One way survivors have been able to nab new dinosaurs in ARK: Survival Evolved is by claiming abandoned tames when their ownership timer expires. That mechanic is being itself abandoned: On the game’s Reddit forum, Studio WildCard’s community manager confirmed that the practice of claiming of abandoned dinos is going away. Now when players leave servers their tamed dinosaurs will all just despawn/die when the timer runs out. This change, in conjunction with a 400 tamed dino cap for tribes, is meant to help server performance.
The idea was met with mixed feelings. Some folks enjoy the sport of camping out and snagging prized dinos when they become available, especially on PvE servers; others welcome the reduction in lag from server load. Could other options get the same desired result of less dinosaurs, such as giving owners the ability to release/remove unwanted dinos (short of setting them lose to slowly die)? One commentor offered this scenario as a compromise:
I think it should be a 50% chance the dino reverts back to wild and aggressive. Imagine the hilarity of watching people stand around arguing over who is going to claim that badass giga, and then the timer expires and it chomps everyone of them.
In response to concerns about trading dinosaurs, WildCard clarified that players could still actively unclaim their tames for others to claim.
