Pipinghot

Are you playing in single-player or joining a private server?

Boooo no. Cosmetics yes, P2W no.

When you say "destroy bases at once" do you mean you're using something to tear them down like a karkinos, or are you using an admin command? If you're manually tearing them down maybe try a console command like DestroyTribeStructures, that might get rid of stuff more efficiently without kicking you out of the game. https://ark.wiki.gg/wiki/Console_commands#DestroyTribeStructures

That sounds exactly like evergreen ARK to me. Having ARK without any cheaters or black markets has never existed, no one has any idea what that ARK would be like.

[Edit: I found stuff I missed in the CC. Clearly I replied too hastily, deleting the rest of my post.]

[Edit: Never mind, maybe not. Check out this week's Community Crunch.]

Maybe X (formerly Twitter) or Discord. Unless they put it into a Community Crunch, WildCard shares very little info on the forums.

That would still be true even with crypods. Busy servers are always near the tame limit all the time, and all of the new servers in ASA will be busy at first. With or without cryopods the PvE servers will all be at or near the tame limit within a couple of weeks. The man result of removing cryopods will be that breeding super dinos will take longer (and I'm betting this is the reason WC did it). Since people will only be able to play with the dino's they've tamed, they won't be able to use cropods to store bunches of breeding dinos from many species.

*poof* Gone baby gone.

*poof* Gone baby gone.

Since you're the admin of your own server I suggest using one of the mods that lets you look at the levels in a dino rather than relying on the raw stats, because raw stats can be deceptive and confusing sometimes. For example, sometimes a raw stat will be wrong until you reboot the server. Why? I have no idea, I just know that it can happen. In addition to this being a basic issue with ARK, if you change any config settings that affect taming, breeding, leveling, etc. you can end up with stats that don't match the base game or what other people see. Levels, on the other hand, are universal no matter what you do. If you allow 100 HP per level of Health and I allow 150 HP per level of health, and we each put 10 levels in to Health for a dino, we'll end up with significantly different Hit Points, but we'll both have 10 Levels. When discussing breeding it's almost always better to discuss levels than stats. Regarding which mod to choose, on my server we use the Super Spyglass mod but there are quite a few alternatives that do this for you. When I look at both the Stat Calculator on Dododex and ARK Smart Breeding I see the following: 51 points in Health = 12,320 HP 52 points in Health = 12,540 HP. Neither one of them shows that 12,408 HP is even possible, much less how it might happen. This means that possibly your server needs a restart, or you're running a mod that affects stats, or you've made a config change that affects stats. What would be much more useful to know is how many Levels of Health the various dinos have, once you look at that number you will probably be able to figure out the issue for yourself. But if not, definitely keep discussing in here, just discuss it in terms of levels rather than raw stats.

Which is exactly what can happen in ARK too, which is the point. I'll agree that there are more mods that can cause this problem for Valheim than for ARK, so player honesty is somewhat more important, but there are definitely client-side cheats for ARK that the server admin cannot prevent. I'm not going to name or discuss specific cheats but they exist. ARK is nowhere close to being immune to the problem of client-side cheats. Beyond the question of client-side mods, I would also argue that ARK is also more vulnerable to exploits than Valheim, by virtue of having a more complicated set of game mechanics. ARK is a more complicated game, and with greater complication comes greater vulnerability to exploits. Not hacks, not cheat mods, but simply understanding ways to exploit the game mechanics for an unfair advantage, ARK has a big history of this. Personally, I think the sheer number of exploits in ARK balances out the greater number of cheat mods in Valheim. If you play ARK on a private server you have the same trust problem, you have to trust that other players are not taking advantage of known exploits. I used to think that too, but unfortunately it's not true. There are definitely client-only cheats that can affect what happens on the server in ARK. Again, don't want to name specifics nor talk about where to find them, but they definitely exist. Thinking that ARK is invulnerable to client-side cheats is a mistake. Understood, we each have our preferences. You certainly have the right to like or dislike any game because... well because obviously you do, no reasonable person would argue otherwise. Which brings us back full circle to why I was writing to Noffek in the first place. You'll notice that at no time did suggested that Valheim is a direct, one-to-one substitution or replacement for ARK, nor that any other specific game is a direct substitution or replacement for ARK. I wasn't advertising or touting Valheim's virtues. It's worth remembering that I said, "If you only want to play a game with dinosaurs then the options are extremely limited, but you're willing to generally consider open-world-survival-crafting games with different backstories there are a number of good options on the market now with more to come." Which is to say, "There are other options if you like them". That was it, really, the whole point of my reply to Noffek was that there are an increasing number of options in this genre if someone is willing to try them out. I'm not convinced that's an accurate assessment, I think they intended it to be multi-player from the beginning. I'm not saying your wrong because (as far as I now) there's no evidence to prove either feeling right or wrong, I'm just offering a different opinion based on my feelings being different from yours. Unless or until the Valheim team has made a public statement on this particular aspect of the game we'll never know the answer for sure. For what it's worth, there are aspects of Valheim I also don't like (again, it was never my intention to proselytize Valheim here, this whole Valheim discussion is a tangent). Personally, I think it's insulting to their players that they don't support mods. The need to utilize 3rd party mod installers is absurd and pretty obnoxious. This is the 2020's not the 1990's, mods are a standard feature of online gaming. I think it's lame (which in to say being overly precious about themselves and their "vision" for their game) when a developer "doesn't support mods" even though mod support is a native feature of the game engines that they're using to build their games. Mind you, if a game has official servers then it's perfectly reasonable to say that mods are not allowed or supported on the official servers, but the instant a game is allowed to be played in any other environment, single-player, private dedicated servers, non-dedicated sessions, then "we don't support mods" is insulting and deserves to be mocked by players.

