About the expansion ARKs, I'm hoping there isn't going to be an absurd number of these.
I finally bought the expansion yesterday after a lot of thinking on it. The content is good, it might be better priced at 15 bucks, but seems fairly solid. All the new weather effects are nuts. Some cool creatures are around to tame and travel with, Got a friend on the The Center server I run a Jerboa. Map looks great and I can't wait to manage to snag some high level wyvern eggs.
This all being said, I love the game, 1200 hours would tell ya that. But the way you released Scorched Earth was dirty and you know it. I don't like the Paid Premium DLC precedent this sets for Early Access Games, and I'm banking on you guys actually needing money right now. Hype Train to the max, and then at the end of the trailer on the live stream "Get it now on Steam." Flipped off my twitch app on my phone, (app eats data like a hungry giga), turn on my steam app, go to the store page and then have the price tag thrown in my face. It took me a minute to register that.. "Huh.. Paid DLC.. In Early Access.. The hell?" I pulled the brakes hard on that and a lot of people who have gotten bled dry by DLC trains like Battlefield and CoD probably did to. You guys really need to communicate intentions a bit better man. Screens have been found of Desert Biome being listed in the Core Goals. I knew I saw it in there before and pulling it out of the notes is a sneaky move. Feature Creep is a thing and I know you guys are way behind schedule at this point.
Long story short, I bought Scorched Earth on the hope it'll help you along in the development. Despite my very real concerns that you and your studio are headed in a bad direction. I don't want to see any more core features disappear off the patch notes to be shoved in a paid dlc and unavailable (without admin commands) to the buyers of the original game other than by trading with other people through this "gateway" or whatever.
Speaking of this "Gateway", I'm assuming it's the only way to get the SE items over to non SE maps (without admin commands) as both player and dino inventories are wiped upon upload to the ARK. I spoke to my Server Hosting web team and they neither offer this feature or have an ETA on this feature nor know how much they will charge. So unofficial server owners are a bit left in the cold by this.
Hope you take time to read this and I hope it makes sense, getting a bit late here so I may be a touch hard to understand in a few spots.
-A concerned Survivor