Hey Survivors! Welcome to the latest edition of the Community Crunch and ARK Digest!

New Record 140 Player No Tame Servers!

That's right, as of today we have officially launched an Official ARK PC server which supports up to 140 Players concurrently. We were able to achieve this as a result of some server-side optimisation, and have been running the change on our Experimental No Tame servers. Over the weekend, we'll be rolling out the improvements network wide to our Official PC servers and shortly thereafter they will arrive on console alongside the major update with the latest content.

For those interested in our latest experiment, here's the low down: We've just launched some new experimental Official Servers on PC! These are a bit different to our standard servers as they do not allow players to tame, ride, or breed creatures. ARK has a lot of core survival elements to it, and we wanted to see how players would find playing the game without the help of their trusty tames. Of course, this doesn't mean we're moving to a non-dino focused environment, it's just another customisation we've introduced for everyone So give it a go, let us know what you think!

Features

140 Players

No Taming

Boosted Harvesting and EXP Rates! (2x rates of normal -- so with the current event, it's pretty much 6x OLD-ARK!)

Titanosaur has been removed

Auto Turrets have been removed

Difficulty Level is currently set to 2.0

Tribes are limited to 10 players

Isolated Cluster

50% Higher Base Weight and 50% increase per level too

No Alliances

Decreased Movement Speed Stat

Increased Server Side Optimisation to support more players!

If you'd like to try out the server for yourself and give us some feedback, just search for "Experiment" in your server filter. You'll see 5 140 Player Servers; two The Islands, two The Centers and one Scorched Earth on their own isolated cluster. Keep in mind these servers are experimental and will have some iteration done to them over the course of their existence. If it goes well, we'll keep em permanent and we'll bring them to console too!

ARK: Evolution Event Weekend!

Survivors across ALL Platforms will be receiving a special Evolution Event perk this weekend! It's already live now and will remain active until Monday the 6th at 12PM EST. All Official Servers will be undergoing this evolutionary change which includes:

1.5x Harvesting Rate

1.5x Taming Rate

1.5x EXP Rate

Reminder: this 1.5x bonus is on top of the 2x rates that are now standard on our official servers!

ARK Digest!

Here is our question and answer session with Lead Designer, Lead Programmer, Co-Creative Director of ARK: Survival Evolved, and Co-Founder of Studio Wildcard: Jeremy "Drake" Stieglitz!

Survivor, GamerPefection asks, “Will we get Bionic Dodos?”

Quote Can neither confirm, nor deny

Survivor, Mendoza asks, “Could we get very rare resource drops that are worth say 10x more than the normal resources... Example -- Rare Metal Ore - That can be smelted down to make Fine Grade Metal Ingots... This kind of rare resources and others like Fine Wood, Rare Pearls, Quality Stone ect, would open up a new economy for trade and also allow for the building of High End Mastercraft Gear which can't fit in the slots provided in crafting stations.(being 10x more valuable, interchangeable with normal resources and stacks the same as the average like resources) -- Rare resources could also open up the possibility of being able to craft slightly better quality gear the more "quality resources" used to make said item.”

Quote That’s an interesting concept; I’ll meditate on it. I’ve been wary of doing such a system for concern that having super-rare resources might lead to players being shut-out of them, but perhaps if they’re optional it would not be too much of an imposition.

Survivor Mendoza also asks, “Will you be considering fully random locations for above ground beacon drops each time they drop and change the collision detection so they don't go through building structures?”

Quote Yeah, that’s a worthwhile change I will likely do in the near future, possibly for the next Major Version update.

Survivor, Deaner asks, “According to the explorer notes, the characters in the story could understand each other through the use of the arm implant. So why is it that we cannot understand their notes through the use of the arm implant?”

Quote The implant only affects spoken language, not written words.

Survivor, JNS asks, “Would you guys ever consider making the Achatina shoulder mates? Like the Mesopithecus?”

Quote Achatina are too big for that! Maybe the Troodon though

Survivor, jazzop asks, “Since we can hold down the attack buttons for melee weapons could we hold down the attack buttons whilst mounted as it has no difference apart from preference and does not allow any advantages in PvP { it would be much appreciated as long play sessions farming for breeding can be arduous”

Quote Yes, I’ll try to get this change in there soon.

