ccz2887

Oh without a doubt lol! From walking a juvenile giga from a friends base that was just about on top of the new swamp cave to the NE side of gigs mountain, escorted by 4 gigas and 5 battle quetzs and spawning the brood mother at the obs when people decided to be tools and built RIGHT ON TOP OF THE OBELISK! Spawn her and let that big green meanie go full on hulk smash lol. Logging into the center for the first time in May 2016 and getting immediately “handled” by mate boosted 150 gigas. That’s enough to humble ya for a hot second when you’re starring at the death screen and it says “you were killed by giganotasaurus- lvl 150”. Especially when we had absolutely ZERO idea WC was going to raise the wild tame level cap lol. I haven’t posted any of the stories on here because I kinda forgot where to do it lol, but oh yeah we had a metric s#$* ton of fun and good times back in old school ark. Yeah I remember hearing something about that. Our favorite thing to see in chat was “it’s pve, you can’t do anything to me!” We could and did we just had to be more creative to accomplish it. With enough time, patience, planning and a little bit of help any tribe could be taken out, but it wasn’t an easy feat once a tribe had a good enough base. I don’t blame em for that perspective, our server we usually only reserved that for the tribes that had no regard for the server or the the people who were there from the start. WC did actually start adding in “no structure zones” shortly after the redwoods were added to the island. The old volcano there were metal smelting platforms all over the rim and the sides of the volcano. Now you can’t place anything above a certain altitude. They did the same with supply drops. People could build a base that would enclose a supply drop, that can’t be done anymore. Also in pve we can not build in caves, that’s been a thing from the start. I remember a certain point in the center that there were some resource spawns that structures couldn’t be placed but that could have been changed. I see both sides of this coin. Yes it would be nice that there be no build zones along rivers and heavy resource spawns, but on the reverse in a way it kinda defeats the point of being a complete sandbox experience to “play how I want to play”. People are greedy and selfish and unfortunately others pay for it. I will say though that a lot of the servers ( i have seen towards the end of ASE and just nicely starting to see it in ASA), people didn’t close off entire portions of the rivers, and if they did they at least built some sort of bridge for others to traverse said area. Now I am sure that some servers are plagued with blocked rivers and beaches that are next to impossible to get around, but as more maps come out it will get better just like it did in ASE. When all of the population is forced to play in “X” number of servers and only one map it gets a little congested. As more maps release the player base will spread out and the bottlenecks and congestion will clear up. I agree. I don’t regret buying ASA, but it seems as if what they were trying to sell to the players wasn’t quite delivered. The big one that comes to mind is cryopods. I called it, along with many others. A month and a half after the release of ASA cryopods we’re back in when they realized (finally, but even a blind man could see it) how bad the server performance was with a 65 people taming and breeding 100 plus creatures a day for a month. I think I said something along the lines of “even the most advanced processors have their breaking points”. When they’re are people who are running some top of the line machines are struggling to get 60 fps with ASA, it wasn’t any wonder why they added cryopods. Many of us said that no cryopods at the start was a BIG mistake. To quote Will Smith in I,Robot…..”sometimes I told you so, just doesn’t quite say it” lol. Last mention of cryos, the range to deploy them is ridiculous in pve. Yeah I get “it makes the game to easy”, well sometimes (and in my case most of the time) it’s got nothing to do with easy it has everything to do with real life time. If ya got only 2 hours to hope on and do some stuff quick and get into a sticky situation (which is just about an everyday occurrence in ARK), ya don’t have time to spend an extra hour trying to rescue your gear, tames or sometimes even base. Whereas yeah a pocket giga doesn’t just save your butt, it saves time and an added 2 hours of frustration when something should have only taken a half hour. I certainly miss the old cryos. Other than that the graphic upgrade is cool, the changes to the maps is pretty nice. They did do a decent job at that. I definitely like the visuals and am excited to see the changes to the maps, especially The Center. That’s map is my favorite, and I hope they bring it up to snuff with the others. It left sooooooo much to offer on the table.

