It's been a joy to watch the community participate in TSOTF matches this past week! We've seen several nail-biting matches and clever uses of the new mechanics that TSOTF provides. It is a memorable experience for us to watch these high-intensity matches play out on a grand scale. Who’d imagine we’d see little dilos, monkeys, and small creatures being mind-controlled at end-game!? We'd also like to give a nod to the ARK content creation community for keeping our screens full of nonstop entertainment.

Since the original launch on Friday, Dec 23rd, balance changes have been made to several creatures including Thylacoleo, Rhino, Triceratops, Carcharodontosaurus, and Dragon. Changes have also been made to C4, fire/flame weapons, and bosses in the game. Several quality-of-life improvements have been added such as keybinds, total match time remaining on the HUD, and a confirmation prompt for converting to tokens. A parachute has been added as a lootable item and some optimizations have been made to the mini map, compass, on-screen text, and in-world POI UI/HUDs.

The patch notes thread contains the latest changes and updates for TSOTF.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/407530/ARK_The_Survival_Of_The_Fittest/

We are excited to announce that ARK: The Survival of the Fittest prototype is now available on Steam!



‘ARK: The Survival of the Fittest’ is a prototype spin-off of ARK: Survival Evolved, pitting up to 60 combatants against each other in a fast-paced, action-packed struggle for survival, where players are ultimately pushed into an epic final showdown leading their Dinosaur Armies into battle. ARK TSOTF is the only Battle Royale that focuses on large-scale creature-army confrontations, combined with a unique Real Time Strategy overlay. By using tactics and strategy to assemble a fighting-force of history’s most powerful primeval creatures, only one tribe will survive!

Form your tribe and fight in the ultimate battle of Dino Survival! Designed for intense competition and fast-paced dino action, survivors begin their match in a TEK-imbued sky lobby to tribe up. When the battle begins, they’ll fly towards an island aboard a giant Quetzal before ejecting and gliding towards their chosen starting area. Do competitors dash for drops and fight it out? Do they run into the jungle and hide, search for creatures to tame, and rapidly build their Dino Army, or do they die to a pack of curious Compys? Make use of the birds-eye-view mode, which allows you more effectively Command-&-Control your army of dinosaurs, directly possess individual upgradeable creatures, and issue commands to your team as the ultimate strategist. This unique RTS-style experience is available in-life and also after-death! Avoid the continually shrinking and dynamic “ring of death” that forces contestants ever closer together over time and become the last tribe standing. The hunt is on!



Please note: this version is currently only a prototype to test out the new gameplay and features – it is not yet a fully-featured competitive game. Nevertheless, we encourage all survivors to play and provide us feedback to help further develop and grow TSOTF!

While the core goal of The Survival of the Fittest remains the same, we’ve gone back to the drawing board and introduced a significant number of technical/quality of life/balance changes to the game mode that differs from ARK: Survival Evolved and the original version of Survival of the Fittest. These changes aim to make the experience more streamlined and accessible, eliminating the complex aspects of crafting & the steep learning curve, and empowering players to quickly form their Dino Armies and get to the creature-action faster.

• ARK re-designed from the ground up, focusing on fast-paced gameplay and intense combat around large-scale creature battles
  
• A whopping 88 dinosaurs and creatures at launch!
  
• A simplified version of The Island from ARK: Survival Evolved
  
• Solo and Tribe based game modes
  
• Overhaul UI/UX Experience to communicate only what is essential and gamepad friendly.
  
• Inventory Management has been completely removed for a simpler and quicker gameplay experience.
  
• Looting-focused design - Harvesting has been removed and replaced with tier-based supply crates where items are rewarded to all members of your tribe or killing dinos for your own additional resources.
  
• Weapons and armor have been modified and rebalanced for the ultimate fast pace experience and uncomplicated player progression.
  
• New timing system: kill creatures for tokens and then spend those tokens on taming new wilds or stealing downed tames from your enemies!
  
• Commander Mode. A birds-eye-view mode that can be entered at any time of the game, allowing you to control your army of dinosaurs (RTS style) more effectively, directly possess individual creatures within your arsenal, and issue commands to your team as the ultimate strategist (including an ally-driven fog of war). Thus after a player has died, they can still participate in the match as a commander and continue to control and possess the team’s Dinosaur – they can continue to play and benefit their team! A team is only fully defeated once they have had all their Players AND their Dinosaurs destroyed.
  
• Dino Tier System - Dinos are rewarded for their kills with EXP to advance them to a new tier providing them with fixed statistical benefits and eliminating dino-level RNG.
  
• Dynamic “ring of death” unique to each round enabling emergent gameplay and unpredictable advantages
  
• An intelligent Pinging System to help communicate within teams
  
• Custom-Painted “War Banners” enable Tribes to show off their team spirit on Flags across their army of Dinosaurs!
  
• Summon bosses of the ARK to strengthen your arsenal in this ultimate Dino Army experience
  
• A custom live-orchestrated soundtrack was written by award-winning composer Gareth Coker of Ori and the Blind Forest and ARK: The Animated Series.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/407530/ARK_Survival_Of_The_Fittest/

As always, we’re looking forward to seeing your community-created content, collecting your feedback, and participating in the action as well! With fast-paced gameplay and intense combat focused on large-scale creature battles, The Survival of the Fittest is the ultimate test of skill and strategy! We’ll see you out there on its primal battlefield!

Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark
Discord: discord.com/invite/playark
Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark
Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark
Twitch: twitch.tv/survivetheark
Steam: steamcommunity.com/app/346110
Youtube: youtube.com/survivetheark
Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark
Official Wiki: ark.wiki.gg

The ARK: Survival of the Fittest All Stars plus Naughty & Nice matches will take place from 11 am EST to 3 pm EST tomorrow, Saturday the 17th December 2016!

The final games will be shout-casted by typeForced! We invite all ARK fans to come watch the epic battles at that time on our Twitch channel:

https://www.twitch.tv/survivetheark

To those competing: may fortune smile upon you, brave Survivors!

The ARK: Survival of the Fittest All Stars plus Naughty & Nice matches will take place from 11 am EST to 3 pm EST tomorrow, Saturday the 17th December 2016!

The final games will be shout-casted by typeForced! We invite all ARK fans to come watch the epic battles at that time on our Twitch channel:

https://www.twitch.tv/survivetheark

To those competing: may fortune smile upon you, brave Survivors!

ARK: Survival of the Fittest initially started as the original Total Conversion for ARK: Survival Evolved. It’s a game mode which puts places in a battle arena where they fight to the death. Since it’s inception in August 2015, it has undergone a lot of changes.

However, we are officially announce the hiatus of ARK: Survival of the Fittest. This means that there will be a halt in active development for the game mode whilst we consider our options for the game’s long-term direction. This also means that Survivor League will no longer run, for now. Please keep in mind that this may not be permanent, and there is active discussion surrounding the game mode’s future, including the possibility of a console port and development continuing, but for now we wanted to inform you that we would not be working on it plus no longer supporting it through competitive tournaments. The Official servers will remain online for the time being.

We understand that this may come as a disappointment to a number of you, Survival of the Fittest was a project we do love, but unfortunately, for now, it’s just not possible for us to scale up work on the title while also providing the necessary attention to ARK: Survival Evolved. However, we would like to give it a proper send-off: this winter we will be hosting two special matches to celebrate the game mode, as well as all who played it.

On Saturday the 17th of December at 11AM EST we would like to cordially invite the best SotF players to take part in an “All-Stars” 4-player-tribe game. The players will be invited based on their previous placements and accolades in Survivor League. This will be a standard 4-player match with the same settings as the October League, except the match timer will be scaled for 1.5 hours. All participants will be provided with a 20$ Steam Gift card, and the winning tribe will each receive a bonus 100$ Steam Gift card for their success! Following that match, we would like to host a final ~200-player Naughty vs Nice (to take place on The Island SotF Map) where the winning tribe’s players will receive a 50$ Steam Gift card (all hundred of them!).

In January, we will also release the Scorched Earth SotF source to the Survival of the Fittest Development Kit. The map environment itself is complete, however enterprising modders would need to add the dino-spawns, as well as make any other changes that they themselves deem necessary. We will also ensure all Survivors who have won over 200 SotF games in a set competitive game mode receive their Bionic Giga skin in ARK: Survival Evolved v253. Sorry, it took so long - we’re still waiting for our functionality from Valve but have managed to create our own workaround!

We’ll keep you informed should plans on SotF change next year, as we are still sourcing potential ways to give the game a substantial development outlook.

ARK: Survival of the Fittest initially started as the original Total Conversion for ARK: Survival Evolved. It’s a game mode which puts places in a battle arena where they fight to the death. Since it’s inception in August 2015, it has undergone a lot of changes.

However, we are officially announce the hiatus of ARK: Survival of the Fittest. This means that there will be a halt in active development for the game mode whilst we consider our options for the game’s long-term direction. This also means that Survivor League will no longer run, for now. Please keep in mind that this may not be permanent, and there is active discussion surrounding the game mode’s future, including the possibility of a console port and development continuing, but for now we wanted to inform you that we would not be working on it plus no longer supporting it through competitive tournaments. The Official servers will remain online for the time being.

We understand that this may come as a disappointment to a number of you, Survival of the Fittest was a project we do love, but unfortunately, for now, it’s just not possible for us to scale up work on the title while also providing the necessary attention to ARK: Survival Evolved. However, we would like to give it a proper send-off: this winter we will be hosting two special matches to celebrate the game mode, as well as all who played it.

On Saturday the 17th of December at 11AM EST we would like to cordially invite the best SotF players to take part in an “All-Stars” 4-player-tribe game. The players will be invited based on their previous placements and accolades in Survivor League. This will be a standard 4-player match with the same settings as the October League, except the match timer will be scaled for 1.5 hours. All participants will be provided with a 20$ Steam Gift card, and the winning tribe will each receive a bonus 100$ Steam Gift card for their success! Following that match, we would like to host a final ~200-player Naughty vs Nice (to take place on The Island SotF Map) where the winning tribe’s players will receive a 50$ Steam Gift card (all hundred of them!).

