Most of the negative reviews of this game are just people crying over their base getting raided by a big tribe and how the price was raised to $60.

First : For the people complaining it's impossible for a solo player to have any fun and get the full experience because their base just gets raided and their dinos get killed everytime they log in. It's true, a solo player will have a rough life playing on an official server. AND THEY SHOULD. If you thought about it, if we were to live in the dino era and if we were to survive, we would have to band together and create a group. You would have no chance by yourself, you wouldn't last a day, you NEED a group to survive and that's the whole point, the devs dont want you to be by yourself, go get your friends together and create the alpha tribe of the server. If you can't do that, then that's just the way it works kiddo. EVERY survival game in the world with PVP has massive groups that are the most dominant, because that's how survival works, the biggest groups are the most powerful and succesful. BUT you can always play on the unoffical servers which are what i spend 95% of my time on, it makes it more bearable for a solo player to survive on a PvP server, as different unofficial servers have their multipliers ramped up to make the game faster (Eg....50Xtaming........50Xgathering........50Xexperience) , you can log onto a server and tame and build everything you want within a day, which would take months on an offical server. PVE on unofficial modded servers is just as fun if not better, you can spend hundreds of hours playing PVE with the different mods out there like Dragon Gods, or Annunaki, Extinction, you honestly can get lost with time and spend your whole day playing PVE and not notice. Building a city, castle, or taming an army of drakes or dragons, Indominus Rex's, or even an army of ancient valkyrie's. Beating the endgame bosses, taming Celestials, exploring every cave, there's so much to do, it's just an endless adventure.

Second: The PRICE of $60 is quite expensive, but I personally feel it might be worth it, as the amount of new content and weekly updates they bring out is astonishing compared to other games. They bring out a new dino just about every week, they're constantly bringing out new maps, quite a few for free and some paid DLC, aswell as hundreds-thousands of mods to choose from it's well worth it. It blows my mind people are complaining about a paid DLC, but people will pay $80 for a COD game and $40 more for a crap DLC. ARK has a lot of effort and time put into it and people are just angry over the price? Are you kidding, if you spent thousands of hours and work building and coding a game, i'm sure you'd want to get some money out of it so you can make a living, so stop complaining. You can easily get ARK cheaper on other websites or even just wait for it to go on sale on steam as i'd say around $30 is just about a perfect price for it. I bought it for only $27 and it was well worth it, i've gotten my time out of it and had tons of laughs and good moments already, but there's still more to come as there's tons of things still left for me to do in this game.

Third: OPTIMIZATION. Yes there is quite a few bugs and glitches and it's not the easiest game to run for everybody.
BUT so far for me, there's been no game breaking bugs or glitches, maybe a glitchy dino every here and there, or something on the map not working properly, but none of these have caused me to stop playing or anger me. I haven't had any problems running the game with a mix of high/epic settings other then an fps drop or stutter every now and then due to someones base rendering in or a clutter of tons of dinos. I'm running a MSI 1060 and 24GB of RAM and an I7 4770K processor, I get around 75 FPS in most areas. It doesnt take a BEAST of a computer to run the game but something a bit more powerful would be nice so you get to see the games beautiful graphics, as running it on low or medium is quite ugly, but high/epic is fantastic, I recommend medium quality at the very least.

Fourth: CONSOLES, I have never played any other platform for ARK other than PC, but to my knowledge and from friends recommendations, I have heard that ARK is fun on the XBOX aswell as PS4 but I would not recommend for you to buy it on the consoles as you'd be missing out on the modded content which is the base of the community on ARK, the mods are the most fun you will have in this game as there's tons of different ones out there to make the game more fun for you. If you're going to buy ARK make sure you get it on PC.

Fifth: SERVERS, I see people complaining about servers? I have no idea what anybody is talking about as the devs cutting out some servers is nothing but beneficial for everyone, taking out excess servers which had nobody populating them, I don't see the problem there, just pick another server to play on or pick one of the thousands of modded servers and stop complaining over nothing. There's TONS of servers to play on. Wipes happen around once a month or so depending on the server, try out different servers meet new people, don't have to play the same one every time.

Sixth: If you're planning on buying the game you definetly should with a couple friends, as friends make the game more enjoyable and worth while, you can play solo on some servers, but being with a few others will make it a more rewarding experience. DONT let all the people giving it negative reviews change your mind, most of them are just salty over the price or getting raided by a big group. :)