1 August

ARK: Survival of the Fittest - Development Kit & Going Forward!

Hello Survivors!

On July 24th 2015, we announced a competitive-battle mod for ARK, called “Survival of the Fittest”!

A lot has changed since that announcement, what first started out as an internal mod side-project, grew into a publicly released Total Conversion, and eventually became its own standalone client - ARK: SotF has seen plenty of changes over the past year and today we’re going to discuss the future of this game mode.

The 2016 Summer Cup

We've just posted our recap on the Summer Cup which you can check out here:

http://steamcommunity.com/games/407530/announcements/detail/868452059603124218

SoTF and its future!

As we look to the future of SotF, we came to a decision: Survival of the Fittest will be brought back internally as part of the ARK: Survival Evolved package. For technical functionality it will still exist as its own application, and everyone who has thus-far played the game will continue to be able to play it without having to own ARK: Survival Evolved, but going forward it will be considered part of the ARK: Survival Evolved product group. There are some key reasons behind this decision, which we believe is the best option for the success of Survival of the Fittest and we’ll go through those points as follows:

Development Kit

The release of the Development Kit is the main reason for bringing back SotF internally. We have been pondering for a while how to release the kit without any restrictions on content and licensing, allowing SotF modders to freely take all the content from Survival Evolved as they wish. We wanted to ensure that modders would have freedom when working with the kit to create the mods that they wanted to see in SotF. This was more important to us than any other reason, and to accomplish this, we had to bring SotF back into the Survival Evolved product. We do not want to place any restrictions on you, this community has provided a lot of feedback in regards to SotF and there are a number of you who have expressed a desire to work on the game mode itself and take it to a new place. We wanted to ensure that you would be able to meet those desires and make SotF into the game you want to see, no limits. Furthermore, we’ll be kicking off a large-scale SotF Mod Contest shortly to help give the SotF creative community a boost to get out there and make cool stuff, stay tuned for details on that! You can download the SotF Development Kit here ( http://arkfiles.com/sotf/ARKDevKitSotF_v177.2.zip -- 50 GB! ) and start uploading your SotF Content to Steam Workshop right now! Feel free to take any and all content you want from Survival Evolved, let’s see some new Dinos in SotF! Tutorials and info on how to create content (Maps, Mods, Map Extensions, and Total Conversions) are available here: https://forums.unrealengine.com/forumdisplay.php?70-ARK-Survival-Evolved

No Free To Play Monetisation

When a game like SotF is made free to play, there are still expenses - this can range from development work, server costs, running of tournaments, prizes and of course the opportunity cost. To ensure that SotF would remain a success and a sound choice, Wildcard would have had to put a lot of resources and time into learning how to become a ‘free to play’ developer. We would have had to learn how to monetize a free game, notoriously through the use of in-app purchases such as skins and other cosmetics. Ultimately, it’s clear this is not who we are, we like to make games, and to make the gameplay fun. We don’t know much about monetization, and quite frankly we aren’t interested in hiring an economics team to take over that process, it is much more in our and your best interest for Wildcard to solely focus on the development of a game. We just aren’t cut out for free to play mechanics. With SotF being part of ARK: Survival Evolved, it’ll be able to draw from Survival Evolved resource pool directly, and enable us to continue operating the title.

Survivor League

July’s Survivor League Final shall be taking place on Saturday, the 6th of August! It will take place at 11:00AM EST where the qualifying survivors across 3 tables will compete to be placed in July’s Survivor League, and earn a prize pool of over $65,000.

You can check out the qualifying Survivor’s here:

https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/survivor-league/

The games shall be hosted on www.twitch.tv/survivtheark and casted by non-other than typeForced! We hope to see you guys tune in for the exciting games!

Survivor League will be continuing throughout August, however due to some major gameplay changes made in the last few days, we will resetting the League’s ELO for August. This means that players current scores will reset and players will need to compete against on the ladder to reclaim their rankings. You can check out the most recent changes by reading our patch-notes thread:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/407530/discussions/0/365163686069351564/

Naughty or Nice

It’s coming back! We’re going to prepare the epic 100v100 ‘Naughty or Nice’ battle-mode as a SotF “Total Conversion”, incorporating all the latest updates made to SotF - it will be open-source so modders can take it further if they wish. We’re hoping to release the TC by the end of August and host a gamers’ Charity Match sometime in September, to which all the qualifying members of August’s Survivors League are invited to participate! We had a lot of good feedback about our last, and there has been a lot of request for when the game mode will be making its reappearance, just to let you know - we’re on it guys! And yes, the developers will compete, and get our butts kicked ;)

