The net trap thing is the most easy mode addition...

[Ganelon]

IMO, of course...

Okay... I know that Quetz hasn't been the most useful tame in a long time (since Argies started carrying Anky)... but damn.

And Manas are a piece of cake.

I don't know if I am complaining or rejoicing. I'm still processing the game meta as it is now... but having Gen 2 enabled characters is like a statement "I'm am sooooo done with early/mid game ARK!".

[St1ckyBandit]

It's a good thing imo. Have you been to the snow biome in Ext. There's 10 million discarded owl traps everywhere. Yeah I get they decay but more are then put down. Its ugly as sin.

Net gun solves that problem for the most part.

Another good QOL change gen 2 brought about.

[Fresiki]

^^
Agreed. And manas were always a piece of cake with a good blueprint longneck.

I mean, I won't argue that Gen 2 is quite different to The Island, but then again.. I haven't dived into Rockwell's Garden yet. I think going there and further into Rockwell's Innards takes you to the actual challenge. Sure, you can fly away from raptors with your free tek suit and all that, but what happens if you try to fight a pack of shadowmanes with a rex in Rockwell's Garden? Won't they stun it, dismount you, and then do their teleport attack and damage both you and the rex? I haven't tried fighting them, but on paper it looks like that's what would happen. So you can no longer ride around on a single dino and be a god. Sounds a lot more challenging to me than running away from raptors and killing them with bows tbh  And how do you even fight Noglins? I mean, the difficult parts of the map seem a lot more challenging than any early game survival ever was. You either had enough movement speed to outrun dinos or you didn't.