Pipinghot

And you can transfer lots more stuff via the upload, what you can carry on you is only part of the picture. Right back at ya', bad suggestion is bad. No matter how they balance the game, even if it was perfect, it would still be harder for new tribes. PvP in ARK is brutal and destructive, which is how it's intended to be. Your version of balance is not the dev's version of balance. Unless you have something useful to suggest don't bother.

That's not what uploads are for. People have figured out that they can use upload to save stuff, and the devs allow it, but the point of uploads is for server transfers. It's never been intended to be a form of safe storage.

"It's already a problem, so WC please make the problem worse," that makes no sense. Anything that makes it harder for griefers is better. Maybe not perfect, but it's still better than saying, "Hey griefers, it's open season have fun." It's more convenient but it's not "essential". Making things harder for griefers is worth the price of making taming a little bit harder.

Yes. All of these threads you've been in have been about honesty and integrity, which you are making clear you've never understood. Every one of these threads has been caused by WC saying one thing and doing another, talking out of both sides of their mouth, making false promises about what their players can expect. Nearly every conversation for every game that discusses P2W issues is about honesty and integrity, because nearly every company that adds P2W features to their game lies about them. Otherwise known as <drumroll> dishonesty. And the core issue is promising players a level playing field but then adding P2W features that were never disclosed until after people had bought the game. You know, the stuff that you keep failing to understand. You really need to look in a mirror once in a while, your level of failed self-awareness is astounding. I would suggest you take your own advice, but it's clear you're either not willing or not able to follow along. Failed red herring #149. That's been explained in multiple threads. You're either willfully ignorant or incapable of learning how people lose when P2W content is added to a game, or even when a company misleads them about non-P2W content. It seems like you should understand by now that there is a difference between being honest and being dishonest, but apparently these are concepts that bamboozle you. Honest capitalism and dishonest capitalism are not the same thing. Honest selling of products and dishonest selling of products are not the same thing. Fully disclosing information to customers and deliberately concealing and obfuscating information from customers are not the same thing. Truth and lies are not the game thing, and yet here you are many posts later still incapable of telling the difference. These are not difficult concepts, and yet you've never been able to grasp them, which is why you're back here yet again, failing to understand the discussion and arguing about the wrong things. Yup, you definitely need some mirrors in your house. Failed red herring #150. Congrats, achievement unlocked.

Never said it is, you can stop your straw man arguments any time. But you won't, because that's how you roll. Nope. Wrong again. Never said they were. More of your usual straw man arguments. Nope. Wrong again.

Still completely wrong in your understanding of the discussion. This isn't about capitalism, and never has been, it's about honesty and integrity. You continue to fail to understand the discussion and argue about the wrong topic. Swing and a miss. Just one more thing you're wrong about.

A lie of omission is still a lie, no matter how many times you try to deny it this basic, fundamental fact will still be true. WC deliberately mislead people and implied things they knew were false right from the beginning, that's lying.

That same argument is used in every P2W game, and it's always a failed argument because it severely misses the real point. Start with two players of equal skill. Give the first player the P2W cat and the second player a lesser creature. The player will the P2W cat will win more often because they have paid money to artificially boost their effectiveness, that's P2W. That same scenario plays out whether they're both bad players, both medium players or both excellent players. Any feature/component/element/creature that allows a player to spend money to artificially boost their effectiveness is a P2W feature. The skill level of the player who purchases the P2W feature is a meaningless red herring. That's what P2W players get for trusting WC. Still a meaningless argument. P2W does not require that the stakes have to be higher than simply bragging rights. Paying for an advantage is paying for an advantage, regardless of the stakes. And, as you're already agreed, there's some truth to that. The difference was that the paid DLC in ASE was mostly new content, with a couple of P2W elements. They were still P2W, which mattered to every single PvP player in the game, but there were not as much P2W as the ASA DLC and the ASE DLC included a much larger amount of legitimate new content. Again, there is both a quantitative and qualitative difference. Then it's odd that you already supported the idea that the ASE DLC's included P2W features.

P2W doesn't mean automatic victory, it means paying for an explicit advantage. The problem is that "paying for an explicit advantage" is something people don't want to say and type over-and-over again, so pretty much the whole world used "P2W" as a shorthand for this idea. It may not be 'invincible", but it's definitely overpowered, and that power is purchased for money, that's what P2W means.

