ARKADIA SPACE

As yes, the master of twisting words at it again... I started playing July of 2017, your 'war' was in Nov 2016. Hiding behind "peace has never been declared or AGREED"... key word there... AGREED. Of course you would never agree to peace. That would take the opportunity to kill innocent players away from your crew that constantly join and work on the Varyag.

Actually, Granny, All Louise did was accurately report that Morgoth had taken advantage of a NOW KNOWN BUG and Morgoth then posted confirmation that he had done so. You then came along and dumped on the thread because one of your own, known to act suspiciously, thus ratcheting up the drama as is your wont. You can try to twist it any way you'd like, but the fact remains that Morgoth received (through an exploit) something that he would have never received if it had not been for a broken game mechanic. It matters not that he was a pirate killing a non pirate and claiming he was a pirate hunter killing a pirate, the fact remains that he took advantage of an exploit in the game, has admitted it, and has not had the decency to return what he illegally received.

The sad truth here Granny is that your are the one guilty of defamation as can be easily shown through the recordings made of you and your crew. Maybe you have forgotten the 15 minute spiel you made about Yoshii having problems remembering things after her accident, but in your own words you state that THAT was the last time you spoke civilly to her. Apparently you view brain damage as something to be dismissed and derided... what a sad corrupt little woman you must be.

 

We would love to do that Dylan as soon as every ped illegally stolen through this bug is returned. But we know that this is unlikely to occur as MA has washed their hands of the problem by blaming you and the rest of Ark Team.

 

Anyone notice how the light side (light colored too) of the moon is faced toward the star next to RT? you can see the border of the light side follow how the light from the star shines on the moon. Really hope that means there are plans for arkadia space in regards to positioning of other celestial bodies.... ark moon space mobs ftw (add to wishlist!)

 

I did kind of see that yes...There is also part of the dark side pointing at the asteroids in Gordons Belt , Space mining ftw ( add this to wish list too ! )

 

Are you serious with this?

Dead silence for almost two weeks while your company's only product is busted.

No response to any questions even though status shows you've been around the forum.

Not a comment to reassure your customers who are frustrated and literally paying out of pocket for this problem?

No time to bother with so much as a minor update or reassurance regarding an additional week without even a maintenance reset?

Then you come in with this about how you don't really have time for any of this, "don't have feedback available" and will communicate "as soon as possible" - but the point is while you have nothing to say, you just had to drop in and make a post about how concerned you are with louisa chasing morgoth around the forums?

Well. Good morning arkadia.
Cross your fingers it looks like it's time for the next round of "guess what's broken and who knows what they tried to fix!"

 

Poeple:

Once again slow down. This is EU. It takes time. Unless you want them to rush it and miss yet another space bug? Sorry, but MA is slow and why the Ark team couldn't report on anything was because THEY had to submit a support case to MA to have space fixed which MA loves to be slow.

The Ark Team did post about this issue stating that it was being looked into. So please stop the drama. (yes I know it is fun as hell -- but still.)

Pirates: This isn't just any game, this is a ROI which costs us real money unlike other games where game money is worth nothing and people do pay to play knowing they will lose it all anyway. But yes, justify it all you like you know who you are and sorry that is just simple fact.

 

So, you have inside channels?

Ark team doesn't know what they tried to do until MA responds to tell them?

There are two things going on here. The pirate drama is cute and distracting and basically meaningless. Ark staff have time to comment on this.

The busted game is not cute. The lost time and money are not distracting. The stonewalling clarifies nothing.

All here for cuddles and kisses from the fans. Plenty of time to babysit and intervene in players' inter personal drama. Major issues?

Ark staff are "too busy" to comment on this. 100% I am not the only player frustrated and offended by this.

"It's MA's fault" is an incomplete explanation, and it's clearly a red herring right here. It's nice of you to try and smooth things over for them but in fact even they seem to realize that while it may be a fact, it's not an explanation.

And there are a lot more questions circling around than "when are you going to fix the planet exit". While they may not "owe" the player base any answers these are defining moments and a product like this is 100% dependent on player trust and goodwill.

This is a(nother) example of that relationship failing when the pressure level rises above ZERO.

I don't count things like ammo or weapons as "investments" in this game. I'm not one to talk about "investing in my avatar" or any of that. It's like buying consumables on a credit card it's a bad habit.