TLDR

Right now here’s what we are certain of:

The SotF Development Kit will be released today, without restrictions due to this change and this means that there will be no restrictions on modders.
For this to happen without content license restrictions (take whatever you want from Survival Evolved and put it into SotF!), we’re bringing back SotF Internally into the main-game’s product group again, and it will no longer be a separate “Free to Play” title.
We will continue to support and encourage modders through their developing endeavors to see where they can take SotF. Details on the first SotF Mod Contest will be announced soon!
Survival of the Fittest will be maintained as a playable game mode internally. If there are issues with the game, we will resolve them. If we’re able to make performance updates due to optimisation work done on the main game, SotF will also receive them. Major content upgrades to SotF will be pending further expansion of the team, and the development kit will continue be updated with content from ARK: Survival Evolved (which can be directly copied into SotF by modders).
Console development of SotF (PS4 and Xbox One) will be placed on hold so we can take a step back and see how these changes pan out in the long term, without making any hasty decisions about ARK: SotF.
The 100v100 ‘Naughty or Nice’ event is making a comeback in September!
Summer Cup was a lot of fun - thank you to everyone who attended and all the fans who watched it live from China! Hope you enjoyed it too!
Stay tuned for longer-term announcements about future regional tournaments.

These changes will be taking place immediately. It is very important for us to see how SotF progresses and we want to make sure we’re making the right choices. We understand that these changes are quite big and will impact the future of game, but hope you can understand our reasons to do so and will continue to support the game mode you love. We are very excited to see what the release of the Development Kit will bring to SotF and where creative players will take it -- if you have some balancing or gameplay ideas, or simply want to see more creatures in the game, you can now make them happen!

All the best,

Wildcard Jat and the ARK: Survival of the Fittest Team.

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User reviews:

Recent:

Mixed (454 reviews) - 61% of the 454 user reviews in the last 30 days are positive.

Overall:

Mixed (4,303 reviews) - 56% of the 4,303 user reviews for this game are positive.

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Recently Posted

Posted: 8 August

Takes alot of space and cuases lag to other games

Helpful? Yes No Funny

requires a good pc but its a good game ;)

Garbage. Trash. 10/10.

We'll see how SoTF pans out over course of the next few months. Love it right now though, it's an unofficial hunger games game.. with dinosaurs.

lol i got it for free suck it skrubs

this game is one of the best game i ever played. I hope many people play this game and im telling you guys this game is REALLY GOOD!!! So hurry up and start playing this game.

i play esports because i'm lazy af and all the real sports are ♥♥♥♥

Posted: 7 August

dxh d df hftd h

For newbies, it might be hard and stressful, but as soon as you learn the controls, the game is interestingly and surprisingly fun! I say go for it!

Great Game make swatackeers

Most Helpful Reviews In the past 30 days

alox

5 products in account

1 review

Posted: 12 July

I'm surprised to see the kinds of rating this game is getting, and I feel it deserves much better. Among the bad ratings I've seen, I've seen complaints on the difficulty or techincality come up a lot, so I have a few things to say.

1. Do not try to play unless you are sure or slightly sure your computer can run it. There are many people lowering the overall rating of this game because their computer cannot handle it, which isn't quite fair. IN ADDITION, you may find out that you will STOP DISCONNECTING if you change your graphics to lower settings. WATCH OUT FOR: high ?textures?, high sky, and high mesh level detail settings. TURN THOSE DOWN for very quick results. ALSO, making your window smaller by LOWERING RESOLUTION will add fps.

2. Winning a game is not always a result of who has the best shooting skill. This game is survival, you can win many games just by surving, albeit a lot of survivng is being able to take down other players.

3. The FIRST THREE AND LAST THREE MINUTES are perhaps THE MOST DANGEROUS. Beware.

This game is very fun and competitive! Goodluck m8s

Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny

[AGSMIS]Orion711

18 products in account

Posted: 9 July

If the hunger games had dinosaurs it would like this!

