Pipinghot

Yeah, I think that's a pretty good assessment, the release of ASA will be mostly an illusion. When they release it they'll say it's been "upgraded" to UE5 but really it will be running inside/under UE5 with the bulk of the game being unchanged yet. Then they'll convert to UE5 piece-by-piece with patches after the release date. It will become a true UE5 game eventually, but not when they release it.

But you know it's going to stay, right? I don't mean that in an argumentative way, you have the right to dislike it. Any discussion on these forums of pillaring is basically a hypothetical debate between players, you're aware that WC has zero intentions of changing the land claiming mechanics in ASA, yes?

Unfortunately that's all we're going to get until WC decides they're ready to say more, that's pretty much how they've always worked.

If you believe WC it won't be that. The paid DLC maps have all been developed in-house, whereas the free DLC maps are the modded maps you're talking about.

They'll adjust the existing lore as needed to fit in the extra map. It's worth remembering that ARK was originally supposed to end with Extinction, but then WildCard said to themselves, "Do we really want to stop making money?" so they change the lore/story in order to publish 2 more paid DLC's and more free DLC to keep the game going (and to keep selling more copies). That's not a criticism, by the way, I would have done the same thing. If people want to pay for more maps and have the game keep going, you sell them more maps and keep the game going. The point is they'll do the same thing for the new map, they will "add on" something new and then adjust the lore on the previous maps so they match the new story.

Fair enough, gave me a real smile. Thanks for that additional explanation. More intense, but conversely also less sustained. What we don't see in rust is people who spend many months building a beautiful (and sometimes) expansive base, nor do they have the need to tame a large number of animals that take up a lot of space, not to mention breeding programs for end-game (boss) content. After reading your post I went an read a couple of primers on TC's and, while they seem suited to the kind of game Rust is I'm hard pressed to see that they would be an improvement in ARK over the existing system. In Rust - need more space, build more TC's. In ARK - need more space, put up more pillars/foundations In Rust - TC's need to be maintained with resource costs or they decay and the building decays. In ARK - have to visit all buildings, pillars & foundations or they auto-decay Either way there is a tool that allows people to claim space, and a method for maintaining that space. I'm not seeing anything that makes TC's better than pillars, just a different way to accomplish the same basic objective. And we have to reinforce the point that Rust doesn't have a pure PvE mode, if we compare Rust to ARK-PVP then it's basically a non-issue. In ARK it's not good enough to merely put up pillars, you also have to be able to defend them, which means it's a non-issue in PvP. We are, and talking involves discussing the pro's and con's It involves asking questions about whether alternative methods actually offer real benefits or whether they're merely different without really making a difference. You could say that about every game. There are always some people who are not happy about some aspects of every game. The thing is, most of those complaints don't have alternatives that stand up to scrutiny. If you look past the surfacae level of the complaints, what most people are really complaining about is over-crowding in PvE. Their are tons of people who want to be able to build where they want to, and when they can't they blame the game mechanics rather than the simple fact that land is at a premium in ARK, especially in PvE. And, quite frankly, most of these threads are started by people who are fairly inexperienced and don't understand both the pro's and con's of pillaring, they only understand that they're frustrated and want to be able to build somewhere they can't. Let's just look at the opening and closing statements in the OP: Opening - "There clearly should be some rules when it comes to this topic, whether it's Ark Survival Ascended or ark 2." There already are rules, which the OP either didn't understand or ignored because they were able to build in a spot they wanted to. Beyond that, we later found out that the OP was on a PvP server where those rules don't apply anyway (if you want it, fight for it). Closing - "I will believe the next 2 Ark games will be great and I will buy but.. spamming needs to stop. It's the legal equivalent to hackers." That's obvously a silly argument. No, it's not the legal equivalent of hacking, that's an argument that shouldn't even need to be debunked. It's perfectly legit to "be unhappy" about the system, as long as the person complaining fully understands the system being discussed and as long as they are arguing for the better interests of the whole player base, and not just grasping at straws that they think will make things better for themselves.

Unless I've missed something, pillaring in ASA will work the same as it does in ASE. Is there some announcement I've overlooked?

Pillars/ladders require constant refreshing, you have to actually visit the location of every one of them to keep them from decaying. That sounds pretty "active", and hardly counts as lazy (neither for the devs or the players). It's also worth noting that you're comparing apples to oranges (I think). As far as I know - Rust has frequent wipes and Rust doesn't have a pure PvE mode (correct me it I'm wrong on either point). ARK, on the other hand, is specifically designed to let you have a base for as long as you can maintain it. I personally know of bases that have been kept alive for 4-5 years, non-stop, maintained by active players. This also leads me to a question - do you know whether it's possible for a tribe in rust to reduce their land claim, or is the size automatic based on the size of the tribe? Something that is allowed by the ARK mechanics (and which I've seen on official servers) is people making friends with neighbors and building close together intentionally. One of the benefits of ARK land claiming is that you can deliberately un-claim land to let friends build close to you. Is this level of flexibility offered in Rust? Also, no tames in Rust, the amount of land needed even for a small base in ARK is typically more than Rust. Not an insurmountable problem, but another illustration of how Rust and ARK are apples & oranges.

