Overall: Fun but incredibly tedious and frustrating at times

Generic feedback:

3 Good things:
1) The map is great. I love the map and the layout. There's an inherent built-in progression that is both fun and challenging.
2) The ruins/puzzles are fun and interesting. The "difficulty" of the zone your in increases the quality/quantity of the drops somewhat.
3) I like the "minigame" included in the saddlesmith upgrade. I'd like to see this extrapolated to other things (weapons/tools/armor)

3 Things that could use a bit of improvement:
1) The job/rune system is unecessary and tedious.
2) Though I listed the ruins/pubbles as fun and interesting, requiring certain recipes or drops from them is completely unnecessary. The random chance adds to the tediousness.
3) Removing the capabilities/abilities of the creatures that you tame isn't necessary. This also adds to the tediousness.

Specific Feedback:
The job/rune system:
1) Allow a permanent version of the crafting tables to be built. In the crafting, make it require a permanent rune of some type that can only be built with gem parts and obsidian and it can only be built at high levels. Make it a schematic only available somewhere. This will keep it challenging, but give a light at the end of the tunnel for the tediousness involved in having to craft runes, take jobs every death, and so on.
2) The drop rates for things are all over the place. Again, it doesn't make it challenging; it makes it tedious. The fastest way to gather materials is actually to run around and pick it up off the ground. The tools break too quickly for the return you get from them and makes the entire thing unnecessary outside of crystal/obsidian/metal.
3) The tamed creatures (even with upgraded saddles) are way too underpowered for the content. It doesn't make it more challenging, it just means you level nothing but speed. If you need to go into an area, a few spike walls and a crossbow can clear any content with little to no problem. On the same note, I couldn't tell a difference when I wore my otter into the cold area. I was still cold/hypothermia at the same temperatures.
4) There are recipes that require sulfur in the game, but sulfur isn't even in the game. I searched for it for about two days wanting to get preserving salts. Just add it to the game. Put it in the hot springs area or up on top of it.
5) I don't understand the point of the progression. It's to get to more advanced items, but they don't really add anything of substantial value. At least not from my point of view. With 150 strength, I got the same amount of crystal/metal/stone/thatch/wood between iron and steel tools. There's no skinning knife upgrade, you're stuck with the one from the beginning (outside of RNG finding an upgraded version that you have to repair).
6) I still don't know how the rune table works. I've tried every combination of things I could think of but I can never get it to activate to actually upgrade something. If it's to upgrade weapons/armor/tools, let that fall into the job of the warsmith/armorsmith/toolsmith, like saddle upgrades.
7) I mined a lot of gems one day about 10 days ago, and those nodes never came back. Does this mean gem stuff is the most valuable thing in the game?
8) There's almost no chitin available outside of the one cave. Then you have to use a skinning knife to get it, but it rarely gives you even 1. Having each crop/berry all over the map is fun and interesting, but please add seeds to the random loot in the ruins.
9) Taming babies is all fun and games, but in reality, I just build a container around the baby and wait for it to be an adult before moving it, since I can't pick up babies (which I should be allowed to do if I have the strength for their tongue weight). Then when they're an adult, I go get them and bring them back to the base. Nobody has the patience to wait for a baby to walk from their tamed location to your base unless it's less than a stamina bar's run distance.
10) The decay timer on the respawn graves is too short. QOL, make them last for a few days of real life at least. The upgraded respawn grave, let it be permanent with a shortened cooldown between respawns. Remove the ability to fast travel. Make it so people can only have one respawn grave at a time (similar to beds in minecraft). Being able to "teleport"/"fast travel" around the map doesn't match with anything you're going for in the mod.
11) QOL: Let us lay down in beds when we log out so people can't mess with our bodies.
12) Building has a long way to go for improvements. I started out using the items in the mod, but it became a lot of work to build cleanly, since there are no pillars or ways to raise/lower foundations. The walls provided can't be built on slopes, etc. For those walls, please let their "bottom" side go further into the ground so they can be built on more steep terrain. So I eventually swapped to exclusively using spike walls again. Both to keep stuff out of the area, but also because they can be built on extreme surfaces. Maybe add a stone/metal version of them that looks a little different and are a little larger in height.
13) More on building: The logs you can get from trees, make them a permanent thing you can use to decorate the base. I love the idea of having dedicated storage for items like wood/stone/thatch/etc. QOL: Allow obsidian/crystal/gems to be put into the metal or stone containers.
14) QOL: remove the timer from ghillie. Instead, make the durability really low and let it provide no armor.
15) The bug repellent torch is almost completely useless. As soon as you put it away, you're attacked by the swarm and can't get it to go away. When you put it on a saddle, it doesn't do anything at all. Also, saddle torches provide no warmth.
16) QOL: increase the amount of foods you can craft and let them give you the same buffs from regular ark. Add animal fat to the game and you can do a whole lot with that. You can render it for oil, use it in recipes, etc. Let me craft something for warmth/cold/swimming/etc.
17) Make the creatures in the game have a purpose. Make me want to choose between what I have available and what I can tame instead of "I have to wait until I have enough kibble for an iguanodon" Most of them, from what I can tell, don't have a purpose other than getting eggs for kibble. I wasn't even happy when I tamed stuff, because I kinda knew it was just going to be used for eggs. It didn't change my gameplay at all, give me additional options, etc. How about some meat things to tame carnivores instead of just kibble? Instead of traps, a pile of meat for a short-term distraction, etc.

With all of that said, I don't get as much enjoyment out of the entire process as I think I should. I'm going to set the mod aside for now. I wanted to play the mod because I wanted a harder Ark, but I don't think it's hard so much as tedious. If it weren't so tedious, I would have played it longer. I loved exploring and the adventure associated with it, but at some point, it lost its luster.

I want to thank the creators for their interesting map, their idea, and their dedication. This map design forced me to explore, for crafting materials, ruins, etc. Cheers!