Why is Ark so poorly optimised?

[Sellet]

I've played this game for years. The game still has the same issues as back when I first started. I play single player. I have a good computer. These issues shouldn't be issues. I'm not very technical but I understand enough to know that this game is buggy. The game crashes frequently so I try to 'save' the game as often as I can, in fear of it crashing and losing progress. I wonder what's causing all these bugs.

I just needed to rant. I love the game regardless of all this. I just wish it was better. I really hope these bugs are fixed in Ark 3.

[Teratus]

It's better but still pretty poor.

Optimising games for PC is much harder to do than on consoles since everyone typically runs different hardware, software and drivers etc.

Still there's probably a lot that can still be done to improve the games performance but it's more than likely far more effort to do than is worth the time to do it.
Specially since the game updates fairly often and things get broken all the time because of it.

Mods have to be constantly updated with the game as well, god knows how much time and effort that takes but mad respect to people who still support their mods on ARK after all these years, legends all of them lol.

[Knight Siegfried]

So the issue is, the games coding is extremely inefficient written by inept programmers. The game vastly uses more resources than it justifiably should.
If the game got remastered with solid coding, the performance difference would be night and day.

Then add in lots of people trying to play on higher graphical settings than their system can reliably handle and you've got chaos. Of course, this game with having so much AI and how big the maps are do take a toll on your system, GPU and CPU wise. Increase the graphic settings and your GPU requirements jump up.

Except for reducing your graphical settings or going into the ini and downgrading visuals, optimization is impossible. Essentially the only thing you can do is brute force the game with high end specs.

Ryzen 5 5600x
RTX 3070
32GB DDR4 3600
1440P monitor
2TB NVME SSD

Even with my specs on a mix of ultra/high settings, I see my fps around 100-150 for the majority of the game. The two official genesis maps wrecks my framerate when playing on them where I see a consistant 20-43 fps.

Hell, going from high to ultra shadows is an insane frame rate price. It basically eats 67 frames out of my average for that one setting. I can't imagine how well some of these settings are made.

As another poke at brute forcing, even the 4090 struggles with this game. Playing at 4K maxed settings, you'd see an average 70 fps.

I personally don't understand how the devs even made this game if some high end pc's struggle with it, let alone gpu's then weren't nearly as advanced as they are now.

[CaveDweller]

Originally posted by Sellet:

I just needed to rant. I love the game regardless of all this. I just wish it was better. I really hope these bugs are fixed in Ark 3.

Ark 3? Do you mean Ark 2?

[「」]

Because its old game and they rather making another game. This is only game that makes my PC literally shut down... so wont recommend for you this game at all.. Try PixArk.. game is way more enjoyable then this punch to the face trash :) Mods support exist but really terrible made. Hosting server and game on PC was no problem with any game.. Even Conan Exiles that is hella heavy with mods.. but this game? Literally blackscreen my PC and data getting each time corrupted or lost. big NO to this game. and what i check hosting sites... overpriced with also bad support for modding,slow as hell..

[Knight Siegfried]

Originally posted by 「Succubus」:

Because its old game and they rather making another game. This is only game that makes my PC literally shut down... so wont recommend for you this game at all.. Try PixArk.. game is way more enjoyable then this punch to the face trash :) Mods support exist but really terrible made. Hosting server and game on PC was no problem with any game.. Even Conan Exiles that is hella heavy with mods.. but this game? Literally blackscreen my PC and data getting each time corrupted or lost. big NO to this game. and what i check hosting sites... overpriced with also bad support for modding,slow as hell..

Sounds like you're trying to play this game on some ancient tech that can't handle the game. That or your computer parts quality is shoddy. Power supply can't handle the demand of your pc or the cpu/fans quickly overheating? All of that is liable to shut the PC down.

[margalus]

If the game crashes "pretty frequently" there is something wrong with your computer, it's as simple as that. It's not the game.

