Conan Thrives on the FeedBack that Ark Devs Ignored :)

[ciabattaroll]

Just now, Moradin said:

and i thought for a moment that we achieved something here, my bad, for the record it was never about me loving conan, it was about me giving feedback once and for all to Ark, about how much i would love for them to enhance the quality of the gaming experience we have, not by adding content that was never there, but rather by improving content that we already had, as mentioned above.

to be banned just cause Ark's fan boys are easily offended when they are faced with the opposite opinion to their, is still no excuse, and thats the kind of cancer that should be looked into, not the other way around, Never-the-less, thanks for your time, and Goodluck.

Again, you were not banned. As unfortunate as it is, Steam does not have a "restrict from posting" feature. They just have "post things" and "banned".

[DomiDarko]

So, Conan has some things done better, but that doesn't mean Ark won't improve stuff. And when both titles would have been released at the same time, my choice would always be Ark, because it has extinct creatures - Conan doesn't.  BTW: The building system and UI aren't the biggest issues for me anymore. I'm used to them now after "some hours" of playing.^^

[PlatinumCore16]

I had read your post on implemented features a while back and I appreciate your efforts to combine all of those into one location.

However, even if features are requested by everyone who had a forum account (by no means close to the amount of people who play this game), WildCard is by no means obligated to include any of these features into their game.  The development team is going to make their decisions based upon internal criteria and if that means that a player requested feature, no matter how much support it garners, doesn't make it in, well then it doesn't make it in.  It is not that this feature is bad, good, absolutely necessary or completely trivial, it means that the development team decided they didn't want to put it in their game.

I completely agree with you that we as a player base need to point out exactly where this game fails, where this game succeeds, and where this game is broken.  And I would like to think that the developers read our feedback, good, bad, ugly, and even the praising.  But they still are not obligated to act upon it.

[Moradin]

20 hours ago, DomiDarko said:

So, Conan has some things done better, but that doesn't mean Ark won't improve stuff. And when both titles would have been released at the same time, my choice would always be Ark, because it has extinct creatures - Conan doesn't.  BTW: The building system and UI aren't the biggest issues for me anymore. I'm used to them now after "some hours" of playing.^^

wish i could say the same, but i still care, specially since this is an almost out of alpha game, and feedback should be important.

[ThzNutz]

12 hours ago, Moradin said:

and feedback should be important.

it is important--was typing a response but @PlatinumCore16 has already said almost exactly what i was thinking.

[Moradin]

9 hours ago, ThzNutz said:

it is important--was typing a response but @PlatinumCore16 has already said almost exactly what i was thinking.

good to hear, so here is my actual feedback:

 

[Clarey]

I love ARK, so I'm kinda loathe to try out this Conan game even though a lot of people I know are raving about it. I don't know how I feel about slaves lol  Dinosaurs however!
There are certain things that I wish ARK would take away from the game. Like the dino timer. Honestly, the dinos should just die or maybe after the time is up your Allies have a whole 24 hours in which to claim them before they become available to the rest of the server.

ARK's deff improved some of it's flaws since it's release yet also still has many. I don't know if I'd want to risk putting my money into another alpha game =/ nothing anyone has said in reviews I've read makes me want to go out and buy it though.

[Moradin]

12 hours ago, Clarey said:

I love ARK, so I'm kinda loathe to try out this Conan game even though a lot of people I know are raving about it. I don't know how I feel about slaves lol  Dinosaurs however!
There are certain things that I wish ARK would take away from the game. Like the dino timer. Honestly, the dinos should just die or maybe after the time is up your Allies have a whole 24 hours in which to claim them before they become available to the rest of the server.

ARK's deff improved some of it's flaws since it's release yet also still has many. I don't know if I'd want to risk putting my money into another alpha game =/ nothing anyone has said in reviews I've read makes me want to go out and buy it though.

when i joined Ark, i had two thoughts in mind that attracted me the most, Survival and Flying, i love both, but little did i know, that once u have survived the first few hours, there is no more survival to do, and the game basically becomes a farm simulation, of tamed dinos and what not.

and i totally agree with you about the dino timers, cause no one should have a dino for free without going through the hunting and taming hours, unless it was gifted to them by the one who did it, which is still an unfair privilege, dinos should indeed die when the timer is out, but even though we both agree on this, i doubt it would make any difference, i have seen it often posted on the forums at the early stages of Ark, and nothing was done about it, to the point that till today, there are tribes that live off other "leaving tribes" by claiming their dinos, so they basically dont have to do much taming or hunting.

all the other points i have mentioned already in the link i posted previous to your comment. 

