ccz2887

On 4/14/2024 at 8:15 PM, FlorianWind9 said:

You sound like you'd have some really interesting stories from the game as well. If you've posted any anywhere then I'm sure I'd enjoy reading them. 🙂

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.

On 4/14/2024 at 8:15 PM, FlorianWind9 said:

Yes; I remember people talking about that as well. They'd say they came over to PVP from PVE cause on PVE it was difficult to retaliate against others doing these things. If they were going to get attacked they said, then at least they wanted to be able to attack back. That's why the worst problem was and is that PVE on Ark isn't true PVE.

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.

On 4/14/2024 at 8:15 PM, FlorianWind9 said:

The good PVE servers managed this well. Just like how the good PVP servers managed their bloodshed well. But, that's why I'd say that a true PVE server should have no-build zones built into the map to keep these things from happening. That way the players wouldn't have to worry about pillaring areas and doing it themselves. High density resource areas and creature spawn areas should have no-build zones on them from the start. Perhaps at least some if not most rivers should have no-build zones across the water so people can't wall off areas. And for PVE especially there needs to be build radius limits to keep people from making bases so big that they break the server.

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.

On 4/14/2024 at 8:15 PM, FlorianWind9 said:

That's one of the major things that I am upset with them and one of the major reasons why I have not and may not buy A.S.A. They promised a new and fixed experience, where I only see a shameless reskin. 

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.

On 4/10/2024 at 11:19 PM, FlorianWind9 said:

That's exactly my point. 

On PVE servers where everyone is "supposed" to be friendly and your only challenge or danger should come from the game's creatures, not other players, then the caves should absolutely not be buildable. Pillaring also should not be possible or any kind of blocking in any way. PVE is meant to allow the widest range of people access to the entire game.

On PVP however, your main challenge in the gameplay is meant to come from other human players. Alpha tribes blocking things is supposed to be part of the challenge in pvp. PVP is not supposed to be easy. Yes, it sucks. Yes, it's difficult. Yes, it is unfair. But, that's what PVE is for.

Back in the glory days of Ark when I first began playing soon after it released in Early Access, I intentionally chose to play on a PVP server because the freedom and challenge from that mode and from the other human players would make the experience feel more real and immersive. More like in real life where people can be mean; destroy your stuff; block you from things; take you prisoner. There were many times where I was harassed by people; where people destroyed my stuff and killed my creatures; where people killed me; where people knocked me out and took me prisoner; where I wasn't able to access certain areas because of stronger people blocking my path.

But do you know how wonderful the stories were that came from all that?

How exciting and interesting the experiences were because of those things?

How terribly boring it would have all been if on a PVE server where those things couldn't have happened?

I played on that server for 2 years, and I didn't get to experience the bosses or even most of the caves until about 1 1/2 years in. Can you imagine the excitement and satisfaction once I finally did get to? How boring and tedious would it have been if I'd been able to note XP my way from level 1 to 100 in a day and then expert gather resources to get the artifacts in 1 or 2 more and then defeat all the bosses a week later? Instead the suspense built up over 1 1/2 years. I had to work hard during all that time. I had to build my way up until the Alpha tribe on that server let me into their tribe. All the trust and personal connections built over all that time. And all the exciting stories of hardships along the way.

Back in those days, the Alpha tribe could completely block access to the Obelisks and they were the only way to do the bosses and when transfers first came also the only way to transfer in and out of a server. So cool to finally gain access to the sacred Obelisks and gain such abilities. The Alpha tribe used one of the Obelisks as a prison center where those deemed hostile to the server were kept knocked out and fed under 24/7 watch by various wardens. The sneaky ways those prisoners used to try to escape; the cunning involved. The vigilance needed to keep the prisoners locked up so they wouldn't harm the server. Just so much excitement and nuance and suspense and intrigue that no longer is truly possible in the game; and mostly never was on PVE. 

You start restricting things in PVP, and you take all that away; which they already have long ago. Making the game easier for the masses only takes away the excitement and challenge for those who truly have the will to survive. 

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.