[Lori37]

Originally posted by Sellet:

The game crashes frequently

As margalus said: the issues must be with your PC, not the game.... I can play the game without crashing just fine....

[BlackDino]

I tryed Pixark. I thought Pixark was ♥♥♥♥ and was lacking alot that Ark has. Plus theres barely ANY mods on Pixark. They are ether old or abandoned. I would LOVE to enjoy a Pixark. But the failed in so many ways that made it so boring compared to Ark.

[Pisaro]

100 capped FPS here @ 3440x1440. My old 3080 wasnt able to rendering capped/stable 100 FPS. Now the 4090 is. But yeah, in facts ark is optimited like ♥♥♥♥.

[FallenShaw]

While Ark can be improved, I will dare to say there are games out today that are worse than ark in that reguard. Dying Light 2 for example. Yes I know its a new game and Ark is old, however Ark is alot bigger than most game. 500gb game takes alot more optimization than a 50gb one. There is just alot of ♥♥♥♥ to recode.

[Knight Siegfried]

Originally posted by FallenShaw:

While Ark can be improved, I will dare to say there are games out today that are worse than ark in that reguard. Dying Light 2 for example. Yes I know its a new game and Ark is old, however Ark is alot bigger than most game. 500gb game takes alot more optimization than a 50gb one. There is just alot of ♥♥♥♥ to recode.

Well, 500GB's is with ALL official and unofficial maps with some custom mod maps installed. But that's not really the issue, the game will only use data from whatever map you're using and the assets of the base game including any loaded mods.

Depending on the map, performance wildly varies including if you're playing it on Singleplayer, Multiplayer, what map is being used and what mods are being loaded. Generally mods only cause the game to load longer when getting into the map but some, depending on the size and complexity can cause major performance problems. Adding tons of new engrams like S+ and castles, Keeps, and Forts Medieval Architecture mods can worsen your performance, Because of how absurdly inefficient the coding is for this game, will turn opening inventory and crafting menu to a crawl. Or just cause freezing stutters whenever you open your inventory. This ♥♥♥♥ could have been fixed if the devs actually knew what they were doing when they started making the game. Surprisingly, it's a good idea to know how to use a game engine when using it.

Having this game on an HDD and SSD or M.2/NVME is a night and day difference considering the amount of data being constantly read and written.

of course, computer specs and drivers have a huge role to play in this problem so always make sure that's not the problem

[turk0gamer]

Poor optimized, it has bugs from the beginning till alive... dinos spawn behind walls etc. in caves and so on...

[retsam1]

Originally posted by Sellet:

I've played this game for years. The game still has the same issues as back when I first started. I play single player. I have a good computer. These issues shouldn't be issues. I'm not very technical but I understand enough to know that this game is buggy. The game crashes frequently so I try to 'save' the game as often as I can, in fear of it crashing and losing progress. I wonder what's causing all these bugs.

I just needed to rant. I love the game regardless of all this. I just wish it was better. I really hope these bugs are fixed in Ark 3.

1. They've not even finished Ark 2 so jumping to ark 3 as a consideration is a bit silly.

2. Often when people call for optimization, once they actually post the full details of their steam detected system information, use of mods and game settings, and more, it turns out that more often than, the source(s) were user end issues.

That's not to say Ark is perfect, far from it, but it is to say the ones that often make rant threads complaining of optimization/crashes/"got a good comp" etc etc tend to be prone to the reasons being user side.

[william_es]

Originally posted by Knight Siegfried:

So the issue is, the games coding is extremely inefficient written by inept programmers. The game vastly uses more resources than it justifiably should.
If the game got remastered with solid coding, the performance difference would be night and day.

Oh wow. So... when are you starting on a total re-write of the entire codebase? How long do you think that will take? one day, 2 days?

[TheRockFromHell]

Ark does not scale with modern CPUs, it does not use available cores. On my PC (alder lake) it uses two cores only. Now with fear event enabled, it completely freezes for a moment when loading. It locks itself. Fingers crossed for ark 2 doing better.