What an intriguing discovery survivors, can you guess what creature it is?




Survivors across ALL Platforms will be receiving a special Evolution Event perk this weekend! It's already live now and will remain active until Monday the 4th at 12 PM EST. All Official Servers will be undergoing this evolutionary change which includes:

2x Harvesting Rate
2x Taming Rate
2x EXP Rate

-------------

To read the rest of the Community Crunch this week, check out our announcement post on survivetheark!

Keep on surviving!

What an intriguing discovery survivors, can you guess what creature it is?




Survivors across ALL Platforms will be receiving a special Evolution Event perk this weekend! It's already live now and will remain active until Monday the 4th at 12 PM EST. All Official Servers will be undergoing this evolutionary change which includes:

2x Harvesting Rate
2x Taming Rate
2x EXP Rate

-------------

To read the rest of the Community Crunch this week, check out our announcement post on survivetheark!

Keep on surviving!

What an intriguing discovery survivors, can you guess what creature it is?




Haven’t yet explored the island of ARK? Nows your chance to get in as ARK has huge discounts during the Autumn Sale!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/346110/ARK_Survival_Evolved/

http://store.steampowered.com/app/696680/ARK_Survival_Evolved_Season_Pass/

What an intriguing discovery survivors, can you guess what creature it is?




Haven’t yet explored the island of ARK? Nows your chance to get in as ARK has huge discounts during the Autumn Sale!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/346110/ARK_Survival_Evolved/

http://store.steampowered.com/app/696680/ARK_Survival_Evolved_Season_Pass/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9T_uPssVB4

We are excited to announce we have a release date for Aberration: December 12th of this year. 

All of us here at Studio Wildcard have been working diligently to progress through the Aberration workflow in anticipation of getting it into your hands. Aberration will be an ARK experience unlike anything survivors have seen so far. We hope you are all as excited as we are for its release!




A few days ago we announced a big change to the game wherein we would be limiting the use of turrets within a radius on our Official Servers. We have been keeping track of all the feedback, reading all the threads, and we understand that this is an important change. Therefore, we'll be making some modifications to our initial plan in order to deal with the concerns that have arisen, as well as ensure a smoother transition to the new turret system for all players. Here's what's going down:

We are no longer hard-limiting turrets on the 5th of December, that timeline has changed. We still plan to hard-limit them, but it'll be pushed further out now that we'll be introducing a new kind of turret into the mix. Here's the new plan:

PC players can expect the new "Heavy Turret" on the 27th, it will launch with an active server-side turret limit specifically for "Heavy Turrets". We'll take the time to monitor player feedback and our official servers to see if there's anything that we missed, so then we'll have time to consider how to fix and address those concerns. This means that if you're over the visual limit on your regular Auto Turrets, you'll be fine (for now). However, you won't be able to place the Heavy Turrets, unless you're within the limit. We recommend taking advantage of this time to slowly transition your base to using the new Heavy Turrets over the old ones. 

When Aberration releases on the 12th December, it will have the turret hard-limit enabled on that map from the get-go. This means that neither regular Auto Turrets or Heavy Turrets can be placed on Aberration above the limit. After some time -- likely in the latter half of December -- this change will be enabled on the other maps, however, we'll be providing 2 weeks notice beforehand so you can make any adjustments as necessary. The idea is that you can immediately use the Heavy Turrets in the meantime to prepare for the change while ensuring your base remains well-defended.

For those who hadn't seen some of our previous dialogue on the change, you can check out this short blurb post by Senior Technical & Gameplay Designer, Kayd Hendricks (aka TheRightHand). He covers what are our current thought-processes are, as well as shares some information that we had discussed previously.

Turrets 3: The Turret... ening.

So, more stuff to talk about with regards to turrets. It's a party and everyone is invited!