8 minutes ago, MMaas said:

You almost talked me in to buying ASA! 😹
Just to proove you can build a smal but decent base without maewings or incubators where you can do the selective breeding needed for that first bossfight. And to make fun of all the kids that are just speedrunning the notes to get to that level needed for the Alpha Dragon without knowing what tames to bring...

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.

14 minutes ago, elsegadorbk said:

I just hope the Shastasaurus is big enough to carry things.

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

53 minutes ago, OverRannus said:

 This was how ASE was for the first four years of its existence!!! People breeding creatures and having no cryopods at all to free up space, Veterans knew how to Not kill server’s and still breed amazing battle mounts and ASE survived for 4 years after that.

 A lot of people wanted a more primitive play style like to ASE’s original version with no luxuries and we all got it. But we forgot what are most minimal luxuries were and we lost those too. We are only losing them for around a year to less than a year from launch. We were spoiled by WC when they gave us Cryopods and they continued spoiling us after Extinction!!

 We survived without them the when players first tried ASE back in 2015, we can survive without them in ASA. That’s what it’s all about, Survival on the Arks. So get your tools ready and your saddles polished, because it’s coming!! And the question we should be asking is.. Are we ready for this harder challenge that is called ASA?? With smarter Dino’s, No cryopods and unknown terrain changes. Will we underestimate ASA as just an ASE reskin or will we Survive ASA? The choice is yours.

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.

6 minutes ago, Gecko1611 said:

Seriously guys, please stop focusing so much on the negative. I really love the concept and idea of ARK. A survival game with dinosaurs has never been done (unless you count the pathetic ARK rip-offs). Perhaps its due to less/no competition that some of the choices made by the creators and publishers aren't quite as thought out.

Yes, they modifications made the new creatures is a little disappointing. Yes, the publishers cheated and hacked on their own servers. Yes, some choices Wildcard makes are affecting the future of ARK.

But at the end of the day, if you really love the world of dinosaurs, nature, fantasy, and the unique experience ARK has to offer, you'll stick with it and endure along with it for as long as you can.

Let's just focus on the positive and enjoy this unique and spectacular world as much as we can. Until the owner outright send ARK into the stars of ascension, I, and hopefully you, will stay with it.

We survived the ARKs, and we can survive this as well.

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.

8 minutes ago, TyranntX said:

Aaaaand, Que the complaining... It's like clockwork with these "Not Adults" (can't call them "kids" because that's "hurtful" despite it being fact)

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.

7 minutes ago, PaleoGamer said:

Yes, I do realize this. I'm using them myself - only way to breed something and don't become a slave to the game.

 

You do realize that the Maewings ARE a living feed through, right? It's exactly the same mechanic: you put the creature food in it, and every creature in range (babies, on Maewing's case) eat through it. Exactly the same.

 

Yes, one can transport 4 babies with it, and steal other's tribes too. But, really, the "feeding" part could (should?) be offloaded to the parents.

 

I agree with You points about incubators and cryopods too: they are a must for anyone doing breeding. I would even say that cryopods are a must for everyone else too: best way to keep your base "small", organized and needing less food. Not to mention when someone playing solo will go away for some time: cryo everything, let the generator running and problem solved.

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?

On 8/7/2023 at 12:39 PM, CervantesMor said:

 

at the moment we are only "interpreting from the little information that fails to clarify us" and any hypothesis can be valid but, even if we propose the DLCs only later and therefore originally we should have waited for Extintion, today the Criopods are enabled in every map including TheIsland, you don't need to have the Ext DLC and you don't need to move to Ext or other extra maps to unlock them... so the observation "who said that the Criopods won't be there?" is also valid, nobody said anything... and really for this "nothing" that doubts arise... just another of the annoying silences.... perhaps it serves to see if we complain more about what will and what won't be there? mahhhh.....

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.

On 8/8/2023 at 5:22 AM, KingOfAshes said:

Realistically, I'm thinking the decision on cryopods will mostly come down to game/server performance on UE5 with large dino populations after testing stability. Honestly, the performance is the biggest concern at this point and why I'm pretty sure ASA release is bound to be pushed back further and into the new year.  I wouldn't be surprised at all if it ends up coming out next summer instead. I'd say on the bright side that means keeping ASE servers up for a year longer than they first announced for those still on officials. So, those asking for extension might get their wish.

