LPTF

We just updated our cluster to what is supposed to be the latest server version and we're now getting the following error message when attempting to start any of the servers: ShooterGameServer: error while loading shared libraries: libsteam_api.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory As of right now our entire cluster is down. Any prompt help would be much appreciated.

Most of the problems you mention are the result, as discussed above, of what seems to be deliberately poor quality official servers. I can only strongly urge you to at least try a couple of unofficial servers. There are some extremely high quality, professionally run, well populated and free unofficial servers out there for PVP and PVE and on all maps, including some really cool new maps made by groups of very talented users. Most servers have at least S+, which, if haven't used it before, will totally rock your world. The thing is, you don't have to choose official or unofficial. It's easy to dip your toes in the unofficial pool and see what you think. You have nothing to lose.

Oh dear @TedyBearOfDeath.... I'm getting the feeling now that you're arguing for the sake of seeing your own words. I'm also getting the feeling you're about 12 years old. You have completely missed, or ignored, every single point. WHAT?? You think the two sections of the same company working on the same franchise have absolutely no involvement with each others products and development efforts? I'm guessing you're still in high school? Again, you've totally missed the point. I don't care what your opinion is about what is or isn't balanced. The point is that the events have happened almost every weekend since launch, and, until the last month or two, almost always included breeding. That's a fact. So people began to rely on that. It allowed people to play the game that normally couldn't. That seemed to be the point of the events. So when you take that away, people have every reason to be reasonably pissed off. Sigh. You're not very good at listening are you? Please show me where I said "everyone" does anything? I made a very clear point. The game is sold as online multiplayer. This means WC must provide that experience. Unless it's otherwise clearly states that it costs, then they must do so for free. Is that too difficult for you to understand? Again, I made my point very clearly. Please go back and read what I said and perhaps you might get it. I have over 4K hours in Ark on official servers, about the same in SP, and I also run 5 unofficial servers of my own, in all different states. Please tell me again what I "don't seem to get"? The point here is that for very many people, official is unplayable because ALL their local servers are tame capped. If you can't tame anything and you can't breed and raise anything in a game based on taming and raising dinos, then in the judgement of any reasonable person, the game is unplayable. I don't know how I can make that point any simpler for you. Again, stop talking for a minute, put your Pokemon down (or whatever kiddies do these days) and actually read what others are writing. You might learn something.

@TedyBearOfDeath, there's quite a few errors in your comments that I feel need addressing. That is simply not true. Snail Games acquired Wildcard in December 2015. They are essentially the same company. If you think that they have no say or control in how Ark has been developed, then you're kidding yourself. From what I've seen of PixArk, I'd say there's been a fair amount of code "borrowed" from Ark by the PixArk developers. Ragnarok was released by WC as an official "free" DLC almost a year ago. If you think they would release a DLC without significant oversight, if not involvement, then again, you're kidding yourself. However, that is immaterial. How the development is done is not relevant to users who purchase the game and expect a quality product from an official DLC. What they said about breeding events being rare, and what they actually did, are two completely different things. They have run breeding events almost every weekend since the days of legacy, and certainly since their "official release". If you run events on official servers all the time that enables people to do things in the game that they wouldn't normally be able to do, you can't be surprised or annoyed when people come to rely on those events. The bigger issue here is why so many people were so reliant on those events. That should tell WC a great deal about how their game is (not) balanced. I've saved this one for last. This is complete garbage. Official servers are offered because Ark is marketed and sold as an online multiplayer game, and official servers are part of that product that customers have paid for. Without official servers, the product (as sold) is not complete. Most people seem to agree that WC's attitude has been to supply the absolute bare minimum level of service required to fulfil their product obligations, whilst "encouraging" their users to move to unofficial. Their consistent behaviour in terms of how they have run their official servers over the entire life of the product really does suggest that as the only logical conclusion, other than extreme gross negligence, and I don't believe that is the case. Their cost model simply does not have the significant costs of running free high quality official servers built into it. So WC put hard limits both on server numbers (which they continue to reduce by closing down legacy servers) and the hardware resources allocated to each server. Cheaper servers and fewer of them. Unfortunately for WC, it seems a very large number of users are choosing to stay on official and not move to unofficial for many and varied reasons. That, combined with the current state of game play in ARK which requires a very long term and time intensive investment to make any headway in the game, and you have a perfect recipe for the disaster we're currently seeing played out on all official servers. The thing I don't understand is this. It seems like the easy solution to their server overcrowding issue, given they won't increase server numbers, is to reduce the time investment required to "complete" the game. People would move through the game faster as they complete key goals more quickly. They'd play fewer hours and move on to new DLC's or other games faster. What does WC gain by stagnating users on overcrowded servers for what seems like eternity?

Bump. Does anyone have any ideas about this?

Yes, have tried Argies in the SE Manticore fight on a private server, and that are just way too slow. They do plenty of damage when they do hit, but they can't keep up. Also, they tend to get knocked out by the Manticore, as their torpor level isn't great.

Hi, hoping someone can help me with the "NPCReplacements" option. I'd like to replace stock griffin spawns on Ragnarok with the "King Griffins" from the Breedable Griffins mod.I'm aware of the default format for the NPCReplacements option when using standard NPCs included in the main game, but it does not seem to work when replacing a standard NPC with one from a mod.What I have right now is:[/script/shootergame.shootergamemode]NPCReplacements=(FromClassName="Griffin_Character_BP_C",ToClassName="King_Griffin_Character_BP_C")The spawn command for the modded NPC I want to use instead of the standard is:admincheat spawnDino "Blueprint'/Game/Mods/1086678105/King_Griffin/King_Griffin_Character_BP.King_Griffin_Character_BP'" 1 1 1 120 I assume there's some paths or something wrong there somewhere. I'd appreciate any help.Thanks.