I agree with most of this. As also a PVE player who started playing this game not long after its release on Xbox, I remember all of these issues. For the most part, PVE was/is more friendly than PVP. Not saying there weren’t servers that were completely run amuck of power hungry “alpha tribes” that had the moto of all for me and none for all, and would block caves and obelisks, fortunately those servers were much fewer than the ones that didn’t do that. After a time most of the servers started naturally developing kind of a community, some were close and some were an uncomfortable tolerance with each other. I don’t know if that ever happened on PVP because I didn’t play and still don’t. I like to play the game to have fun, and to me I’m not having fun when I log in everyday to my base gone and creatures dead, but that’s me and to each their own. I do differ from you in that yeah I deal with nimrod people in real life, I didn’t want to deal with them playing the game. Even on PVE though there were still times when it wasn’t easy to get things done or there was some crap from mother tribe that we had to deal with. Back in those days though offline damage prevention wasn’t a thing and for a long time kiting was an everyday threat (and it was legal), I know I mentioned that it to me it wouldn’t be fun to walk up everyday to a destroyed base and dead creatures, and most of the time it didn’t happen if you had enough of a base and decent defenses, but the threat was still real even for PVE players. It also wasn’t that boring, it was typical Ark and the grind was there but we made up things to do. Kinda how like the creators on the monarky servers come up with different challenges, we were in a way doing that 8 years ago we just didn’t realize it at the time. We would have bets on who could run on foot from one end of spino river to the other with nothing but stone tools and a bow and see who could survive( a lot harder than what you think it is lol), we would tame the shoulder monkeys and turn them loose on aggressive wander on the river and see how long they would live, boxing matches in the volcano. Stuff like that. I definitely see where you coming from on the note runs and getting to a higher level quicker and kinda in a way bypassing the hard ships along the way, but also in the old days that wasn’t as big of a thing like it is now. There were faaaarr less notes on the map and finding one was a pretty awesome thing as I remember it. So even in PVE it was still a grind from level 1 to 80. We also made friends and personal connections along the way and I would like to believe that it benefited the server and all those on it, because we all had the same goal to keep the server playable and fair to EVERYONE! Which also brings me to the practice of pillaring land. Now pillaring was to combat 2 things mostly. Protecting spawns (resources and creatures) and keeping the map playable. Obviously rivers got pillared, beaches got pillared and high density resource spawns got pillared, because tribes would come into a server and build a full base right on top of a resource spawn and not have a care in the world how it effected the whole server (still happens to this day), or would build a massive 40w x 60l x 25h lag box of a base that would completely close off a river to where no one could get through on a meat run and it would ruin creature spawns and/or cause a disconnect area where even if you looked in the direction of that base it would dashboard ya. Why people build bases like that I have no idea, maybe they can’t build? I dunno, but given situations like that it causes the map and game to not be fun for anybody at that point. I’ve been on servers like that and my god everybody that plays on it is just miserable all the time. Lastly, there was excitement, nuance and intrigue on PVE. A lot of it was in different areas though, since for the most part we didn’t have to worry about getting our stuff wrecked, we channeled it in running the hard snow cave with another tribe (it was just as hard then as it is now, in some cases maybe more so). We also pushed the building aspect a lot, finding out new ways to manipulate the sideways mechanics, of course breeding creatures to insane stats. Now yes did it get monotonous and feel like just another job? Oh yeah many times, but it took a while if you were solo or only maybe a 4 player tribe. We had a 25 member tribe upon entering the center for the first time in may of 2016, and things happen so fast it made our heads spin. Within the first 4 days we had quetzs, Rexes, spinos max level untility creatures and had pretty much the entire run of the map to ourselves before most tribes even upgraded their thatch huts to wood and a raptor pack for protection. There was still new things to see and fun to be had but I guess my point is that it went stale quicker. By the end of the summer of 2016 all but 4 of our tribe had up and quit and by the end of that year we all took a break. So there can still be excitement and cool things to check out even in an 8 almost 9 year old game, but the big thing is the pace that you go. Obviously if your solo or smaller tribe it is a lot more satisfying to accomplish things, and it keeps the spark of the game alive. So in that aspect I agree with you in regards to you spending a year and 1/2 building up, by yourself it takes that long, but where I disagree is that PVE can be just as fun and intriguing as PVP, it’s just in a different way and how your perspective is on it. Now there are a ton of things that WC could do that would make the 2 modes drastically different, but like you said in another post it would be all in the coding and being the game was coded more to the PVP aspect when PVE was conceptualized they will be permanently linked to adversely affect each other when balances are made. Now if WC ACTUALLY did recode the game with an real cleaned up code base, that would have been the time to completely split the 2 modes and balance them individually from each other and not affect each other negatively. Unfortunately we as players pay the price for their (or their publishers) lack of competence within this matter.