Fair enough.

Yup, one of the many methods WC has specifically chosen to not use, because that's not what they want.

It's completely related, and the fact that other companies don't do this should show you that it's related. Game companies don't publish their source code on games they're still selling copies of, or otherwise making money from, they only do it for games that are basically abandonware. Whether that decision makes sense to you or not, it should be obvious that there are reasons for it. Or, at least they believe there are reasons for it, and they are going to make decisions based on what they believe, not whether it seems like a problem to you. My guess would be that there are issues of copyright ownership that get exposed when a company publishes the source code for a game, but of course that's only a guess. Regardless of whether I'm right about the reasons, or whether it's something else entirely, the point that you need to remember is that game companies don't do this when they're still making money from a game. You don't need to "get what's the problem", you only need to have a realistic understanding of the fact that they don't do it. That's actually a pretty good reason why they would not do it. If ASA is re-using code from ASE then they would not want to risk exposing that code (whether it's for copyright or some other reason) by publishing that code with ASE. As long as all or part of the intellectual property that is part of ASE is also part of ASA, they're not going to publish the code.

True, the circumstances might change if/when they actually decide to abandon ASE-UE4, but that hasn't happened yet.

Maybe this is true for you, but it's not not for WildCard and it's not true for the questions I've asked. What's becoming readily apparent is that companies don't do this for games they still want to sell more copies of, which means you're suggesting that WC do something they definitely won't do as long as they're still making money from ARK. They might do this in the future, when they no longer care about ASE as something they sell to make money, but I don't see any reason why they would do this now or even in the near future. Continuing development and selling more copies are two separate issues. Even if they're not actively developing the game they're not going to make the source code public as long as they're still selling copies of the game, and probably not even then. How they work has nothing at all to do with the questions I've asked. The "how" doesn't matter if they "why would they do it" hasn't been answered. Yeah, there are plenty of game-related projects on github... and all of the ones I'm aware of are for games that the publisher is no longer selling copies of. So far the only example you've given (Unreal Tournament) is basically just abandonware. Having said that, there's lots of stuff in the world I'm not aware of - so what I'm asking you is how many projects like this exist for games that the owner is still actively selling copies of.

Short answer: No. It's vaguely possible that maybe, possibly, hypothetically, there could be a small reduction in disk space, maybe 5%-10%, but don't believe it until you see it. And as for the idea of a 90GB install, definitely not.

I'm not fond of fanatical fanboi's either, but you do realize they're part of that "community" you're talking about, even if you wish they weren't. The real takeaway here is that no game has "a community", every game has multiple communities and there are many disagreements among the different communities as to what they want.

What?!? Where on earth do you get that idea? They're just taking down the ASE-UE4 official servers and bringing up the new ASA-UE5 official servers instead. Nothing else about the official server environment will be different, the basic game mechanics and daily operations will be exactly the same, they'll just be the UE5 servers instead. Well you'd better hope harder because that's exactly what they're doing.

So, just to make sure I understand your answer - as far as you know there's only one case of a developer doing what you're suggesting, making their source code available while the game is still in active production. I'm not trying to poke you in the eye or start a flame war, I genuinely don't know if this has been done before and, if so, how often, and how it worked out for the other games. I understand your hypothetical arguments, and they sound good on paper, but I don't know of any real world examples of this being done nor how it worked out. It's hard to judge the merits of the idea if there aren't existing example to look at and learn from. Just because you say it's a good idea doesn't make it so, there may be additional considerations and "gotcha" problems that you're not thinking of, and it would be educational to look at any existing examples rather than just discussing a hypothetical.

