ark-2

[blissful perch]

Been there Raq. Hopefully you have a better run than I did

[copper stirrup]

if dinosaurs came back

[stray elm]

I doubt they will

[copper stirrup]

hopefully they won't

[lavish rain]

I think there will be more aliens then people expect, and God damn I certainly hope that's true

[mint swan]

Wdym delay? Sorry im late I just got into ark, i used to play it on mobile when it first was released on ios. Than redownloaded it after watching rust lol and noticed that ark was now like console/pc on mobile so i bought tiday on ps4

[lavish rain]

The more aliens, the more likely they are to take a scifi route, and the more likely they take a scifi route, the more likely they add tek or an equivalent, and the more likely tek is in the game, the more likely I can play God and make the best weed seed know to mankind and aratai alike

[mint swan]

Lol ark in first release was so fun. The game never saved, and you had to collect a certain amount of eggs to hatch certain dinos. Like some big crab one was 466.

Mobile^

[copper stirrup]

your roles only say playstation and Microsoft's contract prevents ark 2 on playstation for a certain amount of time

[mint swan]

Oh

[blissful perch]

The rex in the trailer is pretty promising that we’ll be seeing dinosaurs

[lavish rain]

More aliens

[thick moat]

Aahahah I thought I could post discord links seeing those on that channel, wanted to invite people onto the soft community server lol

[blissful perch]

Is that server still active? I’m glad to hear that

[thick moat]

it's new

they are hosting servers on the og soft while official soft doesnt release

[blissful perch]

Ah I thought it was the old mod server that got repurposed

[lavish rain]

"Soft"

[thick moat]

Survival of the fittest

oh

Sotf* XD

[stray elm]

Survival of Fittest the

[thick moat]

le brain fart

[untold ingot]

I once had an arthro named "a brain fart" just so that the tribe logs would say "your base was destroyed by a brain fart" the reactions in chat were epic

[frosty notch]

Is there an official release date for this yet? Lol I’m impatient and curious

[thick moat]

not yet, all we know officially is that it releases 2023, you got all info on the pinned comments

[frosty notch]

Ok, thanks. I forget to check pinned comments lol

[thick moat]

• it will most probably come around Q1 and Q2

because of game pass games announcement on June of this year that stated that ARK 2 and other unreleased games will release along those 12 months

[frosty notch]

Ah ok. Well thanks I’ll keep a lookout next year then

[thick moat]

keep an eye on the 8th of december too, The Game Awards may include gameplay, we are not sure though

[frosty notch]

Ooh, didn’t even think about that. Ima look out for that for sure. Thanks

[stray elm]

So, Unreal 5.1 just dropped.

One of my biggest worries with performance with ARK-2, was that foliage was going to kick its ass.
Nanite supports only meshes and whatnot.
But for some reason, foliage's aren't supported.

....until 5.1....
Holy shit, now foliage's are supported with nanite, and it looks good.

[untold ingot]

That is epic

[tropic crag]

No doubt why they've been waiting to show us footage, I'm sure

[wanton pike]

First half of 2023, so yh most likely 😂

But it might get delayed again, so who knows really

[stray elm]

I just hope they'll update the games engine onto a newly update version of Unreal 5 later on. Versus ARK-1 always staying at the exact same version of Unreal that it has always used.

[warm lagoon]

heard rumors before July 2023. rumors be rumory though

[wanton pike]

Tbh, ark 1 already had a lot of lag issues, so implement better graphics etc wouldn’t do the gameplay any good I guess

[elfin pumice]

Is it very problematinc/time cunsuming to update to the new version of the game engine?

[wanton wraith]

There is new news?

[lime forge]

Pins

[wanton pike]

Who’s responsible for the art work for the creatures in ark 2 this time? Is it Dave Melvin again?

[ripe cedar]

There are several concept artists employed by wildcard idk how many do creatures but i know its more than one

[thick moat]

last time it seems it only was Dave Melvin who did most Creature concepts

[ripe cedar]

Did the most doesn’t mean the only one

[slender lotus]

Need this game out already

[lavish rain]

You can't rush perfection

[past wind]

Perfection?! Chill, dude 🤣

First day you will fall in a mesh hole 💯

[lavish rain]

That's what will happen if it's rushed

[sinful ermine]

Since the game is launching into EA again I wouldn’t be surprised to see a four or five year continuous dev cycle afterwards

The scale of what they’re doing is crazy, and the technical side of implementing everything they’ve promised will be a long time coming

Of course that’s assuming they actually do implement everything they’ve promised

[stray elm]

It is, but it'd be worth at least doing it once.

They could try to update to the newest version of UE5 when they're coming out of Early-Access.

It'd be hard, but possible.

[lavish rain]

Ark 2 will be next year's game of the year

[untold ingot]

They really need to be keeping up with Ue5 updates imo. It would take a lot of effort, but the changes put into Ue5.1 are too good to not use

[past wind]

They might update when quitting early-access. But I don’t believe keeping the engine always up to date is a viable option.

[untold ingot]

Thanks for the edit lol, the double negative was throwing me off lol

I dont think they will always have it up to date, but 5.1 is too good to not take advantage of imo.

Itll make their trees significantly better

[past wind]

That’s true. They should keep an eye for major and relevant updates.

[untold ingot]

Any nanite update is worth taking advantage of lol

And the world partition supports the new large world coordinates, which allows for significantly larger maps without the tearing issues that normally happen

[past wind]

But, I don’t know. I love ark. I don’t hate WC. But they are known for underdelivering.

I’m still waiting for DLSS

[untold ingot]

I wouldnt necessarily say they underdeliver. As a standalone, gen2 would have been amazing, and most of the new maps and dinos have been phenomenal. Granted I have only been around since just before ext dropped, but honestly ext is the only thing I have really thought was underdelivered

dlss on ark2 would be epic though

[past wind]

I mean features. Their new content is always great indeed.

Two things that I remember were promised for Ark 1 and I was waiting for were dx12 and dlss.

The fact Ark is super cpu bound has always annoyed me

Ark 2 with dlss frame generation will be great I guess

[untold ingot]

Ah, I guess I wasn't aware of that

[past wind]

DX12 promises were from 2015, and about dlss, Ark was on Nvidia’s presentation back in 2018

I hope they just used all their knowledge on those areas for Ark 2

[stray elm]

This is what I mean.
Even if they just update it once when it comes out of Early-Access will be so much help.

[untold ingot]

Yeah, 5.1 is an update of everything that makes Ue5 good

[past wind]

There’s a huge that will happen at least once, when quitting EA

I’m pretty sure they did update Ark 1 engine version

[stray elm]

They didn't.

It's been the same version of Unreal-4.

[past wind]

They have a modded version. I think they have updated at least once. But I’m not sure 🤔

[stray elm]

Everyone uses a modified version of an engine.
All that means is that they tweaked some of the public coding for UE4 to make it more compatible with what they wanted to do.
But it's still the same version of UE4 that they used years ago

[untold ingot]

Ue4.5 was released in 2014, if they did update the engine ever, they chose a bad one to update to lol

[stray elm]

Yeeeeep.

[past wind]

I know. People talked about an update for the engine on Reddit, years ago. But I’m not sure that ever happened. Maybe it was supposed to come with the dx12 implementation

[stray elm]

Yeah, I don't think they did.
You'd think they be boasting about it in a patch-note if they did.

Cause that was the time they shared all of the things they fixed.

[untold ingot]

It might have ended up being too much work to be worth doing

[stray elm]

That, or like you said.
They updated to a worse version.

[untold ingot]

Yep

[stray elm]

But yeah, back to the original point.
I think they'd benefit greatly if they update their engine to the newest version at least once when it comes out of Early-Access.

[untold ingot]

It's too much to ask for them to always be up to date with ue updates though

[stray elm]

Yeah, that'd be wasting time and resources.
Doing it at least once or twice in the games lifetime is reasonable though.

[untold ingot]

If the lifetime is 7 years, then it might still be too much lol

[stray elm]

Fair

[untold ingot]

I worked on a financial web page that used Drupal once, and just updating small changes would take the entire team months to do

The longer the time between updates the harder the port is

[stray elm]

I was thinking once when it comes out of Early-Access, so that'd be like two to three years later.
And one last time for the last expansion.

Even just doing it once would be great though.

[untold ingot]

It all depends on how port friendly ue is dedicated on being

[stray elm]

True, but doesn't UE5 have a system in place to make updating a bit easier?

[untold ingot]

It could be really easy, or it could be impossible without a complete recoding of the game

[stray elm]

Oh wait, I'm thinking of porting newest UE4 projects to UE5.

[untold ingot]

I mean, yes. As long as you don't write any code that ue wasn't expecting you 6

[stray elm]

True

[untold ingot]

The minute you have custom code the worse the port becomes

[stray elm]

Which is what most studios do to engines.

[untold ingot]

Yeah, you kind of have to. Ue gives a baseline of techs to use, with libraries you can call, but you have to write the code to make the calls

[past wind]

I have found this:

v265.0

• Huge perf gains, may vary based on system configuration due to upgrading to the latest Unreal Rendering code. After changing your in game settings, be sure to restart your clients!

People on Reddit said it was an update for unreal engine

But I’m not sure

[stray elm]

That's rendering code though, not a whole engine update.