[Jtmorris]

Conan is a joke. It's created for boy-men. Men who are old enough to purchase and play such a game, but who are actually jr. high buys in mind.

The saddest part is that it's actually popular....

This is where I would normally start to rant about how our young men are failing to rise up despite being raised in a Homer Simpson/Phil Dumphy world. It breaks my heart. 

--- but with regards to implementing player feedback, they have decided an order to do it in. Content first, tweaks and balances, final tweaks, then fix all the bugs to polish it all. There has been (as pointed out) tons of implemented player suggestions. You got the response you did because you are trying to argue with an absolute dichotomy statement. If we want more suggestions to be implemented, then we keep being vocal. It's not that they don't see or hear it, it's that they are not operating in the expected time frame, and not communicating about it. 

[PlatinumCore16]

1 hour ago, Jtmorris said:

Conan is a joke. It's created for boy-men. Men who are old enough to purchase and play such a game, but who are actually jr. high buys in mind.

The saddest part is that it's actually popular....

This is where I would normally start to rant about how our young men are failing to rise up despite being raised in a Homer Simpson/Phil Dumphy world. It breaks my heart. 

--- but with regards to implementing player feedback, they have decided an order to do it in. Content first, tweaks and balances, final tweaks, then fix all the bugs to polish it all. There has been (as pointed out) tons of implemented player suggestions. You got the response you did because you are trying to argue with an absolute dichotomy statement. If we want more suggestions to be implemented, then we keep being vocal. It's not that they don't see or hear it, it's that they are not operating in the expected time frame, and not communicating about it. 

That's a pretty strong opinion you got there.  I'm all for people being entitled to their own opinion, but I am going to strongly disagree with you.  Just because a "man" (presumably a male of 18+ or 21+ years old, whichever you believe is an "adult") decides that he wants to play a video game, doesn't mean that he has a mental status of a "boy" in junior high.  Video games are played/meant/designed to be fun.  What some perceive as fun, may not be to others.  Am I considered having a childish mind if I enjoy playing that yarn game(cannot think of it for the LIFE of me right now) EDIT: Unravel or Max the Curse of Brotherhood?  I would certainly think not.  And does a "boy" have a "mature" mind if he likes to play Civilization, or DOOM, or virtual chess?  I would not make that correlation either.  So calling a group of video game players mentally immature because they enjoy playing a certain game that you believe is childish, is very small-minded.

I agree with your response to the thread topic, but I think that you are borderline name-calling as far as your first comment goes.

[Jtmorris]

1 hour ago, PlatinumCore16 said:

That's a pretty strong opinion you got there.  I'm all for people being entitled to their own opinion, but I am going to strongly disagree with you.  Just because a "man" (presumably a male of 18+ or 21+ years old, whichever you believe is an "adult") decides that he wants to play a video game, doesn't mean that he has a mental status of a "boy" in junior high.  Video games are played/meant/designed to be fun.  What some perceive as fun, may not be to others.  Am I considered having a childish mind if I enjoy playing that yarn game(cannot think of it for the LIFE of me right now) EDIT: Unravel or Max the Curse of Brotherhood?  I would certainly think not.  And does a "boy" have a "mature" mind if he likes to play Civilization, or DOOM, or virtual chess?  I would not make that correlation either.  So calling a group of video game players mentally immature because they enjoy playing a certain game that you believe is childish, is very small-minded.

I agree with your response to the thread topic, but I think that you are borderline name-calling as far as your first comment goes.

I'm referring to the game content - not games in general (obviously I'm in the gamer camp). Many video games would apply, and certainly playing too many video games at the expense of real live responsibilities and relationships would be another issue with the under 40 generation of men. 

[PlatinumCore16]

20 minutes ago, Jtmorris said:

I'm referring to the game content - not games in general (obviously I'm in the gamer camp). Many video games would apply, and certainly playing too many video games at the expense of real live responsibilities and relationships would be another issue with the under 40 generation of men. 

I agree with you there.  Being able to balance life is not something for the faint of heart.  Definitely have been down that road and it's really not a nice place.  I play with a few others who are also in the same age bracket as me (under 30, though the one is turning 30 this year lol sucks to be him), and we all have full time jobs, one guy is married with kids, another guy is in school and just had a baby, and I have a relationship and dogs.  Video games are fun, but they are no substitute for real life and if they affect the rest of your life, you need to reevaluate your priorities.

