St1ckyBandit

Agree, but every map needs new content. It cant just be the remastered map itself. I personally think youre underestimating Rag. People love it. It's routinely right near the top in favorite map votes and discussions I've seen over the years. WC must be aware of its popularity and it would be a mistake not to capitalize on the hype it'll get. However, Rag is massive. It was unfinished when it first released. The map is varied and its going to take a long time to upgrade. To me its sort of pointless to even speculate about a map thats probably not coming until 2025. With WC, I try to just focus on whats immediately in front of me. Lets hope and pray the Center comes without too much of an additional delay

I dont see how you can say that for sure given how frequently wc changes things around. Rags probably not coming until 2025. Thats plenty of time to do another creature vote or add an all new original creature like they did with the oasisaur. And how do you know Rag wont have new content or map changes to make it feel fresh? SE certainly did. A lot of speculation and conjecture being passed as fact here.

I find this thread ironic given OPs avatar.

Why not? Rag should 100% get a new creature now that the gigaraptor has been used up as WC's bandaid for screwing up the center launch.

In spite of all the incessant complaining I do on here, I agree, they really did knock SE out of the park. It looks amazing. SE in ASE was a slog. The color pallette was so bland, just endless tan with a few dark rocks mixed in. SE on ASA feels more like a mountainous map than a desert if you take away the border dunes. A desert could easily be (and most times is) very one-note but SE is varied and interesting across the whole map. I dare say its the best desert environment I've seen in a game yet. The sandstorm is pretty epic. I love the wild elevation swings in the dunes. Makes them feel more natural. The cool blue hue at night is so flipping well done. My base is in the trench, which is just visually outstanding, especially with the fiery red lava contrasting with the night blue. The island was good but SE blows it out of the water imo. Cant wait for the center. If they could just chill out with the storms every 5 seconds, it would be basically flawless imo.

I havent payed for a UFC PPV in a decade.

Lol

I like to fight people. I like to raid. I like to defend from raids. I like PvP. Just because I see a glaring issue with how the game is structured doesnt mean I want to abandon PvP altogether. The very nature of PvP makes getting to end game more difficult. We dont need additional astronomical barriers like we have now. Again, all it does is screw over 90% of the playerbase and there's a very simple solution.

10 bucks isnt going to make or break anyone. Its the principle. I understand WHY they do it. Its more profit now. Cmon bruh its snail we're talking about here. Shi would try to sell a ketchup popsicle to a women in a white dress. It's just an underhanded way to squeeze us for all they can before asa completely runs into the ground. If they were confident they could deliver a worthwhile product on time they wouldn't need to charge us for stuff thats not coming until next year. All this tells me is they know the games teetering and they need to cash in now while they can.

What exploit?

Anything that prevents most of your playerbase from reaching endgame is bad design and needs to be reworked. On Fjordur, the cave in the dragon trench was initially the only spot players could farm element. So naturally, people blocked it off and kept all the ele for themselves. There was major backlash and wildcard ended up adding additional ele spawns so one tribe couldnt easily prim lock everyone else. So there is precedent for a very similar issue. It's really no different here, just replace ele with artifacts. To suggest people should have to raid not 1, not 2, but 3 different very strong caves just to have access to the boss fights on SE is utterly ridiculous. I don't care that much if the caves are buildable or not, (I'd prefer they werent just because some of them are really cool looking and a blast to fight through with your friends) just take the artifacts out of them. It's a very easy, simple, win-win solution. The alphas get to keep their caves and no one is prim locked.

I live in the wyv trench and I've seen one flying over it a few times as I was coming and going to base. Weird place for a bee.

The oasisaur should absolutely be standard content. Probably the shovel too. This expansion was originally marketed as a cosmetic pack. It's absolutely not. The shovel, train, cart, and oasisaur all introduce new gameplay mechanics that in some cases drastically alter what you are capable of in-game (like bringing tames back to life). Plenty of games like Rust and Warzone offer true cosmetic packs and rake in tons of revenue. Just another lie and predatory practice from snail/wc.

Then why not just sell the SE BTT for 10 bucks. Why package it with content for maps that in all likelihood wont be coming until 2025. It's a scummy predatory practice.