Yes, of course there is, and if you don't understand that without it having to be explained then you're exactly the kind of sucker customer that WildCard is looking for. Well done, you just demonstrated how the marketing lie functioned. When WC made a big deal out of saying that the maps in ASE would all be free they were deliberately implying that there would be no additional cost beyond buying ASE, and they knew that wasn't true. That deliberate avoidance of disclosing their plans to make more paid DLC was a lie of omission, and a lie of omission is still a lie. If you say to someone, "I'm not going to punch you," and then you kick them, then the statement was technically "true" while still being a deliberate lie of omission. No matter how you try to rationalize things, that's still a lie. And likewise no matter how you try to rationalize paid DLC in ASA that's still a Marketing Lie of Omission. There were people who explicitly asked WC if they were going to sell other paid DLC during ASA and WC dodged the question, they knew they were using a marketing lie of omission to mask their true intentions. WC knew they were being dishonest, the shame of it all is that more players didn't realize this was happening and withhold their money. If you can use it on said map then it is, by definition, not unrelated, you've just proven that it's quite related. It's even more related if it's explicitly designed to specifically give an advantage on said map, which it is. Your analogy falls flat, it's missing a crucial element. The crucial element is full disclosure in advance. If you give a way a free coke that's flat, lacking carbonation, but you don't disclose that in advance, and then you offer to sell people a "cup upgrade" that also adds carbonation to the drink, that's deliberately dishonest. Your lie of omission is the very thing that makes your free coke a ripoff. This is what WC did, they didn't merely offer to sell a better cup, they're deliberately selling a cup that adds something to the drink itself, a component that they deliberately left out when they gave away the uncarbonated drink. Accusing people of "crying" is the mark of someone who doesn't want to have an honest conversation. Winning is winning, regardless of whether there's an esport league or cash prizes, you're creating a false distinction that doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Selling features that give people an in-game advantage is P2W regardless of what the stakes are, even if the only stakes are bragging rights. But the stakes in ARK are much more than bragging rights, P2W in ARK can make a significant difference in the amount time people spend reaching their goals in-game, and that time has value. That's especially true in PvP, where the value of that time can mean the difference between winning or many, many hours of work destroyed in a defeat. But even in PvE it's still true, being able to spend money in order to accomplish goals (farming, caving, beating the bosses, etc.) more quickly means that in the context of PvE selling a P2W items means WC is selling people the time from their own lives at a premium. Even in game with no esports, cash prizes, etc., time still has value. If people like you are willing to buy P2W features that's your choice, but in no way does that negate or invalidate the right of others to criticize P2W features. P2W doesn't magically disappear if there are no prizes, it's still paying money for an explicit advantage. You've offered some great arguments for why people shouldn't buy P2W features, again well done. I agree with you that these things are going to get nerfed (see, we can agree on something) but that means you're partially making my argument for me. What you have demonstrated is that even people who are willing to buy P2W features shouldn't trust WC, they're just going to get ripped off and disappointed in the end. Having said that, this truth does not negate, in any way, the fact that the Train Robbery DLC and the P2W cat are still P2W features, and in no way does that negate people's right to complain about P2W features.

Here's a funny thing, yes, I really do. Turns out you know nothing about my professional experience nor anything about what I know, big surprise. You, on the other hand, come off as a mindless fanboi who's happy to pay for scummy P2W features. There is both a qualitative and quantitative difference between the power-creep that was built in to paid map/DLC's released during ASE vs. the Train Robbery and P2W cat being released in ASA. The ASE DLC included bona fide content, new maps to explore, new adventures, caves, missions, bosses, etc. with the P2W elements of adding more powerful new dinos being only a small component of hte DLC. The ASE DLC, on the other hand, have been mostly explicitly P2W features that offer very little new content that's meaningful for game play other than the fact of being P2W features. AT least half of the Train Robbery DLC was nothing more than P2W objects, and a train isn't remotely comparable to a new map. That's both quantitatively and qualitatively inferior to Scorched Earth being paid DLC during ASE.

There is a difference between power creep in a game and just selling individual P2W features outright. Even though the paid expansions in ASE included some P2W features (power creep from new, better creatures) that's not the same as selling an individual P2W creature for a separate fee. It's also not the same as promising the customers that all of the maps in ASA will be free and then creating a separate P2W Train Robbery DLC. A marketing lie is still a lie. WC promised players that the expansions would be free, but they are sneakily violating that promise by selling P2W DLC along the way rather than simply being honest and admitting there were going to charge more money as new content got released. A lying scumbag is still a lying scumbag no matter what sneaky rationalizations they use to violate their word.

