Pipinghot

I accept your apology.

You don't get to decide what's relevant, this is a public forum. If you don't want to argue then don't, no one is forcing you to reply. Your own argument applies equally to you. what you think is smart doesn't matter. "Only what the developers think" is smart matters, "and you do not speak for them." Based on your own logic, you don't know what's smart because you're not one of the developers. I never said I did, you're making up a fake argument to argue against. Of course it does. Looking at the game industry should help you understand that even though it feels like a good idea it might not really be one. If you don't understand the game industry, and you don't understand the different revenue models that are driving the industry, you have no idea what's a smart idea and what isn't. Which would be great, I support that goal completely, it would be great to see the Official servers for ASE to stay up. But that doesn't mean your idea would be able to make that goal happen. Wanting something to be true and having it actually be true are not the same thing. No matter how much you want it to be a smart idea that doesn't mean it is one. I think it's a total scumbag move that they're taking down the ASE official servers. Even garbage companies like EA keep up official servers for older versions of game when they come out with a new version, but WildCard/Snail manages to treat their customers worse than EA does, which is quite and accomplishment in scumbaggery. Except that it's not, especially if WildCard doesn't think its' a good one. As you pointed out, "What you think matters not. Only what the developers think". Never said I was. Another example of you making up an argument to argue against. Your sincerity is overwhelming. Hugs to you too.

Again, WildCard is really good at getting money from people, that is the one thing they absolutely care enough about. You're talking about a game that has made somewhere between $1B-$2B, that's a lot of caring (about money). And also again, compare the number of games that use monthly subscriptions to the number of games that don't. That answer will also tell you that it's not as smart as you think it is. The answers don't change just because you dislike them.

If it was as smart as you think, they would have done it. WildCard has faults, but being stupid is not one of them, they're very good at convincing people to give them money. How many games can you think of that are still able to charge a monthly fee to play there game? Now how many games cannot do that and are forced to use other methods to try to make their money. Compare the answers to those two questions and you'll start to get an idea of how smart it would be.

The how & why is that the official servers are basically counted as an advertising expense, to "show off" the game without being responsible for making sure the servers perform up to a minimum acceptable standard (no promise of service levels). The official servers for ARK have performance specifications that are just barely good enough to run the game, in other words, the cheapest servers possible. That way they can say, "We have official servers" but also say, "They're free, we never promised they would be good servers."

If you're having fun, then play the game as long as you're having fun. You already paid for it after all. Also, if you're one of the people who plans to buy the replacement ASA then everything you do now will help you learn the game better. Personally, I think ASA is just one giant ripoff and won't be buying it, but of course different people have different views on that topic. If you're going to play ASA then it's worth continuing to play ASE, everything you learn now will help you when the replacement is pushed out.

Also "Beta testing" in this context means they sell it with just a small amount of internal testing, still full of bugs and let the players "test" it for them. You'll be paying them to test their new version.

No, only regular Snow Owls spawn on Extinction. The wiki has pages for every map showing the spawn locations of all creatures (they also have resource maps and exploration map, lots of good stuff there). https://ark.wiki.gg/wiki/Spawn_Map/Extinction?creature=Snow+Owl I don't know if you can breed regular and R together, you may want to check the wki for that too.

I can see why you chose the name "Death of Cervantes", you really like jousting with windmills.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic as a way of pointing out that WC/SG are not honestly diligent about improving ASE, or if you're hoping that they want to change, to become honest and diligent, and as part of that change they should also improve communications. If you're being sarcastic, agreed. They have a long history of not being honest and diligent, nor of good communication with players. But if you think they're trying to change and you're suggesting things they should do as part of those changes well... they're not changing. WC/SG are going to continue being the exact same company they've always been, no one should think that they're going to change anything about their corporate cultures. Yeah, there are plenty of other survival games now, with more coming on the market all the time. This isn't 2016, there are quite a few good options available. That's some pleasant, wishful thinking. It would be nice, it would be nice for all of us, but it's not going to happen. WC/SG are going to continue being the same company they've always been. It would be, but alas it's not going to happen. Any answers they give here will be more of their marketing lies and attempts to convince people that they're doing more work than they really are. Their plan is to charge $60.00 for what should be a $10-$15 DLC, their goal is to convince people that this is a good price and to pretend that it's not the ripoff it really is. I'm not hostile, I'm realistic. I would be great if WC/SG would change how they do business, but they're not going to.

"Spilling crumbs in the form of some graphics" is exactly what they've always done here. The community crunch is their primary way of communicating with players on the forums, they have never offered answers to questions here. They have always used the C.Crunch to push information based on what they want to push, not what people are asking them. Why would you think that this would change after so many years?

In the first community crunch when they announced ASA would cost money instead of being free, they also said that there would be 1 more DLC. Considering their money situation it's not surprising to hear that they might be considering a second one. As for dates or content, I haven't seen or heard anything about either.

The Magic 8-Ball says: Answer hazy, ask again later.

