One year development - what happened?

[Nova900]

Come on guys... The last time I played ARK was one and a half year ago. I tried it today again, and what did change? Nothing. Really. Over a year of development and nothing has changed. I mean, yes, of course, there may be new dinos and all that stuff, but I just started the map and can't see anything of that yet. Then again the game still runs terrible despite a more or less modern computer - or it looks terrible if the options are all on low. Everything is bright as the sun and trees flicker because of the upscaled rendering resolution. I've got a Geforce 660 TI - not the newest or fastest, but still quite good.
The last time I played ARK was with a Radeon HD 6870 and even that was more or less the same performance as now - where are all the optimizations you could have / should have done?

[Stryker]

not to chime in here and give anyone a hard time honestly a 650 750 is a good mid tier card its dx 11 and 12 support and is good for a low to mid gaming rig yeah mabe not 4k 5000000 p2 xtr and wont compare to a 10780 blah blah keep in mind the average user spends about 400 on just a base pc not 400- 600 on just a graphics card i myself got my asus gtx 980 for around 4ish used just my 2 cents its also possible to get around 40- 60 fps with a 650 thats what i ran for around 3 years it wasnt as beefy as i have now but these days game devs are so lazy in there coding that we need this level of hardware to compete with consoles actually i just got back into minecraft and notice a huge problem with moving water and lava even with the 980 so idk end rant 650 is a good card for the money dont let people dog you

[Nova900]

You should not trust the steam "hours played" display. Who said I played ARK with this account? Oh, and most of the hours are ARK just being open in the background. I didn't even craft my first item now. ^^
Of course things are not perfect. It's early access as you said. I always compare other early access games with Factorio. That game fulfills everything I wish from early access developers.

Sorry, I don't know where to see the system requirements. According to systemrequirementslab dot com I surpass the system requirements by far. Then again they sound more like a "guide line" instead of a hard limit. I also don't know what exactly should be "passes the system requirements" - can run the game? can run it with 60 FPS on low? On Epic?

But to be honest, the game runs now more or less fine after I used the Extremely low RAM mode. I didn't expect that to be that big of a change. Normally 8 GB are enough for everything and much more, but looks like ARK is the first game I played which needs more with standard settings.

[heroicidiot]

Messaggio originale di Nova900:

You should not trust the steam "hours played" display. Who said I played ARK with this account? Oh, and most of the hours are ARK just being open in the background. I didn't even craft my first item now. ^^
Of course things are not perfect. It's early access as you said. I always compare other early access games with Factorio. That game fulfills everything I wish from early access developers.

Sorry, I don't know where to see the system requirements. According to systemrequirementslab dot com I surpass the system requirements by far. Then again they sound more like a "guide line" instead of a hard limit. I also don't know what exactly should be "passes the system requirements" - can run the game? can run it with 60 FPS on low? On Epic?

But to be honest, the game runs now more or less fine after I used the Extremely low RAM mode. I didn't expect that to be that big of a change. Normally 8 GB are enough for everything and much more, but looks like ARK is the first game I played which needs more with standard settings.

Sys requirements? You mean the info that is on the steam store page for the game? Maybe it's outdated, but it's still something

[Nova900]

Oh, okay. I tried to find it here in the community page, but that wasn't successful.
For ARK:
64-Bit Windows 7 Service Pack 1, or Windows 8
2 GHz Dual-Core 64-bit CPU
4000 MB RAM
DirectX10 Compatible GPU with 1 GB Video RAM

[Danny]

Im pretty sure everyone already knows this but if you put -sm4 and -d3d10 in launch settings, you'll get much better fps. Makes the graphics worse but if you prefer perfomance over graphics, this helps.

[TVD]

Ran like ass plus tax on my 580 on even the lowest settings and lowest resolution even though it could support it. Always got crashes between 20 mins to 20 seconds lol. Since I upgraded to my 1060, ♥♥♥♥ moves much smoother. Still needs way more optimization tho.

[LastPrestige]

Messaggio originale di Nova900:

But to be honest, the game runs now more or less fine after I used the Extremely low RAM mode. I didn't expect that to be that big of a change. Normally 8 GB are enough for everything and much more, but looks like ARK is the first game I played which needs more with standard settings.