Completely disagree. All allowing the caves to be built in does is make sure that 90% of players never get to experience them or the boss fights because the 2 or 3 alpha tribes take them all over and lock everyone else out. It sucks. I've beaten 4 or 5 of the bosses and thats solely because of the artifacts on crystal isles being out in the open. If WC insists on players being able to build in caves, then the artifacts need to be taken out of them. Not to mention it also locks players out of taming certain animals only found in caves like beetles and arthros on the Island and snails on SE. Again it wasnt that bad on ASE because of crystal isles, but on ASA it's a huge problem

Only WC moves things up to delay them again lol. The Easter launch made no sense from the get go. Just get the damn map out on Monday ffs.

The only way I see the train being useful is if it can carry unlimited or at least an astronomical amount of weight. Maybe have the tracks go from your forge to a nearby metal mountain. Of course it would still get outclassed by a teleporter but could be a decent primitive option with the right set up. It's gonna be hard to protect though.

^Thats probably the biggest problem with ASA. It's hard to feel like the franchise is being pushed forward when these bugs from basically the games inception are still around. We'll see if Scorched can buck the trend but I wouldn't bet my tek rifle on it.

I liked Bob overall. It was a fun nod to the noob stage of ark. But they chose to make him a misogynistic guy from 1940s on purpose. He started "mansplaining" the island to Helena and expressed she would die without him. He then gets shot in the face when he's about to decry her for being a woman professor. This dialogue is not by accident. The writers clearly wanted the audience to cheer the death of the misogynistic male character. Every male in the 1st episode (Bob, Dominus, Rockwell) is either a jerk or a ruthless killer. Every female is a hero that is pushed further in the 2nd episode with the addition of Mei Yin and Helena's mom. Tomb Raider is one of my favorite games ever. Furiosa from Mad Max is one of the coolest most BA movie characters ever. My character in ASA is female. I enjoy well done hero female leads as much as the next guy. The problem is when there is no balance and one sex is entirely depicted as good while the other is bad. So far this series has the nuance of a sledgehammer when it comes to building the characters personalities and showing duality or the conflicted nature of people. Maybe thats a lot to ask for in the first episode or 2 but I could have a lot more patience if the show wasnt so blatantly spamming FEMALES ARE STRONG THEY DONT NEED MEN SEE SEE GUYS.

"WHITE AUSTRALIA HAS A BLACK HISTORY" The protest scene in the 2nd episode was cringe af. The first 2 episodes establish 2 things, Man bad woman gud and White bad, black gud. Add ark to the list of franchises that pander to the woke ideology.

Agreed. Any complaining at all about woke is too much, because that divisive nonsense shouldnt even exist in something like a flippin ark cartoon. One thing I did like is how brutal Rockwell is portrayed. Feeding the kid to the Trex was awesome, one of the best scenes. Didn't think they would actually go through with it, but they did and it delivered. Rockwell is 1000% the best character on the show so far.

Dont take my word as Gospel. Its just my opinion after all. However it does seem like the show has fallen into the all too popular trend today of use a beloved IP to cram some woke crap down our throats (halo,LOTR, etc) Maybe I'll give the other episodes a try (there were 6 in total) because it was fun to see dinos, armor, and weapons from the game.

Watched the first 2 episodes. Kinda meh. The scenes of Helena's backstory in modern times were all either cringe or boring. It's clearly a vehicle for woke feminism. Women are strong. Women can do everything a man can do blah blah blah. One such scene has her at a protest where someone's holding up a sign that reads "WHITE AUSTRALIA HAS A BLACK HISTORY." So I guess throw in the anti-white agenda as well. Shame. The scenes where they are on the ark were enjoyable (except the broodmother, what the hell even happened?), but I doubt I'm gonna watch the rest of it. If the first 2 episodes work this hard at establishing a "men bad, men cause problem" feel to the show, I'm sure it'll only increase the further the show runs. No thanks.

Cool. I'll check it out. But since this self contained thread has popped up, dont waste tomorrows entire crunch on the animated series as well. We need SE news.

For me personally, a lot is riding on SE. The frontier pack possibly being p2w and just the overall condition that the SE map launches in is make or break. I've barely logged in this past week or 2. The interest is just not there anymore. I think by aberration modders are basically going to have to take charge of development and carry the load for this game to maintain a healthy population. WC is clearly not equipped to deliver a good product on time (have they ever been really?) and Ark has such a backlog of content it'll take years to realize it all, which of course means less profit now for papa snail.