Ark: Survival of the Fittest announced. F2P Hunger Games, Early Access starting today

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Ark: Survival Evolved developer Studio Wildcard has announced a free-to-play spin-off entitled Ark: Survival of the Fittest.

Launching today on Steam Early Access, this new game will focus on the competitive multiplayer aspects that blossomed from mods of Survival Evolved. It will allow up to 72 players on official servers (and 200 on unofficial ones).

The competitive game tasks tribes of 1-6 players to duke it out in "an epic dinosaur survival arena with a continually shrinking 'ring of death.'" By the end, only one tribe will be left standing.

"Originally, Survival of the Fittest was a 'total conversion' mod within the open-world survival adventure Ark: Survival Evolved," Studio Wildcard said of this spin-off. "The game rapidly grew in popularity amongst those wanting a competitive 'Battle Royale/Last Man Standing' experience. This standalone game brings all the features of the mod, with upgrades, and newly integrates dedicated eSports ranking, matchmaking, reward, and tournament features to make it readily accessible to all players."

Ark: Survival of the Fittest will feature 30 creatures to ride and tame at launch, four multiplayer modes (1v1, 2v2, 4v4, and 6v6), random "evolution events", exclusive cosmetic items than can be imported into Ark: Survival Evolved, and a soundtrack by Ori and the Blind Forest composer Gareth Coker.
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Eurogamer

So basically it's the popular Hunger Games variant made into a full F2P game. Very happy about this because I was interested in the game just because of this mode but never really got around to buying it.
 
Seems both Ark and H1Z1 are moving their attention from the open world survival concepts to the more competive "Battle Royale" design.
 
I was about to buy the full game but might just settle for this.



Also im thinking this might be the version that is going to be released for PSVR
 
They just won the survival games. Ark seems to have the biggest and most dedicated community of all and this being f2p will make it huge.
 
My friend started playing and loved it, then he built a tent, had a dinosaur as a pet, and had a wonderful life... he logged out, went to bed and when he was back online, someone destroyed his tent, killed his dinosaur and stole everything he got.

he stopped playing in the BR server :P
 
Saucycarpdog said:
Seems both Ark and H1Z1 are moving their attention from the open world survival concepts to the more competive "Battle Royale" design.
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Open world survival is a flawed concept. I've played them all and it always ends up a game full of large kill on sight deaths squads roaming the map and insta killing anyone and ruining hours and days of work. It is thrilling but for 90% of people an act of frustration that eventually makes you stop playing.

These new modes have the same thrill in smaller not so time consuming doses.
 
So is everyone going to start releasing two versions of their game?

The original vision which never gets realized, and the me-too BR mode?
 
Are Youtubers-Reaction-Quotes something new to video game marketing? It's grueling to listen to and it makes me feel old.
 
I really really dislike the way early access goes more often than not. Spinning off unfinished games. Games forever stuck in early access.
 
So we're moving away from perpetually unfinished Minecraft and/or DayZ clones to perpetually unfinished Battle Royale type games, huh.

I'll never get it but if people keep buying them I don't see the issue in developers continuing to make them.
 
Will download, but I hope this doesn't take away from their June 2016 launch window of the original ark. I want to see that game finished
 
Downloading. I've been wanting to try one of these Battle Royale games.

Wow, that 36 GB install size. I can't believe an F2P multiplayer only game is that big.

Edit: It seems the download is actually only 9 GB.
 
I love the main game, really interesting they have split this out and for free, really hope they bring it to console too. I've put in so many hours, will be good to mix it up.
 
Ark always looks amazing in trailers and screenshots, but then you actually try to play the game at those settings and you get like 5 FPS on a good system. This seems cool though, I've always been a fan of Battle Royale in h1z1 but the fact that you have to pay real money for every single match you want to play (kind of like an arcade) really turned me off.
 
Early access should have a time limit or something for how long a game can be on it. With a company only being allowed to have one game at a time.
 
Tried it out earlier. The lobby and party system needs some work, we had some strange experiences there where we kept getting split up somehow. There was a time where we got in a game (2-squads) and we were right next to each other, killing pirahnas, and then suddenly both of our games crashed. They really need to optimize performance. I turned everything on lowest settings, except resolution, and still was in single digit FPS sometimes.

All that said, I think this one has potential and is probably one of the better Battle Royale games out there. The crafting is solid, there is character creation, the enemy variety is absolutely stunning and extremely impressive. I see a stegosaurus one moment, a T-Rex the next, followed by a swarm of bugs and pirahnas. I also liked the idea of this one dropping a bunch of basic gear in the middle and starting everyone there. It was basically a "grab everything you can then jump off the plateau" type of thing. You are unlikely to die during this unless you stand still or stick around too long.

I'm enjoying it and will be playing more of this.
 
Nice. I was going to buy this game eventually. Now I will be able to try it for free.

EDIT: I tried to play it, put everything on low, I get 15 fps. I got an i5 2500k with a GTX 960 4 gb
 
Yeah somethings well up with the optimisation i have had it on 4k Epic and 1080p low and get 6fps on both...

PS: my Spec

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-5960X (8-cores, 20MB Cache, Overclocked up to 4.0 GHz w/ Turbo Boost)
Triple NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) GTX(TM) TITAN X with 36GB GDDR5 in SLI
32GB Dual Channel DDR4 2133MHz (8GB x 4)
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I'm obviously the only person who can run Ark well. I only have a GTX 960 and I can run it mostly on high at ~40-50FPS. If you google around there are some small tweaks you can make to get the game running great.

They've had Survival of the Fittest for quite awhile too by the way, so it's not like they just jumped on the bandwagon, they've had big tournaments for it months ago.
 
No idea why its running so badly, this rig should be able to brute force through it but it looks like thats not the case.
 
ToastiestPlum said:
So we're moving away from perpetually unfinished Minecraft and/or DayZ clones to perpetually unfinished Battle Royale type games, huh.
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Yes because both H1Z1 and ARK teams are quite terrible.

No, because The Culling is one example of very successful game of that type. Also because it wasn't spawned from another failed project.

Short version: The Culling has been out for two weeks and COMPLETELY blows away H1Z1 and whatever ARK will ever deliver.

Want a BR-style game? Play The Culling. It's relatively cheap, built to be BR from the beginning, and it has the Unreal engine that is used at least competently (so better from that crap H1Z1 uses, and better from the spaghetti code of ARK that is one of the worst thing ever conceived in the history of gaming).

The Culling is already FAR more refined and bug-free compared to the bugridden H1Z1 after one full year in Early Access.

Whereas ARK still holds the "survival" kind of game. But it's now obvious the game will never be released as promised, and will remain a technical disaster forever. The team just can't do better and has essentially gave up already. Now split between BR, survival and Xbox teams, yeah. If you can't do one thing properly, just try doing three at once!
 
Gormenghast said:
Yes because both H1Z1 and ARK teams are quite terrible.

Not because The Culling is one example of very successful game of that type. Also because it wasn't spawned from another failed project.

Short version: The Culling has been out for two weeks and COMPLETELY blows away H1Z1 and whatever ARK will ever deliver.

Whereas ARK still holds the "survival" kind of game. But it's now obvious the game will never be released as promised, and will remain a technical disaster forever. The team just can't do better.
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Yuuup. The Culling has a lot more gameplay depth with their melee system.

I can't believe they're making a spin-off game for one that's not even out yet. That's some Mighty Number 9 shit right there.
 
Pop said:
Ark runs like crap. Only reason I haven't played it beyond the first night I bought it.
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They've made a stupid amount of money already. The performance stuff may have bumped down the priority list since people are still buying it.
 
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