I had an opportunity recently to play Ark on a mid range PC(lower spec than the PS5 I use) and the visual upgrade I saw was huge. Frankly it felt criminal that they left it the way it is in PS5 and between the constant crashes and that difference, I uninstalled the game. I guess the point is, I sure as hell won't buy ASA until I saw it running on PS5 and it's visuals/performance was confirmed with actual gameplay, regardless of any trailer shown or promise made by devs or anyone else really.

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.

19 hours ago, slejo said:

Im sure It will be delayed again.. 

13 minutes ago, Noffek said:

It would be fair to start like the rest of us without incubators and cryopods.  It's called survival as I add that today's farm rates are already higher than in those years.

 

frist giga xd 2 week 3 ppl / 3h only farm meat on the island no ball no incubator no tek engram LoL 

 

It was a game.

Yeah until the time say extinction gets released and we finally get cryopods back, we’re looking at a lot, if not most, servers at tame cap due to the massive amount of breeding that a player has to do just to face alpha broodmother and megapithicus on the island.  Not talking about dragon or the tek cave.  Going into the alpha brood fight with even mediocre tames = getting your butt handed to you.  That is if you plan on doing the old school way and not cheesing it.  The point I’m trying to get at is, even if say 4-5 tribes out of the entire server start doing serious breeding for bosses, just the breed the stats that are needed to win those fights and the different strategies (Rex=monkey, megatherium=brood and their= dragon), we’re talking about hundreds of tames by the time the teams are finished, servers would be at tame cap inside 4 months guaranteed, not talking about the regular tribe cap.  We’ve experienced that before, and I personally don’t want to go through it again.

37 minutes ago, Voidtoker said:

It is nonsensical to think they would release ASA without cryopods. Where is this take even coming from? 

Dollie has mentioned it on twitter more than once that they were leaning towards releasing ASA without “recent dlc additions”, such as cryopods, net guns etc. I don’t have twitter so I can’t login to find post but it’s there I’m sure.  I hope they do change their minds on that though because yes it is hands down, the single thing that helped the most with sever tame caps and performance.

15 hours ago, CosmicSkeleton said:

Actually upon revisiting the design it really is more or less aberration’s answer to the terror bird. More specifically it is to the terror bird what the ravager is to the dire wolf. Look at its legs and wings; its design suggests that it’s built to run and temporarily glide via flapping. It’s almost ironic, in the end people basically got the running owl with a different coat of paint and name. Makes one wonder why they’d bother completely changing its design this drastically. It’s like they tweaked it’s concept art so they could tweak and reuse an existing rig rather than making a new one from the ground up and call it a done deal.

I think you’re spot on cosmic, they’ve done it before.  Perfect example is the tapejara and the tropeo.  The tropeo is just a reskinned tape with a a jet powered saddle.  I have never really been a big fan of aberration so it doesn’t affect me that much, I’m actually more concerned about other things than creature votes, who’s submission has won more than once, yata yata yata.  Don’t get me wrong, the creature additions are cool and all, but they’re kinda like hanging curtains in the living room of the house while the kitchen is on fire.

With the lack of actual news and information in the last few crunches, my feeling is they’re going to delay ASA until December at least and go back to releasing scorched and the island at the same time, which is probably going change their price point….again.  I’m also really concerned about how primitive they have mentioned on going with ASA.  I don’t know how many old school Ark players are still around, but for those of you who started playing after 2017, the game was a different game pre-2017.  Some aspects were down right awesome other parts of the game were far far from awesome. 
 

