Jan 21, 2020

ARK: Survival Evolved - complexminded

Love is in the air! We know you love events and we love providing new experiences for ARK survivors. For Valentines Day 5, we'll be introducing new content similar to Winter Wonderland where we saw the introduction of Chibi's.

In addition to existing content you'd expect from past Valentine's Day events, we'll be introducing new content to collect. Our pint-sized chibi friends were such a welcome addition we've decided to reintroduce them for this event! You'll be able to collect the 54 chibi's from the past event, in addition to 5 new chibi pets.

We know you're probably fishing 🐟 for more information on how to get your hands on the new chibi pets, emotes and skins. We'll hook 🎣 you up with the details in due time Similar to the last event, we added new functionality that modders will be able to take advantage of in the future. This advancement expands our item skin functionality to allow support for items like the bow that support multiple ammo types. Simply put: We're able to add skins to more item types now!

We're thrilled to share new emotes, skins, and chibi's with the ARK community for Valentines Day 5 and we'll be sure to post more details as we near closer!

Head over to SurviveTheArk for the full community post including information on the upcoming Legacy PvP closure!

Jan 14, 2020

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ARK: Survival Evolved - complexminded

Patch Notes Round-Up

As we near the launch of Genesis and a new year of ARK content, the current state of the game and the topics that are trending in the community remain essential to us. While we are excited to introduce new content and experiences to ARK survivors, it's important to take a brief moment and recap some significant updates that have made an impact on the current state of the game.

Developers that are working on Live Ops updates have a different priority and focus than that of those working on new content. The main focus of these updates is to ensure that you have an enjoyable and fair playing experience with current game content. As you might imagine, it is a constant process of observing, investigating, adjusting, interacting, updating, reporting, resolving, and repeating the cycle.

Performance, Bugs, Balance, Quality of Life and fixing Exploits are important to us and we know they hold a high priority for you folks too. These updates may not be new news for the well-informed survivor but they may provide insight into the thought process behind the changes. Without further ado, let’s get stuck into what we’ve been up to with recent live game patches:

Performance

Performance is an intrinsic cornerstone of a player's experience. Improving performance is an ongoing process for us that we’ll continue to seek to optimize. Here’s what we’ve worked on in regards to performance recently:

- Changed droppeditem physics to improve server performance. - Added animation staggering system by default to reduce CPU overhead - Applied a one time disabling of replication on all sleeping players on all Official PvE servers. - Fixed a client-side crash related to rendering 3D text - Vastly improved server stability, with various Network Channel threading crashes fixed

Unintended Mechanics / Exploits

Addressing exploits and unintended game mechanics in a meaningful way is crucial to the health of the game on our Official servers. Recently, the team has focused quite heavily on eliminating various methods of exploiting and we’ll continue to hit them as hard and as often as we can!

Many of our recent exploit fixes targeted meshing methods and dupes but there was also some focus on unintended mechanics like MEKs becoming invulnerable and the pretty damn rude Ice Titan breath going through the mesh much to the dismay of its targets, amongst others.

Addressing exploits is an ongoing commitment and we look forward to rolling out more fixes in the near future.

- Unattach all grapple hooks when sitting on a chair. - Disabled climbing pick from attaching to gateframes, charge lanterns, ladders, fence foundations, and railings - Fixed 2 mesh exploits related to creatures. - Fixed 2 mesh exploits related to structures. - Fixed ice titan breath going through the mesh. - Fixed some cases where building structures did not use a bidrectional trace check (allowing certain structures to be placed deep into the mesh). - Fixed a case where a collision check on players wasn't correctly applying thereby allowing them to go enter some meshes. - Fixed an incorrect collision profile which allowed MEKs to collide into and stack on top of one another. - Enforcer can no longer blink onto/or very very near creatures - Pipes can no longer be placed on enemy structures - Fixed an exploit with the snow owl that allowed it to infinitely freeze players - Added additional server-side protection to Explorer Notes to prevent cheaters from acquiring them with hacks - Passengers on creatures will now be ejected if the creature is picked up - Fixed an exploit related to turret damage - Fixed various duping methods

Bugs

What is there to say about bugs? We don’t like them, players don’t like them and they need to be squashed. Along with what we’d consider more run of the mill bug fixes, we’ve addressed some bugs with far reaching implications in regards to MEKS, Managarmrs and Velonasaurs, among other issues. Our players are adept at rooting out bugs and we’ll continue to iterate on your bug reports moving forward.

