MMaas

Yup, all very valid points wich I also often mentioned in the past, my comment was more on the ASA situation and the old DLC's are included so far. I also kind of mellowed on that for ASE since I got friendly tribes providing me with striders, maewings, incubators and shadowmane breeding left-overs until I finaly paid to win myself into Genesis just before Lost Island dropped... In my defense: My partner made me buy it, I agreed on condition I was allowed to also buy Mad Max or Metro Exodus or something like that. Not a bad deal, right? In my opinion PvE and PvP can be judged same: On PvE shadowmanes were used to push people off platforms to rob their bags when drowned or killed by wilds, spacewhales were used to bluescreen people to drown them or just simply bully them away from the server. PvE has more naughty trolls than PvP since many PvE players are easy victems that don't know how to deal with unseen enemies while honest PvP gives more options to get even. But back on topic: This new system is a new level of P2W, the packs are no longer cosmetic only like the tek skins on ASE. I'll wait till the "definitive final complete edition" with all skins, dlc's, adventure packs and bug fixes. That will most likely be included in Gamepass for PS7.

The fact that people don't want to dump money on crap doesn't make them poor or unemployed, it just means they got other priorities. And brains.

Yes, but at least everyone on the map had it. Sure you could transfer items to non-DLC maps but this is a new level of pay to win.

You got ASA, isn't that crap enough? Oh, wait...

Let's be fair: It is not a complete unplayable mess. Some unplayabele parts are still missing.

It is not the point what I "actualy" believe, it is about what WC tries to make us believe. They were pretty clear about what we were voting for. To be fair, I did not give a rats behind about the votes and in my personal opinion it was only to built hype. Seems we are pretty much on the same page here. Some of the idea's were way over the top (or beyond WC's ability as was confirmmed with this CC) and I did expect dissapointments. My way of avoiding dissapoinment was just wait buying untill ASA has enough maps rolled out to confirm it was an improvement of ASE. So yeah... I'm stuck at ASE for the next few years.

It will get worse. Toxic players and cheaters hopping from server to server are kind of anonymous. No one can keep track of them so it is easier for them to stay undetected. Official ASE already teached that lesson. The other thing we will see returning is all the "I got ARKed" posts from people that lost all when transfering.

You are missing the point: We were offered a saying in the future of the game by voting specific creatures for specific maps. People designed these dino's to fit in that one map. What is happening now is making as much sense as giving a basilo-like creature as the new dino for Scorched Earth. Giving this creature on another map is just a vote wasted and votes were what all the hype to ASA was buil on. Tl;dr: The current situation is WC doing a "We here you" while giving the finger simultaniously.

First, welcome to the community. I'm genualy interested what made you buy ASA inspite of all the controversy. As you might have seen by now the community is kind of divided on ASA and to be fair the discussion if it was all hype or not started straight from the first announcements.

If they knew they needed more time to get that saddle working, why the F did they push the release of that map instead of sticking to the announced scedule? The whole voting thing never appeared to me as a good idea but if they can't even give people what was voted for it is all just baked air. Don't want to be a partypooper but it seems to me they are pushing things way too much with too many unsolved issues.

There is also no "excluding server". Everyone is free to play on a platform of choice IF a game is available on that platform. ASA was available on Windows so WC should either give them acces to servers asap or refund asap. That Windows is a weird choice is not relevant here.

I'm sorry to say but you realy have to take this up with the server owner. No one on this forum or at WC can help you with unofficial server issues.

In the past there were a few initiatives that tracked console numbers, for PS4 the trends where in general much like the Steam trends for ARK. Unfortunatly the one I used stopped a few years ago. What I do see lately is the behaviour on the private cluster I play on since last year: The hype for ASA and crossplay was massive but the activity on the discord shows people getting bored with "Again the Island". Since their bases on ASE have decayed they just drop out. Activity for the PS ASE cluster is also declining A few numbers: ASA Servers got 100 slots when consoles got access but are down to 50 now. ASE varries per map but are cut to max 20 since there's hardly anyone playing anymore.

Indeed it is but imo it is WC (and you) that is confused. ASA was supposed to be BETTER than ASE. The "back to the beginning" was supposed to mean "start fresh on the first map" instead of "start fresh with every bug we fixed and more".

Your frustration is understandable. We were made to believe that ASA would be fresh new code, so the old issues would not have been ported. When announced, ASA was not said to be "early acces" again, that frase was later intruduced. I'm still baffled with the ammount of people that (tried to) jump in blind at launch, we all could and should have known better and sofar I have no regrets of not getting ASA. Unfortunatly ~100k people did so they do get away with it. Sad side effect is that this forum is turned to a never ending rant from dissatiffied users of wich many not even understand the difference between ASE, ASA and ARK2.