Jamie

I will see who can help, I'm having some personal issues that are affecting my life and some life changing things have become known to me, I apologise for my lack of communication in relation to this issue. I'll pass this to management to see if they can resolve this some how.

It's a sad time to see you go, But I understand exactly what you are going through personally and I understand why you have to make this choice. JR wouldn't be where it was without you, I hope you remain an active member with our community and if ever there was a time that you'd like to become staff again I will reinstate you without delay. While you haven't had much to do currently it's due to my fault, I'm going through quite a bit of stuff to properly run JR. I want to apologise about that. I'm not going to make this a big thing about me. Again, thanks a million and I hope you do continue to be an active member to the JR community

Apologies I'm having a hard time with a few things recently. In relation to our ARK servers we will review some mods to install but we are not putting everything back as before as it will just cause another issue similar to what we have just resolved. We don't want to have a crashing experience and as you said there has not been problems as of late. Please confirm a few of the mods that you'd like to see added and we will put a poll after reviewing mods that are okay and don't show any issues in the reviews / bug section. Thanks

I don't believe though you should have to setup parental controls just to setup a password for your profile. Pokemon 2 player while in it's infancy just really was a bit of a let down. I do enjoy Let's Go, don't get me wrong, playing with pickachu still makes me chuckle and I do hope they improve and add the two player to the next game as it is fun to battle with friends rather against them. As for 3 button press, you can disable this feature from what I have found, it's in the settings!