This is a case for which the best argument is, "the proof is in the pudding". WC has had years to fundamentally change how land claiming is done and yet... it still basically works the same. There are plenty of methods available for land claiming (methods that were available in other games before the first line of ARK code was ever written) and plenty of methods that have been suggested in the forums over the years and yet... it still basically works the same. The simplest and most obvious answer is that it's working as intended. Is that answer guaranteed to be the correct answer? No, not guaranteed but common sense (and Occam's razor) both give some pretty strong evidence that this is the answer. But did they? Like, did they really? I would argue that no, not really. They've put on a show of trying. They've gone through the motions and made announcements that they're trying. And to be fair they have small tweaks to the pillaring system over the years, like requiring that you attach a second building object to the pillar to prevent it from despawning, but I would argue that at no time did they ever "try so hard". They could have tested and tried any number of claiming systems. But they didn't. They could have taken a more harsh approach to pillaring. But they didn't. They could have changed the ToC (and then enforced the changes. But they didn't. The only thing they've really done is make it a tiny bit harder to pillar. If you look back at the changes they've made they're nothing more than tweaks to the original system, none of them are really trying to hard to change the system in any meaningful way. Why indeed. And since they haven't made any significant attempts to change the land claim system it doesn't look like they believed it was broken to begin with. In fairness to you and this point, I can't speak to Atlas. Never played it, never had any interest in it, never paid any attention to it. The only response I can give to your question is that Atlas is a different game and maybe they had different intentions for Atlas than they had for ARK. Your comment, "Maybe not the same devs, but the same code." may provide the answer, different devs had different intentions for Atlas than they had for ARK. But really any discussion about Atlas is a tangent, and not material to discussions about ARK. Whatever intentions they had for Atlas have no bearing on a discussion about ARK. That's something we can agree on. I hate official servers too, just not for same reasons you do. I played about equal amounts of PvP and PvE, not that this matters in this discussion. No on has "credentials" that give their preferences greater weight than anyone elses. Having said that, I only visit official servers for about 4-6 days a year nowadays, I've been running my own private server for years now. Because "the game sucks on official", I just think it sucks for different reasons than you do. Agreed, which is the only reason I'm still playing it at all.

What other games are you aware of that have done this (for a currently active game that they're still selling copies of) if any?

You clearly either skimmed or misread. When I was talking about a random collection of strangers that was referring to official servers. Dedicated servers are not just a random collection, they are self-selected based on their (stated) willingness to follow the specific rules of the server. And even then, even though they are self-selected, moderation is still necessary. Even with a group of people who claim they want to agree to the rules of the server sometimes require moderation & banning for pillar spam (among other offenses). If a server full of self-selected people can't actually all agree, all get along and all follow the rules then it would be silly to assume that the people who join official servers would do so. Oh come on, you're being disingenuous and not arguing in good faith, this isn't a high school debate club. * They were strangers before they joined the server and met the other players. * The only thing they had in common with the other players was that they bought ARK and joined a server to play. * They selected the server they're on by some criteria that has nothing to do with the presence of other players, typically something like ping. By any reasonable measure, that's a random collection of strangers. Much more random than on a dedicated server with published rules that they joined because they liked the rules. Nope, that's definitely not what I said. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're not deliberately twisting my words, but even with that benefit of the doubt your assessment is careless at best. The real message is that while you're entitled to dislike their decision that doesn't mean they their decision and/or the implementation of the decision is flawed, it just means that it doesn't suit your personal preference. Right. A sandbox game, and that's exactly how it plays on the official servers. A sandbox game with minimal moderation that uses game mechanics to create land claims and resolve land disputes. Now you're being circular, we've already covered these points. Of course those things are possible if the server admin is willing to donate their time moderating conflicts or if the game company prefers to spend money moderating land claims rather than designing a game mechanic to do that for them. You have every right to prefer a server that matches your personal preferences, that doesn't make the game design or the business model flawed, it just means they don't match your personal preferences.

Are you talking about PvE or PvP? When you say, "wipe their bases for the location" that makes it seem like you're talking about PvP. If you are talking about PvP then pillar/foundation bombing is not (and should not) be against the rules. Everything, everything in PvP is about fighting for what you can keep, if someone can successfully pillar/foundation bomb you in PvP then you're not strong enough to fight them, you're lucky that pillars & foundations are the only things they're attacking you with. If you want to play PvP then you need to expect that you're going to have to fight for everything, including your land.

He's not hiding anything, all of that information is available on the wiki. You know... a public source of knowledge.

Just on a side note, ARK has some pretty wonky building mechanics because they don't want people to be able to build down into the mesh, it's very hard to make a base that people can't crawl into. Or it's possible you build in a spawn area, which means you can't ever prevent people from spawning in there. Either way, you might want to talk to you tribe mates about getting set up somewhere else before you just leave. A good tribe can be hard to find, you might want to consider getting more involved in tribe activities.

Yes, right up to the moment where someone else in the tribe changes the codes or just demolishes/moves them. If you want to have stuff waiting for you after you leave the tribe, make sure to manufacture the things you're going to need before you leave, and don't waste any time pulling stuff out after you leave. Even if you pin code it someone could come along in 5 minutes and take the stuff out or change the code. I'm not saying this will happen to you, some tribes are more friendly and some are less friendly when people leave, just make sure you're prepared. Yes.