Sench; also think about what their new ‘censorship’ attitude is doing. There are people now who have deleted their mods off the workshop, leaving servers with those mods in the dust with people unable to get the mod. The playerbase is now getting hurt because of their lack of communication and not caring.
The Vanilla game without mods is still booming right now and they officially added SOTF, which is a booming game mode. Mods are not needed so much right now. The game itself is still quite interesting. I have rarely heard of people buying ARK for the mods (they’re a nice edition right now not a necessity). As opposed to something like Minecraft. (However I don’t have my ear completely to the ground when it comes to ARK forums)
If I was Wildcard I would look at this and say actually right now our Game play is still fresh we need to ride this train out. I know that the game play will eventually get boring and Mods will be the way they can keep the game relevant.
My advice for the OP is yes you should go take a break or maybe quit. If having a scripting language as opposed to using blueprints is a deal breaker, then the deal is broken.
But for those who stick around for when the need for mods peaks I think they will have an invaluable experience.
tldr
Modding the game isn’t as much as a priority for their team as opposed to their current user base. They have 2 million users who bought the vanilla game and a fraction of those are active modders. The modding days for this game are yet to peak. Needless to say you guys need a place to vent your frustration and you want official answers but you also need patience for this.
Im a skill level 1… or less. I do’nt pretend to be some advanced developer type. I just came here with an idea to try and implement.
I never did modding before… so there you go. Im a noob.
I didnt expect much. I didnt get much. I have one nice guy who helps with engrams, and another who tries to help with levels, but generally my requests for help go unanswered, and noone seems to reply in any meaningful way to the posts where I explain the problems I have and the help I look for.
But… Early Access. I shrug it off, and learn a little more every day.
I think if you came here and expected the mod kit to just work - you were sorely mistaken, and I think the fact the devs offered money for modders was a "hey try your best and we’ll compensate you " kind of thing.
But modding doesn’t matter for a new game - whatever people here might think. A game stands or falls on its own.
What modding can do - is prolong the life of a game, but to be honest that’s something Wildcard will really focus on once Ark is out the door. They’re behind schedule and its hurting them I think. What would you focus on in that situation (if you say “mod kit” you’re delusional). The fact they still release mod kit updates is very surprising and positive I think… they could simply put out statement saying “mod dev kit on hold for 6 months or until after release” - that’s what a big company would do.
Its Early Access. Think about that and don’t just fob it off as “yeah but we paid so its a full game release really”. Some people here seem to think they got the promise of a finished game and a finished modding system - but you didn’t. You got the “we’re working on it” version. You seriously need to go somewhere else and do something else if that grinds your gears.
This is so fecking obvious that I cant believe I get called a brown-noser for having to point it out. Some people here have other agendas and its a bit rubbish.
I don’t have an opinion on censorship or…whatever, but honestly… this is a game dev forum and OP asked “why would YOU drop ARK dev kit” like it was a given. There’s a lot of useless information being spammed in here to do with player frustration, but the only answer seems to be:
“The game is not released yet - The dev kit is not properly done yet - Documentation isn’t there yet - thus its frustrating to work with.”
Perfectly reasonable, and elaborating on those points I can fully respect - but going beyond it… The stuff thats being pushed here is just so raging kiddy tears it’s hard to fathom. The diatribe the OP came out with a few posts up makes me wish there was an age check here.
Seriously. Its ok to be sceptical - and its ok to be negative even sometimes - but cutting into people who try to keep “persisting with something you hate” is the best way to destroy a community that’s just starting up. The OP has given up and wants to see the world burn.
Later replies give away his agenda - hence the reason we are coming with counter views. We’re trying to be a community.
The dev kit is a necessity for ARK itself actually. Quite a few of the content additions would not have and would not be being made for ARK without the mods. They took the slanted roof pieces from Aku Shima. They got the babies from a baby mod. Furniture as well… The tranq gun idea came from Aku Shima.
