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Ark: DLC evolved
cagan
Member UncommonPosts: 445
You give money to an early access game so that they can complete the development...well at least that"s what you would expect...
Instead of finishing the game with its horrible game breaking bugs (your dinos falling through the ground and disappearing) and glitches, non compatible with nvidia and very low frame rates with monster PC's etc...they made a DLC to sell for $20.
I would gladly pay not $20 but $40 for the DLC to support the developer after the initial game (which was supposed to be completed in June), but they chose to spend their resources to make a DLC for a broken game. This is what"s wrong with today's greedy developers... just trying to make a quick buck... I will still go into other Early access games to support developers, it was great with Shadowrun, pillars of eternity etc...but beware of Studio Wildcard....trying to sell the initially promised content as a DLC...
Instead of finishing the game with its horrible game breaking bugs (your dinos falling through the ground and disappearing) and glitches, non compatible with nvidia and very low frame rates with monster PC's etc...they made a DLC to sell for $20.
I would gladly pay not $20 but $40 for the DLC to support the developer after the initial game (which was supposed to be completed in June), but they chose to spend their resources to make a DLC for a broken game. This is what"s wrong with today's greedy developers... just trying to make a quick buck... I will still go into other Early access games to support developers, it was great with Shadowrun, pillars of eternity etc...but beware of Studio Wildcard....trying to sell the initially promised content as a DLC...
Comments
I have 84 hours on ARK. The game has a lot of content. It is stable and the bugs are not that bad. It has great mod support.
Most importantly, they released a huge amount of free updates. If you look at the game today, compared to a year ago, there is a HUGE amount of content added. It is easily the most updated game on Steam. No other game I own can keep up with the updates of ARK.
At the same time, the game is still labelled as "Early Access". Unfinished games should not offer paid DLC. The premise of Early Access is that you pay the developer early, in hopes of them working on your game. Paid DLC means you gave them money and they worked on your game, as well as something else you don't have access to.
The conflicting part, for me, is that the game has a lot of content. It has more content than a large majority of released AAA games. The expansion offers a large amount of new content - it offers more than many 20$ AAA DLCs. Games from EA (Battlefront, Battlefield 1), Ubisoft or the Call of Duty franchise, all come with hefty price tags (60$) day one DLC passes (40$+) and microtransactions. If you look at ARK objectively (disregarding the Early Access tag), I think you are getting a good deal.
ARK should come out of Early Access in my opinion. Perhaps they should have announced a full release, followed by this DLC several months after.
Steam is very clear with their terms about early access games. If someone thinks the game devs owe you updates after that disclaimer, then the problem is located between your ears.
It's a jerk move from Ark to release DLC without finishing the base game first, but I think it's the people who should learn to read better what Steam promises to you and what they don't promise to you.
It's quite badly optimised.
There are a few good games coming out of early access but steam early access remains lawless land.
I was a huge ARK supporter, not white knight or fanboy fanatical but I was pretty high on them.
BUt after they got sued and all that stuff came out, on top of them taking a lot of mod stuff and putting it in the game I changed my position.
These guys are masters at taking things others do and making it look like their own.
This whole DLC is a conglomeration of stuff they worked on at Trendy (which got them sued in the first place) and mods guys have made to use in their game (on unofficial servers). Wyverns, elemental animals, different structure material, flame focused items, power items, windmill, and more I am sure I didnt buy it so I dont know everything they have added, but all made by modders. Just like every other 'cool' 'update' these guys have done the past year or so.
So while the obvious issue is selling a DLC to a game still being 'developed'. It goes to the root of how these guys operate. I suspect the settlement they had for 'only' 40 million (when the asking price was 600) included some sort of payment per unit sold to Trendy. So how do they (try) to use another legal loophole? They make a DLC and keep it separate and Trndy gets nothing.
I smell another lawsuit if that is indeed their goal. But this guy Stieglitz is as shady as they come.
Of course the fans and supporters of the game claim 'they gve us this or they give us that', which isnt true at all. The modders are the ones developing this game. The thing the developer has to fix are bugs, performance issues, and optimization. NONE of those things have improved overall since the first 6 weeks of so of them being greenlit.
