ARK: Survival Evolved

[Deleted]

I saw a guy stream it and I can't believe people are buying into this shit. How many survival games are there now? Beyond count. How many of them have dinosaurs? 4? 5?
Well, the first thing that happened, the VERY FIRST THING that happened when he spawned in for the first time, was that he instantly died to a dinosaur.
Not to mention what an atrocity this game is. You punch tree's down. YOU PUNCH TREES UNTIL THEY FALL! Then you make your crude pickaxe to completely split a gigantic, hundred ton boulder BY YOURSELF and put it in your pocket.
Ofcourse, let's not forget that you literally shove your burning torch into your loincloth. When you take it out, from your loincloth, it's still on fire.

Then there was the little problem when the game didn't install, servers didn't appear etc.
No, don't tell me "but it's early access". That's not an excuse to be shit. I can't believe people are buying another damned early access survival game... The amount of crap people will gulp down without even gagging baffles me.

Though I will give it some points for letting you create inhuman monstrosities as playable characters. That character creator was comedy gold.

[BurningSkies2018]

Someone sounds quite mad?

It's a game. I've already clocked 100+ hours, and rarely have any of those issues with the "game not installing, or servers not appearing" etc.

Hell, I've had a blast so far.

[Lightning-]

Someone sounds quite mad?

It's a game. I've already clocked 100+ hours, and rarely have any of those issues with the "game not installing, or servers not appearing" etc.

Hell, I've had a blast so far.

That's the only thing that matters. I think the game looks interesing.

[endersblade]

I got it yesterday. Playing local though, not willing to deal with the asshats in MP. But man, this game is brutal. Took me about 5 deaths to various things to finally figure out what I was doing, took me another 2 to realize you can pick stones up from the ground rather than the meager amount you get from pick'ing a boulder, and another death to realize you don't fuck with dodos lol.

Built myself a thatch hut out on the beach where I started. Had a crate or stash or whatever they're called land right in front of my place...requires level 15 to open. I'm like 5 lol. I have a campfire built INSIDE the Thatch hut...yeah, that makes sense.

I'm sort of disappointed that, at least for the moment, all you get for killing things is meat and hide. Where are things like bones? Teeth? Claws? I know the game is in early access and all that, but that sounds like serious missed opportunities to me.

I haven't really left the beach. I ventured inland and spotted a spinosaurus, which chased me until I managed to find something bigger for it to eat. Think I'll stay on the beach for a few more levels.

Still not entirely sure which stats I should be putting my points into. I always seem to put them into whatever seems important at the time. It'd be nice if there were descriptions on what they affected, like what does Fortitude do? Does increasing Food or Water mean it also takes longer for you to get hungry/thirsty, beyond just raising the cap?

Aside from the serious performance issues, this game is fucking amazing. I'm currently running it on a 770 at medium settings, the graphics are freaking killing me, but I'll get over it. Having so much fun, and I can't wait to see what awesome shit I can craft later!

[Puri]

I am playing it since release. It really looks gorgeous, and it has very few bug considering it is alpha.

But imho the game suffers from two major problems: If you want to play PVE, you will soon notice there is hardly a challenge as soon as you have tamed a reasonable strong dino. Sure you still can go places where you find challenges, but this rather defeats the purpose of a survival game. Take away the time to tame dinos and there is not much content you can spend your timeon.

And if you want to PVP you either can play 24/7, or you are gonna have a bad time when you think you might sleep a few hours, since both your body, your dinos and your buildings all remain attackable in the game. So you can be fairly certain that you have lost all your property and you lie naked in the forrest when you get up again. This can be countered by joining a large tribe on the server, but most servers are so imbalanced that you are either part of thw winning tribe (which practically turns the game into PVE), or you will be dead all the time.

And another thing that needs balancing: Not everyone has the time to consecutively spend four hours (literally, not exaggerated) to tame the largest dinos. I don't say it shouldn't be challenging to get those, but there have to be other means to make taming challenging except giving it ridiculous durations.

But overall the game is really fun, and definitely is one of the technically most advanced survival games out there, running pretty stable if you have the appropriate rig.
And who doesn't like riding a trex?

[Weezing]

I recommend you guys play on a PVE server until you get the hang of the game IMO. I am playing on one, and glad I am. I don't want to deal with high level asshats going around ganking lowbies.

[RuneDK]

How is this game? I'm very very tempted to get it now that I've watched a few videos of it. These types of games don't interest me usually but this one just looks amazing.