Without the dev kit we wouldn’t have a lot of the content. It actually is in their best interest to help the modders and stop ******** us over.
Yes, we need to have patience and a place to vent our frustration, but honestly, patience shouldn’t apply in certain situations. For example, this one:
“Originally posted by Drake:
v219 ARK Dev Kit will be updated this weekend. Please bear in mind that we prefer to stabilize the major versions before we release the Dev Kit, to be sure we have no bugs with the core game as it is very time consuming to generate and upload the Dev Kit versions (the source content files are quite large). For now, there will be an approximate 5 day lag between Major Version updates and the Dev Kit.”
Drake actually said straight up the dev kit WILL be updated this weekend. He didn’t give an ETA, this is his direct word. He also promised an approximate 5 day lag between Major Version updates and the Dev Kit.
This is from Yesterday (Tues) from Sinari: “Update: Just got word from Wildcard that Version 220 will be posted today! Apologies from them on the delay.”
This is him saying that it WILL be posted. Again, not an ETA.
These two things were posted with NO updates. The dev kit hasn’t been updated in over 20 days… They’re well beyond approximate, they’re well beyond their promises.
Also, they haven’t made a single ETA on time since they released SOTF… It is easy to see why as well. Every ark update breaks SOTF. Every SOTF update makes ARK not work right with it. Because their dev team is working on something OTHER than ARK itself, it’s causing problems with EVERYTHING else, and causing delays. SOTF should NOT have been released by Wildcard. It is a game MOD, and not a game in and of itself. They’re being paid with the early access money to program ARK and the ARK Dev Kit (the two things they said they were working on), NOT survival of the fittest. That wasn’t even part of the original proposal for the game, which means they’re also misallocating funds to make a MOD, which is not going to work right until they get the main game running 100%.
“The dev kit is a necessity for ARK itself actually.”
No. It really really isn’t.
90% of the mods currently developed are balancing or “enhancement” stuff that was developed because the community wants more content in the game itself.
The game is still under development - which means its unblanaced and loww on content… Those mods become largely irrelevant as the game matures. Right now they serve best simply as a feedback to the desingers as “hey wouldnt this be cool” kind of features… In this way modders actually become involved in shaping a game they like - which is awesome. But don’t mistake it for anything but that. If the modders disappeared tommorrow (for example if the devs get sick of all the whining going on and freeze the dev kit for 6 months) the game will still progress - its just we get much less input.
Reality check - getting your mods incorporated into the development of a game is a cool thing and kudos! but don’t get ideas that modders are essential to the game dev progression. The devs can (should?) shut us down if we’re more harm than benefit and distract from the big picture - which is a decent release.
SOTF is not a game mod, its a Game Mode its very much part of and in the official game and not a modification of ARK. As Deathmatch and TDM is a game mode of an FPS game.
So to clarify SOTF is ARK. It’s not a separate entity like a mod that was developed by a third party. It is a game mode created by the developers of ARK and in the game ARK.
I for one dislike when Games companies say a game/feature will be delivered on a certain date and it doesn’t happen. I will agree this is poor planning however you have a terrible sense of entitlement. The modding side of ARK Dev Kit owes you nothing. No updates, No extra features they’re doing this for themselves. ARK the game which you have paid for offered you future updates and a chance to play and contribute to the unfinished game.
I think you guys should be trying to get more transparency from the developers as opposed to release times etc…
If I was as frustrated as you. I would be like… Okay they didn’t release today, like they said. I wonder why? And I would want to have something from the Devs to say unfortunately we missed our deadline due to working on game balancing we hope to have the update in the next week.
Maybe you guys should channel your frustration on showing the devs you want them to be more transparent?
