Ark: Survival Evolved

[Fireblade]

Anyone checked this game out?

It looks pretty fucking tight. It releases today, 6/2/15.

[video=youtube;Jbt3AUbV_so]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbt3AUbV_so[/video]

It's effectively DayZ, without zombies. But Dinosaurs instead. The game looks beautiful.

I've been watching streamers on Twitch play it for the last 4 hours or so today and I have to say that the game looks solid. It's coming out as Early Access but, in all honestly, looks like it is ready for release.

Have to say that I am seriously considering picking this up.

 

[Shilka]

That actually looks pretty good, and with basebuilding too, might be interesting.
I do hope it doesn't involve a lot of grinding, and I hope there's ways to make like dedicated servers or something, as I can already see fellow players being a larger threat then the dinosaurs.... hope it doesn't become like rust etc...
But it certainly looks better then the crappy dino stuff coming out last year... Not very high system requirements either.

 

[Peeble]

Been watching a lot of gameplay of it over the last day and it still needs quite a lot of work until it gets my purchase. A lot of broken gameplay, painful looking UI, bad performance. Just another unfinished survival game to add to the list.

I do hope it doesn't involve a lot of grinding, and I hope there's ways to make like dedicated servers or something, as I can already see fellow players being a larger threat then the dinosaurs.... hope it doesn't become like rust etc... But it certainly looks better then the crappy dino stuff coming out last year... Not very high system requirements either.

It's basically an MMO, you'll have to be leveling up certain skills to be able to tame/attack higher level dinos, things like that.

Here's a quote from one of the devs about performance:

I'm using a 970 and I can hit the top end avging about 24 FPS on a 1080p monitor. Got some things set to low though

Optimization is absolutely horrible at the moment, hopefully it gets better over time.

 

[Fireblade]

Been watching a lot of gameplay of it over the last day and it still needs quite a lot of work until it gets my purchase. A lot of broken gameplay, painful looking UI, bad performance. Just another unfinished survival game to add to the list.

I think that this one will unlike most; actually get finished. They've already got a deal with EA to port the game over to the Xbox One and the PS4. I watched probably 6~ hours of streams yesterday and the game seemed quite solid. Definitly more solid than that Life is Feudal was when it released. Some of these streamers have dumped 100+ hours into the game already and haven't even scratched the surface of what can be done.

The AI seems quite good as well. Was watching a stream yesterday where a guy stole an egg from a triceratops so the triceratops attacked him. He took off running through the forest desperately trying to get away, when suddenly a T-Rex bit the damn triceratops in half. The T-REX's and other predators actively hunt the herbavores.

 

[Produx]

This looks seriously interesting and beautiful.

Would you happen to know if there is or will be any dedicated server software released for this as well ?

edit: found the information, quote from the Steam FAQ

"The game is both online Multi-player (with persistent official and custom player-hosted servers), and with a Local Single-player option as well."

Awesome, I smell a B2O server incoming for this one ;-)

 

[ElektroVodka]

This looks seriously interesting and beautiful.

Would you happen to know if there is or will be any dedicated server software released for this as well ?

edit: found the information, quote from the Steam FAQ

"The game is both online Multi-player (with persistent official and custom player-hosted servers), and with a Local Single-player option as well."

Awesome, I smell a B2O server incoming for this one ;-)

I got offered 30 slot servers for 5€/Mo each so it can probably be ran on a potato.

Might even be able to run it on the B2O dedi with no trouble.

 

[JohnnyK]

It's really unoptimized though, right? Was watching jackfrags' stream for a bit (who has SLI Titans or SLI 980s IIRC) and he maxed out at 30 FPS.

 

[Kitlope]

I'm all for giving this a go but I'm getting a bit tired of buying unfinished alpha's, especially in the survival genre since I have 4 or 5 of them now... and to this day not one is finished. It definitely looks like it could be a lot of fun but the lack of it being optimized is a bit of a deal breaker. Tired of alpha's running like ass on the rig, which as we know is to be expected but kinda heartbreaking nonetheless.