[-aiko-]

Seems like no matter what server I join I have load times lasting minutes. It's so bizarre. I opened up my task manager while loading it one time and noticed the memory it took climbed up to 4,960,000 or so slooooowly. So something's definitely causing it to load slowly I just don't know what it is. Maybe I'll load the 'low memory' version of the game or whatever it's called.

The game itself is fun but I don't exactly have enough enthusiasm to wait 10+ minutes each time I want to play.

[Weezing]

Since the game went down for maint. Does anyone have a recommendation for a PVE server? I want to try one out as opposed to an official one.

[Tommi]

I made a server for my friends and I which seemed to attract a lot of players. Everyone is friendly and the hackers can't transfer their shit to it.
Search for (EU/UK)(PvE)Tenacity in the unoffical server list. I try to maintain a 100% uptime and update as often as I can with warning before I do. Most of the people have started on East 1.

[Weezing]

I made a server for my friends and I which seemed to attract a lot of players. Everyone is friendly and the hackers can't transfer their shit to it.
Search for (EU/UK)(PvE)Tenacity in the unoffical server list. I try to maintain a 100% uptime and update as often as I can with warning before I do. Most of the people have started on East 1.

Think my ping would be way to high seeing as I am from Los angeles?

[Tommi]

Think my ping would be way to high seeing as I am from Los angeles?

Have a few US players and they report between 50 and 150.... not too bad.

[khalltusk]

I saw a guy stream it and I can't believe people are buying into this shit. How many survival games are there now? Beyond count. How many of them have dinosaurs? 4? 5?
Well, the first thing that happened, the VERY FIRST THING that happened when he spawned in for the first time, was that he instantly died to a dinosaur.
Not to mention what an atrocity this game is. You punch tree's down. YOU PUNCH TREES UNTIL THEY FALL! Then you make your crude pickaxe to completely split a gigantic, hundred ton boulder BY YOURSELF and put it in your pocket.
Ofcourse, let's not forget that you literally shove your burning torch into your loincloth. When you take it out, from your loincloth, it's still on fire.

Then there was the little problem when the game didn't install, servers didn't appear etc.
No, don't tell me "but it's early access". That's not an excuse to be shit. I can't believe people are buying another damned early access survival game... The amount of crap people will gulp down without even gagging baffles me.

Though I will give it some points for letting you create inhuman monstrosities as playable characters. That character creator was comedy gold.

Punching trees until they fall much like how minecraft does the same thing? It also hurts you in this to do such an action so its not that much of an immersion breaker. The boulder breaking bit is a little silly I give you that. But from what they have done so far it is looking fantastic.

The character creator lets you make some fucking hilarious options, fair play. As for the torch thats really not an issue thats gameplay over immersion.

I had a blast for nearly 10 hours my only snag? On a PVPVE server when 3 russians decided it'd be fun to wreck my base and my mates base (hes been on far far longer than I) His two Trex dead, spinosaurus dead, bronto 2 trikes all dead and raided his base but they could not break into his Iron safe room.

Was frustrating as on the PVPVE one it should be no fighting unless provoked, but it was completely unprovoked. They had rules about only doing x amount of damage to a base as to access lockers etc, but they completely obliterated my mates base.

Thats one aspect of the game I dislike atm. But they let you setup a server as you wish so I made one and will get my mates on so we can have a little fun. Making it a PVE server with combat as by consent or self defence. Loving the crafting and dino taming.

[Lora]

I've been playing on a pvp server and this game absolutely rewards campers or people playing during the hours that people are normally sleeping. Without fault, every day for the past week my tribes base has been raided. The worst was when someone killed our dinosaurs, which included a t rex.

[Azrile]

punching trees and boulders is almost a staple entry level thing for survival games now. it is like a bad joke that keeps getting passed along and now has become normal. These are video games, there are certain things you just have to ignore to stay immersed.

After all the dino and survival games that have been released on Steam over the past 3 years, it is nice to see one that is at least playable and fun. Sad we are to the point where you hold your breath the first hour just hoping it isn´t a completely broken hoax game.

- - - Updated - - -

I've been playing on a pvp server and this game absolutely rewards campers or people playing during the hours that people are normally sleeping. Without fault, every day for the past week my tribes base has been raided. The worst was when someone killed our dinosaurs, which included a t rex.

You cannot eliminate PVP from these type of games. They serve a purpose. People who want to camp and jump to an early lead are the ones who buy the game on day 1. If you don´t have pvp, or don´t have a pvp game where early players are greatly rewarded, then there wouldn´t be a big day1 jackpot.

