And since it is a work in progress I should be on Steam and playing this game actively on PC.
Instead I'm just playing it. Cursing it. Rage Quitting every few minutes..
But I'm playing it. Collecting feedback points that should be implemented in the game.. but keeping them to myself because it is obvious that the majority of Ark Survivors aren't playing solo or using the default settings.
It disappoints me. If they want to play Minecraft.. go do that. I'm just going to kill dinosaurs and try to eat my chaff by proving to myself that this game on default settings is worth playing in the long run.
Minus of course that I keep rage quitting. It's like a classic mode (reloading saves) versus actual hardcore death. Normally I wouldn't have accepted that death at Whitesky that forked my progress and I normally wouldn't have allowed TLTTC or Chubbs to have permanently died. But it is what it is and in the long run failing to survive Whitesky was educational. Not having to rage quit every time TLTTC derped itself to death.. and well it is just a shame to have lost Chubbs. I've reunited with the group and we're much stronger.. though we haven't done anything yet.
I feel like I could stop for a bit and think about what this game is trying to get me to do.. other than think about the stuff that's missing.
'theme song'
I said stuff like that while enjoying Morgcules play Mass Effect 2 last night. I wasn't meaning to disparage Destiny, which is a game we both hold very dear to our hearts, but I have been very vocal about how much I hate certain aspects of that game. Mostly due to the politics of it not being Halo, or an MS console and PC exclusive.. or way too heavily biased to PvP etc etc etc. After 3200+ hours I have as much good as bad to say about Destiny. She almost threw me out of her chat. I'm like fair. I really want to be a good contributing member of her channel and well gripping like an old man about my Destiny experience.. isn't appropriate.
Plus I really miss that game, ME. It was the last game I played before the Pre-Alpha for Mass Effect 3's multiplayer mode at EAM. Since then it has been very hard to not be especially critical of games. So I try to keep that stuff at the back while giving a game as much as I can in terms of the parts that appeal to me.
Ark.. being a work in progress though.. based on things that have to be intuitive and simple just isn't. Short of pulling the game's built in guide up every few seconds the first half of the game.. where you have to give more into the game than it gives back.. versus the back half of after you know just about everything you need to know.. without referring to that guide or the internet.. That first half IS well constructed BUT extremely ass backwards and lacking.
I can't even say it is simplified. It is functional and that's all I care about in a game.. but it could have been more intuitive.. or still could be..
Imagine if you had enhanced senses so you could actually detect more threats and useful things in the environment. IF not when you're in bare ass and fists stage.. at least when you need it.. that part when you finally start crafting and learning new engrams but are still trying to survive while still foraging most of the time and setting up. (like Witcher senses)
And I was asking about training your dinosaurs. Obviously a game that supports multiplayer the way Ark does doesn't need to make it that much easier for a lone survivor to have fun.. but taming shouldn't be the end of the story. Why can't I train my creatures to do things and then delegate work to them. Something like Black and White of which this game seems an excellent spiritual successor.
AFTER having teams of creatures that are working for you.. there's what to do for really moving massive amounts of goods around. These treks to collect rare mats have only taught me that it would have been much easier to just build a railroads. I'm told the same thing inspired players in Minecraft to do the same thing.
I'm really seeing Ark as a game where players could build little settlements and have them all linked with infrastructure. And again if this wasn't so bloody mindedly focused on us being the only humans.. I could see colonies growing up around these far flung resource nodes. But there aren't any NPC humans and you can't train creatures. And you don't have to micro manage them.
This game would easily verge on impossible if each creature had as much difficult just surviving. But I'd want to see that mode. IS it possible to play when you're micro-managing everything.
So ok.. the fundamentals then. They are too simplified or silly.
Like.. Where's real preservatives and processes? There's Oil and a couple of rational sources for it.. but why aren't there salt mines/deposits? Skins then through a process hides.. and buildings for the purpose of tanning. Villages could easily be built for these things.. but I've having to manage on my own because the game has simplified these processes to the point where it is possible for me to do it all myself.
Arguably that's the point I wanted to prove to myself. That I could manage with the default settings while so many people would rather play on different settings. aside from playing in a tribe with *intelligent human players.