Breeding was a complete nightmare without cryopods, and even that is a mild understatement.  Let put this way, if you wanted to breed in old school ark, YOU HAD NO LIFE!!!  It took forever to raise tames for boss fights, especially if you were in a small tribe or solo.  If you were in that type of scenario, you were basically forced to buy your boss tames.  Not to mention when you finally did get a boss team, trying to get them to the obelisk to do the boss fight was another migraine in the works.  Walking 18 rexes, a yuti and deadon to the obelisk is probably one of the worst pains in the rump you could think of.  Then just to get there and realize some jack*ss left their boss team ON THE PLATFORM AND LOGGED OFF!  Not to mention the shacks, buildings and fences that were quite literally PACKED around every ob with boss teams.  THAT is the kind of experience that is waiting for those who never experienced that debacle.  Back to breeding, the other annoying issue waiting for us is, tribes breeding for bosses or just breeding tames because they want to bogs down servers BADLY!  I don’t care how advanced UR5 is or gonna be, THE SAME THING WILL HAPPEN!  Even the most advanced systems have their limitations.  The point I’m getting to is that cryopods not only were a godsend to the breeding and taming of creatures, but they were more important to the running health of the servers.  Not having cryopods at launch of ASA in my opinion is a such an insanely stupid idea that even the words “stupid idea” can’t express how stupid of a decision it would be.  Now I would love to see the other QOL additions, that I believe should be, available at launch, just because I remember how daunting breeding and raising really was.  Incubators, maewings and tek troughs really helped make the small and solo tribes have a level playing field with the big tribes in regards to breeding, it allowed people to actually have a life and not be, quite literally, tied to the game.

Other things that I believe should be a part of ASA is flyer speed leveling.  If WC is gonna try to have lightning strike twice that needs to be available.  Allow flyers like quetzs worth something again.  Allow us to build turrets on the platform saddles (in PvE), keep netguns on launch and actual real separate balancing for PvE and PvP.  Remove some of the pointless nerfs that PvE had to take because of PvP balancing.  

Lastly, with the creature vote for The Center, I hope you guys are able to update that map.  IMO it’s probably one of the best mod maps and deserves to have the best work.  It has some of recognition being the first map to be added and deserves the love.  With all that being said I look forward to Asa and I hope that it is everything we hope for and that WC/SG doesn’t try to pull any stupid shenanigans, but that’s probably just wishful hoping on my part.

“We have an update to the ASA roadmap coming next week”= ASA IS DELEAYED UNTIL DECEMBER.  That’s my prediction.  After the last couple of months that is equivalent to a head on train crash on a busy airport runway with the space shuttle blowing up over top and WC/SG pulling a 90s Saturday night live Stewart special “ look what I can do”, it’s a wonder that there are enough of us still here to leave 3 pages worth of comments.  This is just crazy.  Wildcard, you guys really don’t care about your own product, players or even yourselves as a company.  It’s absolutely astounding and so blatantly obvious to everyone, and those who can’t see it either truly are blind or don’t want to see it.  What gives guys?  Seriously!

Congrats to the mega raptor for winning, I didn’t vote so I can’t complain or celebrate.  Anything that helps with the breeding rates on official is a winner in my book.  I hope that maewings and incubators are introduced to the island map upon ASA launch, that’s probably just a pipe dream.  Man I am really hoping that you guys don’t do something stupid that destroys ASA.  Unfortunately I don’t have very high hopes of that.  I could be wrong and I hope that I am, but by the sounds of that CC and your track record I suspect nothing short of at least a delay of 3 months.  Which is not at all surprising really.

Being that we have seen little to nothing of ACTUAL game assets, and even some of those have been questionable in regards to accuracy.  No gameplay, no screenshots, no real information on supposed changes and upgrades of QOL.  If they have changed as much as they said they have, then why isn’t there the typical hype being this close to the alleged release of ASA and the shutdown of the official servers.  Because of all this a lot of YouTubers have been calling out that it’s gonna be delayed, and I agree with them whole heartedly, and we should NOT even act the slightest of surprised on next weeks crunch.  I really hope that WC comes to their senses and does the right thing and actually listens to what the community is saying to them, but I seriously have my doubts.

22 minutes ago, Highmobility said:

Why’d you have to use that type of metaphor???

Because I did, and it’s the truth ain’t it?  

1 minute ago, ladyteruki said:

Ragnarok got more than one. I don't think the Ice Wyvern existed before Rag... also a mythical creature, admittedly.
#JusticeforTheCenter, I agree. Hopefully it'll come next.

You are correct, I forgot about the ice wyvern.