WOOHOOOO THE CENTER!!! LET’S GOOOOOOOO!!! Probably my top favorite map, to those that started playing after the addition of aberration, the center to a lot of us long time original ASE veterans holds a place in our hearts that is indescribable. I will never forget those beginning months of that map. I hope you guys fixed that blasted lighting issue in the snow after a thunderstorm though. OOOOFFF! That was enough to give ya epileptic seizures! Good to see the Shasta is BACK on the center where it was voted to be! I would like to see you guys relaunch The Center how it did originally and NOT TO CHANGE IT THIS TIME! I mean in the regards that a Giga (or Carchar) has a rare chance to spawn ANYWHERE on the map. The Center was supposed to be how many times harder than the island and after that change it really wasn’t. Nothing screams Ark to me than going about doing different tasks and have that fill the back of your pants moment. I also hope you guys added some things to the map that the rest of the maps got as far as element spawns or black pearl spawns like Ragnarok. Every non-story map seemed to get things like creatures and resources that were capable to get on the previous story maps, except The Center. Rag had the wyvern scar and wyvern bay, it introduced us to the ice wyvern, the griffin and the in world mini bosses (that were a lot of fun to run), as well as the desert with the SE creatures. Val had the in world broodmother and the deinychus and the aberration biome. Crystal Isles introduced us to the crystal wyverns and also had the desert biome and gave us the ability to farm element and black pearls for tek. Last but not least Fjordur gave us just about everything in one package (kinda wish it was a little bigger than it was but still awesome map). The point I’m making is The Center seemed to have gotten left behind and always felt like the map had the potential to offer more than what it did. There are cool things about it like the underworld, the air pockets in the ocean the volcanic islands, the ice cave and the super deep ocean but they’re almost 1 trick ponies. Yeah it’s cool to go check em out but after that they get forgotten. It’s probably too much last minute at this point and I hope you guys already thought about that sort of stuff and added in some of the things that The Center got left behind on, but also hopefully to continue to bring it up to date in the future as the roadmap plays out, as the story maps get released. Just food for thought and all in the same, like I started this……WOOOHOOOOOOO THE CENTER!!!! LET’S GOOOOOOOOO!!!!! Definitely excited for this one!!!!

The photo mode creation looks pretty amazing, but just as long as the actual graphics are similar and not dialed down in actual gameplay. Definitely seeing that jumping out at me on my big screen tv is well within pants pooping territory! And THAT is definitely awesome! For some reason though I’m still feeling like a kid walking to school and getting approached by somebody in a white cargo van asking if I would like some candy. It definitely does bring me closer to buying the game, but many others I’m sure are questionable still. Now just imagine if you guys had come out with that screenshot in August? Or July? You could have saved A LOT of bs in between. We get it, full and unequivocal transparency is not in the play book but the loads of players that have walked away wouldn’t have, if you guys had gone with more of a clouded opaque transparency instead of absolute nothingness for months. Hopefully we get the game play trailer in this week’s community crunch. That might lure some players back but not all, ya kinda blew that. I really do hope for all involved’s sake that you guys deliver this time, on time and really are able to capture lightning twice. We will all be looking forward to what the next reveal is. Don’t let us down, it’s do or die time.