Everyone understands how businesses work. P2W garbage in any game is still scumbaggery, no matter what trash arguments you try to use.

P2W is scummy no matter how you try to make it sound good. If you like game companies ripping you off then that's your business, but that doesn't mean anyone else is obligated to be sucked in by these terrible arguments. Releasing paid DLC's is reasonable business. Releasing P2W DLC's like the Train Robbery DLC and P2W animals is nothing more than scumbaggery.

P2W is scummy no matter how you try to make it sound good. If you like game companies ripping you off then that's your business, but that doesn't mean anyone else is obligated to be sucked in by these terrible arguments. Releasing paid DLC's is reasonable business. Releasing P2W DLC's like the Train Robbery DLC and P2W animals is nothing more than scumbaggery.

Everything they've done since the moment they announced that porting the game from UE4 to UE5 would cost money has been scammy. This is the future of ARK, P2W DLC's, P2W creatures, nickel & dime'ing players to death. The only way to avoid getting abused is to walk away from the game, they're never going to stop.

This game doesn't have a simple progression - Do A, then do B, then do C. For the most part it's a "build your own adventure" game where you explore/build/tame whatever you want to, as much as you want to. Having said that, the early maps end with some caves to beat, where you collect artifacts that you use to spawn the boss fights for each map. If you want some general guidelines, look for the caves on your map (or look them up) and see what you will need to explore them. Then look up what you will need for boss fights. This information will help you decide what to do next, or you might even decide that you don't want to go to the trouble of doing boss fights. But even if you don't care about boss fights the caves can be fun and interesting, and learning more about them might help you decide what to do next.

It depends a lot on where your base is built, and how much wild game is near by. If you have big herds of animals near your base then giga/carcha are the go-to hunters, but if you have a base that doesn't have easy access to a lot of animals then a wyvern might be better for you. Also, remember that you can have a weight animal following your hunter. Kill stuff, transfer meat, kill stuff, rinse, repeat, then you only have to go home once you have a lot of meat stored up.

You have to buy a separate DLC that will give you a P2W guitar.

Keith Richards.

*cough* never *cough*

What does any of that have to do with UE5? Heck, about the only thing WC said that was true about ASA is that it's running under UE5. Almost everything else they said was marketing lies or just good, old-fashioned lies. Those things happen with other games running under UE5 also, why would you think that UE5 would magically fix these issues? p..s. Just to be clear, I'm not defending WC, as I said above they've been dishonest about nearly everything about ASA. I'm just curious why you're complaining about the one thing that's true, that ARK was imported into UE5?

If you're playing single-player, or running your own server, that's really not cheating. Sometimes the game makes mistakes, or it could just be from random bad luck on the spawn points, and sometimes ARK just has glitches. Doing a dino wipe gives the game a chance to spawn everything fresh and maybe do a better job this time. If you just decided to spawn in the creatures you want, that would be cheating, but doing a dino wipe to give the game a chance to fix things is not cheating, that's just fixing glitches.