Survivor, HighFlyer15 asks, “In a recent digest you said you weren't going to add a hunger meter to the Carnivores, does this mean you'll be leaving other AI immersion implementations out as well or will we still see herds, packs of raptors hunting and less of the hundreds of lonely animals stomping about like they're lost?”

Quote We do plan to an AI refinement pass in the coming weeks for their core idle behaviour tree.

Survivor, guitar2117 asks, “I was wondering about difficulty settings on player dedicated servers. PC has been able to alter the difficulty to above 4.0 for awhile, and just wondering when console will be able too? At least making it 5.0 would be nice. Thank you for your time!“

Quote That’ll be in the upcoming console update!

Survivor, NordheimTheMad asks, “Is the piranha still planned to be tamable or has the idea been scrapped? If so will there be a way to transport tamed fish to another body of water without killing them, something like an aquarium or bucket?”

Quote We plan to add a way to transport fish (wild or otherwise). After we have that, we’ll see about whether the Piranha should be tame-able, or whether it’s more interesting to just have them always eat anything they can get their jaws-on!

Survivor, Dinoslayer84 asks, “Could you add the dimetrodon to Scorched Earth? It's one of those creatures that I feel belong in the desert. It will also by pretty cool to have a creature from a real-life desert in the ARK's desert.”

Quote Yeah, I’ll do that.

Survivor, Skuf also asks, “The Radio item is severely underused because of third party applications, and could use some buffing to give players an incentive to use it. Perhaps showing the talking player's general direction, similar to transponder nodes?”

Quote Sure, I’ll make it ping the talker location on the screen to give it extra usefulness.

Survivor, Skuf also asks, “The possibility to pin lock storage boxes or vaults while Structures Ownership is set to Tribe would be amazing. This way we can finally have personal lockers without everyone being able to access them, or without setting Structure Ownership to Personal.”

Quote Sure, I’ll get FORCE-on-Tribe PIN locking added to the next Major Version update.

Survivor, Scuf also asks, “The Silencer weapon attachment could use some buffing, perhaps hiding the name of the player that killed you from the kill message or the tribe log?”

Quote Indeed I will have it hide the kill message entirely from the screen (for the victims), but not from their Tribe Log. Thus making Stealth Assaults more viable in real-time, but ultimately, you still need to know who took you out in the long-run.

Survivor, Fluqsi asks, “Will there ever be support for c++ programming?”

Quote Alas not, but we are currently investigating use of Mono C# as an alternative to Blueprint scripting, so we’ll see how that goes.

Survivor, JokersFinest asks, “Will the titanaboa ever be tameable?”

Quote Yep, it will!

Survivor, BlackWolfVillage asks, “Can we get special admin commands to summon supply drops/spawn dinos at exact coordinates, rather than at the admin using the command? Personally I feel this will make it so admins can host events and map out coordinates ahead of time like a dungeon master and setup events surrounding them. Or even automate summoning of more supply crates in caves than is currently default.”

Quote Yes I’ll add that, but note those coordinates will be XYZ world coordinates, not “ARK” Coordinates -- so get your conversion calculator handy.

Survivor, Brybry asks, “Will unofficial servers ever get an option to disallow steam” family share accounts in the same way that officials do?"

Quote Err sure, I suppose we can add that if you want!

Survivor, Wolf Angelus asks, “What happened to the option to completely remove collision checks?”

Quote I’ll get it into v255, thanks for hanging in there!

Survivor, Wolf Angelus also asks, “Can we get an option (Again for singleplayer at the very least) to remove the "Maximum Custom Paintable Structures Nearby" limits? Limitations on creativity is a killjoy, especially when playing alone where stability should be our own judgement call.”

Quote Sure, I’ll make that a server-configurable option in v255.

Survivor, CyanicEmber asks, “Can we get a "Stay Grounded" option for fliers that can attack while landed such as the Wyvern, Pelagornis, etc...? Also perhaps an option to leave them grounded to follow us”

Quote Yeah, I’ll add a “Stay Grounded” option.

Survivor, plantmanzetsu asks, “Just curious when we will see an option to wipe a single player map on Xbox One?”

Quote I’ll try to get that into February's console version update!

Survivor, Neizan asks, “Can you add an option to avoid buildings on spawn points of the map? Please.”

