Pipinghot

Bary's are easy to tame if you set up a taming pen and lure them into it. If you're on a map with flyers it's easy to aggro them and kite them into the pen. Even on foot it's not terribly difficult, you just need to build a pen with doorframes on the bottom level so you can run up the ramp into the pen and then exit through the doorway. For pure water mounts, I like basilosaurs. They can kill, or escape from, anything in the waters. Being immune to Cnidaria and Electrophorus stun and Tusoteuthis makes them more powerful than many people realize. They can be annoying to tame, a bit glitchy sometimes, but when you consider that they're a passive tame it's not hard to overcome the glitchiness.

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.

Yup, agreed, but that doesn't mean we players don't have the right to exchange opinions on these forums about these topics. WC is going to charge an insulting amount because they can get away with it, and they can get away with it because there are a lot of people who will be willing to spend a bunch of money just to play the same game they've already played... but (maybe) prettier. P.T. Barnum wasn't wrong...

You're arguing with something I didn't say. I wasn't discussing whether the price will be "worth the price", what I was discussing was whether the "amount they're charging is proportional to the amount of work", those are two entirely different issues/questions. Agreed, that's true. And if the history of ARK is any indication they will almost guaranteed require lots of players (probably even most player) to do hardware upgrades. Only time will tell, of course, but from where we sit today even the idea that a new release would somehow be less demanding of compute resources sounds like a pleasant fairy tale.

There's no way that actual game devs thought that. If someone wants to be extremely charitable they might choose to think that WC's management believed this even though the dev's told them otherwise, but realistically even that wasn't true. UE5 has been known to the industry for years now, the only ways someone could believe this was going to be easy would be if they were deliberately, stupidly, naive (WC is many things, but stupid isn't one of them). The reality is that WC has known for quite some time that this migration would be a lot of work, you can bet your socks that when JS tweeted that the migration would be free/easy he knew better. This is not something that just snuck up on WC and surprised them, their communications shenanigans are a smokescreen designed as a smokescreen for the fact that they knew how difficult it would be and they're juggling financial decisions behind the scenes that they don't want to fully discuss. Exactly. Anyone with any experience in the technical world would know better than to thing it would be easy, there's no way WC actually believed that. The "dishonest" part is them pretending that they're surprised by any of this, anyone with common sense should understand that this is something they've been thinking about and talking about internally for months now. That's only true if you assume that ARK needs to get ported to UE5. And even if you agree with the argument that it's necessary to do so that still doesn't mean that WC was surprised by this, nor does it mean that the amount they're trying to change for releasing the same game twice in a row is a reasonable amount. We could talk all day about whether it's necessary to port ARK to UE5, but again even if we choose to agree that it's necessary that doesn't mean the amount they're charging is proportional to the amount of work.

Valid arguments, and of course you have a right to be willing to spend money even if your argument wasn't valid. Your money is your money and you can spend it however you like. No disagreement there. That's not going to change. They're almost instantly going to be a mess again, because WildCard is still WildCard and PvP players are still PvP players - some portion of PvP players will always be deliberate cheaters, and WildCard will never care all the much about cheating, they only care about it when it's good PR. There's some truth to that, for a short while it will be stuff that people have earned, but then as soon as people can figure out how to do it there will be new stuff cheated in. That problem, quite simply, will not be fixed by moving to UE5, it's more of a WildCard-management-attitude issue than an ARK issue. They won't. The basic reasons why PvP is a mess will not change. They will seem better for a short time but very quickly will end up just like they are now. If that's the reason, "for the good of the game", then WC should be giving rebates to people who paid for a game that's rapidly going to be removed from Official servers. It's not for the good of the game, it's for the good of WildCard and their bank account. You're right, it wont. But whether it ends the game or not isn't the real issue, that's pretty much a non-argument.

That's true, from the way it's worded they're not planning to migrate characters from UE4 to UE5... which is exactly why the OP is requesting that they do so. The OP wouldn't need to ask them to do something they're already planning to do.

Nothing about that prevents them from migrating characters from UE4 to UE5. Mind you, I'm not arguing that they should, I think there are other arguments based on in-game-play reasoning that could be used to against migrating characters. I'm not arguing against the decision, I'm arguing against the idea that this specific argument is valid. It's a technical hurdle that could be overcome.

