TheDonn

ARK is an enormous mess of code. Dinos, structures, pathing, player connection and positioning, all these have to seamlessly feed from the server machine out to any computer that requests the info. WildCard has refused to region-lock servers (can still bypass with VPN, but it might help some), so these connections can come from quite literally anywhere in the world. It is definitely both software and hardware related. The game is just too complex after so many years of development to work with less bugs. My personal hope for ARK 2 is that they focus a bit more on consistency of how they code the game. Seems like there is a lack of that in how ARK is currently coded. There are creatures in the non-canon maps and some of them are coded in outside the base game, as a single example, and I don't know that it is 100% necessary for that to be the case. We've always had hardware problems too, on the client-side, getting ARK to run smoothly. I've seen it memory leak to consume right up to 16gb of vram, and at a different time, nearly 32gb of system ram. We can brute-force it with a stacked system, or strip it to DX10 and run in potato-mode, but these problems still hang around. It IS better than it used to be in 2015/16 though, but there is more that could be done. The devs seem to hold a, "that crap is in the past" approach to the current released game as they develop forward. They've done TLCs, I know, and anti-mesh passes on older maps, but fixes for simple map-related problems have gone untouched for years, if they were ever solved. It also usually took an unavoidably game-breakingly bad problem for them to step in to released content and do anything about it. Hopefully the design philosophy in ARK 2 breaks that WildCard tradition, and they spend time refining released maps, systems, and creatures.

The crap in this response thread... Holy hell. We look like a bunch of dip-asses to the rest of the world. I know a lot of people are proud to look dumb on the international stage, but many Americans aren't. Jesus Christ. Grow up.

Used to be straight 150. Like, no +75 levels from taming bonus, nothing. You'd get a level 150 tamed creature. I was given a 150 Griffin to replace a perfect tame 150 wild Griffin (so 224) that died due to a bug. It was before Aberration or any other maps, Rag had just launched as had ARK (official 1.0 launch was in late 2017), and Griffins were rare to spawn and highly camped because RMT'ers were rampant on my server and usually griefed/harassed to maintain control of server dinos. This was also definitely a PvE server. Had to stay there the whole time to protect the thing because 2 other tribes tried to kite Allos to it but I got it tamed. Then it blinked out of existence so I flipped out, put in a ticket, and they gave me a complete turd to replace it. I tried to use the 150, but it was so unimpressive compared to the 150 perfect I tamed, I ended up shooting it in the face and moving on to free up the tame slot. Cryopods were a long way off, and server-cap was a daily issue back then.

EA was 2-ish years. For the years of EA, it was primarily a PvP playerbase. The larger playerbase takeover of PvE players started when the game went to 1.0 in '17 and tipped over in ~18'-19', sure, but the EA years can't be discounted because they definitely had a big influence on what the game would become. PvP was the dominant mode from '15 until the timeframe you are talking about. That aside, the issue is that there is no way to ever balance PvP in a sandbox style game with so many elements. People will always find the thing that is the deadliest for the least amount of work and will dedicate a whole server to fill a base with whatever that thing ends up being. It is harder when WildCard seems to hand it to players on a silver platter by releasing the new-most-OP-thing with the next expansion to garner interest in buying a new xpac. Now to be clear, WC has been really generous with the amount of money that ARK costs as we've seen from other developers. It can get far worse, and the cost isn't my concern. But it's just the way the game has been presented: Every xpac heralds a full-on meta shift that requires less effort and swings power in an increasingly large way.

Frosty Flapper Mr./Mrs. Freeze Numb Icebound Glaciate Cold Snap Ice Wing Just some suggestions. Don't know what particular brand of "badass" you're going for but maybe something will look interesting?

Right on.

This is a nightmare. So much work went in to these, but some of the changes are just far too imbalanced like Deinonychus, +75% HP? Bosses already completely ignore them, pretty much trivializing most (if not all) bossfights. I mean, respect is due for the amount of time it took to type all that out. But lord-a-mercy.