With that said, my largest investments in this game, in property and deeds, are in Planet Arkadia. Anyone can see my forum account dead here for years at a time because I don't appreciate the several repeats of this scenario over the years.

As often happens, the good memories of the past color the expectations of the future. I deleted 5 pages of dead old avatars from my FL this week.

Cyrus stays.


Your players were having a crisis. I say were because two weeks of silence later, everyone is gone who came for this has pretty much split. And few are actually eager to return when you get around to adding more content. Where was Arkadia Studios? Where was the community manager?

NOT out reassuring players and explaining the issues, that's for sure. Filing a "support ticket" with MA, avoiding all communication channels, and crying over forum drama I guess.

They say they're "working on it" and you say they can't. lol

Dunno man more wait and see. If Arkadia Studios don't like their players speculating on the major issues at hand, they can clarify the situation.

Or just ban everyone until there's positive news. There's apparently time for that.

EDIT: to be fair I was done chewing at this. Then I had a huge "OMG DYLAN POSTED" moment following on this morning's server announcement.

I came here to find out what was good enough for them to finally break the silence.

LOL nothing. No news, no status. Just petty BS.

TRIGGER ALERT

 

There are a few things I can say (not as an Adviser, just as a long time resident of Arkadia and reader of the forum). The Ark Devs don't talk about who's to blame for particular bugs (and it wouldn't be very professional, since the Ark team and MA are business partners). MA support will sometimes point fingers of blame at PPs, but I think those are cases where the rep is sort of just making stuff up in order to move to the next case, it's not MA speaking officially. But maybe we need to ask why are we, as players, so obsessed with pointing the finger of blame for bugs? Will nailing down exactly who did it and who needs to code the fix really get the bug fixed faster? Really?

Also, while Arkadia and the moon superficially appear to be "located" in space, they are not "part" of space. The game is compartmentalized into areas of responsibility for PP devs and MA devs. The Ark team may give directions to MA how they want things implemented (for example, where the spawn points are, safe zones (maybe), graphics of the planet, etc) but the Ark devs don't actually muck around in the "space" domain. Also regarding income from space, Arkadia only gets income from your activities if your avatar was born on Arkadia (25% of the cut I think).

Of course PPs have to submit support tickets for things they need changed which are in MA's domain, except the specific content MA has given them direct access to (I think this is mostly the 3D modeling of terrain). Did anyone really think PPs can just go and change anything they want in another domain? And almost any change has to pass through MA in order to make it into a patch. The things that can be changed in the live server are very limited (things like resetting missions or events, changing inventory items or avatar location, basically, certain game settings, not the "content"), and what PPs are allowed to change on the live server is an even smaller subset of these.

In any case, it's kind of silly for us to think that the biggest bugs are not being worked on by someone, though we players don't know which team is doing what, or when it will finally be patched. It's a good bet the safe zone issues will be patched tomorrow. But don't bet the farm, bigger bugs have gone unfixed for longer.

Policing space bickering on the forum is actually part of Dylan's job. But that's time he could have spent working on bugs and content for the patch, so... space bickerers, thanks for that. (/sarcasm)

 

People:

ARK TEAM HAS NO CONTROL OVER WHAT HAPPENS IN SPACE! If there is a bug in space, the ARK TEAM CAN NOT FIX IT. The only way they can get it fixed is to contact MA itself and tell them what bugs are there so MA CAN TRY AND FIX THEIR ERROR in 2-5 update.

This has happened a few times in the past. It is not a new issues. MA just can't seem to get the coords right when working with space.

Almost every damn new PP added there has been such bugs. And I have already stated this but how bad is it? Look at all the pirates. THEY KNEW that 99% chance that there WOULD be a bug and made sure to log in the day of the update to find the moon and camp there.

Come on people.


But yes, 1-2-3:

Let the drama continue....

 

No worries there's nothing but speculation here this whole time. It appears we agree on many fundamental points here. I don't really want to have an argument with another player over speculations about a third party.

I am interested in discussing what's happening and I'd like to share my thoughts on some of these points.

I can only speak for myself here. There are actually very few people bothering to post here at all. And I'm not bothered by or interested in clarifying any issue in that list.

100% agree it's irrelevant. Also as a fellow long time resident of arkadia and player in EU since before Arkadia existed and having participated in many discussions and speculations regarding the PP/platform arrangement, I'm comfortable that my understanding is as solid as anyone's who hasn't actually seen any of the paperwork involved.

