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[Fikes]

Is there any first hand accounts of how much the game has improved performance wise? I want to get my friends into it but I upgraded my computer and it has been fine since like week 2 of early access.

[Icefire2314]

I'm thinking about buying it, but since it's 30$ I'd like to know something about it before hand. Like, pros and cons of the game? (exclude performance issues from cons. That's a typical early access thing I fully understand.) Is it fun or does it quickly get old? How is the multiplayer? I'm not asking for a full review but I would like to know some things about it like what features are currently in it. It does seem pretty cool though

[Folly]

I'm thinking about buying it, but since it's 30$ I'd like to know something about it before hand. Like, pros and cons of the game? (exclude performance issues from cons. That's a typical early access thing I fully understand.) Is it fun or does it quickly get old? How is the multiplayer? I'm not asking for a full review but I would like to know some things about it like what features are currently in it. It does seem pretty cool though

I wouldn't say that it gets old quickly...but it definitely does reach a point after 2-4 weeks(depending on how good you are, and how much help you have) when you've seen all there is to see, built all there is to build, and tamed a dino that can eat any wild dino on the island.

Multiplayer PvE is great. You can access new technology faster by splitting up the unlocks with your tribe members, and you get xp for everything they do around you. Everything just works better when playing with other people.

Multiplayer PvP is brutal. People can steal your stuff and kill you while your offline, and destroy dinos and buildings that took you hours to aquire. Some people like that kind of thing...but I recommend sticking to PvE servers.

[Icefire2314]

I'm thinking about buying it, but since it's 30$ I'd like to know something about it before hand. Like, pros and cons of the game? (exclude performance issues from cons. That's a typical early access thing I fully understand.) Is it fun or does it quickly get old? How is the multiplayer? I'm not asking for a full review but I would like to know some things about it like what features are currently in it. It does seem pretty cool though

I wouldn't say that it gets old quickly...but it definitely does reach a point after 2-4 weeks(depending on how good you are, and how much help you have) when you've seen all there is to see, built all there is to build, and tamed a dino that can eat any wild dino on the island.

Multiplayer PvE is great. You can access new technology faster by splitting up the unlocks with your tribe members, and you get xp for everything they do around you. Everything just works better when playing with other people.

Multiplayer PvP is brutal. People can steal your stuff and kill you while your online, and destroy dinos and buildings that took you hours to aquire. Some people like that kind of thing...but I recommend sticking to PvE servers.

Welp, any game reaches a point after a while. Gladdens me to hear it takes a while, I like to learn a game because it's discovery and new learning that makes it fun.

I also do kind of like brutal PvP, so long as it's feasible to play. I read some reviews saying that with PvP you basically HAVE to play tribal, which I'm fine with.

Think I'm going to buy it. Seems like a really neat game can't wait for it to be finished. Might play in singleplayer to learn the game though... or maybe PvE.

[BurnedToast]

This is currently having a free weekend on steam, even though it's not on the front page and not discounted at all. Might as well try it out if you're interested.

I discovered that it *does* run on my computer.... if I set everything to low, but it looks TERRIBLE and the pop-in distance for a lot of stuff is like 10 feet. Setting the graphics to medium makes it look drastically better but drops the FPS to single digits. I tried tweaking things to get something that would run ok without looking like a playstation 1 game but I couldn't really find any good compromise.

Anyway I ran around picking up rocks, punching trees, picked a bunch of berries which made me level up. Then I punched a dodo to death, noticed a pillar of light in the ocean so I swam out to it, it was a crystal that smashed when I got close, I couldn't investigate any further because there was a shark so I just swam away then logged out.

Kind of hard to get into when it looks so bad, I guess I'll probably give it another try but I think until I get a better computer I can't really play it unfortunately.

Edit: forcing dx10 mode gave me ~20 - 30 fps with medium settings which is.... acceptable enough.

[Chiefwaffles]

DX12 mode is set to be coming tomorrow by the developers, and is supposedly going to offer up to a 20% boost in FPS.

The free weekend also has an interesting thing - in official servers, you can apparently find special drops which give you one of either two things - a special [code/coupon] for 50% off on ARK, or a very rare free copy of ARK. Apparently people can still loot these codes/whatever from your body if they kill you, though!

[Shadowlord]

I noticed it was on free weekend, so I figured I'd see how long it would take to download (not as long as I expected), and then try running it to see if it would work on my system. It autodetected my GTX 460 as "High" settings (Or maybe it just defaults everyone to High). I noticed that it listed "Low" as being for 660s-tier cards, so rather than desperately trying to lower the settings to try to get it to barely run at 3 FPS or something, I just pretended I was an impatient computer noob; I ignored the entire options screen, clicked singleplayer on the main menu, ignored all the words on that screen, clicked the start game button, waited ~3 minutes, killed it because it wasn't responding, and then uninstalled it because it didn't work. It was oddly satisfying.