Yes, beginner servers are official. For what it's worth, there's a good possibility that the "new" servers for ASA will have the same names or very similar names with the same numbers (it might be something like ASA_899_beginner... you get the idea), so you might end up running into the same people. When they wipe the servers just look for "899" and see if it still exists.

Achievement unlocked: Mindless fanboi identified.

Well no, these are mostly your opinions but still worth discussing. Yeah, see this is a good example of "not a fact", it's your opinion. Many people will tell you you're wrong, prices is extremely releveant. WildCard told people the conversion to UE4 would be free but now they're charging $90, that's pretty darned relevant. Maybe not to you, but to lots of people. Again, not a fact, just your opinion. Actually not even your opinion, it's just a description of how you play the game. Lots of people play "HAVE OTHER GAMES" in addition to playing ARK, that's a real fact. Nope. That is "a" problem, and it's certainly real for many people, but it's not "The real" problem. Only a minority of people play Official servers, and while it's a huge problem for those people (and it's a problem that everyone should have sympathy for) it's "The real" problem for you, not for a majority of players. Seriously, do you even know what a fact is? Plenty of people have fun on the official servers. Unfortunately it probably does make sense. It's a cruel thing to do, but like most game companies they want to push people to play the newest versio of their game because that's how they make money. The minute that ASA is published and ready for people to purchase, they won't be making any more money from ARK-classic, and that means the Official servers need to support the new version that's making money. This doesn't mean I like it, any more than you do. In their previous communications they said that the upgrade to UE5 would be free and they also implied that the servers would also be upgraded at the same time. That's a terrible way to treat people, but unfortunately it probably makes sense to them because that's what's going to make the most money for them. Yes, that's exactly what they think and, unfortunately again, they're probably right. WildCard has seen a long history of players complaining and then still giving them money. The only reason WC would change their plans is if large numbers of people refuse to buy ASA. If they are able to make lots of money then they don't care how much people complain, money talks louder the complaining. In my opinion one of the reasons they're doing it this way is specifically becuase they're afraid not enough people would buy ARK2 because it's different from ARK. If they published ARK2 and no one bought it then that would be a big failure. But if they bundle ASA + ARK2 then lots of people will automatically own the ARK2 base game and they can make claims about how many copies of ARK2 they've "sold" and it makes it easier to get people to buy the DLC for ARK2. Game players are generally pretty predictable - if you sell them one game and then bundle a second game with it then a lot of people are going to play the second game also. Then, if they're already playing the second game they're more likely to buy the DLC for the second game. As a business model they are doing something really smart, it's also a pretty crappy way to treat players... but they're still going to make money becuase too many people are going to be willing to give them money for this. No, not at all. They want ASA and ARK2 to be two completely different games. ASA will help them keep making money until ARK2 is ready, and when ARK2 is "given away" to all of the people who own ASA they will be able to sell DLC's for ARK2 to many of the people who got it "for free". It's nothing like Atlas, you're comparing apples to oranges. Atlas had no connection to ARK, the theme was different, the sales model was different, there was no bundling with ARK + Atlas... and there are other differences that don't need to be discussed. Bottom line is that this is very different from Atlas. That does sound like a good idea, it certainly works well for FunCom with Conan. It seems odd that WC has seemingly never considered this. Cosmetics make a bunch of money for many games, it certainly feels like this could be true for ARK also. That's definitely not the issue, WildCard was like this before Snail Games bought them. Not true, obviously they're not afraid of the community or bad reviews, if they were afraid then they never would have decided to do what they're doing. Which is why this problem exists. If players were willing to vote with the dollars and refuse to buy this new edition then WC would actually be "afraid of the community or bad reviews", but too many players are going to complain but then give them money anyway, they know they can get away with it. At the cost of $90... apparently. Yup, unless people are willing to walk away from the game. Stop giving them money, that's your only true choice, everything else is just talk.

You are obviously not aware of WildCard's conduct before Snail Games bought them. WildCard absolutely shares the blame for this.