We've had a couple of pow-wows and hammered a few more things into stone, I just want to share them in kind of an official capacity as well as do a round-up of everything you need to know if you're just tuning in:

- We found and identified that super dense clusters of turrets have been causing our servers to literally grind to a halt. In the worst of cases, a base full of turrets was causing a 400-500ms per tick delay on the server. (The entire rest of the game only takes up about 240-250ms in the worst cases. This means the turrets were costing up to twice as much as the entire rest of the game per server tick.
- We're implementing a limit on the number of turrets you can have in a given radius. This radius is 10,000 Unreal Units (Which is about 100 meters). Picture attached shows a 10,000 uu sphere for visualization.
- New BobCorp Automated Laterally Attenuated Nano-Cell Electronic Defense system will be available on the 27th of this month on PC, to allow players to start replacing their existing turrets.
- Heavy Turrets will require normal turrets to craft.
- Heavy Turrets are currently designed to be about 4-5x as powerful as a normal turret.
- Stego Armor Plating is being made much less effective.

The above are things that are guaranteed to be happening when we roll out these turret limiting changes.

Here is stuff that's on our list to test and consider further:

- Veggie Cake balancing.
- Tek Turret needs to remain top-dog turret.
- Is there anything we can further do to lower the cost of each turret to allow us to safely increase the number that players can place.
- Knockback for some/all of the bullet-firing turrets?
- % health damage on tick for Plant Species? (Slow poison? Prevent healing?)
- Throwing explosives from the backs of dinos? 
- Can we further weaponize bees?

We're still reading all of the threads that are up and as we decide we're /definitely/ going to do stuff, I'll write up another post about it. 

Expect the new turret on the 27th, and then all of our intrepid community members can make builds with them and if there's anything that they find that we missed, yay we'll have time to consider how to fix those things as well.

Note: Xbox and PS4 will not be receiving these turret changes until after Aberration has been released.

I know it's not a big post but I figured I'd be consise. 

You can see more details in my other threads:

WHY:

https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/forums/topic/274823-turret-changes-a-technical-talk-about-why/

https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/forums/topic/275129-turrets-2-electric-boogaloo-or-what-are-we-actually-doing/

We'd like to wish all survivors out there a Happy Thanksgiving and hope that have a great weekend! As for our plans, we will not be hosting an event for Thanksgiving this year due to our efforts being focused on Aberration and getting it out in December. We apologise for the lack of event this time of year, we love hosting holiday events, but unfortunately, we just didn't have the time to do so. Though, with Christmas around the corner, you won't have to wait long for a special Christmas themed Holiday Event!




Haven’t yet explored the island of ARK? Nows your chance to get in as ARK has huge discounts during the Autumn Sale!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/346110/ARK_Survival_Evolved/

http://store.steampowered.com/app/696680/ARK_Survival_Evolved_Season_Pass/

That's it for this post guys! As always if you want to keep up with the latest news be sure to follow us on:

Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark
Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark
Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark
Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark

All the best,

Studio Wildcard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9T_uPssVB4

We are excited to announce we have a release date for Aberration: December 12th of this year. 

All of us here at Studio Wildcard have been working diligently to progress through the Aberration workflow in anticipation of getting it into your hands. Aberration will be an ARK experience unlike anything survivors have seen so far. We hope you are all as excited as we are for its release!




A few days ago we announced a big change to the game wherein we would be limiting the use of turrets within a radius on our Official Servers. We have been keeping track of all the feedback, reading all the threads, and we understand that this is an important change. Therefore, we'll be making some modifications to our initial plan in order to deal with the concerns that have arisen, as well as ensure a smoother transition to the new turret system for all players. Here's what's going down:

We are no longer hard-limiting turrets on the 5th of December, that timeline has changed. We still plan to hard-limit them, but it'll be pushed further out now that we'll be introducing a new kind of turret into the mix. Here's the new plan:

PC players can expect the new "Heavy Turret" on the 27th, it will launch with an active server-side turret limit specifically for "Heavy Turrets". We'll take the time to monitor player feedback and our official servers to see if there's anything that we missed, so then we'll have time to consider how to fix and address those concerns. This means that if you're over the visual limit on your regular Auto Turrets, you'll be fine (for now). However, you won't be able to place the Heavy Turrets, unless you're within the limit. We recommend taking advantage of this time to slowly transition your base to using the new Heavy Turrets over the old ones. 