Wrong. EVERY SINGLE POST the devs have made about SOTF have classed it as a TOTAL CONVERSION. Even when it updates it says “Downloading 1 Mods, Total Conversion…” Sorry, but SOTF is a mod. It is even housed in the Content\MODS directory. This means SOTF is NOT ARK. SOTF also has another problem being a Total Conversion. Any time they make an update to ARK itself, they now need to make an equally complex update to SOTF in order to have the content IN SOTF, especially for balance purposes (see the issues with the gorilla if you don’t know what I mean). It actually explains completely why the ETAs are now missed by 2-5 days every time now as opposed to an hour or so (pre-SOTF).
Now, you say I have a terrible sense of entitlement… It’s not entitlement. It’s wanting the devs to at least freaking COMMUNICATE with us. They’ve created a standard of communication and have not kept up with it, and now, especially with the v217-220 gap in the ARK Dev Kit they’ve made it worse. If someone posts on the Steam Forums currently, any topic or post related to the Dev Kit or the Game and their ETAs/Promised Timelines and even asks without hostility “Hey, you guys said this would be here x days ago, can you please update the ETA?” They are not only refusing to answer, they are now having a ARK Dev/Steam Moderator DELETE that post and BAN the person who created it from the forums for 24 hours. That, is actually sociopathic behavior. They are now actually hurting players. It actually takes longer to BAN someone from a forum and delete a post than it does to say “We ran into some hiccups, the current ETA is unknown” and hit the quick reply button. It also creates an anger response from the player.
Also, at this point the Ark Dev Kit IS a good and a bad thing for them. As you can see the creator of this topic no longer wants to create mods for ARK. There is a huge issue with Steam’s Workshop and the Modding system. Lets say this mod’s creator had the mod on a popular server with about 40 regular players. If he went and DELETED his mod from the workshop, only the server would have the mod files remaining on it. The client files would register the deletion update through steam, and actually wipe the mod off of the client computer, which would prevent those players from accessing the server. (I know, i accidentally deleted a mod i was working on while testing it, and it wouldn’t let me login to my server with the mod until I managed to re-upload it with a new steam id). So, with ONE modder removing a mod from the workshop, you potentially **** off EVERY PLAYER that has played that mod. That type of chain reaction can actually cause ARK to never make it out of early access. They take much of their content out of mods (slanted roofs, baby dinosaurs, other building components, the tranquilizer gun) and a large number of popular unofficial servers have mods (and lets face it, most of us avoid the official ones, because of all the superiority complexes of many players). So unfortunately, one modder can be easily worth 40 or more players.
Imagine if they broke the Aku Shima mod (the most popular mod on ark). It is on at least 132 servers. So lets round that up to 140 to account for their own server and a few not listed. Lets say that they don’t even have 40 users a piece… lets say that they have 25 this way we lowball it. That’s 3,500 players that suddenly can’t play the game on the server they spent a number of hours on that can now near the quadruple digits based on the game age. So one mod can be worth 3,500 players. Maybe some communication is necessary from the ark devs that they’re not doing eh?
Just to confirm SOTF is a Game Mode, It was officially announced by the developers as a Game Mode. Your ignorance won’t prove your point.
That is quote from them on Steam.
I am in a complete agreement with you about the lack of communication its not right and for that I can understand your frustration.
I can perfectly understand why they would delete and clean up the posts on the Steam forums. It’s the wrong place to be posting about the ARK Dev Kit release unless you’re posting about legitimate things to do with the Ark Dev Kit/steam workshop. Why should genuine players/modders who don’t care about the Dev Kit or release date be spammed by the small minority that do. You may claim its unfair that they are shutting you out the Steam forums but I would claim your ignorance towards vanilla players/Active Modders who are trying to post legit threads about the game unfair.
As for your calculations unfortunately they’re bogus. Let’s run with those figures tho… I would wager the ‘3,500’ players did not buy the game just for Aku Shima mod. I would actually go as far as to say I bet hardly a fraction of that purchased it for that mod or mods in general. What those ‘3,500’ players probably think is this mod is a nice edition to the game. If in your scenario the modder got real mad and decided to pull his Aku Shima mod because Wildcard are neglecting this community, I don’t think ‘3,500’ players would stop playing I also don’t think the ‘140’ server will stop hosting a server. Some may stop playing/hosting but that would be a small minority again.