I guess I'm a little confused what you meant about the game then.  That only men who are still stuck in a "high school" mindset would like such content?  I, personally, cannot comment on the game as I've never played it so maybe there in lies the disconnect.  But it seems that my point still applies in that the content of a kids game can be just as appealing to grown ups and vice versa, regardless of mental status.

This leads my brain to an aside, so you'll have to forgive me, but I think it is indeed related.  Everyone knows how racy and "M" rated Grand Theft Auto(GTA) is.  I read an article (a quick Google search denied me the satisfaction of re-finding it) about a father who liked playing GTA thought to give his 4 year old son the controller.  The 4 year old was driving around as the taxi and having a good time until he saw a firetruck; asked his dad if he could ride the fire truck and they were soon careening through the streets putting out fires and rescuing the inhabitants of whatever city GTA is.  At one point the boy hit a pedestrian and immediately dropped the controller and refused to continue until his dad explained, several times, that it was just a game and he could move past hitting the pedestrian.  The boy got back in the truck and soon forgot the incident.

I think this is pertinent because even in a violent and mature rated game, a young child will get out of it a completely different game.  He didn't once gun down a night club or run over every single person in sight until he had 5 police stars.  You may disagree that it is related, but I think it makes a good point that even the content of video games does not necessarily affect or reflect on those who play it.

Edit: If I've missed your point entirely, I apologize.  Please feel free to elaborate/clarify.

[BFFKimgy]

On 2/3/2017 at 0:03 PM, ciabattaroll said:

It's rather dishonest of you to say that, considering that player feedback is what prompted Wildcard to create SOTF, player feedback is what implemented diseases (of which we presently only have swamp fever), player feedback is what gave players the terrorbird, basilosaurus, and several other creatures, player feedback is what gave the various weather phenomena found on scorched, alliances,  and so on and so forth.

In summation, Wildcard does indeed listen to feedback. Just because you nitpick and gloss over the ones that they do, does not mean that feedback falls on deaf ears.

 

"Theres a player here askin us to fix a bug thats been here since day one..."

"Yeah but there also a player here asking for diseases so lets go with this guy"

[BigRed1227]

On Friday, February 03, 2017 at 2:10 PM, Casanova said:

I'm guessing the OP missed the huge thread in which we asked the community to give us feedback on the UI, as we are building a new one.

Stumbled upon this thread....can you link the thread you are talking about? Would love to read and comment

[mleii]

10 minutes ago, BigRed1227 said:

Stumbled upon this thread....can you link the thread you are talking about? Would love to read and comment

Here's one, I'll see if I can find the other.

Here's the MUCH older one back in Nov.

 

[BigRed1227]

31 minutes ago, mleii said:

Here's one, I'll see if I can find the other.

Here's the MUCH older one back in Nov.

 

Thanks man really appreciate it! Some good ideas there

[Z0mbie]

On 2/2/2017 at 9:35 PM, Sh4rk said:

Good go play conan and get your sour puss attitude out our way of enjoying Ark  Also... Conan is a completely different game, there is no real basis of comparison. You are just a self entitled little squat ;D

Mods how is this not flaming?

[Z0mbie]

On 2/3/2017 at 1:10 PM, Casanova said:

I'm guessing the OP missed the huge thread in which we asked the community to give us feedback on the UI, as we are building a new one.

As an administrator are you seriously ok with letting the moderators here jump all over this guy while allowing other posters flame him at the same time with no repercussions? The guy obviously loves ARK and just wants it to be even more successful. Can't any of you see that? He even posted it in the off-topic section where most anything should be able to be discussed.

[Moradin]

4 hours ago, Z0mbie said:

As an administrator are you seriously ok with letting the moderators here jump all over this guy while allowing other posters flame him at the same time with no repercussions? The guy obviously loves ARK and just wants it to be even more successful. Can't any of you see that? He even posted it in the off-topic section where most anything should be able to be discussed.

im glad you see it in the right way, to be honest, i originally posted it on general discussions, though it was instantly moved from there to here, in a matter of seconds after posting it.

while many did not quite see that i hope for the game to be even more successful, and to cover a bigger ground of interests by improving some of its aspects, you dear sir have got the right impression about it, thank you.

[Moradin]

15 hours ago, BFFKimgy said:

"Theres a player here askin us to fix a bug thats been here since day one..."

"Yeah but there also a player here asking for diseases so lets go with this guy"

yeap, exactly

[HighFlyer15]

16 hours ago, BFFKimgy said:

"Theres a player here askin us to fix a bug thats been here since day one..."

"Yeah but there also a player here asking for diseases so lets go with this guy"

Because it's content first, optimization and bug fixing later. Like every single developed game ever.
Truly hard to understand I know but please give it a try.