Personally, I wouldn't count on that lasting too long. Game companies are notoriously bad at supporting games that are not the current version they're selling, worse than the rest of the software industry. If you're currently doing a play though on an unofficial, private or non-dedicated server, or in single-player, I would focus on finishing that play through. Do not trust WC to keep the game working for more than a few months after ASA is released. I mean, maybe it will keep working, I could be wrong, but the smart money says it would be a bad idea to trust them on this.

Sad but true. WC keeps on lying, people keep on giving them money.

This is where I do my pro bono work.

Well, it is a tribe based game, so if you're trying to PvP solo you're taking your life into your own hands. After all, you wouldn't expect to win 1v15 in a first person shooter, you wouldn't expect to solo-win a 10-person battleground in WoW (or equivalent RPG's), you wouldn't expect to solo a 5-person dungeon in WoW (or equivalent RPG's). The very fact that you can even attempt group content in ARK is an improvement over other games. Single-player is the specific game mode that WC designed to allow people to play the entire game solo, the other game modes were fundamentally conceived as being group/team game modes, so if you choose to solo-play a group mode then it's up to you to accept responsibility for your choice. I'm not criticizing that decision in any way, it's perfectly legit to try any game in hard mode if that's what you want to do, but it's on you when you do so. Yeah, I get that. That's part of the reason why I'm doing my playthrough on a private server with people who are my RL friends. Yeah, all of that can be frustrating if you want to play the game in chronological order, agreed. All I can say about this is that it's a natural consequence of ARK being a survival game rather than a standard MMORPG. You have to be at the leading edge of the power curve if you want to win in PvP. Having said that, even with traditional MMORPG's it's difficult for a character to be competitive at PvP as the character is progressing through the game. Pretty much every game has their PvP in groups of levels, whether it's Lvl 30-50 in a group for battlegrounds or +/-10 levels in open world PvP. Open world PvP in most MMO's (just like in ARK) consists mostly of ganking lower level characters than in 1-vs-1 duels between evenly matched characters. Only rarely do evenly matched characters meet for a duel at high noon and square off for a fair battle, mostly it's ambushing vulnerable opponents. The major difference between standard MMO's and Survival MMOs' is that you don't lose everything in standard MMO's. But otherwise, power creep applies to almost every game. It's important to note that you're mixing two different conversations here. Comparing ARK to Rust is a valid path in a discussion, and I agree with what you have to say about Rust, but it tells us nothing about whether KoS is rising in ARK compared to the past in ARK. What we were discussing was comparing ARK in 2016 to ARK in 2019 to ARK in 2023 is the comparison we were discussion. It's true that Rust does things differently but that doesn't tell us anything about the frequency of KoS vs non-KoS in ARK over time. That's the exact same advice that was given to people in 2016. Talking in public has always been an invitation to get wiped, meeting a stranger in the open world has always meant the risk of instant combat and a KoS. None of that is even remotely new. But, as we've agreed, there's no true data that we have to answer this question either way. All we have is anecdotes and feelings. Is KoS more common now than 2016 or 2019? Unless someone is able to get WC to share their data no one can answer that question. This is an interesting idea that I haven't seen anyone else describe. I don't think it matches the lore, but I like it and if it makes you happy to make that your story as you play then more power to you. We should each enjoy the game on your own terms. On this point I think you're tripping yourself up and making the game less enjoyable for yourself. To illustrate what I mean let's talk about the lore for a minute. When you find the notes on The Island they have been left by people who lived long before you (and me, and everyone). There is not one single player-character in ARK that ever met any of these people face-to-face on the island. They're historical characters who we know about but no player has ever met them because they lived on the Island long ago. Again - You certainly have the right to imagine that your character is living in their time, if that makes the game more fun for you, but that's not what the lore/notes say. To say that you are a contemporary of Mei-Yin or Helena on The Island is like saying that you fought beside William Wallace at Stirling Bridge (or pick any historical reference that makes you happy). We are reading their notes specifically because they are people who lived before we ever arrived, they are people from the historical past of The Island, not living in our present time. The game is fundamentally designed around the idea that these are historical people who lived in the past. So, while you have the right to imagine yourself living along side them (which I still think is a fun idea) you can't expect the game play or the game mechanics to support your decision to use the lore in a way that the designers