- Reloading bows from prone TPV no longer gets them stuck - Firing bows while in orbit camera no longer gets them stuck - Firing bows while running no longer gets them stuck - Pipes can no longer be placed on enemy structures - Fixed the enemy build radius check for the fence support - Fixed the whip to properly pickup items that are flat on the ground (previously would miss such items) - Fixed a bug which prevented players entering 'K' cam a second time if they had a weapon/tool in their hand. - Fixed a bug which allowed Velonasaurs to shoot endlessly in turret mode without draining stam - Fixed a collision issue with Velonasaurs - Fixed a network desync related to Velonasaurs - Fixed a client crash related to Velonasaurs - Fixed a client FPS bug related to Velonasaurs - Fixed a bug which allowed MEKs to be invulnerable to various types of damage - Fixed a bug which allowed Managarmrs to use their ice breath underwater/whilst swimming - Fixed a bug which allowed Velonasaurs to shoot endlessly in turret mode without draining stam - Fixed two damage miscalculation bugs with the Managarmr pounce and Velonasaur AOE Needle Spin - Fixed a bug with the Velonasaur's attacks causing it to incorrectly attack the wrong collision group on Paracers, Diplodocus, Brontos, and more creatures. - Items placed on top of water pipes will now respect enemy foundations. - Fixed a bug which would sometimes cause the atmospheric fog to break - Fixed a bug which would cause the Snow owl heat vision to cause other clients FPS to drop when around large bases or a lot of creatures

Quality of Life

As many players will have noticed, we’ve rolled out a significant number of QoL updates recently. The time you spend in-game is valuable to you and is most rewarding when it's not filled with tedium. We prefer your time be spent on the things you enjoy. This is where Quality of Life comes in! These updates have incorporated changes to stack sizes, inventory slots and other miscellaneous tweaks to help make your time on the ARK feel engaging and rewarding. Please continue to let us know the types of QoL changes you’d like to see as we work together to identify what’s important to players. We understand that the ARK Community is diverse with each group holding a different perspective and all of your feedback is valuable to us.

- Dedicated Storage weight reduced from 50 to 20 - Decreased cook time on the industrial grill by 50% - Shortened aberration earthquake duration by ~10% - Shortened Scorched Earth sandstorm duration by ~15% - Lowered gasoline consumption rate by 50% on the following structures: Chemistry Bench Electrical Generator Fabricator Industrial Cooker Industrial Forge Industrial Grill Industrial Grinder. - Modified the stack size on various items: Veggie Cake 5 -> 10 Raw Meat 20 -> 40 Cooked Meat 30 -> 50 Sap 20 -> 30 Fiber 200 -> 300 Thatch 100 -> 200 Organic Polymer 10 -> 20 Vacuum Compartment 100 -> 5 Vacuum Compartment Moonpool 100 -> 5 - Modified the inventory slot size of various items: Industrial forge 60 -> 100 Chemistry Bench 60 -> 100 Fridge 48 -> 80 Industrial Cooker 48 -> 80 Preserving Bin 24 -> 48 Mortar and Pestle 12 -> 24 Refining Forge 8 -> 24 - Made it easier to look at items to pick them up - Improved dropped item placement when dropping items from structures to reduce the chance of them getting stuck - Added “F” alternate activate option on items to pickup all items in a nearby range - Improved third person view offset so that it now positions at the average head height rather than the center of the character’s capsule to improve how it feels when the camera is brushed up against a collision in the world

Game Balance

Balance is an ongoing process and we’ll continue to monitor our servers to see how players are using creatures and items as we consider making balance changes. Healthy balance is achieved by a constant process of small nudges, changes, and tweaks in order to improve the entire ecosystem as it is maintained and honed in response to the needs of the player-base.

It’s no secret the Managarmr and Velonasaur have held the top position in the food chain to dominate the meta since the launch of Extinction.

The Managarmr intrinsically holds loads of utility and that has made it challenging to balance whilst retaining that utility that helps make it the popular dino it is. Our intention was never to make Manas capable of remaining constantly airborne. Granted, its place as the top player killer was partially due to some bugs/unintended mechanics which we also addressed.