[untold ingot]

Yeah, that's not an engine update

[stray elm]

As always, it's people who don't know anything about games and take it literal.
Like, I also don't know the full extent of game design. But at least I know the basics.

[untold ingot]

I don't really even know the basics, but I know coding and how computers work lol

[stray elm]

I feel like you should learn the basics of something before shooting out ideas that you don't even know if it'll work or not.

[stray elm]

I know hardware, but I sure as hell don't know software.

Well, I do.
I don't know how hardware components work.

[untold ingot]

Well, unless you are the engineer, what's important is to know that it works, if not how

I bet most game devs don't know how ue works, but they know how to use it, and that's what counts

[stray elm]

Fair.
If you know how to use the funny paintbrush tool, and know when and when not to use it and the rendering of foliage, then you're hired.

I love how Nanite is making LoD's basically obsolete.

[untold ingot]

Basically lol

LoDs? I am not familiar with that term

[stray elm]

Level of Details

[untold ingot]

Ahh

I was under the impression that nanite just had a better way of doing that

[stray elm]

So, games for the longest time until now had to create like 5 different meshes of the same model, and each mesh would replace the model depending how far away you are from them. (Level of Details)
Each level/mesh would have less and less polygons, becoming more simpler since you don't need 200+ polygon meshes when you're not in render distance.

[untold ingot]

Oh, you had to manually do that?

[stray elm]

Yep

[untold ingot]

Oof

[stray elm]

Now, nanite will do it for you.

And, best part is.
We don't need 2D fucking trees anymore.

[untold ingot]

Sounds like a great qol for interns lol

[stray elm]

If you ever notice in ARK, trees VERY far away will become 2D, since that's the most simplest LoD, are literal 2D meshes.
Nanite says 'fuck you' and just turns down the poly-count on 3D models, so we can keep the 3D trees.

Nanite is a fucking revolutionary software I can't wait to see executed in games.

[untold ingot]

I mean, nanite with lumen and the world partition is pretty epic

Even one of them would be amazing, all three at once is crazy

[stray elm]

I watched a demonstration video, and some dude was able to spawn in like 1-Trillion triangles worth of meshes, and it only made his FPS drop like from 120 to 60, I believe.

[south lance]

🤨

[stray elm]

Let me find the video

Oh sorry, it was 120 Billion, not Trillion

Still, a shit load.

[untold ingot]

I mean, even a billion is enough to make it indistinguishable from irl stuff lol

[south lance]

idek how a computer can cycle through all that 60 times a second

[stray elm]

You want me to send you guys the video?

[south lance]

sure

[stray elm]

Welcome to Nanite.

[stray elm]

Raq?

[untold ingot]

And computers lol

[south lance]

i mean i get that it happens but like how xd

maybe i underestimate parallel processing

[stray elm]

I want to know also.
But I know if I try to learn, my brain will be fried.

[untold ingot]

I mean, I could take you through the basics of how computers process things lol

[south lance]

sure

[stray elm]

I meant if you wanted me to send you the Nanite vs 120 Billion triangle video

[untold ingot]

Sure

[south lance]

how do the thingy process >100 billion triangles each 60th of a second at least

[stray elm]

This is also before updates and shit, this is 'launch' Nanite.
Imagine this type of technology in 4 years.

Cause Nanite now works of fucking foliage.

[south lance]

since like i thought these things could only process like on the order of 10 billion operations a second

[untold ingot]

Well, really really fast cycles, taking advantage of quantum tunneling and electric charge configurations to approximate a turing machine

[south lance]

what

[untold ingot]

😅

[untold ingot]

It might not have to process it all everytime. At least not if the tech is smart.

[south lance]

fair enough but then itd need to be decreasing what its processing by like 100x

or 1000x

as compared to what we are actually trying to load on screen

*the aforementioned 100 billion triangles

ignoring however many calculations are required for each triangle even

ill watch vid to see if maybe its different to what im imagining

[stray elm]

Basically, Nanite seamlessly merges triangles intro larger triangles, making less triangles.

[south lance]

oh so it literally is just compressing total number of objects by quite a bit

[stray elm]

Yep

There's more to it, but that's basically the simple term of what it's doing

[untold ingot]

I mean an i7 can calculate 38 billion floating point operations per second, add a gpu or two to that, and its easily feasible that with smart rendering you could get a huge amount of triangles calculated

[south lance]

ye its probably a decently conplex algorithm

otherwise somrthing like nanite shouldve already dropped

well, i just remembered, i think there was a paper on fluid modelling that seemed similar to the processes in the vid u sent rockwell man

[untold ingot]

I mean, believe it or not, there are some early 8bit games that the level info (if you recreate it) would take up more space than the entire game would

[south lance]

where it clusters certain regions to simplify processing

💀

[south lance]

i had no clue about this btw

[untold ingot]

I am watching the video btw. The performance increases is nuts

Gpus have better algorithm for calculations, which is why they get used for mining rather than cpus

I swear nanite is probably the best thing ever made lol

[stray elm]

And it's only going to get better from here

[untold ingot]

Hopefully lol

[stray elm]

This is launch Nanite.
They made foliage now compatible with nanite, so what fucking else can they do?

[untold ingot]

Rendering a million snowballs at 60fps, where 1 thousand caused the computer to drop crazy amounts lol

Next stop is some actually realistic weather effects

[stray elm]

TRUE

Hell, I'll take just realistic rain.

[untold ingot]

Well, moderately realistic weather effects. Itll be indistinguishable

[stray elm]

'Liquid' the system where water drops actually bounce off of surfaces. xD

[untold ingot]

Because technically its impossible to accurately model weather without chaos. And that will really really chunk fps

[stray elm]

Yeah, cause weather is very chaotic.

Which I want.

[untold ingot]

It is mathematically chaotic

[stray elm]

Ahh

[untold ingot]

Just because of the differential equations that govern the temperature flows.

You could make a simulation that isnt chaotic and would work in game and be indistinguishable for a player, but it wouldnt be completely accurate

[south lance]

isnt there a million dollar prize for finding a simpler way to solve those equations

[untold ingot]

Probably.

The mathematician who finally cracks chaos will be more famous than Einstein though lol

[past wind]

In that case, I wouldn't consider a lot of unreal engine updates, as you are considering the engine as a whole. I would say they would update once when quitting EA and then updating some modules. They can update the nanite alone, right?

[stray elm]

I have no idea, they might be able to, but Nanite might also rely on some coding from the actual engine itself.

[past wind]

True

[harsh spear]

i just had an idea for a new pvp mode in ark 2. you can find it here: https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/forums/topic/673514-new-pvp-mode-for-ark-2/

[past wind]

this is super exploitable

I can ask a friend to build a base and stay there to get those hexagons 😂

I would be in an "enemy's" base

[harsh spear]

yea but the hexagons would be substracted from your friend. so whats the exploit ?

[past wind]

what if the "enemy" has 0 hexagons?

[harsh spear]

then their base will be able to be claimed by other people

[untold ingot]

I am down for a capture the flag type of thing, but not for ingame rewards

[uncut cypress]

When is the ark2 coming down?

[stray elm]

2023

[uncut cypress]

Month

[stray elm]

We don't know

[potent hull]

we my see ark 2 game play at the game awards next month on 8

[grand lynx]

januprilember

[uncut cypress]

Are you sure?

[grand lynx]

maybe juloctril

[broken dune]

Early Access games are usually don't take long to release they need players to report bugs/errors/glitches and fix them

Maybe we're close to the release date

[velvet leaf]

Where Ark 2 Gameplay

[velvet leaf]

January 31

[fallow niche]

....no? There is not a date. Just 2023.

[stray elm]

Not confirmed.

People are taking the word of an unofficial website too serious

[thick moat]

classic

[ripe cedar]

while january 31 isn't the weekend it still very much feels like a placeholder date instead of an actual one

[stray elm]

No shit.
Almost like it is.

It's from an unofficial site.

[sinful ermine]

I mean the XBOX show some months ago showcased a bunch of games that would supposedly be playable in less than a year

Ark II was one of those

[stray elm]

'in' a year

This means June 2022 - June 2023.
And this isn't set in stone, just a hunch that ARK-2 'could' be one of said games.

[fallow niche]

That does not guarantee January 2023 (or even 2023 tbh, they could have issues that cause it to be delayed again)

[grave python]

are ark2 ants going to be as annoying as ark1's?

[stray elm]

We don't know

[harsh spear]

i think part of what made arks early days really exciting was the thicc djungles where you could barely see through and you would be suprised to suddenly find a dinosaur right in front of you.

[forest flume]

Ark would not be Ark if if not annoying

[harsh spear]

its crazy how the pvp shifted from early days till now. people used to help each other out and discover new things together and only rarely go for raids with primitive stuff like quetzal + xplant. where as now almost anyone is extremely competitive and flying with spaceships and laserguns

[marble thunder]

Early days of ARK were better than now. (I mean obviously the game is more polished and have more content now, but I missed the primitive/difficult feeling of ARK)
Hopefully ARK 2 bring the feeling of the ARK 1 early days again.

ARK 2 being more primitive is a good thing, and to be more immersive, dinos should be stronger, like in real life a Trike can be a very good killer but in ARK 1, it's too easy to kill him with a bow.
One thing is that we should not be able to run faster than dinos like we do in ARK 1.

