I remember getting Ark when it first dropped in Early Access. Looking back, the experience is very very much the same. They reached a point where what they had would "work", just not that great. Rather swing back around to tighten everything up and polish gameplay, they just left it and started focusing on expansions. It was insane to see an early access game actually offer paid expansions and the negative affect it had on gaming is one part of the entire rise in exploitative practices in the industry that's an issue now.

At the time, it was a notable entry into a relatively niche genre of open world survival games. Now, it feels like an outdated experience that the devs knew functioned sub-par, but opted to pump out easy content they could earn a profit from. Instead of reworking things, they directed their attention to getting the broken game onto consoles. No matter how many expansions they've released, they've never gone back to revamp movement, combat, dino interacting or any of the key KEY aspect of just the gameplay itself. Yes, dinosaurs cool, build house cool, but it feels like ass. And the dinosaurs lumber around, completely unaware of their surroundings, getting stuck on/in structures, nonsensical movement patterns, random dismounting...the list of things wrong with just basic function is insane.

If you can swoop it up for free or via Game Pass, have at it. PvP servers, you'll be raided at night, usually by cheaters. PvE servers and you still have to deal with nearly every aspect of gameplay feeling 60% complete.

I remember getting Ark when it first dropped in Early Access. Looking back, the experience is very very much the same. They reached a point where what they had would "work", just not that great. Rather swing back around to tighten everything up and polish gameplay, they just left it and started focusing on expansions. It was insane to see an early access game actually offer paid expansions and the negative affect it had on gaming is one part of the entire rise in exploitative practices in the industry that's an issue now. At the time, it was a notable entry into a relatively niche genre of open world survival games. Now, it feels like an outdated experience that the devs knew functioned sub-par, but opted to pump out easy content they could earn a profit from. Instead of reworking things, they directed their attention to getting the broken game onto consoles. No matter how many expansions they've released, they've never gone back to revamp movement, combat, dino interacting or any of the key KEY aspect of just the gameplay itself. Yes, dinosaurs cool, build house cool, but it feels like ass. And the dinosaurs lumber around, completely unaware of their surroundings, getting stuck on/in structures, nonsensical movement patterns, random dismounting...the list of things wrong with just basic function is insane. If you can swoop it up for free or via Game Pass, have at it. PvP servers, you'll be raided at night, usually by cheaters. PvE servers and you still have to deal with nearly every aspect of gameplay feeling 60% complete.