Quote

It's simply the case that the last year and a half or so have been adding content to the game-- which is exactly how things go in software development. You don't add things -> make efficient -> add things -> make efficient -> add things -> make efficient, because adding new things can break previous work (it happens constantly.)

So you add all the things, and then make all the things work well.

Any other approach is a huge waste of time, resources, and effort ):

- The Right Hand

Still don't agree? Well, then maybe you should become a game developer and waste time doing things in the wrong order.

That being said it must be sad to see the decline in Conan players already. Why isn't the UI and building mechanics keeping them entertained? Can it be the world feels hollow with poor AI, 20ish creatures, and next to nothing worth exploring? I mean the map is pretty and you use some time exploring it but everything cool looking is nothing but a facade for future content to be added later down the line. There are very few actual dungeons to explore. Think if ARK had cave entrances but invisible walls kept people from going in?
Is it because the Twitch streamers already figured out it wasn't the ARK killer they expected it to be? Could they be tired of playing with the in-game physics of genitals already? Or do they simply not want to play a PvP game with more bugs and glitches than ARK on launch? The PvP audience need things to work or they won't bother. Nobody enjoys PvP with lag, rubberbanding and structures not loading fast enough so people can raid you without breaking your defense  
A good UI from the beginning means nothing when the rest of the game is falling apart.

But do you know the funniest part about this whole thread? The CE devs did not do anything based on the feedback received from the community. ARK came with a placeholder UI. The devs stated it was placeholder. People asked for improvement and we got it. Folders, transferring items with T, splitting with Shift-T, item quality through text color, filters, etc. There are TONS of features in the placeholder UI which were requested by the community and then implemented by the devs because they also thought it would be great to have in the game. So your entire point is invalid. The devs listen and the devs implement more things than you know of.
I dare say 40-50% of the game right now was suggested by the community and that's why it didn't meet its June 2016 release. Because we suggested too much and the devs thought "hell yeah, that needs to be a thing before 1.0 comes around!"

[Moradin]

7 hours ago, HighFlyer15 said:

Because it's content first, optimization and bug fixing later. Like every single developed game ever.
Truly hard to understand I know but please give it a try.

Still don't agree? Well, then maybe you should become a game developer and waste time doing things in the wrong order.

That being said it must be sad to see the decline in Conan players already. Why isn't the UI and building mechanics keeping them entertained? Can it be the world feels hollow with poor AI, 20ish creatures, and next to nothing worth exploring? I mean the map is pretty and you use some time exploring it but everything cool looking is nothing but a facade for future content to be added later down the line. There are very few actual dungeons to explore. Think if ARK had cave entrances but invisible walls kept people from going in?
Is it because the Twitch streamers already figured out it wasn't the ARK killer they expected it to be? Could they be tired of playing with the in-game physics of genitals already? Or do they simply not want to play a PvP game with more bugs and glitches than ARK on launch? The PvP audience need things to work or they won't bother. Nobody enjoys PvP with lag, rubberbanding and structures not loading fast enough so people can raid you without breaking your defense  
A good UI from the beginning means nothing when the rest of the game is falling apart.

But do you know the funniest part about this whole thread? The CE devs did not do anything based on the feedback received from the community. ARK came with a placeholder UI. The devs stated it was placeholder. People asked for improvement and we got it. Folders, transferring items with T, splitting with Shift-T, item quality through text color, filters, etc. There are TONS of features in the placeholder UI which were requested by the community and then implemented by the devs because they also thought it would be great to have in the game. So your entire point is invalid. The devs listen and the devs implement more things than you know of.
I dare say 40-50% of the game right now was suggested by the community and that's why it didn't meet its June 2016 release. Because we suggested too much and the devs thought "hell yeah, that needs to be a thing before 1.0 comes around!"

40-50%? who told you that the accepted suggestions where actually not already an -on plan- feature WC had, how could that possibly be? simple, cause when Ark started its alpha, it also more or less like conan, had so less features, content, creatures, and the most horrible character customization screen, moreover what was taken for granted in all the games in the same genre as it is, was not found in it, and clearly with or without asking for these features, they have been on the -to do- list from the very beginning, things like splitting items, and quick transfer are just basic stuff we shouldn't have had the need to even ask for, and as for having folders, i personally find it useless and unfitting to be used inside a game of this genre, and add to the basic stuff that till now we didnt have, is the auto-arrange/auto-sort option for the inventories, which was frequently asked for, but look at what they gave us instead, a manual inventory sorting system, that is almost useless, and you say 40-50% of the GAME is what we asked for? 40-50%?? 

