Pipinghot

Again, it's not that simple, WC made conflicting claims about what ASA was going to be. The only time they "literally advertised it as such" was when Jesse R. first tweeted (back in January of 2023) that they were going to port ARK from UE4 to UE5 for free. Every time after that they made claims of how new stuff was going to be added, and in about half of their claims the "new" stuff they were trying to take credit for were nothing more than improvements that would automatically happen as a result of importing into UE5 (like improved pathing for wild dinos, just to name one example). Not only did they make a bunch of claims about how they were adding new stuff, they tried to take credit for improvements that were built into the game engine. Ok, fair enough, the comment that I was replying to still looks to me as though you were disagreeing with WCpromoteslaziness, but I'm willing to accept your claim that I'm misreading your intent. Having said that, criticizing people who "complain about the latter" ignores how much, and how often, WC was deliberately deceitful about what ASA would be. They spent a lot of time trying to use marketing spin to avoid being honest about what they were actually going to deliver. Even back then I was arguing that WC was spinning yarns, but at the same time I have some sympathy for people who believed their marketing lies. It's hard to criticize people who fell for a carefully crafted campaign of disinformation. And even being billed as a remaster is an overblown claim. At the time of release it has been 95%-98% imported code/content and 2%-5% new/different stuff. For WC to call that a remaster is intrinsically dishonest. WC claimed they were bottling new water, and they promised it repeatedly. But WC has not billed this as merely a "UE5 update", that's not what they've been saying. They have billed it as a "remaster", with claims of the game being recoded and/or containing significant amounts of new content, none of which was true. Being in EA is entirely relevant. When one buys a title in Early Access the intrinsically implied agreement is "You pay us now, and we're going to work on this until it's completed and ready for full release. Then, and only then, we will begin work on expansions and paid DLC." That's what an honest Early Access looks like, anything else is unethical. Publishing DLC isn't an issue by itself, but it is an issue when they're selling DLC content for a game that isn't even finished yet. And since you brought up the topic of coercion, that's exactly what WC has historically done with their paid DLC's. During the entire run of ASE if you didn't buy the DLC's you were at a competitive disadvantage. Obviously this matters more in PvP than in PvE, but each of the paid DLC's introduced new stuff that gave people an advantage in the game. That's pretty much the definition of soft coercion. They didn't "force" anyone to buy the DLC's, but the alternative was falling behind the curve. Compare that to Conan Exiles, for example, in which all of the DLC's are purely cosmetic and offer zero advantage during game play. DLC that provides any form of competitive advantage is soft coercion. Nope, never going to agree with that. Early Access means "You're helping fund the completion of the base game, which we will complete before trying to sell any DLC." Considering that ASA still has many of the same bugs that have been plaguing ASE since it was in EA, that's an extremely debatable claim. Don't get me wrong, if you're happy with how much you paid and how much you got, then more power to you, you should enjoy the game if that's what's you want. But in no way does your personal sense of satisfaction mean that WC objectively delivered what they promised. Maybe to you, but to many people it's very material. A company that mismanaged their revenue and cash flow, that then turns around and asks the public to crowd-fund a re-release of what is 95% the exact same game, that's very material to lots of people. Oh no, I prefer FunCom's model - almost all DLC's (except for the 2nd map) are purely cosmetic and don't affect game play at all. Even Isle of Siptah didn't give a competitive advantage because the two maps are separate from each other. All DLC's in Conan give zero competitive advantage and players can choose to buy as much or as little of it as they want to, that's a clearly superior model from the player point of view.

