no "badly optimized" game would be played this long and this much.
The game IS badly optimized. To say otherwise is a blatant lie.
[darie] 2 hrs "Unoptimised and not fun."
[Nitro] 170 hrs "If you do not have a top of the line computer, DO NOT BUY IT, NO, IT WILL NOT RUN ON YOUR LAPTOP! EVER! I have seen so many people complain on the forums that the game wont run on potato# 221, this has been made clear and YOU are responsible if you buy it for a rig that cant play it!"
[DEAD_SPARTAN] 18 hrs "I really want to play this game, but for me it lags so much even on low graphics and everything. Also the devs are only working on addidng more things and are not fixing all the glitches and bugs."
[Arpa] 23 hrs "Very unstable game. Game crashes every 5-10 minutes after the most recent update. Tried booting game, booting steam, booting computer, reinstalling gpu drivers, chancing video settings ingame and nothing seems to fix the issue."
[Simon] 219 hrs "They should really try to optimise the game before adding more content."
That's just from a quick scroll down the user reviews on Steam, with the "ALL" option toggled. The game is simply poorly optimized. Normally people would be understanding of this, since duh, the game is in Early Access, it's not gonna be well-optimized. But the dev team is more focused on adding more content than improving optimization.
Fans don't want
more content right now. Because a lot of them can't even play the content that's already there.
Also, ARK's success, increased their ambitions and expanded their content plans.
this is a very informative article how the community plays it like a live completed game, even when its still work in progress, the success raised the roof to what they are going to add
ARK Survival Evolved is early access done right.
None of this matters. It doesn't matter that the game was successful and made them more ambitious.
The game should at least FUNCTION properly before you start adding more content. Again, even people with top-of-the-line PCs can't even run the game without some form of lag, stuttering, or crashing.
This is NOT Early Access done right. They are NOT listening to people who have been complaining since the game first entered Early Access last year about the game's poor optimization. Early Access is to have people help you out, to play your game and give feedback, and for you to apply said feedback to your product. People
are playing it, they
are giving feedback, and the developers are just thinking, "...Ohhhhh, so more content then?"
They are making the game bigger and better than if they rushed to optimize finalize it.
Makes absolutely zero sense. By this logic, Assassin's Creed: Unity was an acceptable game.
Ark is
unfinished.
Optimization should be the first thing fixed. If we have people who can play Doom, or Final Fantasy XIV, or Star Citizen's betas fluidly at max settings that still can't even run Ark without a problem, then the game doesn't need to be
bigger and better, it needs to be
fluid and more stable.
ALPHA phase is for adding content.
BETA phase is for finalized content being optimized.
Which I would agree on, if the content was still just small amounts added through free updates.
The game is NOT DONE YET and there is already a PAID DLC EXPANSION PACK that costs a WHOLE 2/3 OF THE PRICE OF THE MAIN GAME.Focusing on optimizing is just double the work, because future things added is going to break things again. They patch things to fix things, but for it to be fully optimized, that has to come after all the content they plan is added first.
Later this month they are going to show a roadmap and they are going to establish a finish line for the base game to be completed.
By this logic, World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, Diablo III, Blade & Soul, Star Wars: The Old Republic, all of these should have simply remained in an unstable and unoptimized state simply because of future content.
Welcome to game design. Welcome to how
games with updates work. You don't just release an unoptimized game, continue adding content, and then
eventually fix the game. You release a game that works
properly, and is
stable, and then when you add more content, you make sure the game doesn't fall the hell apart from said content.
Early Access is for those that accept paying to play it now, instead of waiting until its finalized.
Which, again, people were okay with until they decided to charge you another TWO-THIRDS THE PRICE OF THE FULL GAME for more content, when THE GAME ITSELF IS NOT DONE.
You know there are finalized games launched that are STILL not fully optimized (Bethesda games, for example), and a lot of those more polished games are played less than ARK.
This straight-up does not matter. Skyrim, Fallout, Assassin's Creed,
all of these are widely played games. And they are continually shit on for their poor optimization.
Skyrim ran like absolute crap on PS3.
The game crashed if you simply walked into water. So what did Bethesda do? They released a patch that, while it didn't fix
everything, it was a significantly more stable experience.