ShortWhat

41 products in account

10 reviews

Posted: 20 July

>enters lobby
>kids screaming in all kinds of languages
>drops out of the ♥♥♥♥ing sky
> people everywhere
>run around having no ♥♥♥♥ing clue what to do
>makes a fire
>I see someone on a ♥♥♥♥ing T-Rex tiding towards me
>die

10/10 would get eaten by a t-rex again

czechmate95

23 products in account

2 reviews

Posted: 28 July

Have you ever imagined what it would it would feel like to jump off one of Gandalf's eagles, use a parachute and begin to lob some 10-15 grenades at a terrifying assortment of Giant monkeys, Stegos, and T-Rexes awaiting below? Neither had I, which is what makes this game so very fun!

But in all seriousness I'll preface this review by saying this is an excellent game that i've thoroughly enjoyed and will continue to enjoy playing, but like any game, it has its pros and cons, and i'll try to point out the aspects of the game here that i've found most enjoyable or sometimes a bit frustrating.

So what's this game about?

As you might have guessed, Ark SOTF isn't your typical survival game (no more zombies, don't worry!), with its emphasis on basic to advanced crafting and the ability to tame dinosaurs to fight by your side, Ark SOFT takes a unique spin on competitive gameplay that resembles a fun and rather difficult mix of Hunger Games, Jurassic Park, and maybe some CoD.

So what are the pros and cons?

pros:
-mostly seamless gameplay:
Even though the game is in early access it runs very much like a completed game and I can honestly say I very rarely
encounter bugs or glitches. It also boasts excellent graphics so long as your computer can run them (mid-grade system requirements).

-balanced strategies:
Though riding a T-Rex can be real fun, I personally prefer to make high end weapons, but the point is that either a person with good tames or a person with good weapons can win a match so long as you have enough luck and skill.

-fun mix of opportunity:
Though its easy to get into a routine and its oftentimes beneficial, the sheer availability of tactics you can employ (with a little bit of forethought) helps make this game more exciting and prevents monotony despite its single map location. Should I tame a big dino and tank my way through the match, or should I have several fast dinos to kill off players? Should I make guns as fast as I can and hunt people or wait it out and get better supplies? Maybe I should build a sniper tower? Maybe I should set some traps? etc etc. This game has a lot of potential strategy and opportunity waiting to be explored and tried out.

Cons:

-Large learning curve:
Yep, sorry guys, if you're new you will die over and over and over again. Its a very fun game and sometimes it can be fun learning the hoops, but this game at its core is largely unforgiving and doesn't care if its your first or fiftieth match. Whether you get one-shotted two minutes into the game while sorting through your inventory, or you think you can swim to the other side of the river with cloth armor, you'll probably learn most aspects of the game the hard way.

-Only one map:
Though it is a large map and there are lots of places to explore and things to do on it, it would be nice to have a bit more variety in terms of the map location(perhaps a different biome from Survival Evolved?)

-irritating ranking system:
Though when you're a low level the ranking system seems to work fine, because it is based off of enemy player scores and what place you get, the game can be pretty dumb and oftentimes seem unfair in the way it rewarded or deducted your score. For example, if I win a game of FFA I will on average go up about 4-6 points, but if I get one-shotted 30 seconds in by a high ranking player I go down about 20 points. This isn't a big deal if you don't care much for leaderboards or pro-tier gameplay, but it can be very frustrating if you do.

All in all though guys, this is a great game and its even free to play, if you're even remotely considering trying this game out I deffinitely recommend it and invite you to try it out for yourself. Just try to learn quick and maybe watch some youtube videos on how the game works to save yourself from some learning curve frustrations.

Anyway hope this review is helpful to you guys and that your T-Rex is the next one to fall to my entourage of grenades !

See ya in the arena guys, and may the odds be ever in your favor . . . unless I'm in your match ;)

Paavo Väyrynen negev

9 products in account

Posted: 11 July

Best Hungergames style game that is out there at the moment. It takes some time to get the hang of it but when you do its really fun!

oi oi

46 products in account

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IndPlay

7 products in account

Posted: 1 August

Made me ♥♥♥

Twitch.tv/ogtboi // BigBoi

63 products in account

Posted: 3 August

I am very suprised with the "Mixed" reviews this game has been getting. Most of the people who do not recommend this game are people who play on macs and laptops. This game is not that pc heavy if you have a decent desktop computer. The game still runs smooth at 30 or 40 frames and looks amazing on Medium textures. People expect a triple A game from Ark SOTF but it is a F2P game... Ark SOTF is the best F2P game there is on steam. ARK Sotf also has Esports where anyone can participate monthly for a prize pool using the elo system the game is implemented with. If you expect to get 200 frames on epic settings with no bugs this game is not for you. But if you want to have fun with your friends and be part of an amazing community around the world this game is for you! Thank you for reading my review and if you are a gamer debating to play this game I highly recommend this game.-BigBoi

Rockette

181 products in account

I do not recommend this game to anyone.