[dry flame]

pulls pin on a live question
"What if Ark 2 were voxel building?"
rolls down hallway and strolls off

[split dove]

yh no, we don't need speed gremlins in ark 2 as well. don't want to be the flash again as it makes the dinos look like a joke

[marble thunder]

Yeah my bad, I wanted to say not faster.
I edited to add the not. 😂

[south lance]

if theres like 20 small predators within 100 meters id prefer being speed

they better decrease spawn rates a ton if they wanna nerf players

and like idk make weapons viable

i know for a fact if i swung a stone axe at a dino half my height its done

[past wind]

Man, Ark with 100k viewers on twitch today. The Asian guys have a lot of viewers, remembers me the good old days of ark. It’s possible Ark 2 might bring all that back. 🤣

[south lance]

i remember all the videos back around extinction and before were about TEA or something

i think there was even some gaming journalist who wrote an article about chinese hackers in ark xdd

[past wind]

Yeah, there are hackers from all around, but the Asian Ark community is, or at least was, huge

[south lance]

i wouldnt doubt it still being pretty big

though now most players i see are from europe or latin america

[past wind]

It’s been a long time I don’t see those kind of numbers, but it was very common in 2015/2016

[past wind]

I really believe the whole system is being redesigned

Doesn’t make sense to improve AI, make the creatures interact with the environment and keep the spawn logic the same

[south lance]

id hope theyd decrease spawns if 1. each creature has way more processing involved cause ai and 2. cause each creature is probably gonna be harder to fight due to ai

feel like cpu is gonna be the main bottleneck for ark2

[past wind]

They should rework the whole system indeed, and I believe they will

[past wind]

Maybe not, but aí believe they will need better servers

[south lance]

for sure

[past wind]

Did you ever try to host a server? Man, it’s crazy

[south lance]

never have

[past wind]

I remember once a friend hosted a server for us, on his laptop. It got a bluescreen because I went around farming berries on a mammoth. 20x farming rate.

[south lance]

lol

[sinful ermine]

So, is there any martial discipline in which strafing is actually a viable movement?

Seems to me like it's a very "gamey" concept

[south lance]

i cant imagine that was a great laptop

[past wind]

It was ok. But hosting an Ark server is heavy on the ram and cpu.

[sinful ermine]

Jump spamming and movement speed definitely need to go

[tropic crag]

This is kinda a given, seeing as how the AI is being improved (apparently greatly, over Ark 1) and there's no way in hell Ark 2 (or any game, for that matter) could handle the AI they're boasting of without significantly reduced AI count

[sinful ermine]

And so does bobbing and weaving

[past wind]

I’m out

[azure marten]

what would be the best map to just play with friends with little to no intention of progressing to tek and just trying to have simple/prim fun?

[sinful ermine]

I'm fine with reduced AI count, I think the original game was way over populated

[wanton nimbus]

ragnarok

[tropic crag]

Not the right channel for this, maybe try #general ?

[past wind]

The new movement system will be a core feature to the game. I wouldn’t be surprised you will need those to explore the maps.

Kinda what they’ve tried on aberration but with steroids

[sinful ermine]

The trailer did seem to have a lot of vertical terrain

[past wind]

The trailer doesn’t have anything meaningful 🤣

1 minute each trailer

[tropic crag]

As long as the base player speed is increased, sure, get rid of speed levelling. But If I'm not faster than, say, a goddamn turtle when I first spawn, I'm going to be pissed

[sinful ermine]

Go away HLN-A

[sinful ermine]

...What turtle are you not outrunning?

[tropic crag]

It's a hypothetical

[past wind]

Maybe you just have throw some rocks out from your inventory… just saying 🤔

[tropic crag]

I'm not expecting to be able to outrun a raptor, but I also would hope they're faster than Ark 1 as well

Same with rexes

Most things, actually, come to think of it...

[sinful ermine]

Land dinos were painfully slow

[past wind]

I don’t know man. Apparently the new Dinos will do more damage and some kind of debuffs when you are attacked in certain ways.

That plus more speed, and they will be hard to beat

It all depends on what they envision. If the new rex is supposed to be an end game tame, that would be fine.

[tropic crag]

That's the point 😅

A human would die 100% of the time in mutual combat against a raptor, no contest

[sinful ermine]

That's not necessarily true, I would say 95% of the time

I mean if were talking bare-handed then maybe 99%

[tropic crag]

Also, when were debuffs mentioned? I don't remember seeing that anywhere

[past wind]

I mean, if they create more tools so that you won’t need creatures for everything, that will be fine. But today you can’t even start playing ark for without a rex breeding line

[tropic crag]

Mutual combat, so yes, bare handed (and naked, for that matter, like we will be when we spawn)

[past wind]

Debuff = the Rex bites you in a way it breaks your lag and you will be slower

[tropic crag]

Where was this mentioned, though?

[sinful ermine]

Even then, there's always that one-off one in a million situation where you can redirect it off the side of a cliff or something. xD

[tropic crag]

Because otherwise, it's speculation

[past wind]

Not that exactly, I’m assuming that based on their quotes, I will share that part here in a minute

[past wind]

What do you understand by that:

For creature-scale combat, suffice it to say for now that when you attack something with your T-Rex in ARK 2, the results are visceral: the animation of the attack actually hard-impacts on the target (not “passing through” it), the victim’s flesh is torn, and the target physically reacts at that location to the hit – all to convey the feeling of the raw power of such a ferocious creature

[tropic crag]

Humans are smart, I'll give ya that, but I mean like fresh out the cryo sleep, just dropped into the forest and being spotted by a raptor, as if we just spawned in

[sinful ermine]

Also, I don't think raptors are really adapted to deal with grappling and/or chokeholds from behind, if humans can kill wolves and mountain lions bare handed, or survive encounters with crocodiles, there's always something you can do. Even if it is likely to fail.

[tropic crag]

That's just stating the dinos will have physically based texture changes based on where they're bit, how do you get debuffs out of that? No offense 😅

[past wind]

And when they fall, they should break a leg 🤣

[sinful ermine]

Wild Dinos not taking fall damage is another huge pet peeve of mine

-.-

[past wind]

Physical reaction tells me something different, but we will see. I doubt it will be only visual.

[tropic crag]

I know I wouldn't be able to kill a raptor bare-handed, but I'm also a realist lol

It'd probably gut me before I even breathe

[past wind]

That’s why I don’t want it to be too reallistic 🤣

[tulip garnet]

Im hoping for a horizon zero dawn style

[tropic crag]

I mean, we already know that a lot of Ark's universe is very much based on our own, seeing as how the first game took place on Earth and all. Not really a stretch to say that realism in the difficulty sense should be dumbed down just for easyness's sake, but maybe that's just me

(I hate fibercraft or anything that makes the game too easy, but also waiting irl HOURS to tame anything, so idk, maybe I'm the outlier here 😅 )

[sinful ermine]

I would like that, I enjoyed HZD

Oh no, waiting hours is bullshit

100%

Always has been

The time investment would be okayish if all of your work wasn't left vulnerable while you were gone, but if it is going to be vulnerable, it needs to take less time. There is a give and take.

[tropic crag]

I should be able to tame a raptor before I log off the first time I play the game, on an official server, no less, and have a base to put said raptor in as well

That sounds reasonable enough of an ask to me

[past wind]

It would depend on how many hours you play the first time 🤣

I remember my first tame was a carbonemys, not even in the first day

Officials are harder for everything

[sinful ermine]

Atlas I think had a much better time/return balance when it first launched

[tropic crag]

A normal game session, so about 2-4 hours since yes, Ark is one of those games

[past wind]

Yeah, I believe anyone that played a lot of ark 1 will be fine on Ark 2. But first timers… I’m not sure

[tropic crag]

It's not time friendly to play Ark and we all know it, so maybe even up to 6 hours would be a bit more likely the first time around

Just to learn the mechanics and things

[past wind]

On Atlas we need to learn skills to tame the creatures

I’m not so sure about it being easier

[tropic crag]

Miss me with that shit, lmao

[sinful ermine]

Even the top-tier creatures in Atlas were all done in less than an hour

[past wind]

But at least we aren’t so dependent on the creatures to advance on the game

[sinful ermine]

If you were maxed out preparedness

[tropic crag]

I should NOT have to spend skill points to learn how to tame a creature, fuck that

Figure it out with no instructions? Sure

[sinful ermine]

IMO Devs have a responsibility to craft an environment that doesn't by default demand so much time of it's players that it can devolve into an unhealthy lifestyle

Like there will always be people that are no-lifers

But your game shouldn't basically force people to no-life to compete

[past wind]

Or the system was completely redone, or I was really bad playing atlas, because on officials it took me longer than an hour to me

When I played on 2018/19

[tropic crag]

Oh go suck eggs, bot

I was saying thank you

[sinful ermine]

Taming was my specialty in Atlas so every possible advantage I could have, I had, from traps, to ideal foods, to song buffs, etc...

[past wind]

Even so… an hour to have all the levels and points on official?

[sinful ermine]

Oh you mean from zero?

[past wind]

Having to check vitamins and all

[sinful ermine]

Yeah, no it took awhile to get up there

[past wind]

Yeah, we are talking day one

[sinful ermine]

Oh okay, I misunderstood

[tropic crag]

I thought we were talking doing the taming

[past wind]

But day one, right?

And atlas takes longer to tame than Ark

[tropic crag]

Executing the behavioural therapy

I'm confused, were we not talking about how long it took to do taming of things in Atlas comparatively?