Well, I treated myself to a Nintendo Switch for a Christmas present to myself. As a gamer who has not purchased / owned a nintendo console since the Nintendo Gamecube I thought I'd give my own personal view on the Switch from someone who plays Xbox and PC. The experience To be honest, when I bought this baby home I was rather excited to say the least. I was reminiscing unpacking a silver GameCube which had Mario kart double dash installed that my brother bought me and my other brothers for Christmas, Sonic, Mario and Rainbow Six, those days of the GameCube to me were some of the best times I've had in my gaming life. When I was younger I didn't have a PS2 or a Xbox, gaming back then was GameCube and PC. Nintendo really holds something deep down. I didn't get a Wii because to be honest, there wasn't many titles on the Wii that interested me, sure there was mario kart, party style motion controls but the same magic I had with the GameCube just wasn't there. Anyway, back to after I picked up the switch. I opened the box and was delighted on the size of this device, it to me is a brilliant size, not too big, not too small. Including the Dock, Joycon grip and everything needed to get going was a plus. I bought with the console, Mario Kart 8, Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle and Pokemon, Let's Go Pickachu. After attaching the JoyCons to the console I was sure that I was now ready to start playing. This unfortunately was not the case. The battery was dead, not a little dead. Fully dead, I had to attach the console to the dock and literally leave it an hour before it would even start up, Even when it was in the dock it did not power up till the battery had enough charge to power it up. Well, okay. I work with electronics, I know sometimes they are in a warehouse and the batteries die, just generally most mobile devices at least power on and say you need to charge, this did not. Not that it's the end of the world but if a kid saw that they'd be pretty upset when it looked like the new shiny Nintendo isn't working. Anyway, apart from that when I got it up and running putting in mario, having it load without needing to install anything and enjoying mario kart as I once did was a breath of fresh air. It was exciting, it was fun. Another thing which I haven't missed on the switch is an achievement system, I get so involved in trying to get all the achievements on the game I loose the actual fun of the game. I know it sounds stupid but it's true. There is no competition with your friends for gamerscore or trophies, it's just play and enjoy playing. I love the fact you can be in the middle of the game and you can just pick up the switch and take the game away with you. While it does use a lower graphics clock rate and tones down the CPU the game still feels really nice to play, hat's off to nintendo for making it seamless and the joycon batteries, No more will I have to worry about plugging in a controller. The bad To be honest, there is not many negatives from what I have experienced so far. But alas, let me share a few disappointments so far with the console. Nintendo Switch Online. While this isn't a big headache for me, it annoys me to think that being the little capable machiene the switch is that currently Nintendo still does not have a decent online service. Yes it's 3.99 a month, While yes the games do not lag while playing online from my experience. It's just missing a few things. The friends list is clunky and I do not really understand what the point of a friends list is if all it shows is if your best friends and the other players activity. There is NO messaging functionality even though the touch screen is more than adequate to type with (and the switch supports full keyboard support). There is NO voice chat (unless you use the phone app through certain games, seriously you have to download an App and it supports only like 5 games... Not what I was expecting in 2018 - 2019 which is especially annoying as when I look down the headphone socket it would suggest that it is capable of using a microphone / headset). To add a friend you have to share a friend code which is basically a UUID, a string of numbers. (Unless you add your facebook / twitter account and find them that way). For those feature's I'd pay more but for 3.99 a month all you get is basically a free nes mini integrated in to your switch and online support for games that support online. It's a shame not to have these features, but I can say, I do like not having raging kids shouting down my ear as I whooop ass on mario kart. User profiles. Unless you use parental controls, there is no way to protect your profile, NONE! You can not setup a simple pin, or key combination to secure your game saves and to stop users purchasing items on the eshop (if you click remember my password). There doesn't even seem to be a way to forget your password in the eshop after remembering it. Weird. This is a small handy thing for people who share a switch amongst a family. Another issue with profiles is that when you start your switch if you have multiple accounts on it, it should ask who you want to sign in as and not ask constantly what account wan'ts to open the app / game you want to play. Currently everytime you open a game it asks who you want to play as. This is more than annoying. Pokemon Let's Go Pickachu, Cloud Saves and Multiplayer. When I bought this game, I couldn't wait to play and while I do enjoy playing it, I hate a few aspects about this game. Cloud saves, you can't save your progress to the cloud, while nintendos take on this is to avoid duplicating items etc. What happens if you loose your switch, or it breaks. The game save is lost with that save and there is NO way to back it up, not even to Micro SD. This is ridiculous. I can not believe this, I can just imagine an unlucky sole getting a bad console, spending hours on pokemon (maybe even the only game the play) and it breaks, get's sent to nintendo who replace it and you loose everything and have to start from scratch. What a bummer that would be. I wouldn't play it again for sure. This isn't just a problem with Pokemon though, a lot of nintendo switch games do not support cloud saves and it states it on the game box. Let's GO Together! Share your adventure with a second player. Now, this is stated on the box and I bought it due to the fact me and my girlfriend love pokemon, what a thrill it would be to be able to play together! And while yes, you can play together. It can be a drag, Why? (You might be asking) Well. For a few reasons. I thought that this mean't you'd be able to roam the same portion of the map together (whether splitting off into split screen or staying within the bounds of each other, picking up items, reading stuff etc. But no, this is not the case. Player 1, can play as normal and player 2 just wanders. That's it, you can not pick anything up for player 1, you can not read signs, go through doors, hit pokemon to catch, you just wander! WTF! In battle's you fight together yes, which is cool, it's really good to be able to battle together, it makes the matches easier yes but it is entertaining to take on gyms and people together. Catching pokemon is fun too and you get bonuses catching them together too! Just the annoyance of not being able to help the main player collect things and do small things is annoying, it really is. My girlfriend gets bored and we switch who's the main character because she wants to be more involved. Multiplayer pokemon is a great idea, but it really isn't implemented in the best way. No internet browser and limited media support Nintendo wanted to develop a games console and this is why it isn't a huge problem for me, but the fact that there is indeed a limited web browser to login to wifi access points, to login to facebook and more is a weird one. You can't use the browser but for those abilities. Just why nintendo? Allow users to use the damn browser already coded and on the switch, it works great! There is no real way to watch films / music apart from the YouTube app, don't hold out if you want to use this for media content. (even though you can put a big micro SD card in to the console) Don't get me wrong The switch is a great console, but Nintendo have a lot to learn in my view and need to work on these kinks. If you want to buy the switch and like the idea of it, BUY it! If you're buying it as a travelling multiplayer game console / tablet, don't hold your breath. All of these views are mine, if you have any queries, message below and I'll answer honestly. If I'm wrong about something let me know as I'd love to have a better experience with my switch!

That is brilliant xD

No offence but me and Frosty have a full time job to attend to, and I am still here working at work as I type this. You will receive your items, but please be patient, we have a lot on our plate. We are trying our best to attend to everything...