never intended. No one has the right to tell you that your idea is wrong, but you also don't have the right to complain that the game doesn't support your custom crafted story idea for yourself when the game was explicitly designed to support a different story. To draw rough analogy, there are many D&D campaigns in which the DM and the players put their campaign into the Lord of the Rings time period, with their characters even participating in some of the important events & battles of LoTR, but those campaigns are custom crafted stories for the fun of those players, none of them would ever write a letter to the Tolkien estate complaining that their characters aren't listed in the books. If you want to re-interpret the lore to tell yourself your own personal story, you should, that's creative and interesting. But at some level you have to accept that the game is not going to support your re-interpretation of the lore, the game design is going to support the lore created by WC. And that's ok, as long as you don't expect the game to bend to your will. That's true... but only because it's a game. Let's talk about this for a moment. It sounds like you played games in the TBW (time before wikis) so you probably remember what it was like when RPGs were half-game and half-puzzle-solving-mystery. You might even have played games in which you needed to find and understand the lore/notes in order to progress in the game. People loved those game so much that lore books. clue books. puzzle solutions books, etc. immediately came into existence. Which is to say, a sizeable portion of players hated being required to solve puzzles so much that they didn't even want to play/finish the game unless they could find some way to progress without having to do all of that stuff. Heck, it got to the point that the game publishers themselves start publishing these books and lots of games had these clue books published side-by-side with the game. Game publishers discovered they could make a ton of extra money publishing a game and a solution book on the same day, with many players buying both the game and the book at the same time just so they wouldn't have to solve all of the puzzles. And what brought a stop to all of that? The internet, with it's cheap and easy way for players to share solutions, eventually leading to wiki's being a standard feature of gaming. Now, try to imagine playing ARK in an environment where there was no such think as the wiki, where players had to find and understand the lore/notes in order to figure out how to tame dino's, what artifacts are for and how to spawn boss fights. How many people would play that game? Would you? (I know I wouldn't). That is the reason why "much of it will only be discovered near the end game of each map" or indeed why many players never bother to find it at all, be cause the wiki exists and because people simply wouldn't play the game if lore discoveries were required to progress. A small number people, pretty close to zero, would have played ARK if that was how it worked. It would have failed and we wouldn't even be having this discussion. So it's tremendously important to understand that some things happen simply because it's a game. You can play almost every RPG or MMORPG without ever reading a single line of lore. You can play many games... big, big games with lots of back-story... without ever paying attention to quest-text or anything an NPC ever says. But that doesn't change the fact that the lore tells a story that was specifically designed and intended by the game designers. The story lore of ARK tells us, in no uncertain terms, that the people we're reading about are historical characters who lived in the past, that they are indeed the prologue to every one of us. And the fact that it's a game, which means you can progress in the game without being required to find, read and understand the lore before progressing, doesn't change the fact that this is how the lore was written. We don't meet Rockwell until Aberration, and the only reason we meet him is because of what happened to him. If he had not been transformed by Element he would have been dead long ago. We don't meet Helena until Genesis, but only because she was the first Homo Deus, she became a human consciousness within the ARK system. If she had not done so she would have been dead long ago. With all of this said, I'm still not saying that you're wrong for imagining yourself as one of their contemporaries - as long as you don't try to blame the game for refusing to support your personal vision. If re-interpreting your personal game experience makes if more fun for you then you should do it, if re-interpreting the lore with your own personal twist is more fun than you should do it, but you can't blame the game for failing to go along with your personal re-interpretation. It's up to you to figure out how to do both things, make your own interpretation and still enjoy the game. if you re-interpretation is making the game less fun for you then you need to consider whether you're, to some degree, shooting yourself in the foot. I've run out of quote boxes, so I'll just refer to actual quotes: 1) "For me the story is a single survivor trying to achieve their one objective of finding the mysterious AI that contacts you on the island. That survivor has to deal with both aggressive and friendly tribes, but not become too side tracked to lose sight, or else they may end up like Rockwell." For