Not true. They have also said at various points that ASA is "new", making claims about lots of brand new code, all of which were obviously false. Doug Kennedy even posted it on Twitter/X at least one time. WC has made quite a few false claims about ASA, they have not been honest about what has actually been done with the product. Except that's not what @WCpromoteslaziness did. What he did was make fun of people who are buying used water and believing that it was new. He didn't buy it and then complain, he made fun of people who bought it. There is when a game is still in Early Access. There is no governing body that makes rules about Early Access, which is all the more reason that players/customers should criticize companies who do it. It's entirely unethical, scummy and generally just a crappy way to treat customers. Beyond that, ASA should never have been EA to begin with, that was also unethical and scummy, unfortunately Steam and the other platforms are find with unethical, scummy behavior as long as they get a cut. WC/Snail have made around 2 billion dollars (that's with a "B", Billion) on the ARK properties over the years, much more than enough money to make a better product and have plenty of operating revenue for anything they wanted to do. This is blatant profiteering at the expense of customers. If you want to overspend for a substandard that's your choice, but then you need to understand that other people have every right to criticize people who mismanage their own company and then need to crowd-source an inferior upgrade thinly disguised as a "new" game. Companies do need to show a profit, and people also have the right to criticize them for mismanaging their company and their products.

While that's technically true it misses the point that you're replying too. 1) Atlas was created from the ARK codebase & game engine, which was created by WC. 2) Atlas is owned and published by Snail, but Snail & WC are really one company. On paper they're two different entities but in reality they're one company. No matter what they say on paper, the truth is that WC = Snail. 3) Atlas was heavily cross-promoted by WildCard when it was new. For a long time many people believed it was a WC game, which is why they played it in the first place. 4) No matter who owns which game, and no matter who owns which company, his point is still true. "The treasure map system was taken from Atlas" - that's a true statement regardless of whether Atlas is a WC product or not.

Not if you want to play with other people/friends.

None of your business, that's why. People want private servers because people want private servers, that's all you need to know.

It's funny how their "brand new" code keeps on repeating the exact same bugs as the original code did.

Because: 1) They can get away with it and there's no one to stop them. 2) Steam allows it, because Valve doesn't care if a game publisher is ethical or not, as long as people are willing to buy a game Steam is happy. 3) There are no standards for what is "Early Access" or not, no rules, no consumer protections in the game industry. If a publisher wants to be scummy and use EA as an excuse for a junky product then no one can stop them. The only option players have is to choose whether they want to support a company that does this. You have to vote with your dollars, if you give money to companies who sell DLC's while they're still in "early access" then they'll keep doing it. If you don't want companies to do this then you have to make the personal choice to refuse to give them money. It's not much, but it's the only power you have in this situation.

Oh god, I just time travelled to 2017.

He said just one, geez can't you read.

You already know that's what they're going to do. What to do next is your decision. Agreed. It should also be new instead of being fake-new.

I accept your apology.

Definitely not. Fortunately no insiders are needed because day after day, week after week, since the very beginning of the ASA fiasco a year ago, WC has continued to show the world how their culture works, and it's just the same as it ever was. Different doesn't necessarily mean better. A different method of deployment has nothing to do with a different culture, those are two entirely different conversations. If the method of deployment is better for the company and yet fails to create a better product then that's not an improvement in culture. Culture is about creating a higher quality of product and providing a better player/customer experience, which has pretty clearly not happened during the last year. Yes different, but so far not better (because again different does not necessarily mean better) and WC has given players no reason to expect that it's going to be better. The fact that their very first delivery of "content" with the new system was a bunch of garbage that no one ever asked for should be a huge red flag for anyone hoping that this will improve the quality of the game. That's not an anomaly, it's not an accident or oversight, it's a harbinger of things to come and it demonstrates that their focus on quantity over quality it just as bad today as it has ever been. That part is not new, this is something they've always done. Every map has had pre-deployment of some assets in preparation for the map release. The only rational expectation is that this map release will go as well (or as poorly, depending on your point of view) as all the previous map releases.

Except it's really not, which is the point. That's a marketing lie designed to let WC get away doing a bad job. If you can't figure out that describing ASA as early access is a lie then that's your intellectual failure, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you real cheap.

Of course it will be just as buggy, WildCard is still WildCard, they haven't changed their company culture in the last few months. This has always been how they have done business, and it's always going to be how they do business. If you think they're ever going to magically change, they're not, the company is owned and run by the same people with the same values they've always had. Any other answer is just foolish wishful thinking.

You'll need to answer the obvious questions before anyone can offer an informed opinion: 1) What operating system is he using on his computer? 2) What file system is he using on his computer? There will probably be more questions to follow, but those two need to be answered before anyone can offer you any useful information.

