ARK: Survival Evolved
| ARK: Survival Evolved | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Studio |
 Studio Wildcard Instinct Games Efecto Studios Virtual Basement  |
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| Publisher |
Studio wildcard |
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| Senior Developer | Kayd Hendricks | ||
| composer | Gareth Coker | ||
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
Windows , macOS , Linux , PlayStation 4 , Xbox One August 29, 2017 Android , iOS June 14, 2018 Nintendo Switch November 30, 2018 |
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| platform |
Windows macOS Linux PlayStation 4 Xbox One Android iOS Nintendo Switch |
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| Game engine | Unreal Engine 4 | ||
| genre | Action adventure , survival | ||
| Subject | Fantasy , survival | ||
| Game mode | Single player , multiplayer | ||
| control | Mouse , keyboard , gamepad | ||
| medium | Download , DVD-ROM | ||
| language | 21 languages | ||
| copy protection | Steam | ||
| Age rating |
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Ark: Survival Evolved is developed by Studio Wildcard action adventure - Survival - computer game , which in August 2017 computer , PlayStation 4 and Xbox One was released. In 2018 the game was also released for the Google Play Store / App Store and the Nintendo eShop . You have to survive in a world full of free stray dinosaurs. The development team put a focus on a realistic representation of dinosaurs as well as numerous caves and dungeons. There are currently many different ARK Survival Evolved servers, from official to private. Some well-known private servers would include KnorkSurvival and The Next Gen Of Ark.
Game principle and technology
The game is either from a third-person perspective or from the first-person game. The locomotion takes place on foot or on horseback or by flying or swimming on an animal. Players can use melee weapons as well as bows and arrows to defend themselves against aggressive creatures. Many of the creatures can be tamed , which gives the player access to the abilities of the respective animal. In addition, it is possible for the player to expand his arsenal of weapons and other items with the help of objects that can be collected from the environment. Players can also build their own structures using a large building system and use them for defense. It has both a single player mode and the possibility to play with other people on multiplayer servers. ARK servers are persistent, the game world changes even when no players are online.
Players start in a tropical game world without equipment; only an implant in the arm, which is used to access the inventory, and a loincloth are initially available. The goal is to survive and develop your own skills. For this, the player needs materials that he can collect in the world in order to create buildings, campfires and weapons as well as other equipment. Furthermore, it is possible for the player to tame dinosaurs, for which additional resources are required. The playing map, called "The Island", is approximately 48 square kilometers, of which 36 square kilometers are land mass and 12 square kilometers are ocean. In May 2016 a second playing card, called "The Center", was released, which is larger than the first card. In June 2017 a third card with the name "Ragnarok" appeared.
The game contains classic survival elements, since the player has to fight against nature as well as creatures and players. The player can die of thirst, starvation, freeze to death or death by heat. Even for tamed animals, he always has to provide enough food. If a player suffers damage, his life indicator drops, which slowly recovers in the course of the game, provided there is enough food or healing items.
Players can create objects in the game, for example tools, but also food and weapons. To do this, most items must first be researched. This happens in the course of the game by reaching new levels and investing the points received. You also get a skill point for each level reached. That can either be invested in more maximum health points, more stamina, more oxygen for diving, more carrying capacity, more movement speed, more melee damage, more manufacturing speed, more hunger points, more water points or more resistance to effects. The bonus to these attributes is different, the lower the more skill points you have already invested. The researchable items become more and more modern with the higher the level. While only primitive technology is available at the beginning of the game, you can also make items such as refrigerators as the game progresses. Furthermore, players can expand their weapons with additional items, such as a telescopic sight or a lamp.
In order to build buildings, various structural elements such as B. floors, doors and windows are explored. This also requires resources and points to invest in the technology. Players can build all structures as long as the necessary resources are available and the environment allows construction. Buildings must be stable and can be destroyed by removing pillars or floor slabs.
