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[TheBronzePickle]

Apparently, more modern technology will be available. I don't know the exact systems behind everything yet, but having read some of the Q&As, I know there's some kind of experience-ish system, and there are also buildable generators, structures, and things to power. The generators use gas, which comes from refining oil. So, obviously, there's some sort of resource collection as well. They also apparently plan to add cars in the future, among other things.

The different creatures also have their own unique advantages. The scorpion you catch a quick glimpse of has a tranquilizing venom, which means it can help capture other creatures, and the brontosaurus is really good at clearing out forests and foliage quickly. The larger creatures also have larger saddles, which means that other people can stand on their backs and use weapons while the driver controls the creature.

[Cthulhu]

My ability to care about early access survival multiplayer survival games at this point is actually negative.  Beyond just not caring, I'm actively hostile to the concept.

I just can't fathom how this genre is still producing new games that still garner interest.  How many laps around this track do we have to do?

[TheBronzePickle]

Do you have the same dislike for first person shooters? How about real time tactics? How about 4x games?

Survival is pretty much its own genre now. There's a million different ways to explore the concept, and as long as there's people putting effort into making interesting, fun tweaks into the idea, there will be people willing to invest their money into the system. Yeah, survival's been a really, really popular genre for the past while, but the reason is that, for a long time, games dedicated to the concept of surviving were sparse, either hard to get, hard to play, or just not worth the investment. Yeah, there's a lot of crap out there, but sometimes you get gems, hopefully like this game will be.

Not to say you aren't entitled to your opinion. Not every kind of game is for everyone. Still, it's worth at least giving something a chance if you see something about it that catches your eye.

[nenjin]

I think I know Cthulhu's feels though. The catalog of survival games in EA is getting long and that's unfortunately a real barrier to getting excited about them. Perhaps he's seen the sausage made one too many times.

[Cthulhu]

Those genres don't exactly have the track record this new genre has.  I mean yeah, all genres have seen broken promises, interminable development cycles, hilariously unprofessional developers, and outright lies and cash grabs, but not at the rate and volume of early access multiplayer survival games.  How many have appeared since DayZ?  How many of them are finished?  How many were good?

edit:
First I got a severed finger in my sausage, then I got a chance to see how the sausage was made and it turns out the whole thing is made of fingers.

[TheBronzePickle]

I think part of the problem is that the survival genre really started kicking off around the time that easy development tools became widely available. Things like pre-made assets and general purpose engines have revolutionized game development and let a lot of people get into game development that otherwise wouldn't have been able to, but it's opened up a world of easy cash for lazy people who just take those assets and engines and mix-and-match to create 'games' with zero effort. Survival games are an easy target because they're popular, but they're hardly the only target.

Shitty games have been an industry since the dawn of video games, and shitty knock-offs have been an industry since the dawn of industry. The tools to make games more easily have made knock-offs more easy, too, and survival happened to become a big thing concurrently with these tools becoming available, perhaps even because these tools became available and let developers really reach for the goal of building their dreams without having to rely on too much outside investment and control or sink money they didn't have into the game.

Please, don't let the lazy and exploitative ruin your fun. Cynicism and pessimism toward a genre just means that you're condemning the good to suffer the same fate as the bad.

[nenjin]

I think the issue is that survival games have enough moving parts, which aren't present in EA, for them to be worth it. Starting out, the ability to build a shack, eat some food, and die in the first draft of the world, isn't enough to sustain long-term interest. I don't know if they have higher content requirements than other games to be fun and playable, but it feels like it.

Put another way, the survival stew isn't as simple as just throwing 4 ingredients in there and making money. As plenty of people have now found out.

[TempAcc]

I can understand the waryness for open world survival mmo things, since lately the genre has done a poor showing with infinite terrible DayZ clones, but there's been some decent stuff, too, like Rust, despite how poorly optimized it is. I'm not sure how Rust is holding up, but it used to be really REALLY popular for a while, and for a good reason, since that game was pretty fun (at least when there weren't huge complexes of box-eske houses everywhere). And then the stomping land showed up and got everyone excited about dinosaur survival thingamabobs, so Ark is probably looking to capitalize on that. But yea, its pretty fair to just hold off till reviews start popping up.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Those genres don't exactly have the track record this new genre has.

They have the exact same track record. think about it. Do you know how many hundreds of fucking god-awful FPS, and RTS titles are released every year? Wel... HUNDREDS!!!

[Scripten]

Those genres don't exactly have the track record this new genre has.

They have the exact same track record. think about it. Do you know how many hundreds of fucking god-awful FPS, and RTS titles are released every year? Wel... HUNDREDS!!!

There is a really good reason why "Doom clones" were disdained by the gaming community at large. It wasn't because Doom was a bad game or because FPS games are nonviable, for sure.

[Aavak]

I imagine a few of us will be streaming around then; though I'm debating whether I'd prefer to preserve the wonderment for a Let's Play series, or get a few hours of play time in tonight while streaming, so I don't completely suck when it comes time to record xD

[Mephansteras]

Well, not my usual type of game. But this looks cool enough I may actually try it out.

[Dorsidwarf]

Looks amazing.

[Orange Wizard]

PTW because dodos.

[TheBronzePickle]

They might be doing last-minute code tweaks. If they're modifying major files, pre-loading could very well be effectively pointless since you'd have to download the bulk after launch anyway.

Still, pre-loading would be nice.