Not training them

Just taming

[past wind]

Yes, and cyanic said he could tame everything in an hour and I got confused

[velvet leaf]

***Umm well, Ark 2 would be 'Primitive Only '? ***

[past wind]

Because it took me way more than to me 🤣

[past wind]

Yes

[tropic crag]

No

[past wind]

At least in the beginning

[tropic crag]

Primarily primitive

[velvet leaf]

Does it Have Tek?

[tropic crag]

Whether that's going to hold true for the game's entire lifespan, we can only guess

[velvet leaf]

Please dont say yes

[past wind]

Not like on Ark 1

[tropic crag]

Can you read the pins?

[velvet leaf]

Improved right?

[past wind]

Maybe things like the obelisks

[velvet leaf]

I like talking to live persons 😅

[sinful ermine]

Yeah, all I meant was that under ideal circumstances, you could tame any max leveled wild creature in under an hour. But it takes some initial time investment to attain those ideal circumstances.

[tropic crag]

They'll answer all these questions and more, just sayin

[velvet leaf]

I don't see anything in pins

[past wind]

Yeah, and I’m not sure I like or dislike that. Maybe a mixed system. Some tames will need skills and others won’t.

[tropic crag]

Also, how you know I'm alive, huh? I could be dead for all you know

[velvet leaf]

[sinful ermine]

I think the taming will be more nuanced in Ark II, since all of their most recent additions to Ark have had something a little more interesting than your bulk standard knock-out tames

And I suspect Ark Additions and Immersive Taming went a long way towards inspiring the Devs to come up with interesting twists on the process

[tropic crag]

I hope that that alone makes taking skills to be allowed to tame creatures obsolete, the strategy being somewhat unique and difficult on a per-dino basis

[past wind]

Apparently they are aware. The world events makes me believe in that.

[velvet leaf]

Sad and foolish dinosaurus, the guy hurts them to knock em out but then just feeds but they think he is a good guy why not make him my Owner...

[past wind]

Well, that’s called stockholm syndrome

[velvet leaf]

Yes.

Yes***.***

[tropic crag]

Yes.

[velvet leaf]

We want ark 2 gameplay and they not giving it

I'm waiting and Im scared if I don't die before it comes 🥲

[past wind]

I don’t want gameplay, I want to play

[velvet leaf]

I wanna know how it is

[tropic crag]

They have no obligation to do so 🤷‍♂️

[velvet leaf]

Because game will take time to come

[sinful ermine]

At this rate I might actually die before they do

xD

[velvet leaf]

Okay gotta go cya .

[past wind]

Drama queen 👸

[sinful ermine]

See, you say that, but you do not know the circumstances behind the statement

[tropic crag]

Well, if game developers released games unfinished to give people who are (potentially) dying a chance to play them, there'd be millions of unfinished games released, daily

But I do hope we get some info soon, would be nice

[snow fiber]

Sad news maybe Ark 2 news for the game awards is going to be cancelled

[sinful ermine]

We’ll see, I am not too worried about it

I am keeping my hype in check since I still has mistrust toward WC from their first two projects

[snow fiber]

Microsoft may possibly miss The Game Awards due to the ABK Acquisition. Idk if ARK 2 is hit by that but I thought it includes them too since they have a deal with Microsoft.

[scarlet mesa]

I want ark 2

Pretty much sums this entire segment

[blissful perch]

Things I read that I found worthy of a response: 1.) wild creatures shouldn’t take normal fall damage in a game where verticality and abusing cliffs is common and easy. It’s far better for gameplay to have creatures not be as easily cheesed as “fall 10 feet and die”, and it may be too much to ask an AI to “chart” their fall before they take it
2.) “land Dino’s are slow” is a meme. Maps got larger and other tames got faster, so it made land creatures appear slow in comparison. Remember that travel time is king: and stuff only seems slow when the speed of the game keeps increasing
3.) default player speed is fine as is and should never be increased in ark 2 through level ups. You’ll need to drop creature density to compensate for combat being more involved FAR before anything to do with player movement speed becomes an issue. See above as to why speed is a feeling more than anything else

This is a normal psychological effect, and one we’ll see for many ark 1 mechanics…where people get more and more power and have it taken away and feel upset or crippled

Despite the fact that the game may operate best when the player’s power level is curtailed more aggressively (for example, why use stealth, scent, etc when you can simply outrun every predator you see after they start chasing you)

[south lance]

id be fine with advanced ways to get speed boosts

like if sliding is a thing in which case you can use slides and idk, swings to get through something for a large stamina cost

running for 30 seconds across 2 kilometers is a little cringe tho

[south lance]

90% of issues with ark2 nerfs probably are just this

imagining ark2 early game without speed seems terrible cause the only early game we know of is ark1

[sinful ermine]

I’m pretty sure land Dinos are just slow

With a few notable exceptions

[past wind]

I disagree. They are the way they are supposed to be. The flyers are unbalanced actually.

You shouldn’t expect a mammoth to be fast, or an ankylo.

[tropic crag]

Well, no shit

But the raptors and rexes and the like are slow as hell, don't even try to tell me they aren't

[past wind]

They aren’t… but their movement is too clunky

I hate rocks, trees etc

Try doing an element vein with a rex or a giga, it gets stuck everywhere. To me, their biggest issue is the movement isn’t fluid

We actually need to take more time traveling

The hover skiff spoils the game, for example, because it’s too fast and does everything you need (concerning transportation).

[sinful ermine]

But Mammoth IRL would be fast, because they are furry elephants, which are fast

There are not that many animals that cannot outpace humans

But for a disadvantage in size

[blissful perch]

Thank you

[tropic crag]

The issue there is that the element veins were super dumb and shouldn't have had their wack-ass collision, lol. The movement is fine, it's definitely the speed I have an issue with

I've never understood why people constantly moan about the turn radius of land dinos; excuse me, and correct me if I'm wrong, but last I checked, humans (and most other creatures) can't bite things directly behind them. I'm tired of people expecting a rex to do exactly that

Or break their bones trying to do so, anyways

[blissful perch]

The fact that the animal can’t turn in place is a huge source of valid complaint

[tropic crag]

I wouldn't say valid so surely, lol

[blissful perch]

Most animals can pivot in place or at minimum with steps in place

This isn’t the same as attacking behind your body instantly; but needing to walk forward a mile in order to turn around is pretty clearly unrealistic and irritating

[tropic crag]

That's a gross over exaggeration and we both know it

[blissful perch]

Correct lol

[past wind]

It’s not though

[tropic crag]

But would that really fix the issue with the rex, if it could pivot in place?

[blissful perch]

For PvE a massive complaint is how hard it is to position things in your base with wide turning radii

[tropic crag]

I always pump speed into my rexes, never run into the turn radius issue with higher move speed

Just a little speed, maybe 15%

[blissful perch]

Obviously with falling off cliffs or other movement it can feel disruptive in PvE and PvP to lose momentum because forward far exceeds lateral turning in most land creatures

[past wind]

Now I see why you are complaining about the speed of land tames

[tropic crag]

Never heard this even once, at least since cryos for obvious reasons, but even before then

[blissful perch]

All the early ark YouTubers complained about it lol, at least the ones I saw

[tropic crag]

What does that have to do with anything? The turning radius is a non-issue as far as the rex when move speed is increased lmao

Literally proves my point

[blissful perch]

Movement speed only increases animation speed btw: so turning radius is identical

[past wind]

The speed of land creatures is a non issue

[blissful perch]

Charlie is right

[tropic crag]

Then good luck with your slow ass raptors and rexes

[blissful perch]

If you remove fliers and gliders, grounded speed is miles ahead of traveling on foot. It’s all relative

[tropic crag]

I'm gonna watch a football game 🏈

[past wind]

They aren’t slow thought… 🤔

[blissful perch]

The only thing I’ll concede is that a lot of land tames have terrible stamina consumption and “marathon” movement

[past wind]

Agreed

Improve stamina and keep the speed

[blissful perch]

I also agree that pebbles and stuff just hard stopping momentum for land Dino’s also stinks

[past wind]

I don’t mind what they are planning to do, I just want other relevant means of transportation by water and land, but it should take a while to the cross the whole map and it should be risky.

[blissful perch]

You mean outside tames?

I think risk should vary based on mode of travel, and it shouldn’t always be risky everywhere at all progression levels. Otherwise it’ll irritate players

[past wind]

Including tames, actually. Today people just use hovers. And before that they just used flyers.

[blissful perch]

Sorry, did you mean other relevant travel methods than gliding/flying? Because absolutely yes if that’s your message

[sinful ermine]

Rex should just be able to attack with its legs or tail

Then it doesn’t necessarily have to turn around

[blissful perch]

It should still be able to turn in place. It doesn’t have to snap turn or anything, but it’s silly to have to run a half marathon to complete a circle. Almost all creatures imo should have a few attacks…with varying damages of course. For rex I feel like a “get off me” attack with the legs or tail would be fantastic

[quaint horizon]

Well my hopes of seeing ark 2 game play is dwindling down. Still no communication from the devs. Tho if they really wanted they throw it in the community crunch this week for next week's gameshow awards

[blissful perch]

Why would your hope be altered in any way if the event that’s suspected to have gameplay has not yet happened?

