[2023] Community Crunch 356: ARK Roadmap Update, Rhyniognatha Concept, and More!

Hey Survivors,

We appreciate your patience as we digested the feedback and consulted with our partners to revise our upcoming plans. As always, we’re very grateful to have such a passionate player base, and we hear and understand your concerns. We've decided to make some changes and provide additional information as to why we’re taking this approach, so please bear with us as we address some points.
Price Point and Bundle First things first, we are scrapping the ARK Respawned Bundle. Our intention behind this was to provide a package where you essentially got two products for the price of one. In hindsight, not the best move. Our bad; we recognize how combining ARK Survival Ascended with ARK 2 and requiring further DLC upgrades wasn’t optimal, especially since you wouldn’t be able to judge ARK 2 as no gameplay or content would be available yet. Here are our new plans:

ARK: Survival Ascended will now be a standalone package released on every platform (PC Windows/Steam, Xbox Series S/X, and PlayStation 5) at $59.99. The package will include the following pieces of content built-in (not sold separately), with each remastered and altered for the next-generation:

The Island (Released at Launch)
Survival of the Fittest: The Island & Scorched Earth map variants (Released at Launch)
Scorched Earth (Released at Launch)
Aberration (Released by Q4 2023)
Extinction (Released by Q1 2024)
Genesis Part 1 (Released by Q1 2024)
Genesis Part 2 (Released by Q2 2024)
All the community-created maps are also to be released over time in 2024 (Fjordur, Ragnarok, The Center, Lost Island, Valguero, Crystal Isles)

No longer a backward-compatible free update? Initially, when we had first considered doing an Unreal 5 upgrade, we planned just to port the Switch version of the game and undo the ‘graphical’ limitations required for that hardware. We weren’t going to maximize the potential of the new technology, we weren’t going to introduce new gameplay changes, and we weren’t going to make critical design changes that would have had an impact on existing save data.

After carefully considering what would be the best outcome for those who enjoy ARK: Survival Evolved and would want to continue to enjoy it in the years to come, we decided that our initial plan would not be sufficient. We want to provide you with an evergreen classic ARK experience, one that can continue to grow over time on a cleaned-up code base, making use of the new technological advancements not only in the industry but also in what we are working on with ARK 2.

We weren’t trying to mislead you with earlier comments; our plans and overall intentions changed. So you're probably asking, why don’t we make these upgrades to the original ARK: Survival Evolved (ASE)? Frankly, it would not be viable. Many of the changes we’re making in ARK: Survival Ascended will touch a lot of aspects of the game; it’ll invalidate save data, some mods may not be functional, some things may not play the same way as they did before, and we didn’t want to change that experience for those who prefer it or are unable to upgrade.

This also impacted our decision to sunset the ASE Official Network offline on August 31st, shortly before the ASA launch. Despite ASE Officials representing the minority of players on ARK, it’s an invested and passionate group with attachments to their bases, tames, and characters, and seeing that go away can’t be easy. While we know it’s not the same, we hope making the saves available for unofficial use helps diminish the loss. Our reasoning behind the decision is that those servers are essentially based on old technology and require significant development resources and time for our teams to operate & maintain. In some cases, the issues aren’t as easily solvable without an overall upgrade. Additionally, we know that those resources could be better utilized on fundamentally new technology to further enhance the overall game experience for all players.

ASE will still be available to play for those who choose to; that includes multiplayer through unofficial/player-hosted sessions, the endless amount of mods on the Steam workshop, and all the game content as you currently know it. All of that is going to remain, but after 8 years of development, we have to make the difficult decision of sunsetting ASE and the Official Network in order to provide that truly long-term and evergreen version of the game through ARK: Survival Ascended. We’ll be sending off ASE with one final content update for our 8th anniversary this June, releasing the fan-elected creature: Rhyniognatha! (Keep an eye out next week for its Dossier)

We plan to support ARK: Survival Ascended with new features (including at launch), content drops, creatures, items, structures, and DLC. Our roadmap covered some of those planned changes, and we said there would be more, and here’s another preview:

Dynamic navigation mesh and creature pathfinding overhaul (AI pathfinding)
Photo Mode
Nvidia DLSS
Dino/Baby Management QOL
Wild Babies
Snap point improvements (new snaps, logic improvements)
Character creation & customization improvements
Cross-platform Multiplayer & Full Blueprint Modding (I know we mentioned this before, but we’re serious, it’s happening on PC and Consoles at launch, and we’ve got it working internally with Overwolf technology – this dramatically changes the nature of the console experience).