This page from the wiki should answer almost all of your questions about the unique environment of Scorched Earth. You're right about the canteens, water evaporates automatically from Water Jars and Canteens. https://ark.wiki.gg/wiki/Scorched_Earth

Not sure what you're asking. There are no "powerups", at least not how that is used in other games, so what exactly are you looking for?

1) Find the folder where you have installed ARK (the "ShooterGame" directory), inside of that folder will be a "Saved" then a "SavedArksLocal" folder. ..\ShooterGame\Saved\SavedArksLocal Inside that folder will be some files, perhaps as many as four of them, that look something like these files and show the name of the map you're playing. I'm going to use "The Island" as my example. 2) Make an extra copy of all those filed in a different folder on your computer, this is your personal backup copy of the files that you're keeping for safety while you work on the problem. 3) The filed called "TheIsland.ark" is the file that got corrupted when your computer crashed. My guess would be that the normal backup file (the second file on that list) is has also been corrupted when you tried to restart the game. What you want to do is use either the "AntiCorruptionBackup" or the "NewLaunchBackup" file to replace the "TheIsland.ark" file. Either one of those files should be a good copy that will solve your problem. From now on, you will want to update your personal backup copy of the files about once a week (depending on how much you play).

That depends on where you are and what you're doing. In your base or mounted on a good fighter it's just annoying, if you're on foot in a cave it's dangerous. But really that's the least important part of the discussion. Speaking directly to your question, and looking a ARK's history, it seems highly likely they'll treat darkness the same as they do now.

As far as I know this can't be done, once you over write a character it's gone. But if you want to try you have to submit a ticket, no one on the forums can help you with this.

That's also the first time I've ever heard of this, what I'm used to seeing is people complain about it artifacts spawning in too slowly. When you say "artifacts" do you mean the artifacts that you collect from caves, the things that you need to start boss fights?

Based on WildCard's intention of having "souls like combat" in ARK2, and the overall darker tone that they've discussed, I suspect that their original intent was to make ARK2 a bit harder than ARK in some ways. The reason they added the ability to change gamma was not to make the game easier, it was because they realized that people with more technical knowledge about their PC's could use graphics utilities to change their gamma no matter how the game is set. This meant that players with less technical knowledge were at a disadvantage against players who have more technical knowledge about their PC's. So rather than let people who are less technical suffer, they added the ability to gamma up as a way to level the playing field for less computer-savvy players. It's worth noting that this is still an option for the server admin. If someone runs a private server they can disable the gamma command which effectively gives their server a harder difficulty setting (as long as their players agree to not raise their gamma with external tools). So, no, I don't think they have any plans to eliminate the need for gamma adjustments, since not everyone likes adjusting gamma and some people prefer to play with the extra darkness. I don't see any reason why WC would make night-time less dangerous or threatening, other than enabling the gamma command. They want to include as many options to make the game harder as they can, so that people who like their survival games to be hard can play it that way. Personally, I don't like it that much and I tend to gamma up, but WC knows that there are people who like having the game extra dark & dangerous.

Yeah, agreed, it just hadn't occurred to me. Up till now I was thinking that they would leave things the way they are for Steam users and add OW for everyone else, but your answer makes more sense. Change ASA to OW for everyone and have a single mod system. Agreed, no need to debate this, and frankly there's no need to. Both are true, it just depends on when in time we ask the question. Originally - during the design and early years of ARK - it was here to enhance the game experience. The goal was to sell more copies of the game, so mods helped them monetize the game, but they had no thoughts of monetizing mods for a long time. Currently - since Snail (Shi Hai) took over, the long term goal for everything Snail is monetizing anything and everything related to the game using web3/blockchain/NFT garbage. He discussed this publicly multiple times, there's nothing any of us need to debate about his intentions. Two different answers at two different points in time. Yeah, I would not be at all surprised if some mod makers start using Nexus and/or R2Modman after ASA is released, if WildCard & OW make them unhappy.

Whoops, I can see that I could have described that better. I was talking about support and distribution of the mods after the mod makers had created and uploaded mods. Thanks for showing me that I didn't word that properly, I've gone back and edited it like so: PIpinghot - "2) In addition to making that decision the publisher has to make arrangements for infrastructure to support the management and distribution of mods (once they have been uploaded by mod creators, naturally mod creators are responsible for making sure their mods work, I'm only talking about the distribution of mods after they are created). And, of course, this only applies to platforms like Steam, Microsoft, Sony & Epic. If a mod maker wants to upload their mod to an independent site like Nexus then it's outside the scope of this discussion." That's an interesting point. It hasn't occurred to me that they could use OW to bypass Steam just like it can be used to bypass Epic, MS, Sony, etc. They could remove mods from the Steam platform and consolidate them to OW so that Steam players also have to pay for premium mods. Yikes. Regarding your comment, "They want to piggy back $ off of Modders work" it's more than that. That's how it would be at first, it's what will happen when ASA is released, but their long-term goal is to add blockchain tracking of individual items in their game(s) so that every item in the game has a unique identifier. Then they want to leverage that ability to enable/encourage RMT's between players and get a cut of all of those transactions. It goes way beyond just mods, Shi Hai wants "a piece of the action" for every RMT that happens in their games, which he's openly stated in interviews. As far as Shi Hai is concerned, blockchain/crypto/NFT garbage is the future of gaming and he wants to cash in on every transaction. That's what Project Hermes is all about, the whole point of that game is to add blockchain/NFT garbage into the game. And, of course, even though Snail will never admit it, you can be certain that most of the money they make from ASA is going to be used to pay for development of Project Hermes. Obviously some of that money has to be spent on ASA, just to keep it running, but anyone who thinks that the money they make from ASA will be used to make any significant and noteworthy improvements to ASA is naive. It's really a money grab to fund Project Hermes and the de-evolution games published by Snail to become blockchain ripoffs.