Perhaps a follow up would be: why would your hope decline in any fashion? The note simply said “the next time you hear from us you’ll see gameplay”, which didn’t promise any specific date or event

[grand lynx]

they've always been limited with the info they drop for their dlcs etc as well

part of the charm of ark is going into new content semi blind

[blissful perch]

They did show a lot of genesis 2 stuff before launch: I think we knew about all the new tames beforehand? We also knew about most of the Gen 1 and extinction tames. But it was a slow drip of info

[grand lynx]

yeah they did a lil sorta teaser drop for them. more concepts than anything

[blissful perch]

The extinction ones were more gameplay like and the genesis ones felt like concept drops for sure

[grand lynx]

yeah thats true

was it ext that had that teaser where you had to decipher the code to get the info ?

or genesis 1

[blissful perch]

No idea. I just know they had videos on velos and the like before launch

[stray elm]

That was Genesis-1

[untold ingot]

The harder map travel is, the more people can build bases in pvp, the more space there is in pve, and the more interesting exploration in small servers and sp. It's an all around net win to reduce the ease of transportation in a game imo

Unless you are just trying to do a cod type game, in which case no one cares anyway 🤣🤣

[grand lynx]

thank you

[south lance]

honestly just a massive stomp damage attack would be interesting given to all creatures and said damage being based on something analogous to drag weight

and then add troodons

and pegos, and have them both form family groups

and then i will turn them into mush because i hate those dinos

but back to the point, itd seem silly that theyd go through and make a ton of advanced AI but cant just boost stomp damage and idk, just nerf stam

[untold ingot]

I honestly don't like stomp damage, because it's usually an aoe attack that makes no sense lol

[south lance]

decrease AOE massively

they definitely have the ability to make complex hitboxes

so i dont know why they cant make as complicated damage aoe

well, itd be pretty taxing maybe idk

[untold ingot]

Maybe nanite helps with that a bit. I don't know

[south lance]

but its definitely possible to just make sure stomps only affect the region directly beneath a foot when they can make such great hitboxes

that you can just walk around a brontos leg as its walking always felt really crazy to me

ofc rubberbanding happens a bit but fuck people who think thats a major issue

or at least it looks like rubberbanding idrk what its called since its not connection related

[untold ingot]

It shouldn't cause too much of an issue though. Instead of a giant circle, just make two small obes

Especially with souls like combat, random aoe attacks will be extremely op

[south lance]

the areas should be shaped better

but again idk how taxing it is since not a lot of games do realistic aoe

though that might just be because nobody really cares for it

[untold ingot]

They need to be dodgeable

[south lance]

ya

actually, what about stuff like for honor or those somewhat recent medieval style pvp games

[untold ingot]

In ark1 on foot, the only way to dodge attacks is to move really really fast. That shouldn't be in ark2, but being able to actually dodge a Rex or bronto attack should definitely be true

[south lance]

i think they have pretty complex damage volumes (dunno what else to call it since aoe feels like the wrong term)

[untold ingot]

No idea. I have never played them lol

[south lance]

i think a lot of that could be solved by just reducing how much they can actually move by 1. giving wild creatures some sort of stam so they cant just run for 30 miles, and 2. making most attacks that involve melee take a lot of commitment from the creature

to compensate youd probably need to increase damage output significantly

[untold ingot]

Well, the obvious one is making it so the gigas don't have a 360 degree massive aoe bite lol

[south lance]

well yeah fair lol

i forget that a lot of big therapods have stupid melee aoe

[blissful perch]

I’d prefer a small one around each foot

[south lance]

the aoe should be limited to each foot, but it should be huge damage imo

you should not take 10 hp when a creature 60 ft long and 30ft tall stomps on you

[blissful perch]

A “get off me” for small creatures that would otherwise abuse attack hitboxes and be invincible. Damage and knock back could scale with the size gap between what was hit and by who

[south lance]

especially since its not surprising you by any means

[untold ingot]

Aoe attacks should only happen with aoe type things, like a tail swing or something

Bites and stomps should have minimal aoe

[blissful perch]

A stomp should absolutely be AoE, just a small one

Bites should have little to no AoE, and should mirror the observable bite animation

[south lance]

i mean besides things like ranged all attacks need to be aoe to some extent

[blissful perch]

Right, although I think in this case we mean AoE to mean range beyond the visible attack

[untold ingot]

Well all attacks technically are aoe, but you get the gist lol

[south lance]

ye i just wanna be pedantic a bit :p

[blissful perch]

You COULD have single target moves, but in ark I’m not sure those would work super well

[untold ingot]

So, I think we all agree minimal aoe, not no aoe 😂

[south lance]

but in the case that attack volumes are more complicated than a sphere around one general side of a creature i think basically all these issues about stupid aoe models cease

[blissful perch]

I know MH has some very complex hitboxes

[south lance]

thats the thing though, even ark has really nice hitboxes, its just that the way damage is sent is really simple

but thats really common so it might just be an issue with either excess cost needed for something most people dont want, or that it ruins game performance

the latter i think makes sense since youre basically just instantly creating a new model every time the attack is activated

[blissful perch]

Ark has very generous hitboxes. Not sure we would use the word “good” the same

[south lance]

my only issue is walking on stuff thats already moving tbh

the game does not want me to move on crystal wyverns

its not perfect ofc but idk what a better hitbox lookds like

[untold ingot]

Like when you are on their back?

[south lance]

ye, every time i move it somehow forces my onto their wings when they fly

on the ground its somewhat better

oh and ig that stuff that isnt the main body clips through things a lot

[untold ingot]

That's any game lol

[south lance]

thats also a bit of an issue

the clipping ye?

i wonder when we will get sandbox games where creatures dont clip through walls

[untold ingot]

Again, that is every game

[blissful perch]

When players are ready to accept all the misery that entails lol

[south lance]

dont some single player games not have clipping

or at least almost unnoticeable

[south lance]

so like 10 years when we finally go back to caring about processing actual things instead of graphics

if we ever cared about anything but graphics

is ark2 the only game thats really focusing on decent AI that yall have heard about in the last couple years?

i know one other game that is focusing on AI and such but its getting delayed to oblivion

[blissful perch]

I’m talking more about gameplay here: it’s a huge pain in the ass to have to worry about bonking on every surface of your creature outside your core hitbox

[south lance]

i was thinking itd be automatic in moving itself

though for things like rafts or platform saddles yeah that could be an issue

[blissful perch]

The effort and performance hit required to have creatures dynamically fold wings and shift their body to correctly avoid hitting things sounds like a LOT

And that’s after the mentioned issue of stuff like platform saddles just flying off lol

[sinful ermine]

I honestly think the Platform Saddles being freeform building was a mistake

They should've been created with a limited number of variations that serve a specific purpose, just like Tropeo Saddle and Andrewsarchus Saddle

[lavish rain]

Kinds defeatts the point of a PLATFORM saddle

[sinful ermine]

Not necessarily, since saddles like that could still include some space to build. Probably with predetermined snap points though.

[crystal wasp]

any info on if ark 2 gonna be on ps?

[lime forge]

It will not be on launch is all we actually know. Most expect it to be at some point though.

[rocky heart]

If ark 2 is a flop, im gonna cry ong ong

[mighty lion]

You know what's funny, I just realized it doesn't make financial sense for them to get rid of exploits in ark 2

[elfin pumice]

why

[stray elm]

Why?

[mighty lion]

Never mind, sorry. I thought some platforms dont allow family sharing so if you got global banned you'd need to repurchase the game/ dlc. But it looks like all major platforms have that now

[tropic crag]

It depends on the game, lol

ESO's done that for years

[blissful perch]

Correct conclusion, wrong reason. It’s not financially worth it because it’s nearly impossible to make a complex game like ark 2 exploit free and (as evidenced by ark 1) people love ark enough to tolerate a pretty large number of exploits if the content of the game remains good

[south lance]

ragdolling is so great

[wanton pike]

When do you guys reckon we will get to see the gameplay?

[past wind]

No one here will be able to answer that question. It will come when it comes. They didn’t give us any hint on when.

[thick moat]

keep an eye on the community crunch of the 2nd

i have a feeling that if they are on The Game Awards they'll say it there, if they don't, well, lower the expectations

[past wind]

Yeah, if nothing is said by then, we shouldn’t expect anything for the TGA.

[wanton pike]

Could still speculate tho can’t we 😅

[wanton pike]

That’s my guess too

[potent hull]

sorry to be able to speculate you need to pay all her 30000 dust sorry price lol jk

[past wind]

Sure you can, but the last time people got very disappointed for nothing. Some of us need to be reallistic 🤣

[visual jacinth]

when does it realse?

[thick moat]

2023. no one here knows the actual release date

[visual jacinth]

crying:

[thick moat]

Everything here are just assumptions and speculations other than the pins

if u want to check for official info always go to the official ARK Twitter

[fallow niche]

All official information gets posted and pinned here, the #766826918803800074 and #announcements channels are directly from devs.

[thick moat]

yeah that too

couldn't of explained it better xd

[spice timber]

someone fully explore the entire lore of ark and ark 2 by replying to this message. thank you.

[thick moat]

just search a yt video

NeddyTheNoodle has great videos about lore, the best creator to understand all lore content of ark

and he has recently did videos speculating things about ark 2 lore

[desert swallow]

he did a video that told us to stop speculating. What a hippy crit.

