Ark Survival Ascended.

Just an update on this as I bought the original on release date in 2015 and have 1500+ hrs. Tony, I remember playing with you way back then ;)

ASA is just a cash grab, I was convinced by an old Ark friend to try it out. It looks nicer if you have a higher end system but even the graphics/lighting are buggy with a lot of flickering etc

Some 3 hour sessions resulted in 5+ crashes, rejoining a server may take 10-15 attempts before the 'standard' error disappears.

Ingame, old legacy bugs still very much there, crossbow doesn't reload, meshing, can't throw C4 etc

Dino AI is improved but they are now pretty much the smartest kids at the special needs school...if you get my drift.

Quality of life improvements are nice, tracking tames, deaths etc but these were all done by mods half a decade ago and the inbuilt functionality is worse than those mods.

No lessons learned from the original massive unofficial modding community, no official ORP servers (tried twice, raided within 30 mins of all tribe members logging off), no duo/trio servers. Tek which is what imo completely ruined ASE of course still there, building and blocking off obelisks/caves for artefacts etc still allowed. Hitboxes still terrible.

They scaled the buildings so you can actually fit in a 1 storey building which is good but they seemed to have just applied this to everything, so grass is taller than most characters so running off a cliff is very likely!

Even VERY basic things like favouriting a server does not appear in your favourite lists, 'created characters' for server filter, gone.

I needed a game to play as not really played anything over the last few years and Ark will always hold a special place but yeah, still just as broken, with less mod support, legacy bugs, very crashy, still not playable on official if you do have a life. The graphics do look nice if you have at least a 3090+ but still lots of visual bugs. Just a cash grab.
 
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@Richeh I agree with this 100%. They did say they needed cash though and the reason for this is they needed to fund Ark 2 after the CEO of snail put billions of profits into funding his EV line. Personally, I think Ark 2 is dead, myself and pretty much everyone out there hates the direction of Ark 2. I can see it being cancelled personally.

But yeah, all the problems above are in there for me and thought the exact same. I still enjoy it though.
 
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Yeah, agree with you both. It's obviously far from perfect (probably further than ASE in recent years, especially until the modding community catches up, assuming it actually does), that said I'm still really enjoying it so far and will no doubt get my moneys worth from it.

On the subject of the long grass, I actually really like that as it makes spotting approaching dino's (especially snakes) harder and adds a greater sense of danger when exploring. Similarly I hope they don't add cryo pods back in too soon as the risky pilgrimage home with a new tame has led to some of my most memorable moments in ASE.

It is obviously a cash grab and I see no reason that we, the customer, should be paying for them to effectively train their staff on UE5 (which they've more or less publicly stated when they announced it wouldn't be a free upgrade for ASE owners).

ARK 2 looks pants, I have no interest in 3rd person only, assassins creed/tomb raider knock off with dino's (or more dino's in TR case!).

On another topic, I've seen today that the first full conversion mod (that I've seen anyway) has launched - Primal Chaos (based on Primal Fear but not by Pikkon), so I'm keen to give that a go at some point.
 
TonyTurbo78 said:
@Richeh I agree with this 100%. They did say they needed cash though and the reason for this is they needed to fund Ark 2 after the CEO of snail put billions of profits into funding his EV line. Personally, I think Ark 2 is dead, myself and pretty much everyone out there hates the direction of Ark 2. I can see it being cancelled personally.

But yeah, all the problems above are in there for me and thought the exact same. I still enjoy it though.
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Yeah that is the problem with Ark, the addictive factor :D

Are you playing on officials or unofficial? The problem I find with most unofficials is that despite frequent wipes if not fully onboard on official, unofficial get maybe 20-30 players max then just die!

Currently just playing with one other friend on official but just the 2 of us can't compete as the for example 'big tribes' on our small 6 man server are all in cahoots!

Would be open to expanding and maybe joining a server with a bigger tribe and actually having an impact but myself and my friend actually work now so only avail in the evenings which is very limiting. One way we found around this was finding a 'rathole' which is fine but it's so glitchy spent an hour getting my mate out of a hole as he was holding our 'valuable' stuff. Entertaining but annoying after a certain point :D
 
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TonyTurbo78 said:
@Richeh Playing on unofficial PvP
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Is it a closed off server and active? Am playing with just one friend on official PvP and one of the big active tribes who don't have a 9-5 have taken offence to us beating them in several PvP situations and have as such made our server unplayable for us as cannot get in or out of the base due to turrets but they don't dare enter our base as know they will have a hard time (we have barely any 'loot' lol). Unfortunately 2 people on a 6 man tribe server is quite difficult!
 
its one im renting, its dead though, to many servers on the official server list with 0/20. theres 3 of us, its a 4 man tribe server. Did have ORP setup but it was causing issues whgen ppl logged on and then couldnt acess inventorys with F key. Search for nARKotics PvP
 
TonyTurbo78 said:
its one im renting, its dead though, to many servers on the official server list with 0/20. theres 3 of us, its a 4 man tribe server. Did have ORP setup but it was causing issues whgen ppl logged on and then couldnt acess inventorys with F key. Search for nARKotics PvP
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Ah that's a shame. Well we managed to free ourselves from our situation on our official, we are only 2/6 and both work 9-5 but if you guys fancy having a run at official lemme know and more than welcome to join us.
 
i'm honestly not sure what the point of this game is? as it's essentially the same game as before but like a 2.0 version of it rather than a total remake? just feels to recent and with ARK2 in development, i'm not sure what it is i'm supposed to be jumping back into this game for. a good example of a game worth of a remake was mafia 1. a lot of time had passed, there were 2 games since then, and it was a total remake rather than the exact same game but better looking. maybe i'm just missing something here, but ark being a game played to death, did people leave that game thinking they hope to be back to the exact same game in not that many years time, with just better graphics?
 
The answer is always money.
Wildcard are broke despite Ark making over $1Billion - apparently the Snail games CEO spent it all on a failed electric car business.
www.theverge.com

IndiEV reveals electric car with a built-in gaming PC but not much else

A new startup with murky origins and funding.
www.theverge.com www.theverge.com

They needed a quick route to cash, remaking ASE is quicker than building Ark2 from scratch.
 
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I've said before that this is definitely a cash grab, but for £35 I have got over 80+ hours, for a prettier, quality of life improvments integrated on official. The first week was a nightmare but I am happily playing on an official small tribes server and for anyone who has truly 'been into Ark' you know how addictive it is. There is always something to do. Essentially the same game but prettier and slightly easier to navigate but for the price I got it at completely worth it just for the entertainment value.
 
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