New expansion or ark 2.

[Neo Blackheart]

So I know it's way to early but after seeing 2 YouTube videos talking about it it got me thinking. Which would be better a new expansion? Or a new game at the same price as an expnsion?

New expansion
Season pass would get it for free
BUT It would be using the same code as the rest of ark in all it's buggy glory. So iss7es in ark that are inbedded into the code would still be there. They would have to rewrite everything to fix most of the issues. This leads to

Ark 2
Would allow the devs now that they know HOW to do it to do it right from the ground up. You have to realize wildcard hasn't had a lot of other experiance. This would fix a lot of performance bugs as well as allow them to remake dinos the way they likely should be made. As well as put in ideas that would best be implemented with a cull rewrite such as using s+ As a template for building design.
Downside would be people would have to likely buy it unless they did something like give it to season pass holders and just charge what an expansion would cost. Even then people would feel like they are getting ripped off even if it's just that price because they feel they deserve it for free.

I know this will likely devolve into people screaming but which do you guys think would be better over all.

Also if you think they should just rewrite all the code for the game as a new patch it would likely require you to all your progress as a full rewrite would likely mess up the way the save files are handled.

[Boomer Voncannon]

A) the season pass got you the first 3 dlc’s for free. It would not get you anything else for free.

B) The rest is predicated on an underlying assumption that the core oroblem is the code and not the people writing it. Personally I would describe WC as a studio long on great concepts and short on execution of those concepts. Execution wise they are not getting better, they are getting worse. Extinction was easily worse in terms of playability upon release than aberration and they had a whole year to learn and get better, plus they’d hired two of their best sponsored map modders full time. Yet they cranked out a broken hot mess so bug ridden it made it difficult to enjoy some great new ideas within it.

C) Based on the info available right now my money is on WC leaving Ark as is and focusing future efforts on Atlas-Ark with pirates instead of dinos.

[Chaser the Tiny Hippo]

I'd personally prefer an Ark II but only if they also greatly enhance their modding tools.
An Ark II would allow them to restart with a better, more experienced group of people including the teams that have worked on Ark and gained experience plus any other experienced people they hire, resulting in a much better game (Imagine an ark with little to no meshing, dinos that never clip through walls, proper ai)
From the perspective of someone who's never worked on game or really any program development, I'd guess that most of the bigger issues like the ones I mentioned haven't been fixed yet just because it'd be so much work that it's simply not worth it and would all but require a complete remaking of the game.
So instead of making a new expansion which would be subject to all the issues Ark has had, I'd prefer a remake of it so that they can make the game perform better and be well optimized from the beginning.
But there's one big issue with an Ark II. In my opinion, which I think is shared by a lot of people, mods are a very important part of Ark. Most people play on unofficial servers, and most unofficial servers use mods. According to battlemetrics, out of the ~54k servers it sees, 27k use structures plus, which is about half of the servers all using one mod. If they stop making big changes to Ark, modding will be easier since they're much less risk of an update breaking a mod, so modding would likely be much more interesting on Ark than it would be on an Ark II unless Ark II makes some kind of major improvements to mod making in some way.

They've probably already started at least preparing for their next piece of work though.

[OofstinGames]

I think Ark 2 would make more sense, the story of this game is kinda wrapped up now. and with Ark 2 they could do the whole Rockwells Revenge storyline across a few more DLC's.

[Natjur]

I would except Ark 2, so they can use a much later version of the Unreal Engine. The session pass is completed. Time to move on and sell version 2 of the game with the latest tech (dx12 etc)

Sure, modders will have to start again, but I am sure they will release a dev kit for Ark 2. So in the end, we all win, and much better base code.

[Neo Blackheart]

And maybe dx12 support

[Jyandalf]

Originally posted by Natjur:

I would except Ark 2, so they can use a much later version of the Unreal Engine. The session pass is completed. Time to move on and sell version 2 of the game

Sure, modders will have to start again, but I am sure they will release a dev kit for Ark 2. So in the end, we all win, and much better base code.

With the changes they have made to the Unreal Engine, I doubt they will just jump on board with a newer version because engine modding/building takes a lot of development time and resources, and it can open new flaws that haven't been anticipated.

Couple that with WildCard's track record of less than stable releases that meant 3 of the key selling features of this DLC were disabled for 2 weeks because their QA resembled a few hours worth of work maximum.

I know they won't do this, but they really need to review their development schedule, do proper project planning, hold off from releasing if they are not 100% sure of a stable launch, and keep updates flowing to the community to explain what might be causing any delays, but on platforms that the communities use, all of them(I don't use Twitter for example). I don't mind minor, or even amusing bugs, but if say an element vein spawns, I don't want it to delete my base

[Cobretti]

Season pass got 3 DLC's for free, that's it buddy. No matter what happens next, we are ALL paying for it.

[Gran]

Originally posted by Natjur:

I would except Ark 2, so they can use a much later version of the Unreal Engine. The session pass is completed. Time to move on and sell version 2 of the game with the latest tech (dx12 etc)

Sure, modders will have to start again, but I am sure they will release a dev kit for Ark 2. So in the end, we all win, and much better base code.

ARK without the ability to mod would have been a total Disaster. We know it, they know it, so yes i agree if they'll make an ARK 2 there will be an Dev Kit (but hopefully they speed up the release of updated Dev Kits then)

[Garrieth]

New Ark DLC / Expansion over a whole new game to sure

[Maltheus]

If they take out time for a sequel, Ark will end up like Minecraft, when they took their post-MS buyout break. They should continue with the DLC and maybe work on a new, maybe alien-taming-oriented game on the side, that's unconnected to Ark, but has similar mechanics.