You should be able to run it on Low Memory (4GB) as well, it caps it at 4GB RAM usage. I too had the same problem with 8 gigs, but when I switched to low memory mode it ran a lot better.

[Sparkz]

Yeah my point being Nova is its early access and no matter if say one company made a early access game that was near perfect doesn't mean wildcard can or will on top of that I again will say that there's lots that's been added to the game I myself have had issues with the game but these issues have been sorted and I've enjoyed the game. From what I hear the game is soon out of early access. I believe sometime within the next 2 months

[Balmert]

Run like ♥♥♥♥ on a 970 while looking like ♥♥♥♥ one year ago, today it's still the same ... amazing lazy dev milking the community with early access DLC

[heroicidiot]

Messaggio originale di Balmert:

Run like ♥♥♥♥ on a 970 while looking like ♥♥♥♥ one year ago, today it's still the same ... amazing lazy dev milking the community with early access DLC

You haven't even bothered adjusting settings? Even on a 760, it's fine. Unless you have outrageous standards then I feel sorry for you

[thereisonlyjim]

People with 2gig cards complaining the game runs like crap... I play this, and always have, on a 6 year old pc I built on a very tight budget (1gb VRAM life), at medium to low settings, and get playable framerates.

Hearing people complain that their half as old machine with more power gets a less playable experience makes me think your rigs are configured terribly, because, again, runs just fine on my 6year old potato

[DevilishOblivion]

Messaggio originale di fish:

Messaggio originale di 1212:

A 660ti is not a good card, not to dawg on you just a card that is many generations past its prime.

Sure, but it runs bad on a 1070 though.

Runs damn good on my 1070. :D Max settings, no issues, no lag, 55-70 FPS in high density areas.

[Kikinaak]

Ok, a few things here. First off, the complaints are valid. EA means early access, not excuse anything, especially at this price point. Second, adding new content does not somehow deoptimize a game. Thats a myth spouted by fools and fanboys. Content is things like models, textures, and behaviors for new dinos or new building types, etc. Optimizations made now to the engine that displays that content, or to the netcode, are not going to somehow stop working if they add a new dino. In fact doing optimizations now will only benefit new content when it is added as well as make the immediate experience smoother.

I am not badmouthing the game or the devs, I play and enjoy it greatly. But ya theres parts especially in the performance department that are in sore need of attention.

[the unknowable one]

game dev is a delicate process, especially when youre developing a high end game, they have SO MUCH to release and tinker and get right before full release, and have to optimize performance for individual things, each time they update, they dont really have time during the alpha process to optimize the whole thing, once it reaches the end of alpha Im fairly certain they will do a full scale optimization run, you know when they dont have to worry about keeping the players happy with more content, and can take a break from content before getting back to the grind. It's not a cheaply done MMO that took 3 dollars to make.

at this stage if they dont keep the players happy with content to keep them hopeful, there wont be a point in optimizing the game period because no one will play, because they could just go play minecraft starbound or terraria or rust.....ya know any other sandbox world builder.

[TheEvilNoob]

Messaggio originale di Kikinaak:

Ok, a few things here. First off, the complaints are valid. EA means early access, not excuse anything, especially at this price point. Second, adding new content does not somehow deoptimize a game. Thats a myth spouted by fools and fanboys. Content is things like models, textures, and behaviors for new dinos or new building types, etc. Optimizations made now to the engine that displays that content, or to the netcode, are not going to somehow stop working if they add a new dino. In fact doing optimizations now will only benefit new content when it is added as well as make the immediate experience smoother.

Will adding things completely destroy all optimization? No, you're correct about that. Will it effect it? You bet it will. You can't honestly believe that adding to or altering code won't have an effect and the more things that are added and more complex the code the more the impact. That's simple logic. As I said before, it would slow down development to test the code, optimize it, and then have to check to see if the new code needs optimization when you add new stuff. There is a reason why optimization is left until the end of a games development.

They actually have made some noticeable improvements to the optimization already (it was much worse on release), though it has been small, so it is very possible they have already identified these sections that could be optimized.

Messaggio originale di Kikinaak:

I am not badmouthing the game or the devs, I play and enjoy it greatly. But ya theres parts especially in the performance department that are in sore need of attention.

I think we all agree with this. Hopefully they start as soon as possible.