The Law of Murphy

[Tuco]

I tend to use a sentence, here in France where I live among my French compatriots, when annoyed by the usual small things of day-to-day life: I say "Go away Murphy! Take some free time already, will you!?" Because it makes me feel better. In Ark, either on TS or on global, I'm not the only one to say from time to time: "Go away Fog!" or "Go away lag!" or just "Go away night!". You have to give the devs the props for laying a game in which you actually feel the pain of the rain, are actually blinded and affraid to loose your way because of the fog, or scared of loosing eye-sight capital because of the reflection of the sun...

So here you go devs, props for a beautifully crafted, well thought, awesome game.

Thing is, with ARK, Murphy's Law (whose principles establish that 'Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong' - for those who don't know, as they should : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy's_law) has been brought to the next level. Let me tell you my last night on the official server I currently play in...

I log, well aware that our main base has been raided during offline time by some cheap tyrannic bullies for crappy reasons (heck, at least we have reasons on this server, props to the community for those who know) after a beautiful WE irl on the beach coast. I forgot about the 7 or 8 dinos I had, those two 2nd generation high level T-rex adolescent twins that killed any form of social life last week, my baby 167 direwolf that was suppose to be adult by saturday, all the eggs needed to have a confortable rooster, and the recent huge barn that I builded, who wasn't leveled thanks to some common sense from my opponent's side, but still got damaged, as well as of our stacks of metal, silica, cementing paste, opportunely destroyed by our leader while he was solely and helplessly watching the raid... I forgave myself, and I know that I'm gonna have to rebuild the **** out of this game, hence encouraging my demotivated tribemates to do so as much as to reclaim my former power. Dying a couple of times while restuffing the basics, checking several outposts to see what's available to me, asking for some friend's help in the process. All good on Ark.

My priorities: get me a flyer, preferably an Argentavis or two, to be able to tame-tame-tame for me and my tribemates as I am usually the one in charge of taming because Skillz. Well, so-called skillz as you'll read further down.

Since last patch, I experience more unvolontary disconnections than before. Is that a thing? In any case, I go twice through the pain of dying while flying because of that, afraid and stressed out of loosing someone else's bird. But that's just starters.

After the regular unvolontary kills of argents (headshots, anyone? Jeez I miss my journeyman longneck and my darts), eventually (45min) bringing 2 argents to my courtyard, one lvl 72, one lvl 32 for all-around purposes. Put'em asleep, start starving since I don't really care about efficiency. Pulling out relations to get me a landed T-rex to get some prime in the meanwhile. Setting up preserving bins (no more electricity on my planet) full of prime. Finally ready to make it happend: coming back to the courtyard, where I saw the two sleeping beauties 3 min ago with more than enough torpor... Glitched awake somehow, one is nowhere to be seen, the lvl 72 is up around my base flying weirdly (side effects of narcotics much?). Try to put him back to sleep, fail, killed him. 3 hrs ingame already and still no tame... Going back for more (another 45 min) and consequently getting me a decent one, lvl 80, nice colors. Halfway through a direct taming method (prime grinded and injected at all times + cooked prime inside for buffer), raptor gltiches through the courtyard well enclosed fences and kills the bird. Starting to rage, you know, just a little bit. 4 hrs taming only ingame, and still no results.

Finally, putting asleep a lvl 96, decide to not go look for a second one, focusing on making the thing happend. 3 hrs later, almost perfect raw prime tamed, here goes my new bird. Nice colors too. it's 3:30 am, I am considering being proud of myself reluctant to thinking I lost another day of my life and enthousiastically feeling that I accomplished something yet to be defined with my life time. The lvl 119 argent is going to be my vehicle for a well deserved, regained by hard work prosperity (I am playing on official, with settings by default, remember?).

I take the Argent for a spin of leveling up, nothing fancy, just to enjoy my sweated earnings. It has nice stats, I'm confident. Spot right away a cluster**** of T-rex, 2 carnos, bronto and a pulmo, all low level. My favorites... I go at it right away, kill everything, get 3 levels out of it. While pumping up my ride, understand that 2 dimorphodons got ♥♥♥♥♥♥ in the process. Start the pain of killing them with an unpimped speedwise Argent, all going well. They bring friends, among whom 2 mate boosted lvl 112 and lvl 100+ dimos. Suddenly, my whole flak armor goes "Clonk", and I'm naked. I fly away to my base, close, and set the foot down to kill'em with rex while the argent tanks...

But the argent is on neutral, by default, as it's on "follow me". And the dimos are mean little piece of **** that just won't let go if you can't fly quick enough...

And you know how the Argents are when they see dimos. They're like a camper with a mosquito in his tent, they just won't let go untill they found peace. So here they are, all of them starting to climb, and climb, and climb in circles away from my grasp. I'm on my Rex, left with no flyer. Spamming T and Y through my spyglass, and J and U, and then running by foot to the forest, barely seeing the guys, flying for a freefight that was no man's business.

I was looking at the sky, so I didn't understand right away that I was stuck between 2 rocks. While shivering from the aknowledgement that my flyer is probably lost, but still making a mental note of its heading in the sky, I start mining the freaking rock.