If you're on official servers, submit a ticket, there's nothing anyone on the forums can do to help you with this. If you're on single-player you can spawn in replacements, or if you're on a private server you might be able to get the server administrator to spawn stuff in for you.

It should never have felt like an early access game at all, there's no excuse for that happening.

It depends on how you play the game. Some people like lots of movement speed, some people like lots of health, some people like lots of carry weight. Heck, there are even some people who like to add points to melee damage because they think it's fun to fight hand-to-hand. If you play PvE then there is no right answer, the only answer that matters is the answer that feels right to you. If you're playing PvP then the answer is a little different. Lots of people pump up their speed stat to make it harder to shoot or hit them. If you've ever tried to hit someone with 60 levels in speed you'd see how much it can help. But for PvE, the answer is whatever makes you happy.

That sounds like a visual allegory for the entire history of ARK.

In that case it wasn't a rathole, it was just a cave, those aren't the same thing. Mind you, I've seen holes in the mesh large enough to fly an argy through, but if you're certain that you were flying through legit air space and not flying through the mesh, well that does suck. Based on your new description I feel for you, it sucks to lose stuff because the game has hosed you. You might be able to get some stuff back if you submit a support ticket, but as we all know that's a painful process and they might not give anything back. I can see why you might want to walk away and play a better game.

Yes, you lose all your stuff. No, you're not supposed to get warning because you shouldn't be taking advantage of ratholes anyway. Meshing is against the CoC an no one should be doing it, ever.

You're not going to get a clear answer from the devs, at least not in these forums, this is not where they answer questions. Having said that, people talking about things doesn't mean much, people say all kinds of crazy stuff based on their own imaginations. Anyone can make up something and start a rumor, they don't mean much. So, unless you see an official announcement that says they're planning to do this, you should assume it's not going to happen.

No we don't, that's just something that sounds good on a bumper sticker or a t-shirt. We know much, much (Much) more about our planet than any other. Yeah, that part has truth to it. We could be doing a significantly better job of taking care of our own.

You either have to take care of them like Penguin said, or find a mod that will feed babies for you.

[ Edited to correct some numbers ] When WC first published their intent to pursue this system the figure they gave was 50%, so it's a little bit encouraging to see that the creators are still getting 50%. But... my issue is that it's less than the industry standard across content platforms. If you publish a game Steam takes 30%, Epic takes 30%, GoG takes 30%... and so on. For now I'll ignore that even 30% is arguably too much already, and focus on the fact that anyone who claims that they're doing it to benefit content creators would make sure that the content creators get their industry standard 70%. But instead WC/Snail are sharing 50%, which is decidedly not something that one does if their goal is to reward and appreciate content creators. Instead WC/Snail are lowballing them rather than an honest revenue sharing arrangement. Throughout all of this WC/Snail have pretended that their primary goal is to help content providers, the fact that the revenue sharing for their content providers is a lowball number is just one more piece of evidence that this is a marketing lie designed to make people feel good about the new system. It doesn't matter whether it's it's new dino skin or clown costumes for the survivors or a map, if this program is primarily supposed to benefit the content creators then the content creators should get their 70% share of the revenue, which is the standard for content platforms in the industry. If someone is willing to do something for free because they love the game, that's a fair system, but the moment you build a system designed to harvest a percentage of the sales made by content creators, especially if they claim that this is all being done to benefit content creators, then that system really ought give them the industry standard 70%. Any other costs like paying OverWolf and Tebex should be coming out of WC/Snail's 70%. Content creators have not contracted with a publisher, or anyone else, they are a captive audience that has to go through WC/Snail's system, which means any fees beyond 30% are just rhetorical tricks for WC/Snail to make the content providers pay extra. WC/Snail are taking advantage of the fact that the content providers are (typically) not business savvy people, WC/Snail are preying on the naïveté of people who are just happy to get paid at all. That is not a system designed to reward and appreciate content providers with fair compensation for their work, it's a system designed to harvest content creators time for as much profit as WC/Snail can skim off of them.