The structure and further development of the items is linked to the level of the character created and the points allocated for this in the talent tree . For every level up you get some additional points, so called engram points. The player can decide for himself what he wants to learn. One player alone cannot (currently) learn everything, so working with other players is advantageous.
At release there were over 100 different types of dinosaurs available in the game, most of which can be tamed by feeding them, often after stunning them. Domesticated dinosaurs make their skills available to the player, so players can swing through the air on pterosaurs or use the fighting abilities of a tyrannosaurus to their advantage. When riding most of the creatures, the player cannot use his own weapons and abilities, but with some dinosaurs such as the baryonyx this is also possible; with larger dinosaurs, several players, in some cases even more than two, can ride along. They can use their weapons normally. Dinosaurs can also be used to carry objects and can take commands such as: B. Offensive / defensive behavior received from the player. For example, a horde of Utahraptors can be used to defend a base. There are also other animals in the game that are considered extinct. Examples are the dodo , megalodon or the mammoth . Furthermore, insects such as Meganeura or ants of the genus Titanomyrma gigantea are implemented.
Multiplayer servers are available in three versions, PVP (Player vs. Player), PVE ( Player vs. Environment ) and PVPVE (Player vs. Player vs. Environment). On PVE servers you cannot attack other players and their structures, but on PVP servers you can kill other players, destroy their structures and steal their items. On PVPVE servers it is not possible to kill or destroy players' buildings, dinosaurs or characters as long as the players have been logged out for at least 15 minutes. There is also the possibility of knocking out other players with narcotic berries or weapons. The player who is unconscious has a slightly darkened picture, but can see everything that happens to him. He also sees what has been stolen or added from his inventory.
Should the player die, there are two options:
- The player continues to play with his character and can wake up again in a region of his choice on the map or in a previously built sleeping area (sleeping bag, bed). As a result, however, he loses the complete inventory and only keeps the level, the learned construction plans (engrams) and the skill points. This is not possible in hardcore mode .
- The player can create a completely new character and starts the game from the beginning, in this case all invested skill and engram points are lost.
At the place of death, the player's corpse remains, which can be collected as a player and which contains the entire inventory of the deceased player. However, this corpse can be eaten by carnivorous dinosaurs. This leaves a backpack, which in turn contains the player's entire inventory. If the player does not manage to pick up the backpack again within fifteen minutes, it disappears and with it the possibility for the player to get his lost inventory back.
Production notes
Development began in October 2014. The development of the prehistoric species was based on relevant specialist literature, online articles and experts in biology. Adjustments were made to enable the playful properties, with the developers pointing out that the creatures in the game are considered further developments of the historical templates.
The developers have added other features to make the game attractive to other interest groups who are not committed to the survival genre. So the exploration of the island as well as the fight against big boss opponents is also a big aspect in the game. The player is also rewarded for finding secrets on the island. In order to give players long-term motivation, the "Endgame" also offers additional options, as the developers missed a final goal in other survival games.
According to the developer Rapczak, the game has tens of thousands of non-player characters on one world , all of which have their own artificial intelligence . Furthermore, the game has a virtual reality mode , whereby the development team has experimented with head-mounted displays for several years in order to enable the best possible immersion .
Players have the opportunity to create mods for the game and offer them for download in the Steam Workshop . Studio Wildcard provides a modified version of the Unreal Development Kit for this purpose. In 2016, Studio Wildcard began to officially integrate particularly good modifications into the game.
In December 2016, a version for the PlayStation 4 came on the market. For the time being, only a download was available for the release , physical data carriers appeared in August 2017. In addition, the game supports the PlayStation 4 Pro and thus has a higher frame rate and resolution.
fauna
A biodiversity of over 400 creatures has been implemented, ranging from fish and insects to giant sauropods .
* This creature has only been announced so far and has not yet been integrated into the game.