Then appear those well know words, all in red on the screen : "You killed yourself", while seeing the familiar sight of my body glitching under the ground and being lost forever. My painfully farmed (no dinos, official server, remember?) metal tools and flak armor. All the regular equipment but the gps... Gone!

Woke up naked, 200m from the place I died, bothered 5 mins to get my stuff before giving up as I should have from the start. Grabbing a friend's flyer while he's AFK without telling him (this is bad) and try to get ahold of my Argent, 15 mins later coming back home, naked, hungry, thirsty, with only my bare hands to cry in.

Eventually loggin, with nothing accomplished either ingame or outgame. The frustration management taken to its limits.
Then I thought about Murphy's Law. It was understated until ARK became a thing.
The game should be renamed: ARK survival, Murphy's Law Evolved.

I don't complain much, but a lot of game mechanics are still... edgy. I am thinking that ARK is very close to EVE:Online, in the sense that you can loose in 2 mins what's taken you hours to grind. That offline pvp is a thing, that either PVP or PVE can ruin your day.
But some mechanics in EVE get you sort of safe from, for example, being disconnected from the Internet. In EVE, your ship warps away as soon as you disconnect (if you managed to be not warp disprupted somehow)... You have no such option in ARK for being able to disconnect right away (also gives some weird defense strategies for PVP so I'm not saying anything here, just thinking out loud). Also, the hitbox glitches. I know it's an early access, so I'm not asking anything, but I'd LOVE to... you know... play the game sometimes fair. Not whining though, all is good in ARK life so far.

In any case, /me thinks that maybe, just maybe (i.e. not sure because "reasons"), I might be done with official for some time. The time invested is soooooooo huge, it makes me wonder how long a teenager an adult can reasonnably be.

This was just another regular day in Ark. Hopefully devs, this was the game you wanted. I know we could use some here and there twicks to make us actually live a life too ;)

C ya ingame.

TL;DR: History of humanity started with writing, then video games kicked in. Try to read sometimes and you'll be part of history.

Tuco Out

Edit: Typos. If you don't hate them, you're not worth anyone's time. And I'm not even native english so forgive my french if I left some ;)

[Tuco]

Enjoying a free bump because of WOT motivations :)

[Green]

We can all feel your pain brother.

[Tuco]

Thanks mate. This story was also to give you some facepalm reading and giggles.

[Deadlystrike]

i ready one senstense then i got hungry and had to go eat..

I read 3 more and got distracted.
Dat wall of text tho
Please summorize plox :D

[Tuco]

I did add a TL;DR at the end ;)

[CicutaLupus]

I can't even imagine. That's... more than just a rough day. I do agree though, Murphy's law does apply very well to this game and it's mechanics. I wish you better luck in the future. Definitely more determined than I am, as I would have probably quit after the raptor glitched through the wall.

[Tuco]

I had indeed better days :) As for determination, well from what I've seen, that's about what it takes to be able to compete on an official server... But also, I am a stubborn latin, you know?

[johnny]

I barely read a quarter of your post, just wanted to say i wish i could speak a second language as well as you speak English. Good job.

[Tuco]

Job + family moving here and there to live made it easy for me! No huge merits there. But thanks anyways (to give some effort in reading this piece ;)!

[Quail]

Je sais ton douleur, nous faisons tous! (Sorry if that didn't make any sense I'm in the process of learning french haha). :)

[Painy]

Nice read guess your just unlucky :D

[Tuco]

Originally posted by Lacking Rhythm:

Je sais ton douleur, nous faisons tous! (Sorry if that didn't make any sense I'm in the process of learning french haha). :)

You'd say : Je comprends ta douleur. Comme nous tous !

[Tuco]

So long story short: That night was sunday night. Yesterday tuesday, I found the freaking bird! He was standing high up in the sky, not too far away from where he took off (right at the vertical of it), but... stuck somehow in the ceiling. He appeared lower but wasn't able to follow as if stuck above the border.

Several attemps to make him follow later, I tried landing on him jumping from my new bird, while a tribemate kept the later on follow to bring it back to me in case I failed. Oh man did I failed. We had fun at start falling with the chutes, then had fun crashing on the floor from the very ceiling border... maybe 20 times in between the two of us.

And then I heard a rumor, saying I should try and tranq him so he falls slowly and swell while asleep. Went back, grabbed by the argent of a friend, and started shooting. At tsome point he told me "you might wanna hold on, he's gonna die. Maybe you can reach his inventory?" Oh man, would have I thought about that earlier. Of course I could. It was 20 HP left and still 3000 torpor to go. But more importantly: I could force feed it narcotics!

Hence we did.
Hence he falled, like a snowflake in winter's sky.

THAT'S HOW I HAD A STRANGE LOVE SENSATION AGAIN, AND BEGIN TO LAUGH AT MURPHY !

Here's a pick of sleeping beauty, perfectly landed in my base by savant manoeuvers.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=543638988

F*** off Murphy, we ain't giving a head about YOUR laws!


Tuco out