Quote Presuming you’re referring to PLAYER spawn points, yeah I’ll go ahead and add a radial-check server configurable value to prevent building structures within a distance of all player spawnpoints.

Survivor, Neizan also asks, “Currently, when people starts farming with Bronto/Titano the servers have a lot of lag, some chance to reduce this server lag when people farm with Brontos or similar?”

Quote Yes, I’ll be further reducing the stalls associated with that.

Survivor, iSpeZz asks, “Would it be possible to give us modders the ability to take rafts out of the water by adding a bool if in water or not in water??”

Quote Sure, I’ll look into that, shouldn’t be too difficult.

Survivor, PapaRoro asks, “ gotta talk about poop for a minuet. This is just the best survival/sandbox game I've ever played. So much work has gone into making it a completely immersive experience. For this reason I have to ask, "Why are you guys not tapping into your poop potential?". It's very clear to the hard-core ark fanatics such as myself that poop has always been fundamental to the infrastructure of this game. So why does your poop depth end at: Human, Small, Medium, Large, Massive and eventually Fertilizer? Why is it that carnivores have hard vegetarian rabbit-shaped balls of disappointment instead of a massive sloppy pile of chunky mud? Or maybe a glorious omnivorous brown log of Majesty? Wouldn't it make sense to have carnivore, herbivore and omnivore diets make different poops with different properties? What if in the raising of a crop from seedling to fruiting, it goes through phases where it can get boosts by using "Carnivore Fertilizer" like a plant's equivalent to imprinting bonuses?”

Quote ‘Cause there’s only so much time we can spend thinking about poop before we feel ill :-P

Survivor, PapaRoro also asks, “Can we have the various berry plants have a greater aesthetic variety? When I go in my greenhouse, I'd love to see a forest of different plants. That is all for now.”

Quote Yes, I plan to do a plant/farming pass shortly.

Survivor, StationOG asks, “Love the whistle groups & ignore group whistles but the problem at the moment is that if u have a tame set to ignore group whistle and its on neutral and gets attacked it will not heed any of your calls. Can we get a key for passive so we can aim at the tame? Much like the "Y" and "T" keys to issue an order to an individual dino.”

Quote Yep, I’ll add a whistle key to Toggle Passive or Aggressive on a Dino.

Survivor, Mendoza asks, “Could we get a turret option for spiders so they can act as base defences? -- They could shoot a web bola rather than a slow debuff in turret mode...(Idea from TimeSpiral)”

Quote Yes I’ll ultimately be adding a turret mode to all the projectile-throwing creatures.

Survivor, GuiterRocket1 asks, “Are there any plans for new farming/cooking mechanics or new plants/seeds to be implemented before the full release?”

Quote Yes, I have a plant-specialization pass planned for next month.

Survivor, Dustiest-Ninja asks, “Are you a relative of the famous Alfred Stieglitz of the Stieglitz and Stiegen photographic art museum?”

Quote Indeed I am, he’s a cousin of my grandfather. His photos of American immigrants in the early 20th century are wonderful!

Survivor, Jamagh asks, “Will we ever get the option to ignore other players, either through their steam profile or character name? I have encountered some really noxious people and seeing them talking in chat, insulting everyone really affects my game play. Especially when other people are trying to get info about things.”

Quote Yeah, I’ll add an Ignore-communication system to the PC version (as console has).

Survivor, Shrekasaurus asks, “Will you put ARK on the Switch?”

Quote We don’t have any current plans for the Nintendo Switch, though I will be closely watching how that console does in its launch.

Survivor, SapphiraTigress asks, “Will we ever get an option to stop dinos from looking at us? Getting a tad tired of me getting stuck on a gigas(insert dino here) head because it keeps looking at me lol. Also, will we ever get a "take half" option from inventories? Most times I'm able to carry a lot, but to take half is perfect for most of my over encumbrence problems!!”

Quote I’ll make it so that Dinos will automatically not try to look at someone who is standing on them, and we’ll see how that goes as a start. Yeah, a “take-half from remote inventory” should be easily do-able too.