** This creature comes from the first DLC "Scorched Earth".
DLCs
The already existing DLC maps "Scorched Earth" - which plays in a desert landscape with the new creatures Mantis and Wyvern -; the following ark "Aberration" - in which you mostly play in caves because the surface is too hot -; and the latest Ark "Extinction" - which is the first Ark to be played on earth and mostly in the ruins of a highly developed city - will soon be expanded with the newly announced Ark "Genesis".
Spin-offs
In August 2015, Studio Wildcard released the game's first spin-off, "Survival of the Fittest" . In contrast to the main game, Survival of the Fittest is played in rounds of one to two hours. At the beginning of a game round, all players are allowed into the game world at the same time and have the goal of killing all other players and being the last surviving player. The game mechanics from the main game are basically the same, but have been adjusted slightly, and the game speed has been greatly increased. To force the confrontation between players, there is a barrier that runs in a circle around the center of the playing card and gets smaller and smaller the longer the game lasts. The spin-off can be played alone or in teams of two or four.
Survival of the Fittest was initially released as a total conversion for the main game, but in March 2016 a stand-alone version of the spin-off that was independent of the main game was released on Steam .
Studio Wildcard aimed Survival of the Fittest off on creating a fast-paced and competitive game that in the e-sports place scene appeal. Studio Wildcard regularly ran Survival of the Fittest tournaments with prize money to be won.
At the end of 2016, the active development of Survival of the Fittest was stopped for the time being. Studio Wildcard co-founder Jeremy Stieglitz said in a statement in July 2017 that the game mode was an experiment with potential, but the main game had priority and there weren't enough resources for the advancement of Survival of the Fittest. Stieglitz left it open whether it would be further developed at a later date.
At E3 2016, Studio Wildcard presented a second spin-off entitled "Primal Survival", in which players can slip into the role of dinosaurs.
With ARK Park, a spin-off for virtual reality headsets will be released on March 22, 2018. Players visit a dinosaur park, can explore it in detail, but also fight against dinosaurs.
reception
The game is largely positively received by the trade press, although there are no comparable ratings. The complexity and the graphic realization are often praised. This leads to a large number of players. At the time of this writing (June 10, 2015) there are more than 300 servers and over 65,000 concurrent players. 400,000 copies of the game were sold within the first 10 days after the development version became available.
Game expansions
Another free map was published just a few months after the early access phase began. The Center is a lot larger than the standard The Island map and offers the same range of creatures.
On September 1, 2016, the first add-on Scorched Earth ("scorched earth") was surprisingly released. On a completely new map, which mainly consists of a desert region, players have to deal with new dangers and difficulties. 11 new creatures have been added, which are no longer prehistoric , but rather fantasy- heavy. Among other things, it is now possible to tame wyverns (dragon-like creatures). A special feature is that the weather has a greater influence. There are sight-impairing sandstorms or heat waves that cause damage. The main difficulty is finding a source of water.
There were a lot of critical voices with the release as the main game still had a lot of bugs. It was requested that one should take care of the errors rather than publish chargeable extensions.
In April 2017, the Ragnarok map created by the fan base was adopted as an official map. This is available free of charge to all players.
On September 4, 2017, the second add-on, Aberration, was announced, which was released on December 12, 2017. In this expansion, the players are led into an underground cave system that hardly has any natural light sources. Radioactive light has mutated many creatures on the surface, and most of these have also retreated into the cave system. New resources and blueprints have been added to make survival easier.
It is worth mentioning that creatures can be transported back and forth between the individual cards if the respective server settings allow this. So it is possible to transfer the creatures between The Island , The Center , Ragnarok , Scorched Earth and Aberration and thus take advantage of all creatures.
A paid expansion called ARK: Extinction was announced on June 19, 2018 and was released on November 6, 2018. The expansion pack contains a new game world with a corrupt and dystopian earth as well as several new creatures and items. This also includes titans and boss monsters.
Another chargeable expansion called ARK: Genesis was announced on August 8, 2019 and is to appear in two parts in February 2020 and in the second half of 2020. The special thing about this expansion is, among other things, the first speaking character in ARK, an HLN-A (Human Learning Neural Aid), which can accompany the player on his adventures.