You’re absolutely right cosmic. I say this a lot, people in desperation is an ugly, vicious and horrifying thing to witness let alone be subjected to. To all you PvPers, may the force be with you! Maybe it might not be too bad if WC sticks to their word for once in 8 years and bring separate balances to PvP and PvE. I’m a PvE player so I won’t be in the PvP arena.

Lol that’s exactly how players are gonna tell newer players to us veterans. Probably a few of us will be speed running the notes to gain levels but the difference is we know what to take into that fight. I’m hopeful that people are more respectful this time around with their bases, building in spawns and not having massive lag boxes for bases. Or hoping that WC will drop more than enough servers on release for we won’t get stuck with the “server full” message.

The Shasta is going to be much bigger than a mosa and they said in the dossier that the saddle is going to have a type of cargo hold

You are correct, we did survive, but what is lost is the bs we went through in the process. Servers at tame cap, tribes not caring about how the server runs or the other people on that server. Hatching eggs only for them to crack and no baby because of tame cap. Solo and smaller tribes at a severe disadvantage compared to tribes with 20 people in the tribe. Devoting 15 hours a day to a game just to get ahead slightly. Personally I don’t like buying tames from others, I’d rather tame my own stuff, but I might not have a choice and I don’t like that. Being a solo player since 2018 I am NOT looking forward to going through that sort of stuff again. Yeah we’ll get cryopods in a year or less but a lot of people forget that by the end of 2016 into 2017 there were a lot of servers tame capped. Not to mention the server lags were atrocious. Don’t get me wrong the primitive experience was fun but we also had flyer speed to aid in survival, now we have neither. If players thought the grind was rough before, it’s going to be worse in ASA. The only thing this stuff tells me about ASA is the grind + next to 0 QOL additions + no movement speed leveling = players life quite literally being tied to this game for 15-20 hours a day. THAT is what is waitiing for us, along with the downsides of not having these things. IMO the downsides really outweigh the experience, especially for solo and smaller tribes.

Oh WC *facepalm*, it’s nice to see that is some actual information in this crunch, like there should have been this whole time. Now for the critique, I’m sure most of us understand that this is a game that the whole point is for you to “figure out” how to survive, just like real life, but the less than intelligent decisions of not allowing leveling of movement speed and no cryopods is frankly depressing. I too have many years and 10k+ hours in this game and remember the early days before cryopods and it was straight up hell! Anyone who says “I’m glad there are no cryopods”, never tried walking 18 rexes or theris a yuty and deadon to an ob for a boss fight and getting them all into the portal boundary, nor tried raising tames with longer than a 10 hour handfeed, or tame something across the map that you need and have to walk it back to base and hope that it doesn’t get killed and ya waste 3 hours, narcs and kibble that it took hours to make and not to mention the time looking for that creature. I have, did and those days were the absolute worst times I’ve had in this game. The only thing that eased that was fast flyers and platforms on quetzs, then the flyer nerf came in and killed that method. When you guys introduced cryopods you opened a can of worms that you can’t put back in the can and they changed the way players play the game. In a way it does feel like you could care less about actual QOL. Solo and players with smaller tribes are at a disadvantage to bigger tribes just because cryopods won’t be there, thanks WC (sarcasm). Not to mention, just because ASA is on a new engine with the ability to handle server and render lag doesn’t mean that there won’t be a breaking point, and this game WILL find it the first time it logs in a monstrous 40w-60L-25H uncreative box of a base packed to the brim with tames. Why do people want to witness that? Why do players want to know what that was like? It wasn’t fun or enjoyable! You said that the reason we have to repay for ASA is because it has had so many changes to it from ASE it is essentially a different experience and game, and I ask this…..WHY IN THE NAME OF ALL THINGS HOLY ARE YOU MAKING THE SAME STUPID MISTAKES YOU MADE IN ASE?????? With ASA you get a chance to correct your mistakes not do them over again, where I come from we call that blatant stupidity! I seriously hope that you guys come to your senses and not repeat the mistakes you made with ASE. Allow movement speed leveling (and put a cap on it, like I’ve been saying since the flyer nerf), enable cryopods. The addition of cryopods might be up for debate now but it won’t be within the first month.

