ARK: Survival Evolved - Catch All

These Beaver's gather lots of wood.

IMAGE(http://i68.tinypic.com/ayx2rb.jpg)

#rimshot

Do we have a GWJ tribe?

If you need something to do...

Phades wrote:

I just wanted to throw out there that I acquired an extra Xbox One and created an Ark server if anyone is interested. I'm planning to keep it up 24/7 and would love to get a good population going.

Gamertag: ServerArk
Server name: ServerArk 24 7

If you have any issues connecting, just trying joining via GamerTag or message me.

hi

Is this still live?

I got the game before the weekend and I want to settle on a server/tribe before I invest too much time.

It was a lot of fun while it lasted, but everyone has moved on to other things and my ARK server has been sitting almost completely idle now for over a month. I've cancelled the recurring subscription and the server will run until April 20th at which point I will archive the world and player files allowing anyone who wishes to continue with that world to do so either in single player or on a server of their own.

Thanks for the server, Elycion! I enjoyed the short time I spent there.

Yes, thank you!
I appreciate you fronting that.

Yep, thanks for running the server!

Thanks for running the server! I owe you a noogie!

I spent a good 40 hours on that server, feeling inadequate at all that Warhound and Deftly had achieved

I didn't realize you were paying for it! Thank you for doing that, it was a lot of fun.

I would like to add my thanks to Elycion and danaere for the server. It was a lot of fun!

Same here guys, thanks!

Really appreciate the time and effort spent on the server, Elycion. While Rowyn and I have drifted off, I don't regret the 900+ hours (wow, Steam, 900? Really? So much time spent taming).

Thanks for hosting a great server Elycion. 912 hours and still playing. I'd love to take over the server and will contact you via pm.

So interesting note Ark just released a free DLC yesterday with a completely new map. I have not played it but also did not hear anything about it before I randomly came across it.

Been tracking the official release of The Center map for a while. Actually had a private server running slightly tweaked vanilla ark with some Co-workers for a while now, we're talking about doing a server reset and running The Center. Anyone interested in joining?
It's going to be password locked with gather rates and taming sped up. Debating adding stacking mod and stargate mod as well.
If there's interest I'll pm server name and password to people.

I'd definitely be interested in popping onto a server to check out the new map. I feel like I'm mostly done with ARK because maintenance and upkeep on critters gets to be too much like work, but I do still get the occasional urge to poke my nose in.

I'd be game.

Has the game's performance improved in any way in recent months? It was just brutal the last time I played it for any length.

Supposedly The Center map is actually optimized better than the vanilla map. Have not actually tried it yet though, just what i heard.

Watching Lathland's let play for the new map, he seems to be running into optimization issues, still.

But, you can pick up dodos and carry them around. This is a game-changer.

I'm going to play around with getting a test run this weekend, see if I can get the mods running. Any requests? I want to keep it as close to vanilla as possible, but there are tweaks I don't mind doing to improve the experience. No fog comes to mind.

As for the optimization issue: ARK is not, and I believe never will be, optimized in the manner you expect from a AAA title running on the Unreal engine. The developers have done numerous patches with improvements, but as far as I've ever been able to see all they really do is manage to keep it running at about the same rate despite additional layers of complexity being added.

As a reference point I'm running it on an i7-5820K with 16GB of RAM and a GTX 980ti. On the new map "The Center" running at 1080p and using the "Epic" preset in-game I average around 40-45 FPS. Lowering the graphic settings will increase the framerate somewhat, but even reducing everything to the absolute minimum will not guarantee you a locked 60FPS. There's definitely a distinct point of diminishing returns when you lower your settings to boost performance and it kicks in at surprisingly high settings.

The game does a lot of disk access and effectively requires an SSD if you want to play without frequent hitches while it loads. This is a bit of a problem as the current install with only the two official mods is 50.2GB and their patch process is horribly clunky with large patches requiring you to have another 40+ GB of free space available on the install drive.

If you can put up with some warts I can unreservedly recommend ARK, but if you're in the crowd that refuses to play at less than 60FPS then you're not going to be happy with it.

Rob_Anybody wrote:

I'm going to play around with getting a test run this weekend, see if I can get the mods running. Any requests? I want to keep it as close to vanilla as possible, but there are tweaks I don't mind doing to improve the experience. No fog comes to mind.

Maybe some stacking Mods, some of the vanilla stack limits a too low.

WizKid wrote:
Rob_Anybody wrote:

I'm going to play around with getting a test run this weekend, see if I can get the mods running. Any requests? I want to keep it as close to vanilla as possible, but there are tweaks I don't mind doing to improve the experience. No fog comes to mind.

Maybe some stacking Mods, some of the vanilla stack limits a too low.

Yeah, Stacking is one I'm going to add. Was trying to get it working on the previous server, but didn't really have time or energy to follow through. It was kind of an afterthought and we had been playing for a while before trying to add it, so maybe with a fresh start it will be easier to get running.

Elycion wrote:

As for the optimization issue: ARK is not, and I believe never will be, optimized in the manner you expect from a AAA title running on the Unreal engine.

No, but when the game makes ARMA look like that AAA Unreal Engine game in comparison, that's a problem.

It's not the CPU or memory requirements that are so hard to understand, but rather how unbelievably poorly the visual performance scales down to less than top-end GPUs.

Would you guys be interested in coordinating a time/date grand opening and recording then uploading to YouTube, then linking here or something?
I watch a lot (a lot) of ark videos and it seems like it would be fun to do something like that as a group. I really don't have any experience recording gameplay videos, though some buddies of mine do it a good bit, and I could hot them up for advice. I imagine it can be a real pain in the butt.