There’s an AMA running on r/games right now from Jesse Rapczak, one of the co-founders of Studio Wildcard, the team behind Ark: Survival Evolved who Phil interviewed last week. The AMA has already revealed some interesting new additions that will be coming to the game in the future and is worth browsing in full, but here’s the highlights.
Gameplay:
- Dinosaur AI is being worked on and, eventually, they want all 100+ creatures to behave uniquely.
- Once the system for dinosaur breeding is in place, raids to steal rival factions eggs will be a highly profitable venture.
- Various systems still require a lot of polish, particularly some of the fiddlier aspects of building. A lot of community feedback is needed, and valued, here.
- The breeding system should be arriving before Halloween.
- One of the design goals of the game is for everything to remain useful, even if it’s easy to acquire. This will remain true even once the more high-tech options are available, so dinosaurs will never go out of style.
- There is still tonnes of balance testing to do and they don’t consider that area of the game to be finished.
- Fantastical creatures (Gryphons, Wyverns, Dragons) will be tameable, but hard to acquire.
- Lots of new creatures to be added, especially ones specific to various biomes.
- End-game content is what Jesse is most looking forward to introducing.
- A desert biome is on the way.
Technical:
- DX12 update is planned, but other, more widely-applicable changes are taking priority.
- Console optimisation should help with performance a bit, but with the game being a year out they expect the minimum specs to be similar to Battlefront, for example.
Other:
- The typical employee works 50 hours a week, some a lot more.
- Physical artbooks and other Ark goods are planned.
- When the plot elements of the game are introduced, Jesse thinks everyone will be surprised.
If you just want to see the answers, Jesse’s Reddit profile has just his posts on it. Did any of you get a question answered?