[blissful perch]

Space dust bad

[split dove]

Dumb humans use space rock they don't understand to destroy planet, dumb humans make space stations and space ship to prepare for a new beginning , humans find new world and invade it with dinosaurs, yes there are dinosaurs

[dry flame]

What? No. It's just Earth of the distant past, because time travel. Duh.

Vin Diesel's actually the first caveperson.

[blissful anchor]

duh

[dry flame]

But the timehole Rockwell obviously ripped open (with HLN-A's help if you remember the end of Gen2) caused a paradox, because humans and dinosaurs were never meant to be together on the same timeline.

So Vin Diesel, with help from Denver the Last Dinosaur and Bill and Ted, have to go FORWARD in time to stop us all from going BACK in time and making a mess of the PRESENT.

I know. It's mindblowing stuff.

And then we go back to Ark 1: Remastered.

[stray elm]

[south lance]

mama mia

[bold juniper]

[ripe marsh]

it will if you belive it will

[mint swan]

Wow, thanks logan!

[south lance]

yea cause dinos are basically cars made of muscle

[ripe marsh]

Anytime 👍 Click the affiliate link in my bio for more helpful life hacks

[wispy sierra]

wow that link is super helpful

[woven shuttle]

Bro i am hoping that the taming is more unique in ark 2. Kind of like the taming methods for amargamargasaurus( that is spelled right you are wrong) and carchar

[bold juniper]

Carcharacharasaurus

[woven shuttle]

It will eventually but not at the initial launch

[grave gate]

A

[fallow niche]

We do not have official info. We're assuming it will be.

[merry jetty]

Will ark 2 have meshing?

[bold juniper]

Prolly

[cinder hare]

It's ark, obviously it will have meshing

[bold juniper]

But it’s not an intinted feature

[ripe cedar]

most games have out of bounds glitches, definately doesn't help when players can have jetpacks and also the way ark maps are build so that you don't always just fall to your death when you do

[merry jetty]

Most games have something like meshing but they usually have it fixed if it’s game breaking except Ark

[untold ingot]

If cryos and tek isn't a thing, then I think meshing won't really be as big of an issue

[worldly current]

I believe things will be even worse. People who play fair cannot defend against exploiting meshing by playing fair and most importantly without official server admins who can resolve such cheating in real time.

[near mason]

l

[worldly current]

One easy fix would be "suicide" chat command so people who gets trapped won't have wait 2-4h to die. At least MTS resolved it this way.

[ripe cedar]

well I meant mainly for people doing more mischievous things under the mesh but yeah you can get stuck and it can take a while to die

[worldly current]

Now I see what you meant.

Yes. exo suit was probably way to try new things and get as much data as possible for ARK2.

With this we saw that exploits by them increased a lot and I believe this might indicate some possibilities them being included to ARK2 one way or another.

[south lance]

depends on how defense and raiding works

i mean wasnt meshing a massive issue since scorched?

if someone can smack your base for 2 hours with an axe or whatever that gonna be the same issue

just slower since no explosives or arthros

[worldly current]

ARKs best quality is that anyone can be raided. So people don't stop progressing in order to make it as hard as possible to raiders.

Problem is that people raid with exploits instead of as intended way.

Also I am not against innovative exploits. I am against cheating by meshing and such.

[south lance]

ya

[worldly current]

Just like how people are using karkinos. No one is using it as intended, but we accept that it can be used to farm slot cap amount resources with out breaking game.

[south lance]

innovative methods just make it better for people with lives

having whales also makes it better for people who dont have lives since taking one down offers like 2 weeks worth of grinding in kits

im fine with the overall mechanics of pvp as is, i jusy dont think meshing wont be a major issue just because theres no cryos or tek

these things exacerbate meshing since it gives less time to counter but that the mesh hole exists is the main issue

the only people who will really get to exploit the time difference are large tribes or no lifers anyways

maybe they can fix mesh by changing how maps are designed

instead of having so many different pieces reduce the number of pieces on a map

make it closer to a single continuous surface

that way there isnt 30 different layers a mesher can crawl on

though maybe thatd be impossibly more work idk

[worldly current]

This might be actually some what good idea.

Ark was orginally made this way exept mountain pieces. And those mountain pieces made it possible to exploit and get inside mesh by them where they collided.

[south lance]

idk how hard itd be to implement things like caves

nor do i know how this affects rendering but most of the map already is a largely continuous surface

so it should work ig

if you have to partition the map, make the partitions regular so you know where a mesh hole would pop up 🤔

theres people who know more about gamedev in this chat so they can fact check

or ill just ping @stray elm

[stray elm]

[south lance]

how hard is it to just make the whole map one surface

instead of broken up near mountains with rocks and stuff

[worldly current]

Same answer. Pieces which aren't that same piece makes it possible to mesh.

Every time you include something to that meshing is made possible again.

[south lance]

or caves

[stray elm]

With UE5, not that hard. Since Nanite will do like 99% of the rendering for you.

[south lance]

but is it just a rendering issue though

i dont think it is unless the rocks are just there for collidable texture

though then how hard is it to just increase roughness on a certain portion of the map

[stray elm]

What'd you mean by 'roughness of a certain portion?'

[south lance]

so like, assuming yhe whole map is a single surface, youd want different parts to have different textures right

more obviously for mountains vs plains or caves vs plains

[stray elm]

Correct.

[south lance]

it seems like wc devs did this by adding rocks to the walls of mountains and caves instead of just increasing the roughness at those surfaces

like have you seen those vids where they use certain algorithms to make a surface look naturally rough without manually changing it?

[stray elm]

Right, since the seams of the texture can be pretty rough to look natural, so it's easier to just place down rocks inbetween to hide this.

I have not

[south lance]

aight

ill dm you a vid if i feel like finding it

[stray elm]

Fair

[south lance]

wait actually

what does wc use to make maps

like is it ue?

ok ye

so they are largely limited by what they can make in unreal engine

[stray elm]

I believe so, yeah.

I think they're heightmaps to a degree, but they actually shape the map in engine

[south lance]

then meshing is probably gonna be dwpendent on whats available in UE

and outside wc control except for patches but that can only go so far, basically there probably isnt a foundational way to prevent meshing yourself

[past wind]

Scorched made it worse because it was the beginning of crossark, but meshing was possible since day one. I hope they’ve found a way to, ar least, diminish a lot the damage people can make through it.

[untold ingot]

I mean, meshing is an issue on cod too, and that game has like thousands of devs working on it. There is a possibility that nanite can help combat meshing by allowing more intricate map design, but hopefully a nerf of cryos and tek and such will make it not viable if it even happens

[sturdy iron]

I hope they remove movement speed levelling in ark 2, its great at going from point a to point b in pve especially, but its not fun to play against in pvp

[untold ingot]

It makes pve too easy too, it just needs to be all around gone

[split dove]

Makes the already low challenge PvE even easier

[sturdy iron]

I agree, i dont think you should be able to outrun every dinosaur in this game, its kinda immersion breaking

[violet notch]

thats the most fun part 🙏

[violet notch]

I love it

[wind finch]

Let me have my dodo farm 😈

[wind finch]

The Guy I answered to was banned? 🤔

[split dove]

Or might have just deleted his own message

[wind finch]

Don't see why it was not dumb from his part

[violet notch]

maybe he realised that he couldnt have a dodo farm...

[wind finch]

He was saying that they could do a dino limit, like 10 in a tribe

[tropic crag]

10 per tribe is silly, and he probably realized that and deleted it lol

10 per player, sure, but per tribe? Ehhh

[night sinew]

I was really not excited for 3rd person only and then I remembered that theres gonna be modding for everyone so we could get a 1st person mod.

[blissful perch]

I think per player should be low enough that per tribe should really only impact massive tribes

[harsh parrot]

Yeah I figured 😅 is there a place where I can legit post some links

This Razbuten video somehow I delayed watching but it's an INCREDIBLE lesson in game design and subtlety

and I feel like it could be very inspirational to the game design and story writing teams for ARK2

(I think it's extremely relevant to ARK, the game is purposefully a bit frustrating and that's one of the reasons we love it so much IMHO, at least I do)

In fact a typical example of "fondly remembered frustration" for me was the day I discovered the murder-murder-snow biome, and the 2h struggle that ensued to recover my tame and equipment 🙂

Zeal much haha, but what can you do

[dry flame]

Ark 2 should be voxel build because A) this is kinda fun and B) think of the blueprints that could be up for grabs in PvP.

You can try to change my mind, but it will fail.

That is all. Carry on.

[harsh parrot]

Not sure I personally agree with this 😁 one of the other games I love and is very comparable to ARK (IMHO) is Space Engineers

And I don't feel like ARK has the kind of "vibe" that would benefit from voxel as much as SE does

[dry flame]

That will change the second people can loot others' bps.

[harsh parrot]

(prebuilt map with pre-placed structures are fine IMHO)

[harsh parrot]

I'm not sure what that has to do with voxel 🙂

[dry flame]

?

[harsh parrot]

? I'm really not sure what BPs have to do with voxel 😅

[dry flame]

Maybe I'm saying it wrong then. On Empyrion and Dual Universe both, we can make our own sharable blueprints for our builds. Is that not how it goes with other voxels?

[harsh parrot]

o__o OK maybe you don't know what a voxel is?

[dry flame]

Probably not. XD

[harsh parrot]

Have you played SPace engineers?