I'm not here about who did what, though. I'm here about what the hell happened.

Again absolutely 100% not interested in separating or compartmentalizing blame.

Right. This isn't any different from my understanding of the mechanics. However Arkadia studios offers a product. That product now includes (some might say features) transit through space. This is part of the arrangement that they accepted when they decided to develop in EU.

If they want to have "Arkadian Customers" or "Arkadian Players" they can't deny that space is a part of what they are selling.

Now they want an "Arkadian Moon" and to encourage those "Arkadian Players" into space. Just because an aspect of your product or service offering is vendor-maintained does not absolve the merchant of all responsibility for the product they sell. In any industry.

Let's not forget that Arkadia Studios is working their way through a million dollar funding drive, these customers are very specifically interested in the moon, and in the mechanics necessary to access it within the framework of the game being offered by Arkadia Studios.

This all depends on space and if they're going to hide every time there's an issue it's going to continue to reflect poorly on them as well as Mindark.

Again, while I agree with plenty of this appearing to be accurate according to a common understanding of how such a game works, in the detail it's just more speculation. It's tangenital so I'm not 100% sure if it qualifies as "counter-speculation" lol.

Again. I don't think that anybody would believe they've all collectively taken the last two weeks off. It would be kind of silly for people to think that.

It's a fair bet that they will try and fix the planet spawn tonight. As you say, bigger bugs have gone unfixed for much longer. There might be a partial fix, there might be a new/worse problem.

That's a lot of content though. Got a feeling Mindark wants to push the discovery rush across their pirate filter? I've got my fingers crossed that they don't. But I'm not confident.

Zero data on how to plan or what to expect from Arkadia Studios during this important time for the development of the Arkadian Planetary System.

There's way too much "It's all Arkadia winning over MA" when things go well. And there's WAY too much "It's MA screwing Arkadia" when something goes even slightly wrong. We're 100 percent in agreement on this. I think.

In the end, as a merchant, Arkadia studios is responsible for the content that they provide access to. It seems we might feel differently about that one.

This wasn't billed as a "beta". It wasn't set up as a "soft launch". Hell it wasn't even announced at all. There were no warnings given and no expectations set.

And when the follow-on announcements came, the same.

They've fallen back heavily on the fact that mostly the player base is experienced EU players (originally from Arkadia or not) to move forward in this haphazard fashion and just expect people to shut up and deal, or take any negative feelings about the issue to another company, or person, or anywhere but to them.

TBF, they're not explicitly doing that, which would be VERY unprofessional as you note. But they don't have to. There are people willing to present multiple (sometimes even conflicting) theories and excuses for their behavior on their behalf.

Meantime they're either doing what they can, or waiting for the problem to be fixed. It depends on who you ask because they're not saying.

Again and especially with people that I have peacefully interacted with for half a decade and longer now, I'm not interested in turning that anto any personal attack or lasting nastiness between myself and other players. If I feel like I'm being white knighted I get a little bit of a knee-jerk reaction so if it seems like I'm snapping this is an explicit apology for you Neil. And OZtwo.

What is Dylan's job? He's not badged as a community manager, and he's not badged as a dev.

I understand he was out surveying in space and maybe spoke to some people (or maybe not) this week and good on them if it's all hands on deck such that the community staff are even helping them to sort the problems. People seem to be looking at him as a primary source of information, and he always seems to be something other than whatever is needed at the moment.

Does he work on bugs or develop content? Is the forum taking him from his work, or are a couple of meetings and maybe helping the devs out with some legwork being posited as the reason he's been mostly absent from his job?

I didn't find a staff page anywhere or anything in 1 minute with google but I did find this:

Engaging our Community
We aim to develop a community of players committed to Planet Arkadia’s future. Arkadia Studios will achieve this objective through:

• Communicating effectively (including greater use of emerging technologies) with MindArk, Players/Customers and other organizations, about Planet Arkadia’s achievements and aspirations, gaining their active participation and contribution to Planet Arkadia’s future.
• Developing further, a culture of engagement within our gaming community, whether through Societies, Arkadian Advisors, Mentors or other avenues of assistance.
• Marketing to focus strategically on aspirations of Planet Arkadia/Arkadia Studios.

I honestly thought that was Dylan's job, to represent. To further develop a culture of engagement within our gaming community.