Web links
- Official website (English)
- ARK: Survival Evolved at MobyGames (English)
- ark.gamepedia.com - Official Wiki Game (English)
- Jesse Rapczak, Lirik: Ark: Survival Evolved. Interview with Jesse Rapczak. In: youtube.com. May 11, 2015, accessed June 10, 2015 . (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Ark: Survival Evolved. Instinct Games, accessed November 15, 2018 .
- ^ ARK: Survival Evolved. Efecto Studios, accessed November 15, 2018 .
- ^ Games. Virtual Basement, accessed November 15, 2018 .
- ↑ a b c d e Fight for Life in Studio Wildcard's ARK: Survival Evolved. In: news.xbox.com. May 15, 2015, accessed May 18, 2015 .
- ↑ Rapczak: Ark: Survival Evolved. 2015, time: 20:20.
- ↑ a b c d Jathiesh Karunakaran: Frequently Asked Questions - ARK: Survival Evolved - General Discussions. In: steamcommunity.com. May 12, 2015, accessed June 3, 2015 .
- ↑ Rapczak: Ark: Survival Evolved. 2015, time: 41:02.
- ↑ Rapczak: Ark: Survival Evolved. 2015, time: 31:31.
- ↑ Rapczak: Ark: Survival Evolved. 2015, time: 31:51.
- ↑ Rapczak: Ark: Survival Evolved. 2015, time: 36:27.
- ↑ Rapczak: Ark: Survival Evolved. 2015, time: 7:38.
- ↑ Rapczak: Ark: Survival Evolved. 2015, time: 38:59.
- ↑ a b Jesse Rapczak: Ride dinosaurs in ARK: Survival Evolved, coming soon to PS4. In: playstation.com. Sony Computer Entertainment , June 3, 2015, accessed June 3, 2015 .
- ↑ "Official Mods Program Launching to Xbox One and PC! " At www.survivetheark.com, accessed July 5, 2015.
- ↑ Ark: Survival Evolved - Release will be in December. In: ps4info.de. Retrieved November 9, 2016 .
- ^ Creatures. Accessed December 25, 2019 .
- ^ Lamprey. Retrieved September 18, 2017 (English).
- ↑ Scorched Earth. Retrieved September 18, 2017 (English).
- ^ "Ark: Survival Evolved gets a 'Survival of the Fittest' tournament mode" at www.pcgamer.com, accessed on July 5, 2015.
- ^ "Ark: Survival of the Fittest becomes free standalone with cash prizes" at www.pcgamer.com, accessed on July 5, 2015.
- ^ "Ark: Survival of the Fittest is the premier eSport for dinosaur enthusiasts" at www.gamesradar.com, accessed July 5, 2015.
- ↑ "Ark: Survival of the Fittest is 'an experiment that didn't catch on but we do think there's a fun game there'" at www.pcgamer.com, accessed on August 14, 2017.
- ↑ Major Sock: ARK Park - Title coming to PSVR in a few days . Article from ps4info.de , March 16, 2018, accessed January 17, 2018
- ↑ ARK: Survival Evolved - Steam Charts. In: steamcharts.com. June 9, 2015, accessed June 10, 2015 .
- ↑ Sales figures. In: playnation.de. June 12, 2015, accessed June 12, 2015 .
- ^ "ARK: Survival Evolved Pounded With Negative Reviews After Releasing Paid Early Access DLC" at www.gamerevolution.com, accessed on November 3, 2016.
- ↑ ARK: Extinction: Fighting Robots Against Titans: Third and final expansion for PC released - 4Players.de . In: 4Players . ( 4players.de [accessed November 7, 2018]).
- ↑ Christopher Livingston: Ark's next expansion, Genesis, brings giant sea turtle forts and a voiced AI companion. In: PC Gamer. August 8, 2019. Retrieved August 16, 2019 (American English).