[url=http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=493316663][img]http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/631980045786748044/E2FEED274FFA1D0C6D64F8B031E88D602DFA8FBD/[/img][/url] [i]ARK: Survival of the Fittest Tournament #1 Results Poster[/i] [h1]ARK: Survival of the Fittest[/h1] Hello Survivors! Before we start this off, I’d like to give you guys an advance warning that this post will be full of [b]spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers [/b] about the recent, Survival of the Fittest game mode and tournament. We will be delaying the ARK Digest questions until Wednesday, where our entire digest will solely be dedicated to answering your questions. For those of you who haven’t seen the VOD, you can check it out here: [url=http://www.twitch.tv/survivetheark/v/9332264]Survival of the Fittest VOD![/url] Hope everyone had a great weekend, we sure did over here at Studio Wildcard! For those unaware we debuted our upcoming game mode, Survival of the Fittest during a live 4.5 hour Tournament on Saturday the 1st of August! [url=http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=491148383][img]http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/631979768154967113/872933B0D53988045977192932820F119D46C414/[/img][/url] The event was a great success, everything blew up, twitch streamers, twitter, the forums, facebook, reddit, and even players! The idea behind the event is very simple, you’re placed in a random team and are beamed onto the ARK where you’ll need to compete for your lives for the next 5 hours. There were a wide variety of balance changes made to this game mode, including some very specific interaction from our friends over at Twitch chat! They helped direct the Game Master in unleashing “Evolutionary Events” to affect both the pace and the style of the game, some of these including freak weather changes, day-to-night cycle swaps, mega crates and the ever-loved Dino drops! First of all, we’d like to give another shout-out to the winners of the event and the contestants for their great play! They weren’t provided much details about the event, until the very night before and it was a very daunting experience, thousands watching you compete in a game mode where you don’t know what to quite expect. Huge props to them for stepping up and putting on a great show! Now to present the winners! [h1]The Event[/h1] From the get go, the event was incredibly exciting. Within 35 seconds of play, Sl1pg8r took an arrow to the face and instantly died! This is a brand new record set in this mode, in over hundreds and hundreds of hours of play-testing, no one had actually died this early. We’d like to congratulate Sl1pg8r on pushing the game to its absolute limits! He set a brand new record and currently hold the Sl1pg8r title, quickest person to die in a SotF Tournament Environment! [url=http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=493290932][img]http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/631980045786594439/AEA0B398D9299B015E72750CF412538EED2935C5/[/img][/url] Survivors were dropping like flies right from the beginning, the main culprit of the murders seem to have derived from SniperNamedG (The name definitely fits!) who would often come across gatherers not paying attention to their surroundings, resulting in both a free kill and free XP! Plus you’ll always get to grab the loot that’s left over. Let this be some advice to future participants, always pay attention to your surroundings! Something to note is that prior to the event, the participants were given a document guidelining the changes made to the game-mode, including some hints about how we’d advise them to play. This mode is very different from standard ARK. There are a lot of changes and the core-gameplay is primarily focused about PvP and quick-taming to get those massive Dinosaur battles. Plus on top of that we had introduced Evolutionary events, this is something that would be controlled by Twitch Chat and the Game Master used to help dictate the flow of the game by creating some really odd events, such as raining carnivores, an enormous fog, the ability to track other players, supply crate from the gods and of course the many many annoying weather and day cycle changes. [url=http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=493298382][img]http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/631980045786640518/BF392CA56857472AA65979372C63C8D0784E5076/[/img][/url] The contestants were definitely surprising, we had a lot of expectations from some of them due to the amount of experience they had playing the game and others we weren’t quite sure how they would do. We were pleasantly surprised when Lirik and Echo, both relatively inexperienced players were quick to tame a T-Rex, whereas some of the veterans were left drowning in a pool of piranhas (hehehe). [url=http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=493306621][img]http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/631980045786688813/E17528D8EBF45A108055D2AECDA50B97658C894A/[/img][/url] As we progressed through the event, players quickly began to form and execute their gameplans, we saw a wide range of tactics, Alan from Serious Gaming quickly shot up the ranks in the levels making use of the base-building skills he’s picked up from Server 323 as he crafted foundation after foundation, unfortunately a stone wall cannot protect you from the impending doom-dome. Some groups took to the covers of the jungles to slay and tame dinosaurs, whereas the tribe of Kimbo Slice went deep into the cave to begin their training, this was definitely a risky strategy but highly rewarding, they’d be safe from a fair number of the evolutionary events however these caves are twice as tough and less-rewarding than standard ones! [url=http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=493301431][img]http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/631980045786658889/8CB923289E811570F0FFEBB1CD3FE537D1A3B9F5/[/img][/url] Shroomz lost his partner relatively early on, and when we say early, we mean his partner currently holds the Sl1pg8r title. However this didn’t put a stop to him! He was an early adopter of our changes made to PvP and Dinosaur taming, quickly picking up a Carnosaur as an ally as he roamed the map slaying beast after beast and taking on players head on, even 2 versus 1 in some situations! Really impressive stuff, unfortunately his friend passed whilst he was kiting a T-Rex from the top of a cliff, you really can’t take your eyes off anything in this game mode - literally, 10 seconds and you could lose all your chance for victory ;). [url=http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=493295920][img]http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/631980045786624879/BEFD307FA4BB07D757DF727F88FBCF3212E8AA0D/[/img][/url] When the clock struck TWO, the Game Master released the Mega Supply crate and boy oh boy is this an exciting part of the game! That crate is stacked to the top full of goodies and if you can get a hold of some of those, you’ll gain such a massive advantage. Of course it’s a bit tricky as the descent is a lot slower, and its location on the map is extremely obvious, so it’s likely to attract other players, as you guys saw in the livestreams. Plus it’s too heavy to take everything, so you’ll need to think quickly, otherwise you’ll find yourself encumbered and an easy target for scavengers! [url=http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=493309245][img]http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/631980045786703835/81E71D3667049C89AF6416912A047F0B4ABA3DA0/[/img][/url] Page 2: http://steamcommunity.com/games/346110/announcements/detail/111814120376149584