what i was talking about was content and features that has been asked for, often enough on the suggestion forums, not just fixes and optimization.

and as for saying [that's why it didn't meet its June 2016 release. Because we suggested too much and the devs thought "hell yeah, that needs to be a thing before 1.0 comes around!"]:

no thats not why, the reason its delayed, is because WC does not take deadlines seriously, often enough seen in patches, updates, and content to be added, they delay everything and anything, they just set a deadline as wishful thinking, while infact they are usually highly unlikely to meet the required outcome when reaching the deadline, not because "they implemented so many things we asked for" but simply because those deadlines were made to make YOU feel like there is quick progress, but you know what, im glad they said about many good ideas that it would better be left for mods, yet they spent time developing jousting with a lance, cause thats exactly what we need on official servers.

 

[ciabattaroll]

3 hours ago, Moradin said:

40-50%? who told you that the accepted suggestions where actually not already an -on plan- feature WC had, how could that possibly be? simple, cause when Ark started its alpha, it also more or less like conan, had so less features, content, creatures, and the most horrible character customization screen, moreover what was taken for granted in all the games in the same genre as it is, was not found in it, and clearly with or without asking for these features, they have been on the -to do- list from the very beginning, things like splitting items, and quick transfer are just basic stuff we shouldn't have had the need to even ask for, and as for having folders, i personally find it useless and unfitting to be used inside a game of this genre, and add to the basic stuff that till now we didnt have, is the auto-arrange/auto-sort option for the inventories, which was frequently asked for, but look at what they gave us instead, a manual inventory sorting system, that is almost useless, and you say 40-50% of the GAME is what we asked for? 40-50%?? 

what i was talking about was content and features that has been asked for, often enough on the suggestion forums, not just fixes and optimization.

and as for saying [that's why it didn't meet its June 2016 release. Because we suggested too much and the devs thought "hell yeah, that needs to be a thing before 1.0 comes around!"]:

no thats not why, the reason its delayed, is because WC does not take deadlines seriously, often enough seen in patches, updates, and content to be added, they delay everything and anything, they just set a deadline as wishful thinking, while infact they are usually highly unlikely to meet the required outcome when reaching the deadline, not because "they implemented so many things we asked for" but simply because those deadlines were made to make YOU feel like there is quick progress, but you know what, im glad they said about many good ideas that it would better be left for mods, yet they spent time developing jousting with a lance, cause thats exactly what we need on official servers.

 

All well and good, but save for the unfortunate launch dates (which in themselves were wide in berth), they don't really set deadlines, just estimations. They pretty much never say on their updates that it's flat out dropping on a specific date, just an estimation that it will. You might nitpick and cry arguing semantics about that, and that's your perogative to do so, but that does not change the fact that estimations are in no way the same as deadlines.

On 2/17/2017 at 0:44 PM, BFFKimgy said:

"Theres a player here askin us to fix a bug thats been here since day one..."

"Yeah but there also a player here asking for diseases so lets go with this guy"

One involves isolating a portion of the code and revising it so that the error no longer occurs, the other involves adding onto already established code. One task does not equate in ease of completion as the other.

[Moradin]

16 hours ago, ciabattaroll said:

All well and good, but save for the unfortunate launch dates (which in themselves were wide in berth), they don't really set deadlines, just estimations. They pretty much never say on their updates that it's flat out dropping on a specific date, just an estimation that it will. You might nitpick and cry arguing semantics about that, and that's your perogative to do so, but that does not change the fact that estimations are in no way the same as deadlines.

One involves isolating a portion of the code and revising it so that the error no longer occurs, the other involves adding onto already established code. One task does not equate in ease of completion as the other.

even with estimations, its usually way off the actual time taken to achieve the goal, like the "on ground meshes" was set to be on the first many updates, kept being delayed & delayed, along with the truesky, till they just figured, write it on the to do list but dont give it a date, like almost every Major or Basic feature and aspect that was promised.

like for an example till now we do not have a shortcut to consume a full stack of something, even though its often needed, but hey why give them that, they already can split stacks, thats good enough.

[Moradin]

along with all these PVE issues:

 

This Game is focused mainly on wild life, Dinos and what not, taming and breeding, while little to nothing of the focus is given to the human character each player operates (ex: no bags to increase the carry-able weight, and outfits only affect weather tolerance and armor, except the Ghillie set which increases the player stealthiness, but they don’t affect other important aspects like Health, Speed, Weight or Damage), so expect to count heavily on tamed creatures to pretty much do anything you need.

