Want to play Ark again, worth upgrading to ascended?

[Greywolf]

I herd they added new building pieces and cosmetics and stuff and the graphics look better?

Worth upgrading or are people mostly sticking with the old game?

[Fluffy_Llama]

really depends on your PC as ASA is very hardware demanding and even high end PCs will struggle to stay about 60-70fps in dense areas of the map

if your GPU has less than 12gb of ram and your CPU is not at least a 12700k or equal AMD i would say stick to ASE in till the long awaited and over due switch from Unreal 5.2 to 5.5 happens and check back then

[ThePoetZiggy]

Originally posted by Fluffy_Llama:

really depends on your PC as ASA is very hardware demanding and even high end PCs will struggle to stay about 60-70fps in dense areas of the map

if your GPU has less than 12gb of ram and your CPU is not at least a 12700k or equal AMD i would say stick to ASE in till the long awaited and over due switch from Unreal 5.2 to 5.5 happens and check back then

Beyond the graphical improvement, there are a few places in maps where a bit more love was given to the amount of resource nodes available, etc. There are more issues with meshing and larger amounts of vegetation, which you will absolutely notice if you are say, trying to tranq a tiny dino like an oviraptor off the back off a large dino, for example, with trees and bushes making tracking for the shot a bit more challenging (not in the good way lol). You can reduce that issue significantly in settings, but it's still a difference. Cryo changes have also been reversed for the most part, and you don't have to be within a certain distance of a fridge anymore, which has freed up some space on a lot of the official maps I play, where people were trying to make forward operating bases for things they missed.

My personal favorite, and correct me if its in ASE, is linked storage. It has about 50 item slots that you can set up with power, and two boxes essentially let you bunk bed to a large metal area, pop out an anky cryo from the linked storage, and get all your metal smelting in a forge, before bunk bedding back to main base. If you know the maps well enough already, or are willing to learn them and plan, linked storage alone can make your progression far faster than many still realize, it's a game changer for solo play especially. There are even robots that will transition smelted ingots into linked storage for you, now.

[xitooner]

Originally posted by Greywolf:

I herd they added new building pieces and cosmetics and stuff and the graphics look better? Worth upgrading or are people mostly sticking with the old game?

Steam concurrency numbers indicate both ASE and ASA have about the same number of players. Neither are going away at the moment. There will always be dissenting opinions, but its pretty clear that from the devs opinion ASA is where new development will be at... and there are plenty of ASA mods now as well. (whether ARK2 is still coming is sort of a mystery at the moment).

The issue here is that its hard to say "buy ASA" when you will be seeing many of the original ASE issues still (ie still not fixed). The devs are keeping with their promise of remaking the original maps available for free... but they are also adding ways in ASA for them to make money via small transactions (ie Bobs tall tales, and an upcoming "new" map that wont be free), plus letting modders make premium mods you would need to pay for.

To be clear; I DONT buy these extras; you dont have to, and having them around doesnt bother me... plus there are sooo many great free mods. But Snail/WC are a business, and as such WILL try and make some money from ASA. Many people are often so offended these things even exist that it turns them off from the game (ie its going in a direction they dont like).

Its gonna be up to you to decide if ASA is worth the money for you.

[Serious]

After playing 2000 hours of ASE and 200 in ASA i would say it's not worth the upgrade.
Many old bugs still exist + new ones, the graphical upgrade is very situational e.g. island looks better in general but aberration lost lots of it's unqiue atmosphere.
Also the animation are just copy paste of ASE. Looks weired when you see state of the art textures and effects but 2000s animation quality.^^
Important settings like FG and Raytracing are hidden and need to be set up via console command. the pathing is horrible, even worse as it was in ASE.

The few good things like a new creatures or the better building system are nice but not that important.
For players with good pc and without ASE → Buy ASA at next sale
For everyone else → Don't buy or wait for very good sale (10€)

[Geawiel]

I have ASE and ASA. I am able to play ASA with solid medium settings and a couple at high, as I built a PC around it and PSVR2 to PC adapter. The game looks gorgeous. I think I have some pics up under my profile. I'll check here in a minute and make some public if I haven't already.

Abberation did suck. My son and I found it way too dark to navigate and we had some graphical issues that required some launch perimeter commands to eliminate. I've seen some threads in various places in which others had the same issues.

We still struggle with greenhouse building parts and metal building parts. Both cause some big issues when there are more than a couple of them in the area. The reflective surfaces also really look like ass when they're used to make a home or any structure of any size. We stick to basic materials and TEK materials.

There are definitely still some carry over bugs from ASE. That said, as others have said, building is better. Garden watering no longer requires running pipes for example. The water head has a range and you can extend that range via water tanks.

My son and I do have the DLC stuff, Bob's and the creatures. If you have the spare cash to blow, go for it. However, they don't really add anything that makes them OP must have things. Even the gene/trait gun thing can be had via a mod that doesn't require Bob's. The battle rigs are bugged as ♥♥♥♥ atm. They're completely unusable for us as they just sit below the ground mesh and are inaccessible.

My opinion is that it is worth the upgrade. That said, wait until a sale. My personal cutoff would be around 40% off with higher end PC. If you have a mid to lower end, I'd wait for 50% or more. You'll spend some time with mid to lower chasing down the right graphics settings.

PC for reference:
AMD Ryzen 9 7900X
64 gig gaming ram
GeForce RTX 4070Ti

Playing on a Nitro server I rented for my son and I to play on. There are TONS of good QOL mods out there.