My point is the modding community for this game is not yet the priority but later down the road I believe the modding community will be really popular. You can either quit modding till that time or suck it up and keep venting your frustrations through the correct channels and keep creating great mods for the players that enjoy them.
I still just find the whole argument ridiculous, the Ark team are gods among men when I start to think about how the Hammer editor for Source was literally broken for years pending a simple configuration change to get it working again. Sourcemod has been running on every one of their servers for the last ten years, yet they ruthlessly break it every single patch. We have it good, we have it **** good, and you guys are seriously complaining because it isn’t perfect.
As a programmer, yes blueprints seem off-putting at first, but if you actually stop whining enough to get good with them then pretty much all of those complaints go away. While the Ark devs are a terrible example, if you have a gaggle **** of crossed wires THEN CLEAN IT UP. With re-route nodes, macros, and condensed graphs, you have only yourself to blame if it comes out a mess (Just like with text code). The updates are an issue, but it’s not like a mod cooked on an old version just isn’t going to work. The only thing we are missing from updates is content, which you can live without.
So yes, there is a tide of massive entitlement in this thread.
You are getting angry about not getting everything you want. That’s entitlement.
NO, I’m getting angry about them not doing what they SAID they were going to do, then when asked about it, punishing the people who ask about it and deleting the original post where they said they were going to do it so that noone could quote the dev anymore. Giving us an update, or saying something would have taken two minutes. The number of posts and threads that were deleted and people banned last night took over 2 and a half hours if not more. That’s 2 and a half hours that a dev wasted punishing people who just wanted them to say something that would have taken two minutes, and not to mention that dev was NOT working on the game at the time he was moderating. SO, thats programming time down the drain.
Seriously, we have this in this forum ?
If we are having too much whining, i would suggest the DEVs to just pull the kit out and be like the other majority of games when they released the kit only after 1-2yr of release.
It’s not whining. Theres a huge difference between whining and being legitimately upset about them LYING to your face. Also, did you notice? They locked the patch notes thread.
Clearly because people got ****** that pregnancies were wiped and babies eating like they were blackholes, and were up in arms about it in massive numbers. They knew it was an issue and locked the thread to stop people spamming it about that issue while they fix it(which they have in 220.3).
You seem to be insinuating something other than the obvious?
-WM
Its called Censorship. Something they wouldn’t have had to waste time doing if they had just been honest and spoken to the playerbase.
Thank you for saying this, . I was thinking if I should invest my time in learning to mod ARK for a while, to practice with UE4, but seeing this thread convinced me that my time is better spent in my own projects.
yeah … i was thinking of entering this contest, but seeing how they kept updating waay too often, and you have to work to make it compatible all the time… screw that noise,
also its really obvious they were taking mod content and putting it in the base game (which actually seems kinda cool) … but in a way also seems crappy
oh and they have a line in their contest rules says “you forfeit all moral rights to your mods” … i was told you maintain ownership of your models and textures…
but eeeh… seemed shady…
also whats with them extending the mods deadline?? i havent been around here… lol i googled to see who the winners were but seen that and i was like huh? guess they want more input to take from hehhehh
I don’t think it was necessarily just that… there’s a lot of cash on the line and to be fair they should be sure whoever gets it worked for it. I mean, I wouldn’t award $1k, let alone whatever the first prize is(in addition to it’s other rewards), for a mod that was either half finished or added a few new structures.
The mods that take the top prizes will be maps and TC’s/GameModes.
-WM
Well we can always hope wink wink
I ain’t hopin’ for anything, haha. I’m Australian so I’m barred from entering, which is annoying, but it’s to be expected. Australia get’s locked out of a lot of stuff.
-WM