[dry flame]

Nah, but I thought Empyrion was pretty much the same thing.

[harsh parrot]

Did you notice the way all the terrain is deformable, and you can make caverns etc? that's voxel

Ah, lemme see then

Yes it is! Absolutely the same thing

[dry flame]

Oh, what? Come on, people would LOVE deformable terrain here! You can make your own cave NETWORKS! XD

[harsh parrot]

But again, voxel has little to do with the BP stuff 🙂 voxel is about digging the terrain basically

[dry flame]

Every map becomes Aberration!

[harsh parrot]

Oh I mean absolutely, that would be amazing 😮 certainly digging our own tunnels would be fun

Just I'm a bit afraid it could become a bit abused? like, the map would look VERY weird VERY quickly

[dry flame]

And I would definitely consider these blueprint-style builds because holy hell, can you make massive things with a fraction of the lag.

I got a whole-ass capital ship with hangar zooming around. It's great!

If I tried to do a tenth of this with a skiff, I'm screwing over everyone around me

[harsh parrot]

Hahahahaha this!!! My mothership is a bit smaller but I totally catch your drift, in fact it's comparable to quetz and argies XD

(that's why I like to draw parallels between ARK and SE)

(in ARK you get tames to facilitate your life, in SE you build vehicles)

[dry flame]

Fair point. Shame too, because Empyrion even has some dinos. I guess I was bound to draw conclusions given that.

[harsh parrot]

That does make sense yes

OTOH what I think could be achievable (and hopefully "would make sense") is to have limited voxel regions in an otherwise prebuilt map ; think eg you could make your own tunnels "in the mud of the mountain", there would be perhaps a 100x100x100m (or 1km dunno) cube of voxel people can dig their own stuff in

But the thing is beyond the initial novelty I doubt it would be very practical/useful in ARK

(hence perhaps not worth the effort for the team)

[harsh parrot]

But yeah 🤣

Stripping an ID is a bit much IMHO but what can you do 😅

(yes - what you can do is answer the associated question! 🙂 )

[blissful perch]

Voxel in ark 2 works as well as a dumpster fire

[blissful perch]

Send me a link in DMs?

[harsh parrot]

Done 🙂

You'll find it particularly relevant if you happened to play RDR1/2

[blissful perch]

I think the frustration of certain elements is good, but other impossibly irritating things like traveling an hour to the biome that killed you in a straight line on a flier are bad

[harsh parrot]

It starts with a critique of a particular "change of pace" moment in RDR2

[blissful perch]

Same with the old mat grind or the mutation stacking grind

[harsh parrot]

Mat grind rings a hell of a bell to me!!! I didn't play ARK back then, but it's very much a thing in Elite: Dangerous

Mutation stacking grind seems fair to me given how limitless it is ; you wouldn't want people to catch a couple lvl30 rexes and end up with a lvl 449 mutated rex the next day

[blissful perch]

Who’s DMs did you send the link to? I have no new messages 👀

[blissful perch]

The limitless is a major design flaw

The grind is bad AND the end result is bad

[harsh parrot]

100% sure it was you 🙂 double check

[harsh parrot]

I don't know 🙂 I think it's quirky and fun, but I also agree with you that most AAA games wouldn't have that, except Skyrim OFC which is perfectly balanced as all things should be and JustWorks™ totally as expected 😔

([phone]% alchemy power, [phone]% enchanting power...)

[blissful perch]

Limitless works amazingly well in SP games

[harsh parrot]

AHA

You might have nailed it on the head there!!! I mostly play ARK sp-ish, on my private server

You're right that it probably breaks balancing in multi!

[blissful perch]

Or even to an extent in MP coop games. But it works insanely badly in PvP games, or in survival games where the environment doesn’t scale alongside you

[harsh parrot]

Yeah I totally get what you mean now

Skyrim MP with broken alchemy/enchanting... i don't think would be fun

[blissful perch]

It would not be imo

I do think splitting SP and MP ark 2 is a strong move

[harsh parrot]

I didn't realize it was a thing, but I agree with you, it sounds good ; SP should be more story focused while MP is gonna be more about coop/PvP

[blissful perch]

I should specify I mean in terms of values moreso than major features

[harsh parrot]

I for one have had a hard time ever trying to get to ARK's story

Meanwhile if SP was a bit more "on rails" or at least had "something" to encourage me to follow the story, it would help

[blissful perch]

Ark 2 is slated to have missions with VA characters like Santiago

[harsh parrot]

Hahaha amazing! Yeah I heard that VA was gonna be even more proeminent, what with Vin and whatnot 😄

[blissful perch]

I’m pleased with what I’ve read for ark 2. The question to me is if/how it’ll be delivered

[harsh parrot]

I didn't yet hear Dr Who though because I didn't fight Rockwell (or any boss yet for that matter)

[harsh parrot]

I'm confident in WC, bit less in GSG if I'm being honest

[blissful perch]

I’m confident in WC in some ways and not others. You can easily talk a big game on a steam page and not deliver though

[harsh parrot]

Oh absolutely ; but it seems to me like WC is a fairly honest and open company - which is why I hold them in much higher esteem than GSG

(I followed very closely the whole Definitive Edition debacle, given I'm fairly involved in the GTA scene)

[south lance]

i just wanna play ark when nobody knows wtf is going on

[past wind]

Apparently they will have some focus on “missions” and “events” which could mean more quests within the lore

[blissful perch]

I want full official PvP wipes and “seasons” with major changes to encourage more of that

[south lance]

im enamored with this one caravan idea

[harsh parrot]

Sounds great to me 🙂 this aspect of progression feels to me like it's one of the major things missing from the SP ARK experience

[south lance]

that was developed a couple months ago

[blissful perch]

YES

[south lance]

i love it for pvp

[harsh parrot]

Explain 😄 I never heard of it

[south lance]

i want automated caravans created for large tribe farming

[blissful perch]

Can you pull the suggestion for Cheater. Give him a search term/time or dm him the discord chat link? @south lance

[south lance]

and smaller tribes attack those caravans for resources

[harsh parrot]

Oh woooooooow

[past wind]

Ark 1 SP is just like a creative mod + easier way to get the achievements 🤣

[south lance]

uhh, just search "caravan"

[harsh parrot]

This 🤣 that (plus the fact I wanted to play with pals) is why I just set up a private instead, with boosted rates similar-ish to SP

[south lance]

and scroll

[harsh parrot]

Will do thanks, but your summary was already great

[south lance]

ya itd be amazingly good for redistributing resources from alphas to bobs

[blissful perch]

We also talked in depth about carts

[south lance]

while also making end game less grindy

cause arguably end game pvp rn is even more grindy than early game

cause the loot you get from general ark thinfs is valuable during early game but not so much at end game

like farming drops and stuff

[harsh parrot]

that hits so close to home ugh 😔

[south lance]

but farming drops is so much more fun than running a stryder around

[harsh parrot]

been farming the lost island desert maze for like 4 or 5 days trying to get a single rex saddle or bp

[south lance]

lol ive been doing drops trying to get a capped shotgun so i can do a boss on my new char xd

[harsh parrot]

hahahaha amazing, speaking of which one of the good things I got was fab shotgun with ~300%

[south lance]

ya ive gotten capped everything except the shotgun

[harsh parrot]

no idea how much it'd cost to repair tho 😨

[south lance]

i hate rng

[blissful perch]

Drop farming is “acceptable annoying grind”

[lavish rain]

Time is slower then normal

[blissful perch]

It’s required for longevity sadly

[harsh parrot]

wdym capped, is there a cap? like in percentage for weapons or armor for saddles/gear?

[south lance]

its better cause its similar to gambling

[blissful perch]

It’s better because it requires playing the game, moving around the map, etc

[past wind]

But it could more like Atlas than Ark 1

[blissful perch]

Explain

[lavish rain]

Gambling is how to fix world

[blissful perch]

Yes, there’s a cap

[south lance]

idk if its actually viable long term tho, if you have more than a few people with knowledge of main loot farming methods youll get capped shit within a month

[past wind]

On atlas the loot is all around the map, you need to explore, follow quests etc

It’s not a fixed point on the map

[harsh parrot]

how much is it by default, and is it offset if i increase loot crate quality in configs?

[south lance]

saddles max at 125 armor, weapons at 298%

[blissful perch]

It’s offset based on loot crate quality yes

[south lance]

idk cap for armor

[harsh parrot]

I see, very interesting, thanks a lot

[harsh parrot]

probably depends on the type anyway

[south lance]

i think 1500 dura, dunno armor but armor is useless beyond 500

[harsh parrot]

yeah dura seems more reliable

[south lance]

at least for flak

[blissful perch]

Take a look at the RNG for mutations. 1/6 chance * 10% chance for a mutation of any kind and people spend more time on breeding than anything else

[harsh parrot]

I see I see ; so if I got 2.5 loot crate quality means the cap is 250% (2.5x higher) so eg 750% instead of 300 ?