Velonasaurs were outputting extremely high DPS. Similar to the Managarmr, bugs are responsible in part for this (we see you, no stamina drain in turret mode and an unexpected scaling to the right click +c attack!). Velos are primarily intended to help in base defenses but they were far stronger in the meta than intended.

That said, our statistics show they’re still two of the most popular creatures which is interesting!

Other balance changes include some steps towards addressing the cliff platform meta, giving Brontos some love, smacking Plant Z a little and tweaking enforcers up after some functional changes we made in order to mitigate a meshing exploit left them looking a little sad.

- Enforcer blink recharge cooldown reduced from 20 seconds to 7 seconds - Enforcer blink range extended from 4000 units to 5000 units - Enforcer can no longer blink onto/or very near creatures - Velonasaurs will now consume stamina whilst in AI-turret mode - Reduced Velonasaur recovery time from 4 seconds to 1 second - Managarmr limited to 3 jumps, 6 strafes, and 1 dash before it has to land - Reduced Managarmr ice-breath exponential damage scaling by approximately 20% - Reduced stun duration on Jellyfish and Eels by 20% Wild eels 7 -> 5.6 Tamed eels 1.5 -> 1.2 Cnidaria 4 -> 3.2 - Reduced Plant Z flash range by 50% - Plant Z Grenades weight reduced from 10 to 5 - Metal Cliff Platforms no longer take 50% less damage from explosive damage - Bronto should no longer be affected by knockback - MEK pistol Damage reduced by 10% - Fixed the enemy build radius check for the fence support

Content

The whole team has a lot of fun conceptualizing and implementing events and event-related content for our community to enjoy. The end of 2019 saw a return of our Turkey Trial Event and 365,085 player deaths from a well-known culprit. Shortly after, we released Winter Wonderland and introduced the adorably dorky chibi pets. Last year you indicated that events were important and listed several things you’d like to see. Because of this, we took some time to invest in events and make them more memorable for you. We get a kick out of the pics and art you folks share of your events skins and chibi collections, thank you for including us in your holiday adventures!

As always, keep your feedback coming, whether we are interacting directly or reading and observing, we pay attention to, and value, your communication with us.

EVO Event

Survivors on all platforms will be receiving a special Evolution Event perk this weekend! It will be active from Friday the 17th of Jan at 1 PM EST until Monday the 20th of Jan at 3 PM EST. All Official Servers across each platform will be undergoing this evolutionary change which includes:

2x Harvesting Rates
2x Taming Rates
2x EXP Rates

That wraps up this Community Crunch, our roundup of what we’ve been up to lately and a little insight into our process. For a more in-depth look at all of our recent patches, you can view full notes in our forums

Dec 17, 2019

Winter Wonderland 4 is Live!

ARK: Survival Evolved - complexminded

Winter Wonderland will be returning for the fourth time on Tuesday with all new presents for ARK survivors. The winter-themed holiday event begins tomorrow at 10am PST for PC, XBOX, and PS4 and will last until Tuesday, January 7th. All maps will receive Winter Wonderland and all its content including RaptorClaus and GachaClaus, however, only The Island will have a visual winter theme.

One of our most notable helpers, RaptorClaus, will be back to drop off holiday gifts filled with loot, event items, mistletoe, and lumps of coal for all those naughty survivors. You'll be able to catch RaptorClaus flying across the skies at midnight (game time) on all maps.

GachaClaus is also returning to help RaptorClaus spread the holiday cheer! GachaClaus will be roaming all maps in holiday garb and sporting holiday-themed colors. He will be accepting your coal and in exchange will gift you holiday-themed items, or you can trade-in your mistletoe and coal for a chance at event items. weapons, armor and a brand new event item, Chibis!

While Winter Wonderland is active, you'll have a chance to collect over 50 ARK chibi pets. ARK chibi pets are cute miniaturized versions of the creatures you have become familiar with in your travels across the ARK universe. Chibi's pets can be leveled up by killing specific alpha creatures and in return, you'll be granted additional player levels . Some chibi pets may be harder to find so you'll have to visit GachaClaus and RaptorClaus to find all the chibi pets! Can you collect them all?