One correction to my post, the directory will look more like this: ../arkdedicated/ShooterGame/Saved/clusters/MyClusterName My patch starts with /mnt.. which I accidentally included in my previous post. Your ../arkdedicated directory will of course be somewhere else, wherever you installed your server.

Fair enough. I wasn't trying to debate the merits or demerits of either game, merely referencing the fact that they're established games rather than being part of the recent wave of games that are in the process of coming out. Which, if pillaring is the specific thing that someone hates about ARK, could recommend Conan as matching their preferences better. Some games are better with higher populations, some are better with lower populations, and in the case of Conan a lower population might make the game better for people who hate pillaring. They do, and their PvE players do complain about land claiming, but not as often or as harshly as we see people complaining about it in ARK. Part of the issue is that there will always be someone complaining about land claiming in any game, because people get frustrated when they can't build in the "perfect spot" that they've chosen in their mind. But If we compare the amount of complaining in ARK to the amount of complaining in Conan about land claiming, overall it's less of an issue in Conan (probably because of the lower populations that we discussed). I've played both with strangers and with friends, and some of my friends have played it with other strangers. Personally, I preferred it with friends but as long as the game host is honest then playing with strangers can be a fun experience. The negative scenarios that you mention can definitely happen, no question about it, and anyone who plays with strangers should be prepared to leave if they don't like what's happening on the server. But whether it's fun or not is a highly variable experience, it just depends on whether people are willing to gamble on strangers. My group of friends did some testing and I have to disagree with this, at least in part. The quality of the playing experience depends on the host machine. If the hosting player has a good computer and a good, dependable internet connection with low latency (latency matters much more than bandwidth) then everyone can have a good playing experience even if some of the individual players don't have a good setup. What we found in our testing (which we did because we were noticing problems with our first attempt) is that having a good host pretty much makes the problems go away. A player with a bad connection (almost) entirely affects only themselves, not the other players. The individual can experience tons of lag and rubberbanding without affecting the other players as long as the host has a good setup. Also, you can run Valheim on a dedicated server (either rented or privately owned hardware) to get away from this problem, so in that specific regard it's just like ARK. Agreed. People who run cheats can ruin the group experience for everyone, which is also true for private ARK servers. Again it just depends on whether a player is willing to roll the dice and try it with strangers. True, but then I wasn't trying to so that's ok. Most games in the open-world-survival-build genre are not directly comparable, because they each make some different choices that augment their individuality. Part of the issue is that the tags "sand box", "open world" and even "survival" are used as much for marketing purposes as for real taxonomy, there isn't an objective 3rd party that decides what classification a game belongs to, it depends on what buzz words the developers and publishers want to try. If someone looks at the "open world survival craft" tag on Steam there are some games that are highly debatable as being deserving of that tag. Heck, even ARK, when you compare it to some games (like Don't Starve for example) it's hard to argue that ARK is truly a Survival game. It's definitely a survival game when the player is new, and for a few levels on each new character, but after that it's mostly a farming-building game. So yeah, I agree with you that they're not directly comparable point-for-point, there are many differences between them, but then again I wasn't trying to directly compare them point-for-point, just referencing Valheim as an open-world-survival-build game. As long as it's run on a dedicated server the only issue to worry about is player honesty, and that's going to be an issue in any open gaming community for any game. There's nothing about Valheim that makes it worse, socially, than a comparable server for ARK or Conan.

For what it's worth, the open-world-survival-craft genre has inspired a bunch of games in the last couple of years, some of which are pretty darned creative and imaginative without charging subscriptions or microtransactions. Obviously we've already had Conan and Valheim, both of which have a lot to recommend them both for Official and unofficial game play, but there are more on the horizon (and a few that have already been released). If you only want to play a game with dinosaurs then the options are extremely limited, but you're willing to generally consider open-world-survival-crafting games with different backstories there are a number of good options on the market now with more to come.

Whoa, my bad. I didn't have any recollection of Atlas having PvE. That's what I get for writing about it without looking at the Web/Steam page first. Thanks for the correction.