In the past, it has been announced and/or handled. I was on a server that corrupted and we got 4-5 days offline and then when it came up, there was about a 3 day rollback, but they communicated what was happening at least. Nowadays, with the way things work, there is no telling. Still was hard to bear, because for the three days of the rollback, I had been in a building mood and built out an enormous addition to my base. Logged in and a bred creature, all this kibble I made, and about 2/3 of my base all gone as if I never did it.

I just did a fresh install of ARK, and it is 340 GB.

Yeeeeep I missed out on the Commodore, I did. I mean, I was on Atari and NES from the mid 80s but until PC games I was basically just playing and didn't watch any game news or seek out information about that world. It's sure as hell come a long way!

Numbers are great for showing profitability and possibly even projections, but for the every day average gamer, they mean nothing good. To me, it seems that according to history time and time again (Blizzard, DICE, BioWare, etc.) the more sales and profits a game publisher makes off of IP, the more the studio's quality degrades. I of course don't have a study to back this, just 26 years of observations of the video game development industry while being a gamer myself (since 1995, demo for Diablo 1 on a 66mHZ NEC tower). It seems that for high-dollar studios, games eventually become about the meta-gaming approach of "how do we design the game to take as long as possible?" instead of "how do we give our customers a good experience?" In turn, gamers pick up on this and some are OK with it, while some aren't. I suppose that's my opinion, so I'll just state that clearly. My point in there somewhere is that indeed, numbers and statistics don't mean a game is good. I've also seen people countless times attribute a healthy or booming title (in sales terms) to "this means their games will be better because of more development money." It just unfortunately is not the case, and while I'm not saying WildCard has fallen into any kind of trap like any other studios have, I'm just hoping ARK II is a solid and WORTHY successor to what ARK I has been!

While they are necro'ing a thread... I'll say: Gallimimus is actually ARK's top-tier dino. Rank 1, the Alpha, and the Omega. ARK began, and will end, with a Gallimimus. Fear them, Forza. They come for you.

Maybe, eventually, speaking personally. But if it takes a similar track to ARK 1 in terms of quantity over quality, I don't know. I probably won't buy it. There are a lot of games to play, and my time with ARK 1 has scratched the hell out of that itch! I'm primarily interested in the story continuing, and I don't really have to buy the game to see that. I'm also very patient with stuff like this, so I can wait for Anthomnia to post lore videos and watch em to get my ARK lore nerd-out. EDIT: I don't think I'm alone in my hesitancy, but yeah I bet it'll still sell well enough to stay alive.

I am partially in the not-buy boat. I will not be a day one adopter, that's for damn sure, but I can't write it off completely. I'll watch it's release and development/early access period (we all know there will be one), and if they show improvements over a long-ish period of time, I'll pick it up. But honestly, you should make a thread! The mods might delete or compile all of them into one thread, but voicing concern is important. You have expectations, naturally, of what ARK 2 will bring. If they aren't met, tell the internet, so others know what to POSSIBLY expect if they decide to buy the game. For me personally, 9k hours is longer than I ever expected to put into a video game so obviously ARK is a special kind of lightning-in-a-bottle. But it wasn't all wonderful times with dinos. The good times have been some of the best I've experienced in gaming but the bad and/or buggy times, yeah. I've never been more angry or frustrated at a game than ARK has made me. Mostly due to how bugs and glitches can negatively affect you in this game. Those experiences are why I'll watch from a distance and give the team a chance to stand up a good game before I fully condemn or endorse it. But like I said, that's just me personally! It might be like Battlefield 1... Everyone was excited. Then everyone quit and played Battlefield 4 again, or at least most of the people I know did.

Honestly, voice your concern and stance. If it is ignored, so be it. It probably will be, because you didn't mention anything specifically about PvP. That's the only mention that gets traction around these parts (anyone get it?)! Jokes aside, @GP the point of this thread is this customer sharing his position regarding a company that has made a game with many problems (in some cases, huge base-destroying and dino-killing problems) that remain unfixed and largely unpolished, and sharing his plans now that the same company is planning to release a game of the same genre with a newer engine (with new challenges in coding and debugging for the same company). @Brexit2021 people aren't gonna agree with you. Just speak your peace and let people agree amongst themselves about how mathematically wrong you are. I mean, a lot of people like the game, so YOU probably do too, right? It's math dude!