you that's valid, but it's not how the game was conceived nor fundamentally designed (except for SP). The NPC's we're discussing didn't exist as "single survivor"s, they existed as people living in a multi-populated world. In some cases, the fact that they were not merely single survivors is an important part of their stories. Some portion of their importance specifically because they were not single-players, they were participants and leaders in tribe-based PvP. If these important NPC's had tried to solo-PvP we would never have heard of them. 2) "Ark SP or PvE can be a co-op or single player game from beginning to end yes. And yes you are right that none of the mentioned NPC's have completed the entire story line. But these are NPCs...and where they fail, the survivor (you) are supposed to succeed." We're supposed to succeed only because we are not contemporary with them, it's explicitly because we live after they did. If it wasn't for Helena we wouldn't respawn, we'd all live a single life and disappear when we get killed, just like all of the people who lived at the same time as Helena and the other NPC's. Those unknown people all lived single lives until after Helena uploaded herself into the ARK's. The contradiction here is that you claim you want to live in the lore, but the lore explicitly states that your choices are not true, and then you complain that the lore doesn't support your personal vision. Again, this is like saying that your D&D character went to high school with Frodo and went to Mt. Doom with him, and then complaining that the author of LoTR is raining on your parade by refusing to support your personal vision. 3) "Let's not forget that while our NPC's may have not beaten all the maps they still experienced their own PvP. The issue however is that the documented PvP in the notes speaks of mei-ling riding in on a raptor fighting off squads with guns." There are two responses to this: a) Right, because when she was alive that was something that was possible to do and now it's not because things have changed over time. b) Or alternatively... yup, that's normal, it's something that happens in every game's story. There are always characters in story-based games who can do things that the characters can't. Whether you play Warhammer, Conan Exiles, ARK, WoW, etc.... there are NPC's in the back-story who have done things that no player-character has ever done in that game. Whether it's Gandalf casting spells that players can't, or Conan solo-defeating enemies that players can't, or Rockwell using element to become an insane demi-god, there are always things NPC's do that player-characters can't. And conversely there are things the player-characters do (like finishing the entire game) that the NPC's either can't or haven't done. This is what differentiates your story from their story. Our player characters and our stories are always different from the stories of the NPC's, this is true in every game. You are not Rockwell and he is not you. You are not Mei and she is not you. We're not playing their story, we're each playing our own story. 4) "That poop just straight up does not happen in any ark battle, let along 2v1s with a power gap. The story writers were completely clueless to how battles actually happen in this game, which is why I now claim that not just solo PvP, but PvP in general is broken. PvP is not as intended." This sentiment also has two reasonable responses: a) Every game has differences between the lore and the game play. If you expect your character to be exactly like the NPC's in the lore then no game will ever satisfy you. Understanding the difference between the NPC's in the backstory and the actual gameplay experience of being a player-character is important to enjoying any game. b) Or... you're just not as good a she was, that's why she has left lore notes that are part of the game and you haven't. Get on her level, defeat lots of enemies with a raptor and you too can become part of the lore backstory of the game. Obviously that answer is a little tongue-in-cheek, but not entirely. It's important to remember that there are lots and lots of NPC's that you've never heard of. There were many, many people who died as complete unknowns during the time of Gaius, Helena, Rockwell, Mei-Yen, Diana, etc., people who never left explorers' note, people who's names no one will ever know. The NPC's we know by name are extreme exceptions, people who accomplished legendary things in their own lifetimes, that's why we know who they are. It should be extremely hard, and quite often impossible, to equal the feats that NPC's have accomplished otherwise they wouldn't be important enough to know their names in the first place. They became known to us specifically because they were epic people so if you want your character to join them in the pantheon of greats all you have to do is become epic too. 5) "This was a heck of a writeup, Mr. Pipingshot and to be honest I've had a few beers so there may be some lack of coherence in there. I appreciate that you put real thought and effort into your post as well. I'd love to keep this conversation going..." Glad to, I enjoy discussions like this. "...but if we do I'm down to keep it a little shorter and maybe down to one point at a time, so we don't burn ourselves out on just the forums lol." I'm good either way. If you want to discuss specific points individually feel free to break up your response into multiple posts.

