Ark: Survival Evolved

I've been playing it recently and it's more fun than any paid MMO I've ever put my hands on due to the sandbox nature of it plus the inclusion of one thing only 1 other game has ever done: the removal of the social contract.

I actually find the fact that political actions in this game between tribes actually have server-wide implications.

The survival and resource gathering aspects are fairly tedious (but dinos actually make that a ton less so) but otherwise it's pretty decent.

Thoughts? I have legit never seen Sup Forums discuss this game.

Was actually curious, but I'm burned out on sandbox multiplayer games and like you said, nobody ever talks about it here, so I never bothered.

Bump. Does Sup Forums actually have nothing to say about this?

The developers need to fucking stop adding dinosaurs for about 2 months and focus on actually making the game fucking work.

I was interested in ARK for a while but then realized that I had absolutely zero interest in 'taming' dinosaurs, which is essentially what the game is about.

>still in early access
>has paid dlc
This is why its not talked about

Stop adding dinos? Sure.

Balancing dinos would be great too. The fact that platform quetz + ptera support literally cannot be shut down without superior numbers is fucking dumb.

The fact that gigas can kill an infinite number of dinos so long as they stack up (and the non-passive AI guarantees they do) is also stupid.

Bringing shit to Center/Island from Scorched is also ridiculous and is one of the reason most alphas block obs/turret drops.

More DLC than lines in all patch notes combined.

I put so many hours into this game and I have to say it is really great. I hate those survival type games like rust and stuff but I love dinosaurs and I found this game really chill and fun. It needs to be optimized badly though.

also has like 2 spin offs that are more optimized now than the base game is.

It looks like a lot of fun but the HUD and UI looks really, really bad. Also its early access and has dlc which is a red flag. convince me to play it OP

Sure, Ok.
Don't.
Not until they finally release it or until they fix TRUSKY.

they have been "working" on that for a year and a half now.

It's Talk Shit: Get Hit the game when it comes to PvP. If you run your mouth to someone without knowing what you're getting into, you can and will find yourself standing in the smoking ruins of your base within minutes, oftentimes losing hours, days, weeks or potentially months of harvesting, forging, building and maintaining.

The flipside is that tribes that arbitrarily attack weaker tribes often piss off everyone around them and find themselves on the receiving end of a Giga-dino gangbang (as my server's alpha recently found out,3 of us were taming and raising Gigas in secret).

The combat is pretty straightforward but has plenty of options available.

Base construction on the tribe level is RTS-tier. You *HAVE* to plan for defense not just against random dino spawns but against players. If you don't, you'll find yourself wiped and your tribe scattered to the wind.

You can take players prisoner for being assbags and you have complete control over whether they ever get out.

Read that again. YOU CAN TAKE PLAYERS PRISONER FOR BEING COMPLETE ASSBAGS AND YOU HAVE COMPLETE CONTROL OVER WHETHER THEY EVER GET OUT.

The crafting system is expansive and in-depth, with the rarity of the higher level materials causing actual wars over resource availability.

Tribal interaction is the best replication of real-world politics since Eve. Alliances are formed and broken, server Alpha Tribes are toppled by Alpha Alliances (which sometimes turn on eachother afterwards), and the actions of a single player can have literal world wide reprecussions.

they have no reason to finally release it nor fix it

okay now that sounds fucking fun. now i only need friends to play with

I jumped in solo and found a tribe within a few days. They weren't the server alpha but they're all decently cool.

You just have to be willing to contribute. That means resource gathering/management and assisting with dino tames.

It's actually best to start off solo until you get a feel for the game's mechanics. Once you get to about wood-level you're probably ready to enter the larger world and join a tribe. Until then you're better off staying to your own little corner of the world until you get a feel for the struggle of day to day survival.

Food and water access management, shelter, self-defense. Those are the name of the game pre-Tribe.

it'd be better if it wasn't broken as fuck

for whatever reason they keep pumping out overpowered dinosaurs that just break the game further instead of glaring performance issues

it's honestly gotten worse the more content that has been released, mostly because it seems like they just keep compounding old problems further

it's pretty much more fun on a private server or single player at this point, just because playing with people besides friends just exploits how fucking broken the dinosaurs and stuff have gotten

so yeah i'd love it if they re-balance the game and dinosaurs and work on performance polish on top of that

them releasing a dlc was just a slap in the face, why they would do that instead of finishing the game first is just mind boggling, it's their own fault they got fucked in the ass by that lawsuit

They didn't remove a social contract per say, they left it up to people to develop it on their own in their own server's society.

What are your favorite dinos Sup Forums?

Obviously I don't really use them because of how weak they are but I love carnos and I really like when you are in early game and carno is the best you can get. It feels like a big body guard!

Ill be on my way to watch some youtube/twitch. thanks

I wanna ____ those dinosaurs.

Rex, Ptera, Raptor.

You don't know joy until you sick a pack of 8 100+ raptors on an unsuspecting hunting party and watch them scatter in fear and confusion.

"tame"

Never really used the raptors in packs like that, sounds fun. I was surprised how enjoyable the wooly rhinos are. You just truck things.

ride ;)

Raptors are pretty good shock troops because of how fast they are and how well they fit in tight places.