[BurnedToast]

I played this for a few hours with a friend, my thoughts so far:

Food rots absurdly fast, but it's also very very easy to get. I guess it's balanced, but it also feels really pointless - I never once starved or really had to even worry about food at all. It's a complete non-issue, I had more berries then I could ever eat just from trying to collect fiber.

The EXP system is an interesting idea, but in practice it's just a stupid grind. After a while, my friend and I were just clearcutting every single rock, tree, and bush and murdering every dinosaur we could, and leaving all the materials/meat to rot because we only needed the exp. At least in a traditional MMO the npcs can theoretically kill you and there's a token plot to keep you entertained while you grind, but trees dont fight back and rocks don't have any storytelling.

Engram system too seems interesting, but fails. I understand what they were going for - if you can't make everything yourself you are forced to group up, and maybe if people are forced to group up they won't just randomly murderbone everyone they see. But it was a big PITA to coordinate even with just two people, every single level we'd have to coordinate what skills we were going to buy, and it was worse because there's no indication what some things do, and you have no idea what something is going to unlock later unless you google it. I also can't imagine how annoying it would be to play with 3+ people and be unable to get, say, an axe because the guy who made axes was not online. I feel like even with two people we wouldn't have enough points to unlock everything, and I feel really bad for any single player people who have to be very, very careful about what they unlock.

Ultimately, co-op felt rather hollow. After building a few huts and murdering a few dinosaurs with our slingshots it basically felt like there was nothing much else to do except grind exp (so we could unlock more toys), and that got boring real fast. It seems like it was designed more for dedicated servers with PvP.... but I honestly don't understand the appeal of building something, going to bed, and checking back the next day and someone burned it down and murdered you in your sleep so you have to start over (especially considering the above grind which means everyone is going to be a high level and able to stomp your crap in for a loooong time before you can compete).

[Mattk50]

Was playing this for the free weekend. Had a similar experience to the above poster, but once i figured out taming things really started to take off, xp starts racking up as your little horde is able to murder bigger things for you and then you need to feed all your horrid little monsters then build a pen for them then a bigger pen etc etc. Then disaster strikes, either other players come kill you or you agro the wrong dinosaur and all your stuff dies, then you need to rebuild and gain xp in the process. Issue is, if that disaster doesnt come, it feels like you have nothing to do except work up your level. I like the online pvp aspect but the offline raiding is shitty, you should know that anything in a straw house, including your unconcious body, is pretty much free game for anyone with a stone axe. Wood walls and some tamed dinos to defend seems to work much better as far as offline defense goes.

The taming stuff would have been possible right when i started playing, i just didnt know how to do it because quite frankly you wouldnt know how to do it without looking it up on the wiki. to start with, you hit things in the head with rocks from your slingshot or punch them down if you like bloody fists, then fill their inventory with their relevant food (around 20 raw meat for a lvl 1 dilop or 50 berries for a parasaur) and wait. You need to keep them unconcious though, you have a few ways to do that, you could keep punching them in the head but that will decrease effectiveness and can potentially kill it, so the best way is to force feed them narcoberries or it's other narcotic derivatives, which you need to do manually by putting them in it's inventory then "remotely using" it. Then you just wait, make sure it has food and keep it unconcious then you have a dinosaur.

its a pretty good system, i remember MO's taming system which was just "wave hands, animal yours".

[BurnedToast]

I tamed one of those giant turtles, it took like a half hour and the damn thing ate all my nacroberries and a ton of my normal berries, I eventually had to resort to punching it.

I had it set to neutral, but the first thing it did was charge into the ocean to fight a giant shark and get eaten. WTF? What a waste of time.

I couldn't be bothered to tame anything else because standing there for a half hour mashing to feed it a narcoberry every 2 minutes was absurdly boring, worse even than punching rocks and trees for EXP. I would honestly prefer "wave hands, animal yours" because the current system is just a tedious waste of time.

[Jimmy]

Parasaurs are only worth taming to have as a herd animal for laying eggs. Ditto for carbos/turtles.

The first animal you should aim to tame is a Triceratops, and spend engram points on learning the saddle for it too. They make farming narcoberries for crafting narcotics reasonably fast with their superharvesting from berry bushes when ridden. I usually aim to make a herd of 4 trikes, with two of each gender for the bonus to damage and defense from the mate bonuses. Four trikes can take down a Tyrannosaurus or a Carnosaur without significant losses.

After that, tame a raptor for a mount, and use it to explore the caves for metal and experience. A herd of raptors will make farming experience much much faster down there. Trikes are too slow to ride and they're too big to fit in the holes. Later on you can aim to grab some sabertooth tigers too.

[Android]

Apparently the flying feathered dinosaurs are stupidly strong. Near-impossible to hit and do absurd amounts of damage for their size. Just get a swarm of them.

Not to mention lifting and dropping critters/people.

[Android]

Oh. I literally havnt played in 2 months because I was out of town so idk what they've added since.

[Kot]

This was the most enjoyable laggy Stranded 2 modification I've ever played.

[Kot]

By the way, this game totally needs Amphicyons.