I see, we were talking about two different things. I was talking about client updates, not server updates. So yes, you're right that cross-platform servers could be managed however WildCard wants to without any regard for what MS/Sony as long as the the client can log into the server without requiring a client update. But in many cases the server updates also require client updates or people can't log into the server, in which case the scenarios I described would be pertinent. When that happens WC would have to wait until all platforms have certified the client update before updating the servers, or they would be locking console players out of the server until the console update is certified.

No, it doesn't, not unless you have some secret knowledge that the rest of us don't have. it just means that distribution to PC gets delayed until the platform providers all certify each release. Microsoft & Sony don't care one little bit about WildCards patch schedule on PC's. They're still going to require certification on their own platforms, and if that certification means that the patch for PC has to wait until they're done certifying that's fine with them. Having a patch delayed by console certification is a problem for WildCard and PC players, it's not a problem for Microsoft or Sony. So, as I say, unless you've seen some announcement by Microsoft and Sony that changes this, nothing is going to get "kicked" except PC players who have to wait for console certification. Or (as someone else said), console players will be unable to log in to the cross play server until each of their platforms certify the patch. If that happens WildCard might attempt to blame the problem on the console platforms but that's an argument they're going to lose. Microsoft and Sony will make sure everyone knows it's WildCard's fault if that happens.

Also @Frack @darkradeon Just to make sure we're not all talking past each other, let's see if we can agree about a couple of details. 1) UE5 has the ability to support cross-platform mods, but it's more complicated than simply making the decision to support cross-platform mods. 2) In addition to making that decision the publisher has to make arrangements for infrastructure to support the management and distribution of mods (once they have been uploaded by mod creators, naturally mod creators are responsible for making sure their mods work, I'm only talking about the distribution of mods after they are created). And, of course, this only applies to platforms like Steam, Microsoft, Sony & Epic. If a mod maker wants to upload their mod to an independent site like Nexus then it's outside the scope of this discussion. This could mean that the publisher makes an agreement with one-platform-at-a-time (separate agreements with Steam, Sony, Microsoft, Epic (and anyone else I've forgotten) or it means they have to prepare external infrastructure to support mods (this would mean either building their own infrastructure or contracting with mod.io or overwolf. For Steam, the support for mods already exists and if a publisher sells a game on Steam they can only distribute mods to their Steam game by contracting with Steam to use Steam's infrastructure. For the other platforms WildCard is planning to contract with Overwolf, instead of contracting with each of the individual platforms, for the management and distribution of mods to consoles. (Side note: I don't know what they have planned for cross-platform mod support on Epic or on Microsoft PC for ASA, but for now let's just talk about cross-platform between PC & Console). # Reality check #1 - does anyone disagree with these details so far? As far as I know this is a presentation of the facts from a technical point of view. UE5 allows cross-platform mods but the publisher still has to arrange for management and distribution of the mods. Now for the business side of things... I'm just going to quote Frack here, "only reason they are using OW is $". The choice of Overwolf is driven by WildCard's desire (which really means Shi Hai's desire) to make additional profit from premium mods. It may be the case that Microsoft, Sony & mod,io support premium mods, or maybe not, but whether they do or not, WC has chosen to contract with Overwolf they believe OW is the most cost effective/profitable solution for cross-platform mod support. # Reality check #2 - any disagreements here? Now for the additional speculation from me: Beyond this, I also believe that they will be using Overwolf with ARK2 if it ever gets published (I know they previously announced mod.io for ARK2, but I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that changes) and I'll bet they also plan to use Overwolf with Project Hermes (ARK-in-Space, but with web3/blockchain/NFT garbage built-in to the game). As part of this speculation I'm guessing that Overwolf is more focused on web3/blockchain/NFT garbage than mod.io and probably more than the individual platform providers. Shi Hai's disgusting "vision" for the future is to harvest a percentage from every RMT that players ever transact. He's not doing it to support modders or other content creators and he doesn't care about selling in-game assets for money, he just wants a piece of the action from every transaction.