In raids you can use them as fire-and-forget shock troops if you can get them into position. Anyone not on a dino will be run down and destroyed. Just have to make sure they don't turn any rexes/spinos/gigas on them.

The fact that they're easy as hell to tame (and thus to replace losses) and easy to level (ride 1, whistle follow/whistle passive the rest, pick target, whistle attack, murderblender ensues) makes them great throwaway troops that can be directed with little additional effort.

I've watched some vids but most of them have taming times turned up and it still takes ages, how long are vanilla tame times?

Tame times depend entirely upon what you use for the tame.

Raw meat/raw fish meat is going to take for-fucking-ever.

On the flipside, kibble will get you a top-tier dino in just a few hours. This is part of what necessitates a tribe to tame endgame dinos (rex/spino/quetz/gigas) as it allows you to babysit the tame in shifts, so that one poor fucker doesn't have to endure the entire process on his own.

A level 120 Rex would take:
14:17:59 on raw meat
04:45:59 on prime meat
02:52:45 on kibble

There are other ways to decrease taming time but for the most part expect some grind.

Official servers or organised dedicated servers are amazing, and they get better the more players are on. Me and my tribe take people hostage for ransom, you can monopolize resources by building bases or turrets around hotspots (aka building on the arctic coast so oil is insanely hard to get), full scale base warfare, laying on a dark cliff with a sniper shooting passing players, poison grenades, C4, fun rarity system. Get a few friends who are ready for a potential grind and it is amazing. Also stealthily breaking into people's bases to knock them out and drown them, is very fun

That's what these survival games are in a way. They remind me of pre-WoW MMOs. Everything is just open for everyone to figure out.

The experiences you get from games like Ark and Rust are infinitely different from anything you'd get in any other genre.

I know they get shit from everyone, but they're honestly something special. Really hoping Conan Exiles delivers.

Man that's so long I understand why it's the case but still, 14 hours. In the event that I couldn't find or didn't want to join a tribe I would like to be able to get it done in a day 14 hours of babysitting something is long.. could it not be like 7? Thats still a long ass time

I pirated 7 Days to Die and it's pretty fun playing by myself. Thinking about asking my brother to link his steam so i can play more of this.
Tried it once a couple months ago but I didn't even know the controls. Just wet and cold and died a pathetic death from these assholes. Blinded the shit out of me so instead of running to safety I was running against a wall. When I could see 5 or 6 other dudes joined up with the first one and nibbled me to death.

We used to do a similar thing on Rust. We'd build a wall completely around monuments and not allow anyone to get near. It went as far as making deals with other clans who'd pay us in resources to come and get loot from the ones we'd take over. Unfortunately the game now has more loot out in the open, so raiding monuments isn't quite as special anymore.

Yeah to be honest I don't know how we did it. My friend and I sat around for so many hours trying to tame all of the dinos max level. Mosasaur was actually the most fun but sometimes we got so bored we built a basketball net in-game and threw dino shit around.

So what's a decently populated server where all of the political shit happens? I'm looking at it and all I see is another dayz clone but with Dino's. Political shit makes me wet but I have no idea what to look for in a server that does it right.

Look up servers, there are plenty for everyone and there are servers that rely heavily on politics, if that's your thing

So what am I looking for exactly? "Pvp with politics"? I'm confused

When you get to the server list, just sort by # of online players. The closer to 70 at any given time, the better. More active servers have obviously got more going on.

And there isn't really a matter of doing it 'right'. each server is going to have a different power structure and thus different political landscape between tribes.

I will say, stay the fuck away from NA Official 41. It's a cesspool of cancer and thatchkillers.

When I first started I made the mistake of trying 41. LITERALLY AT SPAWN (and I mean literally literally, not this new-age almost-literally) within 5 seconds I was clubbed unconscious by 2 guys in Flak, drug off, shoved in a cage and forcefed narcotics.

A day later when I tried it again I'd starved to death. When I respawned.. I was greeted by the exact same two motherfuckers who did the exact same thing to me.

I would play the shit out of ARK if I could actually run it.

>Ark
I'm still frustrated that they started missing their milestones since the console versions got released.

I suppose so, there are places where you can browse servers, like steam, and you can look for a server that sounds good. Sadly I'm not sure exactly what it's called

Grab it for XB1 or PS4. Even though it isn't optimized yet, the XB1 version runs pretty well and the visuals are actually fucking beautiful.

Have 260 hours played in the first few months the game was out and haven't played it since.

Won another copy of the game and any ~$30 game of my choice from getting second place in some streamer's broadcast of Survival of The Fittest.

I liked building a comfy base hidden away in the jungle.

They actually managed to get it to run on consoles?

XB1 version is already out. PS4 version is supposed to be out before Q1 2017.

It's really gimped from what I heard, now with that "4k" console shit I can guarantee the devs will once again bite off more than they can chew by making versions for them too.

Consoles aren't made for these kind of games. That time could be going to content for PC.

exactly

Anyone else looking forward to Conan: Exiles? It's looking good. Maybe too good to be true, but AoC and Secret World were actually pretty good.