You're assuming there's a better solution, but the history of ARK (and many suggestions from players) has shown this to be untrue (so far). People have been suggesting ideas since the very beginning of ARK and, as already discussed, they all have pro's and con's, with all of them being less suitable for ARK than pillaring (or at least equally problematic in different ways). Many have tried, none have succeeded, that fact alone should be informative that it's not as easy as it sounds. This is a good example of why alternatives don't really work for this game (even if they work well in other games). Leashes (or something like them) have been discussed many times and the fundamental problem(s) is that it's not adaptable or flexible. 1) If the leash zone is too large small tribe gets too much land. 2) If the leash zone is too small a big tribe doesn't get enough. 3a) If the size changes based on the number of people in a tribe, a large tribe that loses members will have their land area shrink and they might have buildings that they earned fair and square get destroyed because the game has shrunk their land area. 3b) If the size changes based on the number of people in a tribe, a small tribe that gains people might still be stuck in their original area, because the leash distance can't automatically push their boundaries outwards without being unfair to the tribes around them. In the end, it doesn't solve any problems with land claiming but it does create new ones. Except so far there's not, and "so far" means "since the day ARK started'. That doesn't mean a better idea can't exist, but so far no one has thought of it. If you can come up with an idea that solves the problem of pillars without creating new, equally bad, problems people all over ARK would rejoice and sing your praises. But after this many years no amount of working on a solution has ever resulted in a better idea for ARK. No, don't throw up your hands, I'm not counseling hopeless, just realism. People should try as hard as they want to come up with a better idea as long as they have realistic expectations. The catch is that people have to be willing to accept constructive criticism about the flaws in their ideas. Remember, any alternative solution needs to solve the problem of pilaring but not create worse problems. Solving a problem with a different problem can possibly be a solution, lots of things in life are improved this way, but it only works is the new problem is better than the old problem.

[Edit: I was wrong about Atlas PvE, didn't realize it actually exists. Leaving the original text of this post here for continuity.] Considering Atlas is pure PvP there isn't a pillaring problem to begin with, just like there's not a pillaring problem in ARK PvP. Pillars are a moot point in PvP. If you don't like someone's pillar, destroy it. If you can't, or are afraid to do it, you've already lost the battle. Same with Atlas.

You don't need to do anything with them. If you're on an Official server they'll go away when the server is shut down. If you're hoping to keep them, then you need to look at the threads discussing how to download the server save files that WildCard is making available, and you'll need to set up your own server for ASE. Everything about ASE is going away on the Official servers, *poof* gone.

Yeah, I'm not saying that I'm super happy with pillaring, but any land claim system will have both positive and negative aspects. People have suggested many alternatives on the forums and most of them would work even worse with a game like ARK. Different systems work well in other games, but that doesn't mean they would work well in this game. Pillaring may not be a great solution, but when you weigh all of the pro's and con's it's less bad than just about anything we've seen suggested on the forums.

There's no reason to expect that pillaring will ever change in PvE, it's the solution that WildCard has chosen to accept in the game. As you noted, they made some changes to make pillaring a bit more difficult and a bit more expensive in 2016, and ever since then for 7 years, they have allowed pillaring to be a standard feature of PvE in ARK. It's pretty obvious that WildCard approves of pillaring and has no intentions of changing the land claiming system. Also, considering no one "higher up" has had anything to say about pillaring in many years, there's no reason to believe they'll suddenly have something to say about it now. Pillaring is part of ARK PvE, that's just the simple reality of how the game works.

Even though they're really the same game, WildCard is pretending that they're not. Nothing from ASE will be useable in ASA, your single player ASE game will only exist in ASE, not in ASA. Having said that... if you have two computers, or if you have enough disk space on your computer, you might be able to have ASE and ASA both installed, and copy files from ASE to ASA. Maybe, maybe not, I don't know. But really there's no reason for you to buy ASA. Your single-player copy of ASE will continue to work, so you can finish the game in ASE if you want to. WildCard is shutting down the Official network for ASE, but unofficial/private servers and single-player will continue to work for ASE.

Well, it's both at the same time, since it's basically a single corporation that uses different names. If you look at how they describe themselves on Steam it looks like this: DEVELOPER: Studio Wildcard, Instinct Games, Efecto Studios, Virtual Basement LLC PUBLISHER: Studio Wildcard, Snail Games USA WildCard is a wholly owned subsidiary of Snail Games so in one sense you're right, it's really Snail Games from a corporate point of view. But Snail owns multiple subsidiaries and each of those subsidiaries produces different products, so WildCard is still a separate development studio under the parent ownership of Snail. If you really want to get a better understanding of the relationship between the two check out the wikipedia articles on the two of them, and with a little bit of web searching you can find articles by the gaming press that talk about when the merger/buyout happened.

Your instincts were good, no characters will be transferred from ASE to ASA. All characters on the new ASE servers will have to be brand new characters that are started from Lvl 1.

If you are on an Official server, then using duped items is a banable offense. Having said that, the Official network for ASE is going to disappear very soon, so I doubt that WildCard or anyone else cares. It's up to you whether you want to risk it. If you're on an Unofficial server then it all depends on who owns the server and whether they care, you would need to talk to the server owner/administrator. If this is on a private server that you own, or if it's on single-player, then it doesn't matter at all.