Check out the full event details on SurviveTheArk

Dec 16, 2019

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Dec 9, 2019

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Dec 2, 2019

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Nov 25, 2019

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Image credit

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Nov 18, 2019

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Nov 4, 2019

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Mysterious Mysteries: Introducing ????

How perplexing, who can guess what this might be?

ExtraLife 2019 Recap

We at Studio Wildcard would like to give a sincere thanks to the community for participating in our latest 24 hour ExtraLife charity event. With the help of our community and ExtraLife team, we raised over $90,906.20 and beat our highest amount raised in 2018 at $76,630.27! We couldn't have done this without the help of our generous community, our amazing sponsors, and our dedicated community who signed up to join our team. We gave away over $10K in prizes with items from Discord, AMD, Alienware, season pass keys, and more!

As with prior ExtraLife events, we take this as an opportunity to share sneak peeks at upcoming content. In true tradition, we shared video and visuals from the upcoming Genesis DLC. We're excited to take you on a new adventure in Genesis and look forward to sharing more unseen content. If you missed the event on Saturday and want a sneak peek of Genesis, we've created a clip of a recap on Twitch. This clip includes the videos and concept art of all the Genesis content that was shared during the event.

ARK: Genesis Reveals

ARK: Fishing Net Item Teaser

ARK: Cruise Missile Weapon Teaser

ARK: TEK Shoulder Cannon Weapon Teaser

ARK: Magmasaur Creature Teaser

ARK: Bloodstalker Creature Teaser

ARK: Lunar Biome Environment Teaser

ExtraLife 2019 Charity Facts

Team Fundraising Total (as of this writing): $90,906.20 -Up from Last Year’s: $76,630.27 Team Size: 125 -Up from 70 last year Overall Participant Rank: 5 out of 47769 -Up from Rank 14 out of 48101 Participant Earnings: $57,422.57 -Up from Last Year’s: $45,183.27 Overall Team Rank: 6 out of 4954 -Up from Rank 11 out of 5137 Average Donation: $57.28 -Up from Last Year: $42.43 Largest Total Donation Sum (Top Donator) : $3,106 from Acidic -Up from Last Year: $2,500 Total Team Giveaways (excluding keys and vouchers): 33 -Up from Last Year: 11 Top 10 Team Donations: Studio Wildcard - $57,422.57 Burke Black - $6,063.50 Syntac - $4,238.92 Death & Taxes (ATLAS NA PVP) - $3,634 DarksideRP - $3,614 N3 (Exoleras) - $3,339.72 Belle - $2,049.99 Shockist - $1,505.01 Drewlbucket - $1,500 SvalaGaming - $910 Largest Community Donation: $1,337 from Acidic Scoville Units consumed of hot stuff: 31,081,600 A Jalapeno Pepper is about 2,500 - 8,000 Scoville

During the stream, we also played a few ARK mods you might be interested in. For those who wanted to know more about them, we've included links to the mods and a short description below.

Poker After Ark

Poker After Ark offers the ability to play NoLimit Hold'em Poker with up to nine players at the same table. There are four different tables to play on. - PokerTable FullRing (9Max) - PokerTable Shorthanded (6Max) - PokerTable Ramshackle (4Max) - PokerTable HeadsUp (2Max) At least two players need to sit at a table to start the game.

The Hunt

Hunt In hunt mode, one person plays as a terrible monster, and other persons (hunters) try to defeat the monster and prevent it from evolving into an adult beast. Hunters have several types of weapons and traps, including flamethrowers and rifles. The monster has invisibility, a special vision that allows you to detect living beings. Do not think that you can escape from it on the height - a monster can climb anywhere. Survive. In this mode, the goal of the survivors is to run away from the monster by opening the gates that are powered by generators. Generators appear in random places on the map and their number depends on the number of survivors. Power the generators with energy cells to open the gate and escape.

ARK Arena
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__Q9-0X3Jnc

This mod contains 4 fun game modes which will allow you to experience the full depth of Ark PvP without the grinding

We also want to thank our moderators in the chat for helping manage the event, our sponsors, and all our Studio Wildcard survivors that were behind the scenes making the event and reveals possible! We're looking forward to ExtraLife 2020 and if you want to find out more about ExtraLife and how to get involved, visit the ExtraLife website!