No, you don't get to twist my words like that and expect to get away with it. Again... "Even if we factor in that the customer service for Conan has degraded since FunCom was effectively bought by TenCent, they still have an overall better history of customer service and a better history of bug fixes than WC/ARK have had. Over the lifetime of these two games, WC has focused more on quantity over quality, FunCom has focused more on quality over quantity." It would be dishonest to "put aside" either company's customer service when the point you were replying to was about comparing their customer service. You've made claims about FunCom's customer service so you can't just duck out of that conversation now and pretend it didn't happen. Even if we take into account that FC's customer service is not as good as it used to be, it's still better than WC's has been. Advantage: FunCom. No, ARK's DLC is not mostly cosmetic. Almost all of their DLC's have been direct gameplay DLC's and all of them have included power creep features. And just so you understand, no one's complaining about paying for maps during ASE, so don't get the idea that anyone (including me) thinks that the original ASE maps should all have been free. The complaint about the paid DLC maps in ASE was that they all included power creep, that is the crux of the issue being discussed. This one specific DLC, Bob's, is the first DLC they've ever produced that's mostly cosmetic. All of their other DLC, for the entire history of ARK, has been functional game DLC, with only a couple of cosmetic items included in each DLC before now. In the meanwhile, Conan has been selling entirely cosmetic DLC for years. This is the first time WC has tried anything remotely like a cosmetic pack, and even now they deliberately included items that affect game play and cause power creep. Bob's has 39 items in it with 17 of those items affecting game play and some of them being OP items. So even now, when WC is putting more DLC into this cosmetic pack than they have before, it still has a substantial number of items that affect game play and introduce power creep to the game. Whether you like or dislike the Oasisaur, whether you think it's weak or strong, is beside the point. It's still true that the Oasisaur affects game play and so do 16 other items in the pack. If "Bob's" had been entirely cosmetic this would be a different conversation, but it's not entirely cosmetic, which means it's still inferior to Conan's cosmetic DLC packs. Advantage: FunCom. Maybe, maybe not. I'm sure we could spend time comparing each of the various DLC's and quantifying how many cosmetic items you get and the price of each... but all of that completely misses the point. You can argue all day long about which game gives you more cosmetics for your money but you're having the wrong argument. The point is that the Conan DLC's are all cosmetic, which means the DLC's in Conan are entirely optional. If people don't want to buy them there's no pressure on the player to do so, if people do want to then the player can decide whether or not it's worth the price, and whatever they choose their game play is not affected nor impacted. But all of the DLCs in ARK include items that cause power creep in the game, with some of them being OP items, which means that a player has to buy the DLC if they want to keep up with the power curve of the game. WC deliberately builds their DLC to create considerable pressure on players to spend the money or fall behind. In Conan players spend the money because they want to, in ARK players have to spend the money or they are weakened compared to other players. Advantage: FunCom. Then you've been extremely lucky in ARK. Many, many (MANY) people have experienced plenty of catastrophic bugs in ARK equally as terrible as anything that has ever happened in Conan. There have been multiple bugs over the years that resulted in "entire bases being destroyed", people losing all or most of their tames, losing max level characters, getting locked out of their tribe, getting locked out of the game while their entire base decays and all of their tames despawn, etc. As we've already discussed, FunCom is not as good about bugs as they used to be, basically since Tencent took them over. But (again) even if we take into account the fact that FunCom has deteriorated somewhat they still have a better track record of not-breaking-the-game than WC has. Advantage: FunCom. The difference is that every new DLC in ARK causes power creep, which puts pressure on players to buy the DLC or get left behind. That is the very definition of coercion. No one is "forced" to buy ARK DLC but if they don't then they will be weakened compared to other players, that's what coercion is. When Conan released Siptah they found out that players were able to use transferring between the two maps to gain advantages over players who only owned Exiles. After some time they decided to stop transfers so that all players on the Exiles map were on a level playing field with other players on the Exiles map, and the same with Siptah-vs-Siptah players. But in ARK the new maps include power creep on purpose, it's a deliberate part of WC's plan to coerce people into buying the new DLC/map or fall behind the power curve. WC could have introduced new maps in such a way that they did not create power creep, but instead they see power creep as a feature they can leverage, a tool for pushing people into more sales, they are deliberately coercing players to buy each new DLC by putting people at at a disadvantage if they don't. FunCom wants their players to have a level playing field, WildCard deliberately uses power creep as a way to coerce people into buying each DLC. Advantage: FunCom. False. The facts are calling you out and you're waaay off. 17 of the 39 items in Bob's affect game play, and some of them are truly OP. Technically that's 56.4% RP, but even that number overlooks or ignores just how much the power-creep items can matter in the game. Even if you were right, even if it was 99% RP (which again, it's not, that's way off) that other 1% would still matter if it was OP. Adding any power creep to a DLC is inferior to a DLC that is entirely RP. Advantage: FunCom. Eventually yes, you could do that, but only after the people who bought it early were already far ahead of you. And to be clear, there's some truth to what you're saying, I agree with you in part. Since this is more nuanced for PvE than for PvP I'll address them separately. For PvE players and single-players, if they were willing to wait until the next free DLC map was released they could gain access to the power-creep features that were introduced with each paid DLC map. That's something WildCard did that was good. But it still doesn't change the fact that making people wait for months to have access to the recent power-creep content was a form of soft coercion. It's reasonable to argue that PvE and single-players could simply exercise some self-restraint and gain access to that content when the next free DLC map was released. But this still means that Conan DLC has almost all been cosmetic, with no pressure to buy the DLC or fall behind other players, and each new DLC has been equally available to all players in the game at the same time. In Conan people all players whether PvE, PvP or single-player all gain access to each new DLC at the same time as everyone else. Advantage: FunCom. Now we move on to PvP, where things are worse. For PvP players that "generosity" meant nothing. If someone was a PvP player when a new paid DLC map was released they had two options - a) buy it right away or b) get a beat-down from people who bought it. By comparison, the only time Conan ever released a DLC that gave an advantage in PvP was when they released Siptah, and then FunCom made the decision that this was not a fair way to treat PvP players, and ever since that one release they have made sure that all PvP players in the game have access to changes that affect gameplay at the same time. Changes to thralls that affect PvP? All PvP players get it at the same time. Changes that affect weapon performance? All PvP players get it at the same time. Changes that affect attacking/defending bases? All PvP players get it at the same time. But in ARK every DLC that has ever been released, including Bob's, gives an immediate advantage to people who buy it right away. Again, using power creep as a tool for coercion. Advantage: FunCom. And again, the Oasisaur is only one small part of the picture. A significant portion of of the items in Bob's affect game play, and some of them are truly OP. That goes way beyond any discussion of whether the Oasisaur is good or not. Also again, every Conan DLC except for one, Siptah, has been 100% cosmetic whereas not one paid DLC for ARK has been 100% cosmetic. Advantage: FunCom. True. After releasing Siptah, FunCom (eventually) listened to the players, decided that it was P2W and reversed their decision, stopping map transfers so that players on both maps were on a level playing field. WIldCard, on the other hand, has deliberately ensured that all of their DLCs, including Bob's, are P2W by adding power creep to every DLC as a way to coerce people into buying them. Advantage: FunCom. True, but pointless of you to mention. Of course they're both businesses, and of course they're not charities, because duh obviously. That's neither here nor there because it has nothing at all to do with the discussion. The issue being debated is which of those businesses treats their customers better and has less predatory business practices. That's objectively false. WildCard's model for DLC is much more coercive and predatory than FunCom's, for all of the reasons listed above. Advantage: FunCom. Repeating your lousy argument doesn't make it better. Setting the bar low for WildCard doesn't argue in your favor, it simply shows that you know your position is weak and you're trying to make excuses for WildCard. If you have to make excuses like that for WildCard then you already know FunCom is doing a better job. Advantage: FunCom.