In January, we will also release the Scorched Earth SotF source to the Survival of the Fittest Development Kit. The map environment itself is complete, however enterprising modders would need to add the dino-spawns, as well as make any other changes that they themselves deem necessary. We will also ensure all Survivors who have won over 200 SotF games in a set competitive game mode receive their Bionic Giga skin in ARK: Survival Evolved v253. Sorry, it took so long - we’re still waiting for our functionality from Valve but have managed to create our own workaround!

We’ll keep you informed should plans on SotF change next year, as we are still sourcing potential ways to give the game a substantial development outlook.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=656385516

The ARK: Survival of the Fittest October Survivor League Championship matches will take place from 11 am EST to 2 pm EST on Saturday, 19th of November, with a bounty of more than $65,000 in prizes to the winners!

The Survivors who have qualified for the event are listed here:

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

Over the coming days you will receive a steam invite to a special group, join the group as that's what we'll be using to communicate with you during the tournament. The invite will be coming from:

http://steamcommunity.com/id/SoTFLeague

The championship games will be shoutcasted by typeForced! We invite all ARK fans, and the newly curious, to come watch the epic battles at that time on our Twitch channel: www.twitch.tv/survivetheark !

During this months qualifiers there were several Survivors that were shown to be teaming in order to gain an unfair advantage over other players. Because of this, the following players have been removed from the leaderboard and will not be permitted to play in the championship games this month:

76561198251209990
76561198259556029
76561198262390908
76561198309734241
76561198282006651
76561198161377079

To those competing: may fortune smile upon you, brave Survivors! And may the fittest survivor be victorious! Hope we have an awesome Championship and get to see some great games!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=656385516

The ARK: Survival of the Fittest October Survivor League Championship matches will take place from 11 am EST to 2 pm EST on Saturday, 19th of November, with a bounty of more than $65,000 in prizes to the winners!

The Survivors who have qualified for the event are listed here:

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

Over the coming days you will receive a steam invite to a special group, join the group as that's what we'll be using to communicate with you during the tournament. The invite will be coming from:

http://steamcommunity.com/id/SoTFLeague

The championship games will be shoutcasted by typeForced! We invite all ARK fans, and the newly curious, to come watch the epic battles at that time on our Twitch channel: www.twitch.tv/survivetheark !

During this months qualifiers there were several Survivors that were shown to be teaming in order to gain an unfair advantage over other players. Because of this, the following players have been removed from the leaderboard and will not be permitted to play in the championship games this month:

76561198251209990
76561198259556029
76561198262390908
76561198309734241
76561198282006651
76561198161377079

To those competing: may fortune smile upon you, brave Survivors! And may the fittest survivor be victorious! Hope we have an awesome Championship and get to see some great games!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=656385516


Hello again, Survivors!

Today we are announcing that the October Survivor League qualifiers has begun. The scores from previous have been reset due to changes made in the most recent update possibly affecting scores. However we hope this reset will give all players new and old a chance at the top this month.

The qualifying period will run for 28 days and end on the 14th of November. And the end of these 28 days, the top placing competitors will participate in the Championship games.

The October Survivor League Championships will be played and broadcast live on Twitch on Saturday, November the 19th.

In case you missed it, the winners for September were announced in our previous announcement, here:
http://steamcommunity.com/games/407530/announcements/detail/871836532999279494
And if you're new to ARK: Survival of the Fittest and would like more information on our Survivor League:
http://steamcommunity.com/games/407530/announcements/detail/868440796176273740
May the odds be ever in your favor this month, Survivors!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=756175437


To celebrate the upcoming release of ARK v248 on ARK: Survival Evolved - Scorched Earth is now on sale for 25% off on Steam!

If you haven't purchased this Expansion Pack for Survival Evolved, now is a great time to pick up your copy.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/512540/
Get it while it's hot! ;)

Until next time, Survivors!

Much love,
Wildcard Jen and the ARK: Survival of the Fittest Team!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=656385516


Hello again, Survivors!

Today we are announcing that the October Survivor League qualifiers has begun. The scores from previous have been reset due to changes made in the most recent update possibly affecting scores. However we hope this reset will give all players new and old a chance at the top this month.

The qualifying period will run for 28 days and end on the 14th of November. And the end of these 28 days, the top placing competitors will participate in the Championship games.

The October Survivor League Championships will be played and broadcast live on Twitch on Saturday, November the 19th.

In case you missed it, the winners for September were announced in our previous announcement, here:
http://steamcommunity.com/games/407530/announcements/detail/871836532999279494
And if you're new to ARK: Survival of the Fittest and would like more information on our Survivor League:
http://steamcommunity.com/games/407530/announcements/detail/868440796176273740
May the odds be ever in your favor this month, Survivors!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=756175437


To celebrate the upcoming release of ARK v248 on ARK: Survival Evolved - Scorched Earth is now on sale for 25% off on Steam!

If you haven't purchased this Expansion Pack for Survival Evolved, now is a great time to pick up your copy.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/512540/
Get it while it's hot! ;)

Until next time, Survivors!

Much love,
Wildcard Jen and the ARK: Survival of the Fittest Team!