Yeah, it's a risk you have to be aware of. There seems to be some kind or RND roll at the start of the fight that determines how often and for how long the manticore lands, as it seems to be consistent throughout the fight. We run alpha manticore on SE several times every week, and we always have to take 3-4 people with high damage crafted shotguns and around 250 shells in each fight. Usually we don't need them, but occasionally we do, and they save the day. We do the same thing on alpha rag, and have only had to use them once when the manticore decided it didn't want to land that fight, but again, the shotguns and ammo saved the day.

Just wondering if you could provide some more info regarding this second round of legacy shutdowns and new servers. Everyone knows how much we've all official players, particularly those of us in the OC region, have been struggling with capped servers. Many OC servers on the new official cluster were capped within a month of launch. It's only now, that I've looked through the list of servers you're shutting now, that I see just how many legacy servers have been left compared to the number of servers you launched on the new cluster. How did you allow this situation to happen? For example, there are currently just 2 PVE Island servers in the new cluster, yet there are 18 in the legacy cluster. Both those 2 servers have been capped and therefore unusable by new players since long before Christmas. The environment between players on those servers is completely toxic as everyone fights like rabid dogs because nobody can tame or breed anything. So I really hope WC will take more than just a token 1 or 2 of those legacy servers and relaunch them. I'd say you'd need at least 10 spread across all maps to ease the crowding issues and make the game playable for new players again. Please do the right thing WC!

Thanks for the reply Jat. I can say with 100% certainty that something has changed with the rag fight. We have used the exact same team to of rexes to do many alpha fights and none of them would get below 15k health. Now we lose many rexes each time we do beta. Absolutely nothing has changed in our setup. Exact same Rexes, same Yuti, same saddles, same players, same tactics. The game seems to go exactly the same as before, except the damage done is HUGE. The damage is done to the rexes in very first few minutes of the fight by the dragon. They still kill it as quickly as before, but it just does massively more damage than before. We now cannot even do beta, when we used to do alpha all the time. Please help us!

Has anyone seen any further info on the breaking changes they made to the dragon in v278? They promised to make the dragon do less damage in the v278 update, and instead it does many, many times more damage. We can't run boss fights on our rag server until they fix this, and we're almost out of element to run our tek generators. Any further info would be appreciated.

Exactly. It annoys me greatly when someone like Bigfish comes into a thread like this without reading the original post properly, then talks down everything everyone else has said and offers his own sage opinion having not even had any recent experience in the topic at hand. The entire point of this post is to highly that the dragon is now MUCH harder than it was BEFORE the V278 update. Tribes like mine that regularly farm dragon MUST be warned of this before they do their next fight, or else they will very likely loose their dinos and all the countless hours of work those dinos have taken to prepare.

Let me ask you a question. When did you last do an alpha dragon fight on the island, or even ragnarok?

We had exactly the same issue with the Rag boss fight. We have an advanced team of highly levelled rexes with 35k+ health, 100+ saddles, a yuti, pig and experienced riders. We regularly farm alpha rag without too many issues. It's a tough fight, but we have always won, and the rexes have about 10k heath left by the end of the fight. After the v278.1 update, we did the beta fight, and it was a complete disaster. The dragon had knocked 85%-95% of the health off the rexes within the first 2 mins of the fight. Most rexes were down to 1K-2K health remaining by the time the dragon died, which only took 3 or 4 mins. I have never seen anything like this before. We very nearly lost our entire rex army, which would have been a HUGE disaster for us. Instead of nerfing the dragon, the devs appear to have tripled the damage it does, if not more.

** PLEASE BE WARNED ** If you do boss fights on Ragnarok, please be warned that it is broken! Tonight (after the v278.1 update) we very nearly lost our entire set of dinos in the first 60 seconds of a beta ragnarok fight due to what is either a MASSIVE undocumented change or a HUGE bug in the abilities of either the rexes or the dragon. Our tribe has been successfully farming alpha Ragnarok for a few months now with this exact same team of rexes, players, saddles etc. After a complete successful ALPHA fight our rexes usually have 10k-15k health. TONIGHT after 60 seconds of the BETA fight they all got down to ONLY 1K-2K HEALTH!! We have our team of 18 purpose bred and highly levelled Rexes, plus our pig and yuti. The rexes have min 35k health, 600-800 damage and 100+ saddles. The alpha fight is not easy, but we normally complete it with anywhere from 15-25 mins to spare. Our rexes usually have around 10k-15k health left at the end of the fight. Occasionally we have lost a rex or two during the fight because they have gotten stuck on rock elementals. Tonight we took our usual alpha team along to a beta fight to help out another tribe on our server, and I'm so glad we did this instead of our usual alpha fight. PLEASE share this information as quickly as possible amongst your Ark friends. We very nearly lost our entire set of boss rexes. These represent many hundreds of hours of breeding and raising, and hundreds more hours levelling them all up. Add to that the incredibly expensive saddles and it would have been an epic disaster for our entire tribe due to absolutely no fault of our own. WC, please share this info immediately, and fix it asap!