 

[ElektroVodka]

It's really unoptimized though, right? Was watching jackfrags' stream for a bit (who has SLI Titans or SLI 980s IIRC) and he maxed out at 30 FPS.

Yeah it is, steam forums and reddit have tons of complaints about that.
970's at 25fps? Yup

 

[Shilka]

Appearantly the recommended settings for my gtx 660 look like this (and you still get 20 FPS), so I'm going to hold off on this untill some optimization has been (successfully) done...

(click pic for full resolution)

 

[Produx]

Cheers for pointing that out with a great example, Shilka. It will have to stay a bit longer on my wishlist as well because of that.

 

[Shilka]

In their last update the devs posted this:

Finally, regarding performance, it is top priority here for the days ahead. Every day you will see performance gains in the daily updates. Period. Look forward to gains tomorrow, gains Thursday, Friday, and beyond. We have some incredibly talented engineers at Wildcard, and they are not going to rest until every last cpu and gpu cycle is utilized from your computer to the absolute maximum benefit. Get ready, because it's going to be a lot of fun :-D

Still think this looks promising, so I'll keep my eye on this, but currently all I see in the forums is a shitstorm of people with anything less then a GTX 970 complaining that the game is either very poorly performing to the point where it's unplayable, or looks like an 80's console game, or can't get the game started, or can't get the game downloaded to start with.

I'll see what they can do in the upcoming week to solve the most pressing problems before I buy into this one.

Any feedback from people here who already have the game? Steam forums aren't always the best way to get info

 

[Produx]

On the other hand, with the discount there is now (even though it's not that much) it is tempting to buy in. They already have a publishing contract with EA for later versions so to me it feels quite safe.

Yes, I think I just cracked and am going to get it .... I'll let you know later tonight what I'll get with a gtx780 on i7 4770k 3.6ghz with 16gb ddr3.

 

[JohnnyK]

[video=youtube;m8v8nYnewc4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8v8nYnewc4[/video]

 

[Shilka]

Well, the discount is still there untill the 16th, and since devs promised daily performance patches, there's still time to see where it leads before the price goes back up.

 

[Produx]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8v8nYnewc4

thank you for the great after-work entertainment start for tonight, Johnny!

 

[D.O.A.]

installing right now , watched some streamers for a few hours and from what i saw this could turn out to be a nice time sink .

 

[Produx]

Server is online for who bought into it.

It's in the list as BANDOFOTHERSGAMING.COM in the server list, you will need to check the boxes for Unofficial and password protected servers.

The server password is: B2OB2O

Why a pasword? Well there aint enough servers for the community to play on and to avoid having our own server right away saturated I want to keep it for the community only first. DOA also informed me he saw a lot of new spawn killing happening in streams so lets just get that kind of frustration out of the way for the moment. If this would hit on the server would become full public of course.

And please don't let this stop you from sharing the password with friends you want to play with.

 

[Fireblade]

I've got an I7-4790K and a 970 and I was getting 35 FPS on default High settings while streaming at 1080p.

Personally, for an early access game, I don't feel that that is bad. It was definitely very playable. This isn't exactly twitch game play here.

I've got my first 7 hours into the game now and I do have to say that, other than the constant updates taking the servers down [There were 9 updates last night alone, which you could argue is a good thing - Just annoying when you're trying to play] - that the game is definitely worth a $25 investment.

I'm sat here desperately wanting to get off work so that I can go play it. But wait, I can't. BEcause it's Kirsty's fucking birthday. God damnit.

Does anybody want to buy her off of me? I'm selling her for $50. She cleans and is pretty good in the sack. Has this awful habit of popping out children though.

 

[Fireblade]

Appearantly the recommended settings for my gtx 660 look like this (and you still get 20 FPS), so I'm going to hold off on this untill some optimization has been (successfully) done...

(click pic for full resolution)

View attachment 1824

This isn't a very good representation of what to expect. Regardless of settings you see this occasionally. The game has some issue at current occasionally with rendering things at range. You'll be walking towards a tree line and then it will go funky and distorted and then will return to normal as you walk a bit closer. This person took a screenshot of the weird funky distortion. This is not what you're getting or seeing the entire time.