This game has a tight learning curve at the start. The game is very glitchy and there is nothing that you can do about it on console. If you play online, you should expect to get lag spikes multiple times a minute. As you start to build your first house/base, you will start to tame dinosaurs. The taming process is very dumbed down and boring, you will end up having to either quickly knock out an animal or follow it around until the process is complete. As you tame, the only thing you will be doing is either feeding it food for a passive tame. Or keep food in its inventory and constantly be pressing one button to feed it narcotics to keep it asleep, which you might find you will be doing this for hours upon hours.
The developers find no need to fix common bugs and glitches, instead they rather add more dinos. Most people I have come across have found little to no interest in the new dinosaurs. We all would rather have common bugs to be fixed, additional engrams, and fewer building restrictions. It is not uncommon to find many people not knowing what to do. In pve you will quickly run out of things to do, but you can always press the "use" button for a couple hours or days and tame more UNWANTED AND USELESS DINOS. Or in pvp you can spend the whole day gathering resources and making a base, while overnight everything will be destroyed and stolen, which will force you to quit or restart.
The game lacks engrams and items, often times people want to play ark to make a REALLY COOL base, but the developers have put features in the game which is meant to limit creativity. It is reasonable that you cant edit terrain, (mainly because it will lag the game even more) but it would be cool if you could at least be able to put a part of a wall, or any building structure in the ground. This feature would mainly be there to have an effect on the structure as if it were built secure into the ground and not on top. Building foundations can be a chore aswell, (especially a larger building on uneven ground) which is why I use pillars instead. Pillars are broken and very frustrating, when you are required to add another pillar for support for your structure, it should be an easy task, but no. When you try to add you pillar under the floor THE PILLAR GOES THROUGH THE FLOOR. I have found an easy fix but only works if you are about 10 feet off the ground, which makes it look very odd. The only staircase in the game is a spiral staircase.....why not more options? You could have a ramp but it is a different height than a wall which makes it unusable inside. You could use a sloped roof, but it requires (another unnecessary limiting factor) a sloped wall to put it on which can make it look bad. Wanna build a ramp down the side of a small cliff, CAN'T, either use the ugly sloped roof with sloped walls on the side, or use a ramp but it requires support (pillar) but cant be connected to a pillar, nor can it be connected to a ceiling (floor) to have support be connected to that every three small ramps. You also cant place things upside down to add more cool effects to buildings. Since there is a lack of engrams, you have a lack of things to put in your base, therefore they should have interior design engrams like furnishings.
It can be hard to feel adventurous. When you start the game you have to stay on the shore or else you will die if you go anywhere else. You will become familiar with one area for that reason. When you get a bird that you can fly on, is when the games feature of being able to adventure is ruined. It becomes to easy and takes away having to maneuver around things and dangerous stuff. When you just fly everywhere you avoid danger and it becomes to easy, hence meaning less action-packed and more boring. You avoid seeing cool things in the forest or other biomes. So for that reason adventuring in ark is bad.
Common glitches in the game may include:
- Text overlays when looking at structures
- Misplacing structures in places not highlighted in green
- Extreme rubberbanding during battles and even the simplest of things
- Highly complicated and frustrating building glitches
- Even more extreme rubberbanding issues when trying to transport dinosaurs on raft or any other platform saddle without building your own platform on top of the platform
- Jumping, using ladders, or using chairs in a raft while moving boots you out
- Poorly made hitboxes on dinosaurs make it difficult to move around them, or accidental attack at larger dinos
- Pin locks often times dont work
- Drop boxes (items you drop from your inventory) often times glitch out of the game, and/or rubberband all over making it difficult to pick up
- Other stupid and annoying things
Is the game fun? sometimes. Most of the time you are grinding for resources or pressing a single button taming a dinosaur. there are fun moments, but then it is interrupted by lag. Lastly it can feel like a chore most of the time, so that is why I dont enjoy the game.