When Aberration releases on the 12th December, it will have the turret hard-limit enabled on that map from the get-go. This means that neither regular Auto Turrets or Heavy Turrets can be placed on Aberration above the limit. After some time -- likely in the latter half of December -- this change will be enabled on the other maps, however, we'll be providing 2 weeks notice beforehand so you can make any adjustments as necessary. The idea is that you can immediately use the Heavy Turrets in the meantime to prepare for the change while ensuring your base remains well-defended.

For those who hadn't seen some of our previous dialogue on the change, you can check out this short blurb post by Senior Technical & Gameplay Designer, Kayd Hendricks (aka TheRightHand). He covers what are our current thought-processes are, as well as shares some information that we had discussed previously.

Turrets 3: The Turret... ening.

So, more stuff to talk about with regards to turrets. It's a party and everyone is invited!

We've had a couple of pow-wows and hammered a few more things into stone, I just want to share them in kind of an official capacity as well as do a round-up of everything you need to know if you're just tuning in:

- We found and identified that super dense clusters of turrets have been causing our servers to literally grind to a halt. In the worst of cases, a base full of turrets was causing a 400-500ms per tick delay on the server. (The entire rest of the game only takes up about 240-250ms in the worst cases. This means the turrets were costing up to twice as much as the entire rest of the game per server tick.
- We're implementing a limit on the number of turrets you can have in a given radius. This radius is 10,000 Unreal Units (Which is about 100 meters). Picture attached shows a 10,000 uu sphere for visualization.
- New BobCorp Automated Laterally Attenuated Nano-Cell Electronic Defense system will be available on the 27th of this month on PC, to allow players to start replacing their existing turrets.
- Heavy Turrets will require normal turrets to craft.
- Heavy Turrets are currently designed to be about 4-5x as powerful as a normal turret.
- Stego Armor Plating is being made much less effective.

The above are things that are guaranteed to be happening when we roll out these turret limiting changes.

Here is stuff that's on our list to test and consider further:

- Veggie Cake balancing.
- Tek Turret needs to remain top-dog turret.
- Is there anything we can further do to lower the cost of each turret to allow us to safely increase the number that players can place.
- Knockback for some/all of the bullet-firing turrets?
- % health damage on tick for Plant Species? (Slow poison? Prevent healing?)
- Throwing explosives from the backs of dinos? 
- Can we further weaponize bees?

We're still reading all of the threads that are up and as we decide we're /definitely/ going to do stuff, I'll write up another post about it. 

Expect the new turret on the 27th, and then all of our intrepid community members can make builds with them and if there's anything that they find that we missed, yay we'll have time to consider how to fix those things as well.

Note: Xbox and PS4 will not be receiving these turret changes until after Aberration has been released.

I know it's not a big post but I figured I'd be consise. 

You can see more details in my other threads:

WHY:

https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/forums/topic/274823-turret-changes-a-technical-talk-about-why/

https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/forums/topic/275129-turrets-2-electric-boogaloo-or-what-are-we-actually-doing/

We'd like to wish all survivors out there a Happy Thanksgiving and hope that have a great weekend! As for our plans, we will not be hosting an event for Thanksgiving this year due to our efforts being focused on Aberration and getting it out in December. We apologise for the lack of event this time of year, we love hosting holiday events, but unfortunately, we just didn't have the time to do so. Though, with Christmas around the corner, you won't have to wait long for a special Christmas themed Holiday Event!




