Let’s ignore, just for a moment, the rocky road that ARK: Survival Evolved had in Early Access as it became one of the first backed projects that had the gall to release DLC instead of working on what the consumers were promised. The title has come far since then, delivering relatively adequate sandbox/survival/crafting play ensconced in dinosaurs, and that’s what makes the title popular.
The title never fully recovered from the hit it took in community reviews on Steam in early September of 2016, but the developers at Studio Wildcard have continued to plug away at content, offering season passes along with expansion packs that bring the game to new depths and/or heights (depending on the map you play). As content has been added and tweaked, new bugs have reared their ugly heads, adding on to bugs that have existed since as far back as most can remember.
Community Crunch 213: Patch Notes Round-Up, and Evo Eventhttps://t.co/XM5tH6UvNl pic.twitter.com/aPLp98gyNj
— ARK: Survival Ascended (@survivetheark) January 15, 2020
Bugs such as bows getting stuck in a fired position, leaving survivors being unable to fire again without cycling their active inventory. That’s been around since early 2016, and has resulted in the deaths of many a survivor.
In the Community Crunch #213, that bug has been marked as dealt with. You used to be unable to fire again if you were sprinting while using your bow. You’re still likely to get the animation stuck today, but you used to as well.
Goofs and gaffes aside, Studio Wildcard has published a rather comprehensive list of both recent game patches and what’s currently in the works, and it offers a deeper insight into what the studio has been toiling away on.
The blog post makes a studious list of performance issues and tweaks, exploits that have been patched (or soon will be), bugs that negatively affect gameplay, and Quality of Life changes that can fully perused at your leisure; just be aware that the notes from past patches are long, and will take some sorting through.
Some may bemoan yet another DLC for ARK: Survival Evolved, and its history is not one that should be noted as worth following for other aspiring game developers. Yet another expansion of the title bodes well for both the studio and fans of the survival game. If absolutely nothing else, Studio Wildcard managed to emerge from the lawsuit while keeping their game up relatively unharmed, aside from the Steam reviews never quite recovering fully.
It’s worth noting that the listed patches shed no light on consoles receiving the updates, nor on the Nintendo Switch version ever becoming fully playable, meaning without frame drops and stuttering.
If you have a tech-savvy friend with the PC beef to host a private server for their friends, it’s a title that you’re bound to spend hundreds of hours in; just don’t forget to remove some of the more broken dinosaurs that exist for trolling.