The DLC isnt much better, but it does look like they tried to optimize it the best they could. So the DLC is actually a better product than the original. Which for an early access add on is kind of crazy. I also dont expect the vanilla game to see anywhere near the effort of completion it should get. Theyll get it to where it used to run for people a few months ago, maybe add a few other things then call it good.
Ironically the best thing that could have happened to this game and its players is if Trendy hadnt settled they closed them down and then they (Wildcard) sold off the game or opened the rights up for peopel ot use. Because then the modders who have really made this game what it is could have gotten a hold of it and it would have been a much better final (and ongoing) product. Assuming the modders could keep each other in check that is, which they probably could.
Because its obvious "indy' isnt the way to go and ARK was the ONLY example of an 'indie' company that seemed to do it 'right' after all this and the back story its clear they arent any different than any other developer. Theyre probably worse in some regards actually.
I'm all for modders and Ark really does great support for their modders, but this is over the top. Hell, the top modders for Ark now work for them and are helping develop the new stuff.
I'm no fanboy at all, not even close and will call Wildcard out on bad practices, but this opinion you presented seems to be very 'kneejerk'.
If you look at ANY MMO, seriously, any of them, they all borrow ideas from others games, but it wasn't a modder in their own game that they hired and used their modding talents? Which is seriously what Wildcard does. They didn't steal, they held a competition and then HIRED the winner.
They also had that contest to get more ideas. In fact they had two.
The content they got from those far outweighed the prize money they gave away.
This game was going down the drain until they released The Center map as 'official', that surged it right back to close to there it was previously. It has since started spiraling down again, this DLC has injected some more people back into the mix (at least for the last couple days).
This is why their business model wont work. And why 'sandbox' games in general dont work. BECAUSE you need to constantly update them, and thats something a 'small' indie company cant do, and why they did rely on modders for about 90% of the stuff they have added to the game.
The thing that is constant in this game are the modders and the RP streamers. They help keep this game in a positive light. I notice all the TwitchRP streamers are playing the new map and the new season is on that map exclusively. So they (Twith RP admins) definitely knew about it before the announcement and stream, and some of them said they got it for free. So I suspect they all did. So its just (another) calculated marketing ploy by these guys (Wildcard) to try and spin it positively.
End of the day from what I saw the DLC might be worth the price. But only after they finish the original which isnt close in some aspects. Even the DLC isnt retail worthy (which is how it was sold, not even early access) due to the same issues the min game has in terms of performance, crashes, bugs etc.
So basically people have two ealry access games that may or may not ever be finished, one was sold a sa retail DLC to an early access defined game. Both have their good but they both share the bad, and that bad is a major reason why the DLC shouldnt have been allowed to be sold in the first place, because the bas is a fundamental issue that has plagued the game from day one and one they havent been able to figure out, and the reason why they claim 'early access' is to hide the fact that they cant optimize it, not that since its 'early access' they dont have to. Since that is the first thing anyone says when someone mentioned how bad the game runs.
I would have thought people would protest and not buy the DLC till the original game which is horribly optimized and pages of bugs fixed...Well, people have spoken with their wallets, bought the DLC.
At least I know I am not going to do any business with this developer or others like them. Prepare yourselves for more early access games with DLC's which will never be finished after this great success.
Instead of spending $20 on this DLC, I bought master of orion... at least it is from a trustworthy developer...
I am also not able to populated my overall server list, the game crashes before it loads everything. So its impossible to go and look at the populations on all servers running each map of the game. Its been that way since they had the DLC release. You can only populate really short server lists like friends or survivor designated ones. One I have a survivor on is running Scorched Earth the others are still the previously available ones. I didnt buy it so I cant join that server (obviously). But the point is I want to look at every server, count how many are running each 'version' of the game, either Island, Center, Valhalla, Scorched Earth etc. But I cant because the lists wont load before the game crashes.
that just wrong they are still in early acess and they releases a dlc... they should releases the games first then they can releases dlc....
a new low but it dont surprise me
Dev's response it is EA... (this bug still exists after 1 year...and they know about it)
horrible optimization, huge game breaking other bugs still not addressed....
What do they do? Lets release a paid DLC to get more money! I would be the first to buy the DLC with double the price tag if they finished the game like they promised....