Ok this is more like it, I can’t tell you how much it drove me nuts not to be able to put stuff under stairs!  Like Ladyteruki said though, do we loose the open door frame on the top, if so that kinda sucks.  It does come in handy in a lot of builds to be able to stack doorways seamlessly.  Definitely this crunch is lacking, if you’re going to talk about structures and building then let’s SEE structures and building!!!  Talk about it, not just a little “oh hey quick comparison”.  I like how clean the UR5 looks and the height adjustments, definitely will make things easier internal base set up.  In reality though you guys are teasing us to almost the point of climax and then rolling over and going to sleep on us.  Bring on the showcases, have a little hour or half hour stream on the building.  
As far as the creature vote, I believe the center should be first.  Ragnarok already got a special creature on release, the griffin.  Guided it wasn’t a real creature just mythological, but it got its release.  The Center never got a specific creature.  The dire bear came out when the center dropped but it wasn’t specific.  As awesome as the map is, it deserves to be first in that.  It was the second map to be released but the one that started the map dlc frenzy.  So let’s have the Center take it’s turn first, Ragnarok can take a seat for a few.

8 hours ago, ladymarina said:

Oh my God thank you thank you thank you so much for saying this lady teruki. I have been saying this from the very beginning. Since they announced it in April. Thank you so much for sending this you said it even better than I did you go girl ,🙏❤️

Agreed ladymarina, agreed!!  Ladyteruki gets the mic drop post of the week lol.

EXACTLY! @ladyteruki!!!!  SING THE GOSPEL GIRL! Lol.  Looking back when I first logged into the island server 68 in December of 2015, after coming from games like GTA and a hardcore COD player, I thought “eh I’ll give it a shot, but probably be back into GTA in a week.”  Not understanding the depth and the layers of this game, and after playing it for 3 days I fell in love with it and the rest is history.  This game scratched an itch that I never knew was there.  I also believe that when Ark: Survival Evolved came out, it did something to the gaming world.  Once people started really getting into it, and got that same itch scratched that I did, they realized that this is a game that was going to blow the roof off a fairly new genre in the gaming world, one that was dominated by Minecraft for the most part.  And it did, at least that’s what I believe.  In 2015-2016 there were not many open world survival games out there, where you had the freedom and the ability to in a sense build your own virtual world, life and effectively your own outcome of the game, and that is the best part about this game.  The early days were, IMO, the best.  My most fondest memories of this game are from 2015-2017, things like guarding a juvenile giga with 4 battle quetzs and 6 adult gigas as we walked it from the swamp in the south to the east side of giga mountain on the island.  Logging into the center on release night and my tribe and I getting obliterated by 2 mate boosted lvl 150 gigas, trying to get to the spot we wanted to build lol. 
 

I didn’t mean to go off topic there but I mentioned those because this summer or early fall is a chance for players who weren’t around in the early days to experience a true new start on a completely fresh and new (old)map.  I’m not talking about like the dlc releases since the center where players have awesome stat tames on another server just waiting to be transferred in 3 months, no.  We’re talking a straight up brand spanking new start, where nobody has a better breeding line that they been working on 2 years.  Also to be able to make those memories to look back on in another 5-6 years after ASA release to go “damn!  That was fun!!!”.  To tie everything together with my point, players are going to miss out on that kind of experience.  Why? Because you guys can’t come to your senses and try to truly understand what made the community fall in love with this game, and what part you at Wildcard need to play to make it all happen.  You have such a rare opportunity for lightning to strike twice and just as potently as it did the first time, if not even more powerful than the first time, and you guys are just letting the chance slip away.  With every passing week, with every info scarce crunch, with every single unanswered “716 billion” questions that would not have any effect on gameplay experience.  This position you’re in now is a DIRECT result of lack of communication.  For example, Rockstar does this in regards to a new GTA that’s in the works, but they can do that effectively because of their reputation.  They have spent 30 years developing that reputation, the difference is when they drop a product, it’s almost a mic drop, every time.  Sure it’s got bugs, but for the most part it’s a pretty smooth running game, and rockstar knows that they don’t have to release too many teasers because the game will do $150 million in sales the first week, because of their reputation.  Wildcard, you don’t have that luxury…..yet.  
 