 

{UI & Character Customization} so you get in the game, find a server, and join in, then be taken to the Spawn Screen where you start getting the Feel of how Boring the UI looks, but never-the-less you are still excited about trying the game you just paid for, so you get into the character customization, playing around abit with, gives the feeling of how under-developed it currently is, with very limited options to look around, and honestly, the UI just is making it feel worse than it actually is, thats how boring the UI is, Devs talked about it, and a thread was open and pinned for it, but nothing has been changed about it till now.

 

{Tutorial & Story} there is no Tutorial in the game, or scenes, or a story to the game, even though the developers promised it almost right after the release of the Alpha game, but till now, its just bits and pieces of nothingness.

Moreover, the newly added Ruins (Design-wise) look like child's play or simply that they do not belong, compared to the atmospheric graphics of the game, obelisks, caves, and the player structures. 

The story is clearly improvised, and was not something planned for from the beginning, even though it was promised from the beginning, like they thought "oh we have Dossier, lets take them and put them on Notes for players to find" "oh we have hair styles, lets add some of those on some new notes aswell" "and while we are at it, lets spice it up abit with some unreadable notes, n mix it up with ancient civilizations' drawings"...... i can tell already that its gonna be a one, epic.... story.

 

{Spawn Points} if you start on an official Server, you are highly likely to spawn "inside" or "under" the base of someone, cause the developers did not see the need to put any restrictions on spawn points, due to the randomness of spawn points, nor any kind of spawn point protection for newbies, But if you spawned in an area abandoned by other players and structures, you are highly likely to die way more than you should, Cause every wild creature on the island would be so eager to introduce itself to you, to get to know how your insides taste like, since almost everything will kill you just by looking at you, and you cant do jack shiet about it, thanks to how weak and fragile humans are in the game, losing everything on you on each death, till you actually get to build a hut and add a bed to it.

 

{Item Details & Appearance}  the character and every Tool, Weapon, and Armor that gets crafted early to mid game, looks quite usual (Except the Desert Armor/outfit, it looks pretty neat), there is nothing fancy or stunning about them, one will get the feeling that WildCard doesnt put effort into character tools/weapons/structures, at least not as much as they put effort into the Dinos, and sadly the quality/rarity of an item does not have any effect on its appearance, so the highest rarity of an item sadly looks exactly as the lowest rarity of it, Moreover there are no "on ground Meshes" till now of all the items, except poop & eggs, if you drop any item out of the inventory, it appears in the shape of a box, or a bag, depending on the quantity of the dropped items, which is kinda tolerable for an Early Access game, though one would think that this would have been resolved when the game is that far in development, anywho, checking the details on weapons and seeing (100%? 200%? 230%? - how is that remotely helpful? why not use solid numbers instead of just giving a percentage? Or even mixing Solid numbers with added percentage according to the rarity of the item??), where are the important and critical details in-game on weapons and tools?

Even though there are higher rarities/Qualities for each armor, tool and weapon, there is no given way to upgrade from one rarity/Quality to the higher one, and crafting the higher rarity/Quality does not even require the lower one, or a basic crafted one, or the engram itself, talk about a flawed system full of gaps.

 

{Building System & Structures} can’t say its bad, but can’t say its good either, For small builders, its gonna be good enough, but for big builders, its not, its hard to build something that looks good out of it, but not impossible, given the right amount of tolerance, patience, brains, time and effort.

There is no option to click and drag to place a horizontal or vertical set of walls/foundations/fences, it has to be done piece by piece, and the rotate option for structures was added mid-Alpha, though it doesn’t work quite well, leaving gaps between walls & such.

 

{Attributes Categorization} you have built your little hut? Gratz! but before you think that you can run around and dominate the early creatures with no trouble, have a look at the level up system and the 1 point u get to put on a big horrible variety of Minor attributes -Health, Stamina, Oxygen, Food, Water, Weight, Melee Damage, Movement Speed, Fortitude and crafting speed-, Noticing how LITTLE improvement you get by spending a given point on any of the attributes, and how it almost makes no difference what so ever on how long u can last, then you would wonder to yourself (why?? whats wrong with the norm, that wildcard needed so badly to change it up? whats wrong with giving the Normal Major Attributes -Strength, Agility, Endurance and such- and letting them control the other minor ones?  instead of making the minor attributes become Major ones??).