Apologies, was so busy forgot the dmg numbers :') Thanks Chris!

I have been looking at the servers with Frosty, We have installed the following to help: Stackmemore Tek Helper We have not installed the upgrade station yet due to a few reasons, we may install it at a later date. We have fixed a minor issue causing players to be lost in the cluster. This was happening as the file sync was every 15 seconds causing a problem that if you uploaded your survivor and the sync happened just before the download it would replace your character with a 0byte file. In relation to the water issue we do see that it drains quicker, but I believe this due to standard stats now. Frosty has slowed down water drain and it should be better now. We updated the mod collection here also : https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=940316400

Again I will be looking at the small minor problems with water etc today with Frosty. Can you let me what mods that are absent are causing frustration?

We will check in to this later today. I note the requirement for a stacking mod and we may replace the backpack mod with a stacking mod. AS for consumption of water, I believe that is due to the way that we used the original character enhancements to weight, harvesting etc. WE will review this soon DMG numbers may have been part of a mod, but I don't see it a massive concern. I will see if I can find out more about it. The upgrade station I do not see as a must have. It's nice but currently is not needed in any way, we used the upgrade station on the previous server as a end game ability. No one is near end game yet so I will not be installing it and I do not know our view as I haven't communicated this with the management team yet. PLEASE NOTE, WE will not install classic flyers just yet due to the huge amount of bugs with the mod, we want a stable server. We will take a vote upon this seperately next week. In relation to other mods we may not put them back until we have discussed as a management team, again we want a stable server, piling on unnecessary mods causing slow downs / conflicts and longer load time for players. We want everyone to have the best experience. So we need to find that balance. AFTER today I will not be around for the rest of the week and will be back at the weekend / next week so some things may not get resolved till then.

Hi Guys, As of this post: We have chatted with the community and we have been working to create a better server. (AS frosty says, tirelessly through the night) - at this moment we are chatting on discord. A few things to note about the new servers: Clustering - Is in beta but working, Please note if when you transfer and your survivor doesn't show right away give it 30 seconds and try and download again. We have installed the following mods to begin with, we will add mod's through suggestions as previously, BUT we will be going through all bug reports and will be checking better to see if any conflicts exist so we do not have an issue with the map as previously. Structures Plus Death Recovery Mod Taming Sedative Backpack We have also updated our mod pack - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=940316400 Stacking Mod - We have left this out currently due to the fact we can not find a mod without any issues reported. If you can help find a working / better mod let us know Classic Flyers - WE HAVE NOT INSTALLED THIS YET. Due to the following bug reports: https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/discussion/895711211/133261369999910543/ If the community still wants to go ahead and install classic flyers please say below, we just don't want to cause any issues to dinos by installing the mod. Please read the bug reports to see if installing it will affect your game experience. Levelling - Is standard currently, a few reasons to this, I do not want to copy our badly designed level structure, if we are editing levels we need to make the levelling structure better and more balanced than before. Dino Levels - Are standard currently due to the fact normal levelling is in place. I'm sure this will change in time GAIA - For the next week or so this is disabled till I can properly review this. We may continue it, we may remove it. Depends what people want. It's a hefty weight to our server resources but I do not mind keeping it but we will be doing the same but adding GAIA on as well as the other mods chosen. SERVER MAINTENANCE & REBOOT - This has now been changed to run at 12 at night and also 12 midday to ensure the servers update mods and have a good restart when necessary We want to provide the most stable experience in ARK and we really hope you understand why we have only selected certain mods to begin with. We will be adding more but at the same time we want to ensure that it doesn't cause us another issue like before.

So the time has come, I'm working to get the new servers online today. Please note the following: I will only be picking 3 - 4 mods to begin with. Mods may be added in the future I will keep the old game data if anyone wants a download PM me and I'll send you the map I will only get the new servers online if clustering works I will release the list of mods and more information when ready.

The new servers are currently under development, I will report back with news as it is available. Please note that while they are under active development, this does not mean they will be deployed today.

Hi Jake, Welcome to JR, what brought you back ? And why did you join JR to begin with ? I've noticed you around discord more alright sorry I haven't said anything to you yet been so busy with work and other commitments. Hope you enjoy JR and continue to converse with the community 😀