Us players are on the outside looking in to this whole hoopla of a mess, and I can safely say, a lot of us see the way out.  Hell it’s on YouTube every day, from creators like Raasclark, H.O.D., Nooblets, LtBuzzLightBeer, GP, JadePG.  Hell I’m sure Captain Fatdog would love to get an idea of how the new build mechanics work so that the king of the trap builds(king of building period) can start messing around with new traps if need be.  Wildcard, from here on out the outcome of ASA and Ark 2 are up to you.  The road that has been the status quo, is not going to lead to the best outcome that can happen, and that’s on you. Do you want lightning to strike again and more powerful the second time around?  Or do you wanna run the risk of falling into the category of what could have been?  It already happened with Atlas, don’t think for one minute it can’t happen to Ark.

Happy 8th Anniversary, which is quite the milestone in regards to game being viable for more than a couple years.  Only a handful of titles can lay claim to have the standing success for the better part of a decade.  You are now in the arena with titles like Grand Theft Auto and Destiny with a few others that I don’t play and I know I’m forgetting.  Well was until April 1st.  I no longer log in to refresh my base and my tames have long since perished and my bases has been but a forgotten memory on the servers I used to play just about every day.  All the while trying to stay hopeful that you guys pull your faces out from between your knees and show us something WORTH the cost to jump into ASA, and like a father who has abandoned their kid, I feel less and less hopeful with every community crunch that you guys fall short on.  I’m sure that I’m not the only one who feels this way.  Yeah the bug is cool, but I don’t have the want to log back into a server or even single player to give it a try.  Ok we get that spotlight on the new creature coming to ASA, but it’s not enough.  Why is this so hard for you guys to understand?

IF, and I mean a big IF, you guys really have been slamming it hard on ASA, then there is MORE than enough information you guys can let out that would have no impact on “secretive content” that you guys don’t want to reveal yet.  Two months out and we have so little to go on to make our decisions to buy ASA or not.  Many of us are looking at not only spending money on the game itself but upgrading the hardware to run it.  Since money doesn’t grow on trees people have to save for that kind of expense or at least plan for it to be able to log into a fresh new experience on day 1.  If the history of dlc launches has taught us anything, it this.  It’s hectic and chaotic.  Not only are you trying to log in to an almost full server but then you’re trying to spawn in, get the basics and head to the base spot ya want.  We ALL know how perfectly smooth that goes. There are very important questions that I would like to see answered (and I’m sure others too), and those are as follows:

Are you going to release enough servers this time compared to ASE?

What bugs have been fixed compared to ASE? (I.e. weapons having to be cycled before they fire)

Are you going to spotlight new building mechanics?

Are we going to be able to have things like Maewings introduced to the island so raising tames isn’t so time consuming?

These are just some of the questions that run through my head that really does have a BIG impact on my decision to buy the game or not, and I’m sure I’m not alone.  There are other questions that you guys can answer pretty easily if you really have as much done as you say you do.  The best thing is, IT WONT RUIN THE EXPERIENCE OF THE PLAYERS BY LETTING US KNOW THESE THINGS!  Actually it would get us pumped up and excited and want to buy the game.  By what’s been going on in the last month or so that you guys STILL haven’t even acknowledged, you could use a little hype right now.  Two months until release (unless it’s delayed, which would NOT be the least bit surprised by at this point) and we literally know nothing about ASA other than a handful of things that aren’t really things that bring a lot of attention in the day to day of the game.  I’m not trying to downplay the work that has gone into stuff like the smithy, mortar and pestle, sleeping bag or the tree, but in my 7.5 years of playing I have yet to see a bunch of people standing around a smithy going “man it would be cool if they refreshed the look of this”.  That stuff looks great and I’m sure a lot of work went into it, but it isn’t enough.  
 

I will end with this, the opening picture would make an awesome poster to hang on the wall lol.  Let’s hope we can get into the juicy stuff very soon!  Also LETS NOT FORGET ABOUT A SPECIFIC CREATURE FOR THE CENTER!  That map was the first dlc (out of the free and paid dlcs) to come to the game and is still a favorite for me and I’m sure many others.  It deserves its own specific creature!!