And this list is not exhaustive. We’re hoping to get even more done, and the only reason we aren’t covering all of those details right now is that we’re still working on them. It’s taking a significant amount of resources and time at the studio, and we don’t want to commit to other particular features unless we’re sure we can get them in for launch. And yeah, we may miss our deadline on certain aspects, but they’ll come in over time as we continue to support this next generation of ARK.

At the end of the day, these are just words and, frankly, may not mean so much. That’s okay; we understand what will really convince you is seeing screenshots and a gameplay trailer, and you will in time. We know there are going to be more questions, and we’ll be sharing more details over time. We’re not quite ready to pull back the curtains just yet, so we hope you’ll hang in there with us, Survivors. It’ll be worth the wait!

Studio Wildcard

Let’s kick off the first piece of major new content for ARK: Survival Ascended - a fan-voted real-world creature that will launch on Day 1.

Please note that this creature will be released for Scorched Earth, so make sure your real-world submissions are in theme with that map! We’ll also be adding an additional real-world creature for each subsequent canonical expansion pack map release on ARK: Survival Ascended.

Check out the Creature Submission Guidelines[survivetheark.com] for more information on the submission process and hop over to the Creature Submission Forum[survivetheark.com] to see the current entries. The entry period will end at 1PM Pacific on April 21st, so don't wait - get your ideas in. We are looking forward to seeing your ideas come to life!

Survivors on all platforms will be receiving a special Easter EVO Event! During this event, 25% of wild creature spawns will be replaced with the colors from the event list. It will be active until Monday, the 24th of April. All Official Servers across each platform will be undergoing this evolutionary change which includes:

4/07 - 4/24

Red
Blue
Green
Yellow
Cyan
Magenta
Light Green
Light Orange
Light Yellow
Light Red
Black
Dark Red
Dino Light Red
Dino Dark Red
Dino Light Blue
Dino Dark Blue
Dino Light Purple
Dino Dark Purple
DragonGreen3
WyvernPurple0
WyvernPurple1
WyvernBlue0
WyvernBlue1
Dino Medium Blue
Dino Deep Blue
NearWhite
DarkTurquoise
MediumTurquoise
Turquoise
LightCement
LightPink
DeepPink
DarkViolet
DarkMagenta
MediumAutumn
Vermillion
Coral
Orange
Peach
ActualBlack
MidnightBlue
LemonLime
Mint
DarkLavender
MediumLavender
Lavender
DarkTeal
MediumTeal
Teal
PowderBlue
Glacial
Custard
Cream

*Note that these bonuses are multiplicative of the game's standard 1x rates.

Official Servers: 3x XP, Harvesting, Taming, and Breeding (imprint, maturation, hatch/gestation), 0.5x Mating Interval, 1.5x Hexagon Bonus
Small Tribe Servers: 4.5x XP, 4.5x Harvesting, 4.5x Taming, and 4x Breeding (imprint, maturation, hatch/gestation), 0.5x Mating Interval, 1.5x Hexagon Bonus
ARKPocalypse: 5x XP, 5x Harvesting, 5x Taming, and 5x Breeding (imprint, maturation, hatch/gestation), 0.5x Mating Interval, 1.5x Hexagon Bonus
Classic: 6x XP, 6x Harvesting, 6x Taming, and 5x Breeding (imprint, maturation, hatch/gestation), 0.5x Mating Interval

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