Should I care about Ark: Survival Evolved? Yes. If you’re into dinosaurs and survival games, you really can’t go wrong here. Word of warning, though: it’s definitely not finished yet.
What’s it about? Surviving and hunting/taming dinosaurs. Think DayZ or Rust, except with better graphics, more immediately intuitive progression, and—oh, right—prehistoric ultra-lizards (and turtles) who will laugh as your puny spear snaps against their obsidian-solid dino abs. It’s currently in Early Access, but the developers hope to add a fuckton of ambitious features before it’s all said and done. As ever, though, Early Access is not a guarantee of completion. Proceed with caution.
Why is (or isn’t it) cool? It’s got all the usual survival trappings (gather stuff, eat, drink, craft, build), but with fun interplay between both players and dinosaurs and dinosaurs and dinosaurs. I once saw a T-Rex pick fights with multiple herbivorous dinos he would’ve had no problem chomping to bits solo, only to have them gang up and bludgeon him into primordial soup. You can also tame a dinosaur of your own by feeding and caring for it, which is one of those things that retroactively becomes a childhood fantasy even if you didn’t care about dinosaurs as a child or, indeed, didn’t have a childhood (you could be tube-grown clone; I don’t know).
The progression-system, which sees you pick new crafting patterns each time you level up, makes quick, intuitive sense and sets you on a path toward mastering essential skills instead of overwhelming you early. You also keep your level/stats/crafting abilities when you die, making Ark a bit less punishing than other survival games. The progression system is, however, straightforward and could hurt the game’s overall depth. Also, it limits player freedom. I’m digging it right now, but that could change in the long run.
Ark is a strong game for player-driven mini-stories, thanks once again to the dinosaurs. I spent, like, 20 minutes getting chased by a vengeful giant turtle who could not, for the life of him, catch up with me, but god damn it he was gonna bite me in half come hell or a giant flaming asteroid or volcanoes fucking up the atmosphere or something. Also at one point I managed to fend off an attack from three dilophosauruses who were way higher level than me, only to realize I was completely dehydrated and out of water. As I panicked about my impending doom, I noticed a body of water below me. Far below me. Jump off a cliff below me. So I ran off the cliff and... didn’t make it. Seconds after my craterous impact, a dilophosaurus ran up and started eating me. Masters of the long con, those fuckers.
OK, but what’s all this about it being early? Right. Currently Ark doesn’t have all its creature types or systems in place yet. I’ve been having a pretty solid time with it over the past couple days, but it does feel a bit thin on things to do once you’ve tamed some creatures and made some friends and built a base. There are glowing sci-fi obelisks to investigate, but I haven’t made it to a high enough level to do anything meaningful with those yet.
Other issues: the game is terribly optimized, and even my beast of a PC could only run it on medium. Also, it’s hard to tell what level a dinosaur is until you’re right up in its face, which can be troublesome when you’re something wants to eat you and you’ve got to decide whether to fight or flee. Combat, meanwhile, is janky at best. And finally, there aren’t enough official servers (they’re full pretty much constantly), so you’ll probably have to chance it on an unofficial one.
Ark’s developers plan to keep it in Early Access for one year, which is telling.
Should I buy it (even though there are a million-billion other Steam games I could spend my money on)? Right now, it’s a toss-up. It’s already pretty fun, but it’s hampered by a lack of content (at least, relative to what it will have in the future) and technical issues. I’m enjoying it, but you might want to hold off until some of the issues are resolved. Your call.
Taken from Kotaku.com
So anyone playing Ark? what servers ur on? what level ur on? tell us something cool u did. i'm looking for people to play with if anyone wants to.
I was on 40 hours since saturday night ... i may have called in sick to work this morning... but im back to work tomorrow =(
Anyways Im almost level 30, ive trained 1 trike, 3 raptors, 5 dilos... but due to open gate..and all of my pets being set to aggressive i lost 1 raptor and i locked out 3 of my dilos til they died chasing whatever they could lol.. also had a Parasaur i killed on accident...
But ya i have like a 7 square 2story base, and a perimeter wall to keep my dinos in.
Ive learned a lot and am seriously loving the game.. just wish i had more active friends.
Ill be on nightly from 630pm til 11pm PST Steam id: Tekn0Viking
And ya its like Dayz with dinosaurs, and I can already make saddles for a lot of them...raptors included which are AWSOME
Am hoping they introduce a mode that makes buildings indestructable..but still allows pvp outside of that...
Right now it takes roughly 20 hours of work to make a complete base with dino pen and all... But it takes less than an hour to tame a Trex if you have 4-5 decent level friends...
IDK its the only thing i dont like... DayZ was different because you could hide tents... but its really hard to hide a 2 story building, with giant 50 foot dinosaurs around it. Not to mention the map in Ark is smaller than the DayZ map...tho much denser.
Anyone in europe interested in teaming up? Lost all my stuff yesterday, and solo isnt as much fun anyways. I am lvl 30, but i can roll a new char if you are already set up a base. German or English speaking please.
On June 10 2015 22:17 Snotling wrote: Anyone in europe interested in teaming up? Lost all my stuff yesterday, and solo isnt as much fun anyways. I am lvl 30, but i can roll a new char if you are already set up a base. German or English speaking please.
I am level 30 with a base and dinos etc... but i might be rerolling to a PvE server... sick of people glitching out my dinos and killing em while I sleep/am at work.. so lame.
I rage quit after a t-rex somehow got into my dino enclosement and killed my trike, 3 raptors, carno, 3 turtles and 5 dillos.If anyone is playing on 30b let me know so I can start playing again, I am level 25!
Im on a European server, nonofficial. pvpve but nice neighbours :D. Its a german server, but my tribe (two people so far) speaks english. I have a nice base set up, a trike and a raptor. if someone (18+) wants to join we are open for new players and veterans alike). teamspeak is a requirement
On June 11 2015 12:28 Anesthetic wrote: I rage quit after a t-rex somehow got into my dino enclosement and killed my trike, 3 raptors, carno, 3 turtles and 5 dillos.If anyone is playing on 30b let me know so I can start playing again, I am level 25!
Anasthetic! see any more horses running through DayZ ??
That sucks about the Trex...the saddest part of my Ark journey so far..was logging into my base and seeing my 2 raptors missing... i like to tell myself that they are just out in the jungle killing and eating and living happily...
Like yesterday while i was playing a got a message about a dilo i tamed 3 days ago finally getting killed by another dilo.. was pretty funny like "well..i was wondering what happens if you ditch a tamed dino in the middle of nowhere accidentally..."
On June 11 2015 12:28 Anesthetic wrote: I rage quit after a t-rex somehow got into my dino enclosement and killed my trike, 3 raptors, carno, 3 turtles and 5 dillos.If anyone is playing on 30b let me know so I can start playing again, I am level 25!
Anasthetic! see any more horses running through DayZ ??
That sucks about the Trex...the saddest part of my Ark journey so far..was logging into my base and seeing my 2 raptors missing... i like to tell myself that they are just out in the jungle killing and eating and living happily...
Like yesterday while i was playing a got a message about a dilo i tamed 3 days ago finally getting killed by another dilo.. was pretty funny like "well..i was wondering what happens if you ditch a tamed dino in the middle of nowhere accidentally..."
Yea, the walls seem kinda buggy and I think the bigger dinosaurs can glitch through them somehow (I came back to my trike or carno attacking stuff outside of my base before).