Survivor, JohnHinde also asks, “My final question. In one of my previous suggestions for the game I was wondering about the prospect of using fire as a weapon as it has been since the dawn of time. (Sun Tzu's Art of War even has a whole section dedicated to it). So my question is will fire play a bigger role in the future? It would be interesting if:

A. Dinos feared it.

B. It was able to spread to some nearby plants. (Similar to Far Cry 4. Not burn down the entire forest, but capable of burning a small area and destroying the bushes and trees in said area. Would make war a lot more interesting.)”

Quote I’ll certainly go ahead make Fire lower a Dino’s threshold to Flee. As for it demolishing nearby plants, the issue with that right now is the performance cost associated with calculating that in such a dense multiplayer game. But I’ll give that a further analysis as well.

ARK: TEK Tier Sale!

To celebrate the release of TEK Tier Phase 1 and reaching a new milestone in ARK's development, the core game and Scorched Earth are both available at their largest discounts ever! Survivors can pick up ARK: Survival Evolved for 67% off and Scorched Earth for 51% off. If you pick it up as a bundle, you get a further 15% discount!

Xbox Survivors can also pick up ARK Survival Evolved plus the expansion Scorched Earth on sale from Microsoft's Xbox Preview Program. From now until February 6th, the game and its expansion pack will be on a special sale for Xbox Live Members, check out the details below!

Primitive+ Update from Cedric!

Hey fellow survivors!

Just wanted to keep you up to date with a few things I’ve been working on in the lab. I’ll be sharing a bit more in the future, but I wanted to give you a preview of what’s to come and what’s been going on behind the scenes!

Bug Submission

I’ve recently adopted a new bug submission process in addition to the standard ways bugs are collected (forums). This allows anyone to submit a quick form that gets routed directly to me. It’s been going extremely well, and in the first week I received a ton of feedback that I was able to iterate on the same day. It seems this new process has some benefits over the old way of doing things.

Submit a bug

Weekly QA Builds

Rather than waiting before the patch is going to be release to do QA, I am now doing weekly QA builds. If you’d like to be a part of the process, please reach out to me on the forums or on twitter (@complexminded). The beta builds are distributed through the workshop. You also need to be friends with me on Steam to see them (WC_Ced)

New Content

Ancient Flamethrower

This work-in-progress hasn’t been textured yet but it’s a fact that flamethrowers were used in ancient times too! Check out this cool video for more info!

Gokstad

This ship is an iconic Viking ship that should fit well with other Primitive+ Items

Beyond Primitive+

While my work for Primitive+ is far from finished, I’ve always wanted to contribute something I thought was missing from the main game. I’ve been working on a “market” system that will allow you to submit and “bid” on trades with other ARK players on the same server. You will be able to create a trade selecting from the items that are in the trading structures inventory and then select items that you want in return. There will be a listing of all the trades on the server and if you have the items to fulfill the trade, you can bid and receive the items in your inbox. More details to come!!

* I know you're going to ask, UI is functional for now, will be revisited after!

That's all for this week!

Ced

Community Contests!

Player Procedurally Generated Maps!

The Procedurally Generated Map system allows players to make their own ARK maps by determining a myriad of landscape options from the heights of mountains, depths of valleys, and the number of lakes, rivers or oceans, to the kinds of each biome they want, and more! Let's check out the entries for this weeks contest! This week's contest winner is...

Heart of the Land by Wolf Angelus!