[-V-]

Im not a fan of buying into Early Acess games, i think that promotes lazy devs and most of the games stay in beta/alpha forever, but survival+dinos was to much for me, so i bought it and im very happy with the game so far, there is a lot of stuff to do, the optimization got better, my only problem is that 4-5 hours to tame the big ones, usually i dont play that much per session =/

[khalltusk]

punching trees and boulders is almost a staple entry level thing for survival games now. it is like a bad joke that keeps getting passed along and now has become normal. These are video games, there are certain things you just have to ignore to stay immersed.

After all the dino and survival games that have been released on Steam over the past 3 years, it is nice to see one that is at least playable and fun. Sad we are to the point where you hold your breath the first hour just hoping it isn´t a completely broken hoax game.

- - - Updated - - -



You cannot eliminate PVP from these type of games. They serve a purpose. People who want to camp and jump to an early lead are the ones who buy the game on day 1. If you don´t have pvp, or don´t have a pvp game where early players are greatly rewarded, then there wouldn´t be a big day1 jackpot.

I personally think unless stuff changes the game will die off due to the way PVP currently works out. Youre too easily rewarded for offline raids. Even if they set their pets to defend them selves you can easily kill them all. You can then wreck a base and take what you want and they then come online to see its all destroyed. If I were the devs I would allow for more control of certain aspects to server hosts. Allow settings for taming to be scaled somehow. Having a bronto take 4 hours and have it dead in 5 minutes when you log off is not compelling gameplay.

If you could reduce the time it takes for a dino to be tamed on a PVP server you might make it more manageable. Otherwise people will quit the game or go to PVE servers. Eventually if it stays as it is, you will only have less people on pvp servers due to the risk/reward currently in game IMO.

Its why I made a PvPvE server, I got raided after only being in the game a couple of hours. Lost everything. So made my own server, getting around 15 people per night on there now for several hours at a time. All so far playing by the rules we laid down (no offline raids/kills, pvp can happen and base raids but keep the damage to what you need to get in and loot while they are online etc). So far everyone there is enjoying it.

The stone buildings may help a bit as well to bridge the gap between wood and metal. Having wood spike barricades also helped as well as reducing eagle building damage.

[Deleted]

Im not a fan of buying into Early Acess games, i think that promotes lazy devs and most of the games stay in beta/alpha forever, but survival+dinos was to much for me, so i bought it and im very happy with the game so far, there is a lot of stuff to do, the optimization got better, my only problem is that 4-5 hours to tame the big ones, usually i dont play that much per session =/

You can cut down on taming time pretty dramatically by feeding carnivores Prime Meat instead of the regular shitty meat. You can find Prime Meats on Brontos, Rexes, Sarcos, Argentavis(?), and spino. I think Mejoberries has the same effect on herbivores. I've heard clans claiming to tame rexes in like an hour. Gonna be difficult to farm that many Prime Meats for a solo player but you can probably get at least a stack fairly easily, that should reduce taming by half.

[Zeddicious]

The game definitely has a few flaws, but it is seriously amazing. I haven't been this hooked on a game in a long time. Beautiful graphics (with rig that can handle it), great immersion and it has a rewarding leveling system that progresses well. Great game!

[Heathy]

I like it so far but i feel it'll just end up becoming boring like minecraft.

I think the lack of terraforming will hurt its longevity, the leveling system means that those who join the server first will always have the upper hand. I don't think the map is really big enough, its pretty big but, if it only takes 20mins to get to the other side, there is no real consideration in deciding to raid ppl, its like 'well its not far' if it was far, it might not be so easy or appealing to just jolt across the map to raid. or you'd be forced to setup outposts to make it more feasible.

there isn't really many things you can make like the progression is super spread out over those 65 levels. its basically a massive grind. which isn't so bad these games are made for those who embrace grinds.

the dinos are pretty great, the optimisation is bleh, it runs pretty well on my toaster, but holy shit if you find yourself on the cross section of 4 different map chunks you are gunna stutter like fuck till you move into one of them properly.

i'm in a team of probably 10-15 dudes that alternate at various time zones, full metal base, its soooo easy when you have a team of that scale. building/gathering/attacking none of those are a challenge at all.

it has great potential though, definitely worth the £20 even if i have to wait a year or so for it to become more polished, what is there now is probably one of the best alphas i've played.

btw taming is quicker on lower level dinos, but apparently they only ding 38 times so if you tame a lvl 1 rex it'll only get to 39, however if you tame a level 40 rex it'll get to level 78.