I’ll give you that, there is no other game like Ark out there. With every decision that SG makes it does send this game closer and closer to ascension without a respawn. It isn’t WC, it’s SG. When you have a publisher that is connected with cheating, unjust bans and trying to blackmail their own game developers none of us should be standing for that. The question is not whether we survive this, it’s whether Ark itself can survive? Honestly with all the stupid decisions and bad publicity, I’m starting to have my doubts. Also if the game was actually developed and coded right the first time and throughout the years it would be easier to focus on the positive and enjoy the game. The best thing that could happen right now (and it never will), is that new publisher comes in and gives SG an offer they can’t refuse, just my personal opinion.

Is it complaining when there are legitimate concerns about a company’s decision that adversely affects their customer base? Where I come from we call that holding accountability to those people. Personally I really don’t want my personal information sold to the highest bidder because I want to play a version of a game I love. Due to the puppeteer that is working the strings of WC complaints won’t do much but maybe us showing SG we know their full of it by complaining and catching them with their pants down, maybe just maybe it might help things to be a little better.

Teamed up? You mean basically nitrado bought exclusive rights to run the servers, and then not to mention the sketchy stuff with overwolf, this sounds like a SG is paving your flatspin downward WC. This game has soooo much more potential than what is being delivered to the players. It’s a shame that you guys at WC are stuck in the position you are, this game has the potential of leaving just about every other game in the dust, but you’re cut off at the knees. It just seems that initial decisions, which are the right ones, on things like having mod.io run mods (which is a reputable company) is dropped for a company that has a questionable history, why? Cheaper? Well ya gotta spend money to make money. If this game was allowed to reach its full potential, money would not be an issue. Hopefully you guys at wildcard can loose the boat anchor that’s hold you and this game back, and make the right decisions that need to be made.

The one thing different with the maewing is you can slot cap a maewing with the preferred food for the baby, ya can’t do that with any else, or even the baby you’re feeding. I definitely see your point though. It is an absolutely necessity for cryopods above everything else. As an official player, I will probably stay on for awhile after ASA comes out, and i ain’t raising a freaking giga even on 2x rates, that’s still a 14 hour handfeed! Yeah, uh Huh, no freakin way. Cryopods have also done amazingly in cleaning up bases by organizing, shrinking and making over all renders smoother. Which is why I was surprised that Dollie tweeted that they were debating on not not having cryopods available at the launch of ASA, which is bafflingly stupid.

Without a doubt Slejo. I expect that by the end of this month or the start of next we see something like this” we at WC regret to inform you that the release date for the early access of ASA won’t be until December 2023-January 2024. We apologize for the delay, but we want to make sure that we are still committed to bringing product that you expect and deserve. Thank your for you patience anew look forward to seeing you in ASA very soon- StudioWildcard”…..who wants to place bets on this?

You are absolutely correct Cerv. The worst part is we are left to speculation on what is and isn’t going to be a part of ASA. I wish I would have screen shot Dollie’s post, for some reason I just didn’t think of it. You’re also correct that enough of us get involved in speaking up about these QOL (possible), then there’s a chance they may change. If enough of us complain, we have a chained,. Look what happened on march 29 cc. Same here kings, I have serious doubts myself it’ll but until October. I too won’t drop money on it until I see gameplay. I play on Xbox so our graphics are slightly better than ps, but they are catching up. That’s the one thing I believe a lot of people are still waiting on, I know that’s what I’m waiting for.