 

{Taming, Max Level Hunting & Creature stats} you realized that taming a creature is crucial to your survival, its not quite as fun without it, so u start on wondering which ridable creature you should Begin with taming, u figured it out after some digging into guides and Videos, and started your first tame, you knocked out a creature after abit of running here n there, n then u realized how fudged you are if just stay out in the wild next to that unconscious creature u r taming, if you are playing on PvE that is, and u would start wondering (how come there is no way to drag your unconscious creatures to your base), then u figure out that u just have to build around your unconscious dino, to secure the tame, and after u do so, u just wait around, doing nothing but force feeding it stuff, and then again think to yourself (man, this is quite boring as hell, if this was in my base, i could do some other stuff while taming it, and not just stay there in some sort of a trap that i built, bored to death till the unconscious creature gets tamed).

Taming max level early to mid game creatures takes an average of 1.30hour, with its kibble (favorite food) and 3 hours at least if you don’t have its kibble, and taming max level end game creatures, with their kibble, does not take less than 3 hours, and at least 6 hours if you don’t have the kibble aswell, so expect a lot of waiting hours out in the wild till your creature is tamed, doing almost nothing in game other than feeding it every now and then till its tamed.

Hunting for max level creatures can often prove to be very time consuming and unrewarding, thus frustrating, usually when I went on a hunt for a few max level creatures, it rarely ever took me less than 2 hours flying around and checking every wild one of those creatures, till I get my hands on one, I never keep on looking for more than 2 hours, if its takes longer, I take a break then continue looking later, and 50% of the hunts took more than a week to find the max levels im looking for, since there are no Hive-like places for each creature, or a certain place with guaranteed max level creatures.

And now that I finally got my hands on one of the Max level creatures on my list, I go in its inv and check the stats of it, just to often find that its majorly leveled up attribute is the most useless for its kind, like when you get a poop load of level-ups on the Oxygen stat for a mountain creature that rarely ever gets close to water, knowing that Oxygen is how long you can last underwater, which then makes that whole hunt a big waste of time.

If you feed the tame its favorite kibble, it doesn’t only tame faster than the ridiculously long normal taming periods, but it also secures a good amount of bonus levels that will be spent on the creature when its fully tamed, known as taming effectiveness, so one would think it’s a great addition to compensate for the randomness of the wild creature stats, but to our surprise it usually isn’t, and instead of letting the hunter distribute the bonus levels according to their wish as a reward, it automatically get distributed as soon as the creature is tamed, which more-or-less proves to be another big waste of level points, and hunting time.

 

{Survival?} oh you got your first tamed pet and got a saddle on it? now u can climb up the chain of food quite easily, thats if you find the extremely boring taming system acceptable, noticing how the earliest ridable creature can survive everything at least 10 times better than you can, and as long as you are not on foot, you probably wont ever die again in the game, unless you jumped off a cliff or got glitched in a cave or fell in an unescapable hole in the ground, Congratz, you-have-survived.

The most common deaths in mid/end game are from one or a combination of: Disconnection/Lag Spike/Screen Freeze. 

 

{Cooking & Recipes} cooking recipes can be found by looting the corpses of killed creatures, however, it always seems rather useless, since these recipes can not be learned (and then automatically be found in the cooking pot/industrial), and are not needed to actually cook the recipe, since one can cook any desired output, without having to have the recipe needed for it, unless it’s a custom made recipe, which is another system that rarely is used (according to those whom I know on the servers I play(ed) on, and to my self), specially since there usually is no point in creating a custom recipe, and eventually one will end up checking the wiki for whatever recipe that they need to cook, in order to get the ingredients of it to cook it.

Why even bother investing time in developing the recipes that can be looted off dead creatures, when it can not be learned and are usually thrown away -due to how uncrucial they are-!

 

{Engram & Blueprint System} an Engram system that often is rendered useless thanks to the Blueprint system that overrides it and acts totally independently from it, and is better than it in almost every possible way, the lowest BP is better than the limited & progress earned Engrams, and you can craft Any BP u want without having to have the Engram Prerequisite of it, and there is No Given way for one to Evolve the rarity of the Learned Engrams, not by how often the engram has been crafted, nor by spending more engram points into it, Moreover Blueprint rarity grades are so random in stats, to the point that often enough a lower rarity Blueprint would be better than 1-2 higher rarities that are way harder to find, even though the higher the rarity of the Blueprint grade is, the much higher amount of materials it would require to craft it, and as in end game Blueprint grade quality, you will get used to hear about Blueprints that are Impossible to craft, cause there is no crafting table that have enough slots to carry all the materials required to craft it, which goes without saying, an INSANE amount of materials, as if it was not challenging enough to actually acquire the highest rarity Blueprints, Ascendant.