The upgrade to UE5 will definitely affect ARK(1), but as Larkfields pointed out that doesn't necessarily mean it will be smaller, it might well end up being bigger.

Haha no, not this guy. Other than my two-week-long attempt to lure my tribe back to PvP I never tried PvP solo. Reasonable people can disagree, having tribe mates to talk to while playing makes the game better for me. But I can certainly understand that other people, like yourself, feel differently. Sure, I see your point. Playing the story in PvP and playing the story solo (or on a private server which is how I play) are entirely different animals. If you truly want to play the game in a specific sequence than that particular approach doesn't work in PvP. I disagree, KoS has always been just as prevalent as it is today (except in the very early months of the game). There have always been people who try to talk first and others who shoot first and ask questions later. But since this isn't something that can be proven one way or the other, it's heavily influenced by personal experience, we can agree to disagree. On this point I strongly disagree. For me the true story of ARK is the story that players experience as they play the game, no matter what mode or sequence they play it in. The explorers' notes are the prologue, the back-story, to help enhance the setting, mood and tone of the game for the players. Mei-Yin's story is not my story or your story or any other player's story, it's the background lore that helps establish the setting of the story that we're actively playing day-by-day. This is why, for example, my friends and I are playing every map in sequence, not just the lore maps. As far as I'm concerned The Center, Ragnarok and the other free DLC maps are just as much a part of the story of ARK as the lore maps are. The lore notes are nothing more than background exposition to help establish the setting, the story is what each and every one of us experiences as we play. I would argue that the main heroes/villains are the players, the members of our tribes/alliances vs. the members of tribes that we fight against. If I play a role playing game (using D&D as the classic example) I don't care about what the NPC's have done unless their individual tidbits of lore enhance my enjoyment of playing my own story with my friends. The same is true of ARK. I am the story, you are the story, the maps and the players are the true story, all that lore stuff is prologue that sets the stage for us to play out an experience our stories in the game. I would argue that "Solo PvP based on a story perspective was" never "the intended way to play, from a story perspective." And the fact that no one has ever done it is a pretty darn strong argument in favor of my position. ARK SP or PvE is and can be a single-player game from beginning to end, PvP is not, can not, and never has been. It's important to remember that none of the NPC's that you're talking about have experienced the game from beginning to end in story mode. Not one of those characters played all of the maps and beat all of the bosses in order, their stories all diverge in various ways from that single, simple narrative. The very characters that you are using as the basis for your argument have never done the thing that you're using them to describe.

I completely understand that feeling, the desire to not let them beat you down creates some crazy feelings. When I first started ARK it was on PvP, we were doing great and having fun until a mega-tribe wiped out everyone on our server, including the alpha tribe, which of course included wiping out months of our time. My 8 tribe mates decided right then and there to move to PvE and it took me another two weeks of trying to rebuild and lure them back to PvP before I threw in the towel and joined them. We did try PvP again at a later time, on one of the small clusters rather than the main cluster, and that was fun for a while. We even became the alpha tribe on that cluster but it still created burnout and I left before we ever got as far as boss fights. I just couldn't enjoy the time struggle between family, work and trying to play ARK as a PvP game.

I disagree with that. ARK was originally conceived as a tribe-based game, with SP mode intended for solo story play (and PvE eventually added because players yelled about it until they listened). Playing solo in PvP is pretty much the one way they never intended the game to be played. No one would try playing solo against a full football team, or solo against a full baseball team, but people do it in ARK even though that's the hardest way to play the game (except for the sheer lunacy of hardcore, I'm only counting sane people here). Playing the story line in PvP is still do-able with a tribe, although even that is harder than playing the "normal" way. Trying to play the story as a solo player in PvP isn't broken, it works exactly how one should expect it to work.

Dear diary... Joking aside, sorry it didn't end up being as fun as you had hoped. Even so you've given it a good, solid try and you now have the experience of having done it. Also, it's better that you reached this point after 3 weeks rather than 3 months, it was interesting to read your progress reports.

Understood, I wasn't making fun of you, just having some fun with the game in general.

Dear Diary...

That is both fun and... an intriguing possibility. That would be evidence that AI is still more artificial than it is intelligent, despite what some researchers at google might think.

It's possible to accidentally select a whistle group, even if you've never assigned any dino's to any whistle groups. If you accidentally select an empty whistle group then you're guaranteed to not be able to whistle any dino's. You'll need to go to your Tame Groups page and see if there is an "Active Group" number showing. If you see a number then you need to used your tame group keys to un-select so that you have no tame groups selected.