[south lance]

found some random bob base with like 6 sets of capped flak but i lost it cause some level 1 found my stash somehow

😔

[past wind]

The real cap for flak is 1400. 496 is the cap for the officials. With 1400 you are virtually immortal

[south lance]

mutations are probably more reliant on rng but i mainly just mean loot

[blissful perch]

Ark 1 loot isn’t my favorite way to increase longevity, but it’s pretty common to have RNG based loot drops be a primary post game activity

See: MHW gem farming

[harsh parrot]

this also so real - i found breeding and trying-to-find-good-loot to be very time consuming end game tasks and in fact my two previous playthroughs I stopped once I got there

felt too tedious to keep going ; but this time I want bosses 🙂

[south lance]

oh ok

[blissful perch]

I got sick of it real quick and just opted to jack the rates for breeding way tf up

[south lance]

i think so

[harsh parrot]

Absolutely - breeding I already had bumped quite a bit, but loot crate quality I'm always on the fence on ; feels gamebreaking to get 500% crossbows on the one hand, and feels so fkin annoying to never get a rex saddle bp on the other

[harsh parrot]

Sounds good, thanks, probably explains a lot 🙂

[blissful perch]

So you’re aware, that loot quality modifier doesn’t change WHAT is in the crates

It only changes the values of the items

[harsh parrot]

Very much so hahahahahaha....

[blissful perch]

Very much not

[harsh parrot]

just been awfully unlucky because RNG do be like that

[harsh parrot]

I mean I'm very much aware 🙂 hahaha

[south lance]

125 armor iguanodon asc bp 👍

[harsh parrot]

Especially after all the loot I've gotten now

I got like 3 manta saddles, one of which asc

[blissful perch]

You can manually change what’s in crates though, if not through ini than through mods

[harsh parrot]

Oh OTOH I almost got a full asc fur set 😮 amazing

[harsh parrot]

Even in ini, it's just the syntax is awfully complex ; I think all loot tables can be changed

[split dove]

now your manta can beach itself with a more expensive saddle

[blissful perch]

Hoping for ark 2 that we get a way to better dispose of “useless” loot if we’re still getting so dang much of it

[south lance]

i have so many 100 armor saddles from rag desert drops idk what to do with them

[harsh parrot]

but I'm not gonna do that 😅 coding is tedious enough on weekdays, I'm playing ARK for fun!!!

[harsh parrot]

HAHAHAHA literally this 🤣

[blissful perch]

Copy paste from a forum is what I do lol

[south lance]

tried to run the cave into lava golem with a tamed velo and got down to 100 hp cause the spiders knocked my into 5 arthros

gonna just do the thing with the sino

[harsh parrot]

Yeah but I mean, I boosted loot quality already, seems more than fair that I keep the tables as-is and "enjoy the grind" 😅

Speaking of grind I should make a grinder to grind the useless stuff I get anyway

[south lance]

i think they should just up increase likelihood of near capped items

everyone already has them except newbies

and trying to club someone for their kit takes way too much patience

[harsh parrot]

Yeah, or generally switch things around, it's just too frustrating when you loot that red crate and get pipe blueprints -_-

[south lance]

ark2 should not have so many quality grades

100-200% for all items, balance the game around that, i think thatd be fine

[harsh parrot]

↑↑↑ @blissful perch this is what I meant by "very much so" -_-

Some cases like that literally make me cringe

[blissful perch]

I’m fine with quality grades like in ark 1 if you couldn’t just instantly skip to the top

[south lance]

would crates even exist in ark2

[blissful perch]

Probably more genesis mission style tbh

[split dove]

that's where i hope the component based crafting replaces weapon tiers and just gives the weapon more dmg or smt like that

[south lance]

maybe

[harsh parrot]

Procedural missions sound like a lot more fun than looting procedural crates 🙂

[south lance]

id like more regularity yea

[south lance]

chat purged 😔

[blissful perch]

What the heck happened lol

[past wind]

One thing I’m still very curious about, the end game. Do you think they will change the bosses and ascensions? I mean the system and metas

[blissful perch]

I hope so. Bosses rn are basically a one and done affair

[split dove]

and up untill genesis with the exception of abberation Rockwell they were just dino spam dps time races

[past wind]

Me too. With the new combat system, I’m hopeful

I want something more scalable

[blissful perch]

The combat system isn’t gonna change if it’s a one and done

[past wind]

You can do alone - easier
You can do in a party of 10 - harder

[blissful perch]

The rewards and post game will largely determine how viable repeatable bosses are

[lavish rain]

The ancient ones were angeref

[blissful perch]

Ark 1 can scale bosses to party size; but that doesn’t make them more fun to repeat

[lavish rain]

My messages were ignored

[past wind]

Yeah, scalability is just one of the features I want. It’s also boring.

I think they should improve the titans combat model I guess

[blissful perch]

Titans may have been the way in ark 1 but I’m eh for ark 2

Unless titans will only be fightable upon the backs of large creatures

[past wind]

I don’t mean a copy/paste but I’m talking about the meta per say

I like it more to fight the titans than the other bosses

[blissful perch]

I never liked it much. It was a dps check for most of them at the end of the day

I want bosses that for example limit to small tames only and are quick on their feet

[past wind]

That’s the limitation I don’t want, not the way it is now. That Arena thing I don’t like.

Maybe like Atlas where you have to actually travel to reach the bosses and you can’t bring everything

[blissful perch]

I love arenas, I’d almost wish you could genesis 1 style teleport to them from anywhere

The downside is that areas in ark 1 are poorly curated: they are mostly just dps checks and as such they lack tactics, mechanical effort, or strategy

It’s basically “did you get enough stats”

[past wind]

Arenas kinda do it. They are fixed places. Bosses changing their spawn places are more interesting to me.

And not having cryos and tek in general, would limit things we can carry to the bosses all around the map/maps

[blissful perch]

A roaming boss is fine in some ways but it’s too easily cheesed imo

A really clean boss imo tests players on their skills over their stats

[past wind]

They can balance from there. Did you ever played atlas? Hunted the white whale, the hydra or the cyclops?

It’s more interesting than the ark bosses for sure

BUT I don’t want a copy/paste

I want it improved

Don’t having cryos or tek, massive alien map, unreal engine 5. All those can make it possible to implement more interesting boss fights

[potent hull]

some need to make a hip hop Song a bout ark 1 to ark 2

[blissful perch]

A roaming boss in atlas is limited because atlas is limited to boats and their limits

In ark 1, and likely ark 2 unless they make some amazing changes that limit tames you can bring with you at once, you can run around with a boss killing squad after scouting said roaming boss

[south lance]

id love more minibosses

not ones that can break your whole base down

well, id like them to break alpha tribe bases down

[blissful perch]

How do you design that to not harm smaller tribes more? I’m thinking Aratai may be superior than roaming bosses/minibosses for that

[south lance]

but stuff like that would be nice rather than a special boss designed specifically to get you to ascend like in ark1

[south lance]

you could make their spawn based on structure density maybe

so theyll target all structures, but wont spawn far from the area with highest number of structures

[blissful perch]

Eh, I just don’t see that working as intended

Imagine having 20 tribes with the same density as 1 mega…

[south lance]

how would they

its not about different tribes, just total structures in say a quarter sq km

or 1 sq km

[blissful perch]

Right, so a bunch of Bob huts may be similar in density to a mega

[south lance]

not really

have you seen megatribe bases?

[blissful perch]

Right now most are in caves

[south lance]

they easily outstructure all bob bases across multiple servers

yes

ark2 should not be cave based i hope

[blissful perch]

Which by default makes me wonder if any roaming boss is a pointless balancing tool

[south lance]

otherwise many of the same issues in ark1 pop up

[blissful perch]

They’d just run into turrets a mega has and be farmed for loot

[south lance]

hopefully no turrets, increase boss strength

this wouldnt be some titan, itd be capable of destroying a base without a concerted effort on the megas part

[blissful perch]

No plant X is pretty unlikely

[blissful perch]

You’re talking something with an hp pool of the alpha dragon then?

[south lance]

not something you can cheese basically

sure, but we dont exactly know how these things will scale to ark2 meta so this isnt exact

imagine alpha king titan marching to your idk, center cave

[blissful perch]

I’m talking more about how hard to kill. Alpha dragon has a massive hp pool compared to say a wild giga

[south lance]

ya

it needs to be something a tribe needs to get on to handle

[blissful perch]

A wild giga dies to a current turret wall with 0 people online

[south lance]

rather than 2 bobs

[blissful perch]

An alpha dragon would prolly do serious damage unless people acted about it

[south lance]

ik, this is comparatively way ahead of that

the pve must clap

[blissful perch]

The issue is…why would such tribes not kite this creature to other bases?

[south lance]

make it essentially impossible to

[blissful perch]

Unless you want it to stubbornly focus down said “mega base”

In which case it’s getting cheesed…people will stand out of aggro range

[south lance]

like, tie aggro to structure density only, instead of whats the closest structure

[blissful perch]

Yea that’s cheesable since it basically won’t chase

[south lance]

so itll always be heading towards you breeding room or whatever

[south lance]

do you mean render

[blissful perch]

No. Aggro

[south lance]

i dont see why aggro matters, this would have structure aggro

not player aggro at least not preferentially

[blissful perch]

You just yank your tames out of the breeding room or whatever, and shoot the creature from a distance and laugh

[south lance]

you wont be able to just snipe this thing with a shotgun

the idea is that you need multiple tribemembers on boss killing tames to even take it down

which is why i mention alpha king titan

since thats the closest thing i imagine in power to this comparatively

doesnt it have like 2 million hp?

[blissful perch]

Something crazy

[south lance]

give it high projectile resistance

the only thing that works is 10+people riding end game tames

and several minutes to chomp down