PGMapName=HeartoftheLand PGTerrainPropertiesString=MapSeed=166;LandscapeRadius=1.0;Water Frequency=4.7;Mountains Frequency=7.0;Mountains Slope=2.04;MountainsHeight=1.92;Turbulence Power=0.0125;Shore Slope=1.0;WaterLevel=-0.72;GrassDensity=1.0;JungleGrassDensity=0.05;ErosionSteps=4;TreesGroundSlopeAccuracy=0.5;DepositionStrength=0.5;ErosionStrength=0.75;OceanFloorLevel=-1.0;SnowBiomeSize=0.15;RWBiomeSize=0.12;MountainBiomeStart=-0.35;MountainsTreeDensity=0.06;JungleBiomeStart=-0.65;IslandBorderCurveExp=4.0;MaxSawnPointHeight=0.2;SnowGrassDensity=0.25;MountainGrassDensity=0.007;SnowMountainGrassDensity=0.15;UnderwaterObjectsDensity=0.5;SnowMountainsTreeDensity=0.03;TreeDensity=0.005;JungleTreeDensity=0.55;RedWoodTreeDensity=0.031;SnowTreeDensity=1.2;RedwoodGrassDensity=0.07;ShoreTreeDensity=0.32;SnowShoreTreeDensity=0.04;DeepWaterBiomesDepth=-0.24;InlandWaterObjectsDensity=0.5;ShorelineStartOffset=0.01;ShorelineThickness=0.015;MountainGeneralTreesPercent=0.15;TerrainScaleMultiplier=(X=1.0f,Y=1.0f,Z=1.0f);SnowBiomeLocation=(X=0.7f,Y=0.7f);RWForestBiomeLocation=(X=0.35f,Y=0.35f);NorthRegion1Start=(X=0.25f,Y=0.0f);NorthRegion1End=(X=0.416f,Y=0.5f);NorthRegion2Start=(X=0.416f,Y=0.0f);NorthRegion2End=(X=0.582f,Y=0.5f);NorthRegion3Start=(X=0.582f,Y=0.0f);NorthRegion3End=(X=0.75f,Y=0.0f);SouthRegion1Start=(X=0.25f,Y=0.5f);SouthRegion1End=(X=0.416f,Y=1.0f);SouthRegion2Start=(X=0.416f,Y=0.5f);SouthRegion2End=(X=0.582f,Y=1.0f);SouthRegion3Start=(X=0.582f,Y=0.5f);SouthRegion3End=(X=0.75f,Y=1.0f);EastRegion1Start=(X=0.75f,Y=0.0f);EastRegion1End=(X=1.0f,Y=0.333f);EastRegion2Start=(X=0.75f,Y=0.333f);EastRegion2End=(X=1.0f,Y=0.666f);EastRegion3Start=(X=0.75f,Y=0.666f);EastRegion3End=(X=1.0f,Y=1.0f);WestRegion1Start=(X=0.0f,Y=0.0f);WestRegion1End=(X=0.25f,Y=0.333f);WestRegion2Start=(X=0.0f,Y=0.333f);WestRegion2End=(X=0.25f,Y=0.666f);WestRegion3Start=(X=0.0f,Y=0.666f);WestRegion3End=(X=0.25f,Y=1.0f)

If you'd like to learn more about PGMs, please check out our quick start guide:

ARKVideo!

This contest is open to all types of video be they funny, epic, scenic, stories, whatever inspires you. Just a general reminder that they should remain safe for work, think of the children!

And without further ado, the ARKVideo for Community Crunch 82 is...

THE GOOD GUYS by Lame Wolf Productions!

and...

CRAGG'S ISLAND BARBER SHOPPE by Myndmelt Gaming!

ARKitect!

This is an award given to Survivors to celebrate the amazing structures you build. These bases are judged based upon a number of different factors such as their creativity, uniqueness, how fun of a base it is, the difficulty of building it, the functionality it provides and much more!

The ARKitect for Community Crunch 82 is…

ARK EMPIRE STATE BUILDING! by RYANT1UM!

If you'd like to check out the submissions from the rest of the entrants, you can do so here:

Fan Feature!

WATER BASE EXPANSION | ARK Survival Evolved [S3 Ep10] by The Axe Man

Ragnarok - A Second Look - Map Tour - Ark Survival Evolved by MeeMaw

Library of Alexandria - Base Design - Comic Coloring (ARKitect) by Wolf Angelus

Oscar's Birthday Cake!

Lady and her Mount by Violet



Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=853522399

Shitty artWORK by DeltaLEDminer



Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=851789559

Copperratops by Okim



Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=853649666

Pulmino by Okim



http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=853671967

Copper Drake by Okim



Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=853678353

In ya face! by Morgengrau



Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=854258006

Allo VS Ptera by WIM



Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=854835592

Purlovia VS Chalicotherium by WIM



Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=854831987

Kapro by WIM



Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=848799500

Dilo's by Nameless BE



Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=852300185

ARK by GR15



Source: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=850534484

FerrifervensTroglodytes(Nova) by kazmanian45



Dossier Preview 3 by kazmanian45



That's it for this post guys! As always if you’ve got anything to share please get in touch and be sure to follow us on:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/survivetheark

Facebook: www.facebook.com/survivetheark

Reddit: www.reddit.com/r/playark

Much love,

Wildcard Jen, Jat, & the ARK: Survival Evolved Team