Since you bring up context, let's talk about that. The problem is that you have an overly narrow interpretation of what people mean when they complain about "the devs". When people complain about "the devs" they almost never are specifically referring to the people who sit at their desks writing the computer code. What they mean is the development company, and most of the time that means the owners, leaders and managers who make the decision about how the developers' time will be allocated - new content, bug fixes, etc. While it's true that sometimes people use "the devs" to mean the people writing the code what they usually mean is the people at the development company who make the decisions that they are complaining about. You made the assumption that @WCpromoteslazinesswas only, and specifically, referring to the people who write the code, but from the context of his post it was clearly obvious that he was referring to the leaders and decision makers of the development company, yet you started arguing about the people who put their hands on the keyboard and write computer code. This whole exchange started because you chose a flawed interpretation of "the devs" that did not match the context of the thread overall, nor the context of the specific post you were replying to. "The devs" = Wildcard, and WildCard = "the devs", for you to assume that he explicitly meant the programmers was a bad interpretation on your part, especially given the context of his post in the overall discussion. When we consider that the context of "the devs" means "the people who own and manage the development company, the people who make the decisions about how the game will be developed, managed and operated" his comments are obviosly on target. Atlas was created, owned and operated and by the same people who were responsible for the creation and operation of WildCard & ARK (specifically Jesse Rapczak & Jeremy Stieglitz, two of the four founders of WC). The reality that permeates this whole discussion is that the same people have been the owners, operators and decision makers for both games since the very beginning, which means that WCpromoteslaziness was making a legitimate comparison. When he said, "those rats" he did not mean the developers who wrote the original computer code, he meant the owners and decision makers for both games. The owners and leaders of A and B are pretty much "one and the same people" (especially when you consider that Snail and it's CEO Shi Hai are on top of the pyramid for both of these games. The people who wrote the computer code didn't do these things but, "the devs" did. The idea that Studio WildCard, Grapeshotgames and Snail are separate companies is a legal business fiction. They are technically separate business entities on paper but in reality the same people are in the board room for all of them. "The devs" who run these companies are the same people everywhere you look. A game doesn't have to be shut down to be abandoned. Atlas is zombie game. For all intents and purposes it's been abandoned, with nothing meaningful being do with it for a long time. Again, this is about context, which you have pointed out is important. In the context of their post, "abandoned" did not mean shut down, again you're choosing the wrong interpretation. It meant a game that is in zombie mode with no serious efforts made to improve or expand it for quite some time. No, you've chosen to argue against wrong interpretations of their post, your out-of-context interpretations are the problem.