Haven’t yet explored the island of ARK? Nows your chance to get in as ARK has huge discounts during the Autumn Sale!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/346110/ARK_Survival_Evolved/

http://store.steampowered.com/app/696680/ARK_Survival_Evolved_Season_Pass/

That's it for this post guys! As always if you want to keep up with the latest news be sure to follow us on:

Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark
Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark
Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark
Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark

All the best,

Studio Wildcard

What an intriguing discovery survivors, can you guess what creature it is?


Over the past few weeks, we have been carrying out analysis on our Official Servers to see where we can improve server performance and what the biggest difference is currently versus Early Access. Since ARK went retail, we were expecting to see our servers have better performance due to optimisations, better allocation and usage of hardware, and improved DDoS mitigation. What we have learnt is that there has been a dramatic change in how turrets are being used on Official Servers. The fundamental issue is that tribes are not only significantly increasing the number of turrets they use, but reducing the space they occupy, so the server is having to do more calculations in denser areas. In some cases, we've seen an increase of 7x versus the previous server-profiling data we had. It is clear that we need to make a change in regards to how turrets are placed, but we understand that they are an important part meta-game on Official PvP servers and therefore want to give you as much notice as possible.

With the following change, we are expecting a performance increase of 50% on average for our Official Servers (extreme cases up to 300%) and this will have an impact on all maps.

Starting from today on PC (and next week on console), you'll receive an update which indicates the number of turrets you have within 10k units. When you exceed 100 turrets within 10k units, there will be a warning placed on the turret to inform you, so you can make adjustments as necessary. On December the 5th, we will flick a switch on our Official Servers which will disable all turrets that exceed the allocated limit. You have the period from now until then to make any changes you want to avoid your turrets from being turned off. Once the turrets are within the permitted amount, they will function again. This patch will also allow the mounted minigun turret to shoot non-mounted tames, but reduce their range to be the equivalent of the auto turret.

In accordance with this change, we will also be increasing the damage of autoturrets and TEK turrets by 20%, increasing the item slot count of autoturrets by 50% on the 5th of December.

The turret limit will effect: Plant Species X, Autoturrets, and TEK Turrets.

So remember, you'll see the visual change first and will have a couple weeks to prepare for the actual change which prevents turrets from being used over the limit. This is all enabled through a server-setting which can be used in the game.ini:

[/script/shootergame.shootergamemode]
bLimitTurretsInRange=true

TLDR: Turret usage had changed since the game went retail, it has been having a huge negative impact on the server. We will be introducing a limit to how many can be placed within a certain radius on the 5th of December. On PC a patch will be deployed today to inform you of the limit so you can make changes as necessary (and next week on console also). The change affects Plant Species X, Autoturrets, and TEK Turrets. We will also be buffing auto turrets, tek turrets, and minigun turrets.


It's that time of the month where we announce new mods entering the sponsored mod program! We've seen our fair share of maps, total conversions, rebalance, and creature mods but not often do we get to share mods that are tools that benefit other modders. This month we are excited to announce one of those mods, ArkFrame created by ZenRowe.



This isn't the typical mod you might find yourself subscribing to because it doesn't actually contain end-user content. It is essentially a standardization library that modders can use. To most people browsing through the workshop, this wouldn't typically catch their eye. They are more likely to browse through the workshop and find they are already subscribed to it!

Why is this mod important for the program and Ark? It will, in time, create an easier way for people to get into modding by standardizing some of the most common functions.

Here is an example of a mod made using ArkFrame:

Scent Tracker

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gFupEhIhkM
If you're interested in making your mod compatible with ArkFrame or want to start a new project using it, be sure to check out the website and Discord.




Survivors across ALL Platforms will be receiving a special Evolution Event++ perk this weekend! It's already live now and will remain active until Monday the 20th at 12 PM EST. All Official Servers will be undergoing this evolutionary change which includes:

2x Harvesting Rate
2x Taming Rate
2x EXP Rate
2x Maturing
2x Hatching
2x Gestation
2x Faster Mating Interval Rates

-------------

To read the rest of the Community Crunch this week, check out our announcement post on survivetheark!

Keep on surviving!