Hey 'Jat', one quick question : Are you insane?
I don't care how you want to justify the price tag. This is an early access game release on xbox one that's still completely unoptimised and bug ridden. Your team gets leeway on that BECAUSE it's still in early preview. It's acceptable.
But trying to push paid DLC content when your base game isn't complete or even running to a quality standard smacks of exploitation of your playerbase in the worst possible way.
Your Studio's development priorities here are insulting and regardless of the reasoning put forward, understand that the gaming community at large will call it for what it is and slap it down as it deserves.
For a release like this with great potential in a sea of online survival experiences, you need to focus on nailing the core structure of your game before you even CONSIDER development work on new content.
If Ark development was the primary focus and we had a solid performing final release on Xbox and PC, I have no doubt the gaming community at large would 100% back the studio on a release like this. Paid content is not a problem at all for a hungry playerbase.
But pushing paid content when the core gaming experience still has so many issues is a glaring insight into the development studio's priority process.
At the end of the day, this discussion isn't even about whether the 'new content' justifies the price tag.
This is about whether the studio should even be focused on content development at all when the core gaming experience on base technicals needs so much more attention.
This DLC looks good on paper for sure, but for the struggling and supportive Ark playerbase riding along with their early access dollars to see a quality release, they will react very angrily to this move on behalf of the studio.
If WildCard thinks the early payoff of new content is worth the risk, they may want to think again.
They may have just signed the death warrant of this franchise.
I paid to be on board with the Xbox One release under the preview program because I like the core concept design and wanted to support the studio to realise the full potential of this game.
But this game is still far from finished and not even ready for final release yet. It runs poorly at the best of times on Xbox One with shockingly low frame rates and countless bugs and glitches.
Wild Card's focus here clearly hasn't been on getting this game up to a quality standard on console and in a sea of half finished survival games on the market that's still growing, I just cannot continue to provide support for this DLC.
I refuse to support it at this point in time & I certainly won't pay a dime for it. If anything, I'm likely to just quit supporting the game completely.
Wild Card needs to understand that their business priorities currently conflict with their supporting playerbase.
* We don't WANT 'new' content at this point in time.
* We want a quality, core Ark experience first.
Your studio may think it's already meeting the objective of the second point, but if your community support team is active enough on social media, you will soon find out how disasterously wrong this assumption actually is.