 

{Caving and Loot Crates} the caves are shared with the entire server on one instance, meaning that if a player or a tribe clears out a cave, all other tribes and players would have to wait till everything in the cave has respawned/Reset, which can get quite annoying, but what makes it tolerable is that the loot crates of caves usually are not worth caving for, and the main reason players currently do caves for is to collect the artifacts, one might have thought that a red loot crate (highest) would guarantee high quality loot, specially that you had to do a cave for it, but no, it can give as bad of a loot as you can get on the lowest loot crate, when it comes to cave loot crates and Blueprints in general, its always random as fudge with no limitation whatsoever, to how good or bad it could be, moreover the upper south cave has a narrow path that often randomly teleports players out of the cave and not even to the cave entrance, and the teleportation under the artifact of the Central cave, is totally out of order, I used it one time, and it ended up killing me and my previously max tamed favorite Direwolf.

 

{Events - Supply Beacons} the most horrible Christmas events and Supply loot Crates that are made for the pleasure of Alpha Tribes and Ninja looters, and most of those whom I know on official servers do Not take part in the Christmas event, including me, since it only enrages anyone who is not a ninja looter, and the Developers seem to be pretty happy with it, and are not doing anything about it, kudos to those of them who thought that a good way to celebrate Christmas is to throw gifts out in the wild with occasional good loot, and make the players fight to get it, in PVP with dinos and guns, and in PvE with cursing and pillar wars.

The Majority of the players only get some cosmetics out of the events on Ark, if any, like “appearance only” hats and skeletal dino skins, which might be alright for some at first, but repeating it as if it was a good idea to begin with, is not alright.

And the supply Beacons/Deep sea loot crates were a total disaster from day one, whats wrong with them you might ask? Umm lets see

- they can be opened by more than one player at the same time & every player sees the same exact loot.

- if there are 3 items inside, and one of them is good, a player can take the good item, leaving the crap two other items behind, without the supply crate disappearing after an item has been looted and its inv has been closed.

- one can loot 2/3 of the items inside a loot crate, then Put a useless Item INTO the supply crate before taking the 3^rd item and closing the inv of the crate, making the supply crate stand there, even when it has been fully looted except for one item that has been placed in it.

- there is no cooldown for a player after receiving loot from a crate, so everyone can practically run from one loot crate to the other, and it all becomes a game of rush and ninja loot then repeat, that’s if the loot is worth it.

 

{Fishing & Mating} when you start fishing, the fish gets super hyped and often enough run out of the range of the bait instead of staying close to it or running in circles around it, almost same happens when you set a female and male of any creature on wander to mate, (if you don’t use whistles or cage them), they often run out of mating range, instead of moving towards eachother, and how shall I say this to the devs, umm, this is not how babies are made?

Its great that they added fishing into the game, and made it almost the Most rewarding system in the game, then they nerfed it to hell, and made it almost impossible to find a good fishing rod, and no way to upgrade the bad rods.

They made chairs, and realized they are useless, so they thought it would be a good idea to make it a must to sit down on a chair in order to start fishing? Whoever thought this is a good idea, should clearly be fired, I mean, what the hell, if you want to make chairs useful, u could make it regenerate health/stamina faster, not make it a must for fishing.

Moreover, they added different kinds of fish, but not different kind of bait for each kind of fish, nor did they utilize the cooking in making different kinds of bait for different SIZEs of fish, to guarantee the Size of fish that would get attracted to your bait, unless you kill every other fish except the one u need, which cant be kept up with if a player is playing solo.

Catching a fish that is as big as the player or twice as big, with a fishing rod? Are you for real? Instead of adding a fishing boat, or some kind of a custom made/premade structure that can be built on rafts, which would reduce the difficulty of catching small to medium sized fish, and make it possible to catch large fish?

 

{Roars & gunshot noise} yeah its amazing that some creatures can roar, Though, the Roar sound is weak, and more importantly, its not done by wild creatures nor does it have any effect on the surrounding creatures what-so-ever, as well as gunshot noise.

One would think that a Rex’s Roar would boost the stats of surrounding allied creatures, and send the enemy & weaker creatures fleeing in terror, but no, in the game it does nothing, no buffs or debuffs, and same goes for every other roar.

One would also expect that a gunshot would trigger the fight-or-flight mechanism of the surrounding wild creatures, so those that fight when aggro-ed will rush to fight the shooter, and those that flee when aggo-ed would actually just starting running away.

Drums and musical instruments should also have an effect on allies