Not to sit back and determine what it's ok for players to go on about or not while completely ignoring any questions or comments regarding Planet Arkadia's achievements or aspirations in this situation.

Incidentally (freebie!) they've gained my active participation by accepting my financial contribution to Planet Arkadia's future. Again.

If his actual job or role is community relations or communications, there's a real problem.

What are YOU going to give US feedback on?

Our performance as customers during your time of crisis?

 

Wow Well Atrax we all have our triggers it seems.
What you could do is just stay away from the place as I was suggesting in my (unintentionally) drama triggering post
(at least till things get sorted - hopefully by the patch this week)

I was chatting with the pirate junkman last night.
a witty and personable player like so many unconflicted pirates seem to be.

I like his approach to the game and life, and it was very hard to deny the facts as he puts them - people are warned (twice) and who's fault is it really if they take stackable items into space and get looted.
To be fair thou he did take my point that people could be caught up in the moment & excitement of something new & just overlook what they should normally check.

It was a pleasant chat and I think I will see if he wants to be friends (though it certainly wont be "nice doggie, pats the wolf on the head) - pirates are pirates and I certainly will see if I can stay far away from him in game

 

I have to agree with Atrax here, the level of communication is horrific. It would be one thing if Ark did the same shit all the other PPs have had to do, which is basically reduce server size to a minimum and basically hibernate because MA too fucking greedy to help their PPs and see them as just another source for party money.

Ark didn't do that though, they asked the community for 2 MILLION DOLLARS. Who knows how much of that they actually see and how much MA takes but it wasn't a request coming from MA, it was made by Ark for Ark. This was after two years of the absolute minimum level of upkeep and communication. I was hopeful, maybe the old Ark I knew and loved was coming back. However my hope level is dropping. Lets look at who has been talking:

Admin: last post made in 2014.

David | Arkadia: last post made in 2016.

Lars | Arkadia: last post made in 2015.

Mathias | Arkadia: no posting history.

Liviu | Arkadia: last post Aug 24, only 3 postings this year, however they all seem to be job related so I can understand.

Dylan | Arkadia: last non-moderator post was the release notes 2.5 weeks ago. No questions answered on anything related to the game.

So who are we supposed to get answers from? MA support is throwing you guys under the bus. You guys are asking for 2 mil and you cant have someone take an hour or two a week to answer some questions?

 

hmmm gunna have to check that out. Would be cool if they incorporated some space events (even if just graphic), with some event happening on arkadia moon. So far I like the moon, the whole sphere concept works rather nicely, makes me wonder if they will do the same for some planets later.

All real sphere's... next step would be adding some orbital movement for stuff like foma/cp, maybe even give the planets a real solar system. Think this design alone is a big step up from where the games been, and could lead to some awesome changes! Although it might mean space mining gets reduced to people landing on asteroids that are like a single foma dome on them, and maybe or maybe not pvp, so they can mine/hunt and fly away from them. Would be interesting, but I'd prefer mining with a spaceship, with a special attachment.

moons opened a lot of potential

 

People are such clutzes with no cow sense for timing. FFS leave them in peace to work on the update. Bitch afterwards.

 

on the post dark moon rising I asked if everything had been tested, of course the answer was ....

 

maybe it worked in testing environment, and the issues seem to be on the live system only. i think something similar happened back then with the landplots, but who really knows, but those who don't communicate with us?

 

You're right, the testing environment dies not function exactly the same as the live game. There are numerous bugs in the past which showed up in the game but not in the testing environment.

 

Dylan has many roles, including Forum Administrator. He also develops the game. However, he's not the Community Manager. Ark hasn't had one for a long time now (communication was much better then). IMO, a dedicated CM is the most important job, I don't know why the Ark team doesn't have one anymore. It's not content that draws (and keeps) players on a planet, it's excitement and engagement, and when Cyrus left there was a definite reduction in engagement.

 

I started a thread about some similar ideas here after a different attempt got derailed. I especially like the idea of landing on an asteroid (maybe with a grapple since microgravity) and being able to walk/jetpack into an airlock.

There's so much excitement for things they could do in space, if they wanted more than an economic barrier between planets.

They do keep lowering the bar for interplanetary trade (nice one with MA dropping entry fees today) so maybe we're headed in a direction where they can begin to treat it as a part of the game rather than a barrier.