Assassin's Creed: Unity is notorious for being one of the most unfinished games of all time. So what did Ubisoft do? Their next Assassin's Creed game, built on the
same engine, was extremely optimized for all platforms. Glitches and bugs were rare. It was quite simply the smoothest experience the franchise has had since Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood six years prior.
and you know there are games even less optimized than ARK that people still play on PS4, like Onigiri and 7DtD.
Still doesn't make it okay for Ark.
ARK is such a massive and complex game filled with freedom, it's actually naive to expect it to be perfectly polished, even after beta. that doesn't mean it isn't already fun, playable and valuable.
People aren't expecting a perfectly polished game. They're expecting a
somewhat optimized game. Because
again, even people with top-of-the-line PCs
cannot run the game without problems.
the Scorched Earth DLC being paid DLC is justified. That content is ready, it was in the DLC plans before it was revealed, the actual game launch was delayed, no sense hibernating that DLC. And ARK gives more things for FREE and add more things at no extra cost, than ANY other game in the industry. They've been adding new stuff practically MONTHLY. Even the longest DLC supported games don't give as much for this long.
No, it is
not justified. The game
isn't done yet. Just because they already planned for DLC doesn't mean anything.
Your game is not done yet, do not release paid DLC expansions for it.It's just the entitlement rats out there that expect everything added during early access to be free, when these extra things COST a lot of money to make. And extra work deserves extra pay, you know? but the brats in the community expect everything to be freebies, that's just a bad leech mentality from consumers that don't think about the developer's wallets.
It's not entitlement. It's basic expectation of video games. People wouldn't be okay with Blizzard doing this. They wouldn't be okay with Nintendo or Square doing this. They're
not okay with Bethesda or Ubisoft doing this. So why in the
world would
anyone be okay with Studio Wildcard doing this?
this isn't a subscription MMORPG, the devs don't owe the consumers anything extra.
You're right. What the devs
do owe the consumers is a properly optimized game.
meanwhile, scammers and deceivers like Hello Games get hype and money all the way to NMS launch.
and greedy jerks like Blizzard and Activision get more fans and money than they deserve (can you believe the Diablo 1 remake is only playable 1 month a year?)
No Man's Sky is also one of the most poorly received and most refunded games of all time. People didn't stand for the shit that happened with NMS.
Blizzard is already receiving huge fan backlash for the Diablo 1 dungeon event. (Huge misconception, btw. It is
not a remake of Diablo 1. It's merely a dungeon inspired by it. You are not returning to Tristram, you are not meeting the NPCs from the game, you are not using the classes from D1. It's just an event with a dungeon inspired by D1.)
Don't even get me started on the backlash that Activision gets.
These are all poor examples, because these companies pull crap like this and
fans don't stand for it. No Man's Sky's Steam reviews are at "Overwhelmingly Negative" for recent reviews and "Mostly Negative" for overall reviews. The game and Hello Games' reputation are absolutely destroyed, and from here on, probably
no publisher will ever want to work with them again.
So yes, other companies do this. But also yes, fans give even worse backlash to
those companies. How they're treating Studio Wildcard is significantly tame in comparison. It still doesn't change the fact that Studio Wildcard is charging more for a game that
isn't done yet.
They give money to those that deceive and give almost nothing, while hating and ostracizing on those that are more transparent and honest and generous giving a lot more.
Except what you don't realize is that Studio Wildcard is doing
exactly what you're pointing out other companies are doing.
I don't know where you got this mindset of optimization not being important for a game, because optimization is hands-down one of
the most important parts of a game. Several people who meet the minimum system requirements for the game
cannot play the game. People with PCs that should be able to run the game at max settings flawlessly any day of the week
cannot do so without frame drops, stutters, lag, crashing, etc.
Getting the game to work should be their first priority. And that's why I said in the beginning:
Their first step should be finishing the damn game or at the very least optimizing it.
If the game was at least
optimized to run properly, then people wouldn't be so angry about the game. But several people who meet the minimum system requirements forked out $30 for the game and
can't play it. People aren't being
unfair to Studio Wildcard. Studio Wildcard isn't even delivering on one of the most
essential parts of the game.
Meanwhile, they're releasing an expansion which costs a whole
two-thirds the price of the game, which is actually receiving backlash for removing more content than it adds. They're porting it to every major console, with an enhancement patch for said consoles' updated versions. And they released a spin-off MOBA. Yes, said MOBA is free-to-play, but it
also suffers from poor optimization and crashing.
Studio Wildcard is quite
literally pulling the same shit that other studios do. So they deserve just as much crap for it.