---My review after 607 hrs---

It was a great concept and had a great player base to start but now the game is impossible to get into a server. The wait to get into a server for 4man teams is usually over 30 minutes. Then I get into the issue of communication... well there is none... There is known issues and "features" that have been problems since the game has released and there is still no fix for them. The developers have blantly ignored the playerbase! There is no communication on any of the forums by developers. Players who have been playing the game since release, that have no affilation with Wildcard, have been answering player questions on the forums in an attempt to keep the playerbase up but its a lost cause.

As a player who has played in the competitive scene I can tell you that is also poorly run. The only time change happens to the game is when someone abuses a known issue during one of the tournment games FOR PRIZE MONEY!

But hey I'm just a player with 600hrs in the game what do I know. If you want to play a f2p that is similar to the culling but with dinosaurs this is your game but do not expect this game to last. It is on a steady downward slope and I don't think the brakes can stop it.

Blaze

88 products in account

12 reviews

Posted: 27 July

Do not bother to play this game.

Why? Here's the reason:

The shortest gamemode is Free for All, a total of 25 players in a map a little too big for 25 players, considering 15-20 die in the first 5 minutes. The round lasts 35 minutes and then there's sudden death.

In those 35 minutes, you'll spend 5 running away from the center and getting initial gear, 25 getting your winning condition and 5 coming back before the ring of death kills you. That sounds cool, doesn't it?

Well it isn't.

If you go for dinos, everything is based off on luck. Dinos spawn randomly and with random levels. Regardless of leveling them up or not, a lvl30 rex is probably going to end up at 6k hp and a lvl6 will luckily have 4k hp, so it's random and depends on your luck. You have two options:

An herbivore army which is a thrilling experience, since you outrun every single herbivore in the game easily. You have to tame around 10-15 herbivores and then try getting them to the center. However, the AI is very dumb and most your dinos will end up stuck in trees, rocks and even other dinos, therefore from 15 you'll likely end up with 3 in the center. No, I don't recommend going herbivore army because it’s a headache.
A carnivore dino. This is what everyone does, so the game gets very repetitive. You’ll have to get a Rex or a Spino and spend 25 minutes chomping herbivores to level them up. However, keep in mind that when you increase their HP pool, they don’t get that extra HP. You have to do the most tedious thing in the world: Force feed them meat to heal them. Each meat heals 5hp, therefore you need to click your mouse around 200 times to heal 1000hp. A normal spino has around 700hp when tamed and ends up with around 3000-4000 if you level it up properly, therefore you left click close to 600 times only feeding your dino. Well, enjoy grinding your mouse and developing index finger issues. You could get a macro too, but that might result in a ban. The game wants you to click 600 times to feed a fat dino.

If you don’t go for dinos, then teching it is. You go hide yourself between a few rocks, spend 25 minutes gathering an absurd amount of metal and then barely in the last minute manage to make all your guns and escape the ring of death.

Once you’re back on the center with all your guns, one of these two things will happen: You either shoot a rider and get on his dino or you miss your probably only chance of headshoting him and get eaten. Regardless of the outcome, you’ve spent 25 minutes gathering materials to shoot 1-2 bullets tops.

In addition to how tedious to play the game is once you’ve played 6-7 matches, there are countless bugs everyone knows. You can have a look at the discussion threads. There’s a glitch for using the spear faster, there’s another glitch to make a flying unbreakable tower in the middle…

And some of you might wonder… But… the devs do nothing?
Oh, they do! They launch tournaments monthly. But no, regarding fixing bugs or anything related to that, no they don’t. They don’t care and I understand why. This game is free to play after all, fixing it won’t give them any more money.
They just make tournament after tournament to promote Ark: Survival Evolved which is the one that costs money.

And people know this, that’s why this game has only 400 active users daily from the 3600 with which it started. So yeah, don’t bother to play. There are so few people playing it that it takes 30 mins to find a server now.

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5 August

July Survivor League Championship!

1 August

ARK: Survival of the Fittest - Development Kit & Going Forward!

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