Recent reviews by thesickone.

is ok

.As of 2018.02.22

The patchnotes are the following:

-WE HAVE 2 NEW LOOTCRATES

-We have implemented our performance optimization pack, titled PUBG Comic book edition

HumbleBundle<3

HURDURDURDUR

EDIT 2018/03/29: AS OF THIS DAY MY GIRLFRIEND HAS BEEN BANNED FROM ONLINE FOR COMMITTING 0 OFFENSE, ASIDE FROM THE MAYHEM MODDERS CAUSED AROUND US, WE EVEN WROTE TO SUPPORT MULTIPLE TIMES TO STRAIGHTEN THIS ISSUE(REMOVING MODDER CAUSED ISSUES) ONLY COPY PASTED REPLIES ALL THE TIME, THIS WENT FOR YEARS WITHOUT ONE PROPER RESPONSE, IT'S THE COMPANIES' FAULT THAT THEY COULDNT WRITE PROPER NETCODE AND HANDLE CHEATERS, WHO THEY NEVER BAN JUST INNOCENT PLAYERS. THAT IS NONSENSE #BOYCOTTTAKETWO

Long story short, singleplayer and the franchise has it's reputation for a reason, BUT thanks to Take Two Studios for starting a lawsuit on community modder NTAuthority if he doesn't end the development of alternative multiplayer... Now we are stuck with your absolute garbage hacker-filled online mode. Not to mention lack of dedicated servers and current p2p system makes this said online mode a timeout simulator and afk loading screen clicker game.... GJ! a company with such revenue shouldn't be able to release such a broken garbage. I honestly spent at least 200 hours on loading screen out of my 800+... Milk the cow! oh wait u couldnt who buys ur shark cash cards? Indeed, if we set aside the technical brain♥♥♥♥, and idiotic policies, even online could be helluva fun.

So as i noticed this game is available on steam(for what reason server population dying?)
I decided that i will give the Coup de grâce to this game. Don’t let my hours on steam fool you, I’ve been a long time AION player. I bought the game in boxed retail version when it came out for EU back in 2009 and played it as a subscription based MMO for quite a few months and continued to play for years after it went f2p, i have thousands of hours put into this game. This was the golden age of AION. I wouldn’t say that it wasn’t an enjoyable experience, I wouldn’t write this review, or I wouldn’t have played for years if it wasn’t. Just the tendencies and the early nullification of the feedback of european playerbase(I must go into that deeper later on) made this game go into nose dive, topped with the renting of hosting rights to one of the most incorrect companies I met in online gaming : FAILFORGE.

TL:DR and to new players
AION IS A NICE GAME just TIME has surpassed it. if u really are interested in it, go play on NC AION NA, north american servers are fine and actually playable! and f2p is actually f2p.
-Pros:

Some of the boss fights are actually challenging(only end-game)

Fortress raids:When servers were more active, scheduled PvP raids were quite often, when about 1000 men forces battled for fortresses with raid leaders on a teamspeak, these wars were carefully organized, and the crowd was disciplined. mastermind tactics were utilized. Best MMO experience EVER!

KMMO

-Cons:

It's all about milking a dead cow now

F2P players are restricted by many game-breaking things, top it with this game IS A GRIND FEST, u wont be able to achieve anything f2p.

P2W since u could sell premium subscription packs in ingame market.( Nasty NASTY)

GRIND GRIND GRIND. RINSE REPEAT

tab-targeting

KMMO

Very hardcore

Failforge gives a ♥♥♥♥

Community oh that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ toxic community, internal wars, rumours about who is hacking or grinding money by buying LOADS of gold packs and selling them ingame, the top notch guys were 999999x ahead of the rest with most probably nefarious tactics. Hierarchy was kind of practical and obeyed, as it had physical(High ranking PvP players could transform into raid bosses) and prestigial benefits. aside from rare gems was mostly consisting of selfish icangrind24/7 kiddos, and livingonmummiespension 40 some kiddos.

Failforge can't push updates(3 day scheduled maintenance that ends in an hour(72 times))

Failforge can't localize(took them half a year to localize all prepared patch notes for eu servers)

Failforge would delete threads or ban people for trying to make their voice be heard

Have i said its full of cheaters who hardly ever got banned?(minimap hacks, flyhacks, stathacks, tp hacks, any hacks u could imagine) most of them were well documented and presented to failforge, their usual response: ban the one accusing ( WITH CLEAR EVIDENCE) the hacker, relating to TOS.

faction pvp is mostly imbalanced, favoring asmodian master race( :C)

It's 3 AM IRL and I'm flying my scouting ptera to travel from the main base to our remote village. Midway i spot another tribe's base, noticing no turrets gives me courage to go closer and have a look at it. The turrets were hidden and took my ptera down in 30ms.As cigarette smoke starts filling the room, I soon realize I'm out in the wilderness kilometres away from any friendly settlement, running out of ammo. A carno charges at me from the bushes, I defeat it in a tense fight. A T-rex appears behind my back, and I barely evade it's first strike and rush towards the hillside close by. I mindlessly start running up north towards our remote village. After running away for minutes, I arrive at a glade and spot the cliff the village is located on and I remember that my clifftop village is unaccessible by foot. I start building a platform to reach it, and when i reach about 20m of height, I catch sight of the near identical cliff on which the village is built. An hour, and 2 rebuilds later my platform reaches the top of the cliff and I'm in safety.

10/10 Would play until dawn trying to reach my safe haven.

PS: Best graphic simulator ever! 10/10 would reapply settings and mess around with them to get the fps i had a day ago.

TL;DR : Ark is very promising and could be an enjoyable game in it's current state. Graphics are gorgeous but won't even run on my friend's custom built very high end rig properly without inconsistent fps drops. Gameplay mechanics are UTTERMOSTLY interesting but are not perfectly polished. The music is composed by Gareth Coker who composed the wonderful themes of Ori and the blind forest<3, and are therefore very inspiring, but for instance constant in and out restart of combat music gets annoying and repetitive after a while. Gameplay experience in overall is satisfying. But players who hate to grind mindlessly, or are not prepared to lose their items or buildings anytime should not consider playing it. Given it's an early access game glitches, bugs and poor optimization are present, building placement should be redesigned, game balance should be adjusted.Devs are active, tho they should put their focus on graphics optimization, building system polishment, and PROPER game balance changes to appeal to more casual players. Instead of pushing content and MAKING A HORRIBLE DECISION with nerfing tamed dino stats.






Ark is a promising title in the currently popular survival genre. If you are into survival games and enjoy playing with many people as a community sharing resources, you are guaranteed to have a lot of fun. But the game is hardcore and is therefore not suited for the faint-hearted and in it's current state has it's flaws, given it's an early access game, and that the devs are active, improvements are certainly coming.

It's basically a MMO-ish survival game, with crafting system, building placement, and companion/mount taming. It's heavily focused on PvPvE gameplay(meaning it kind of forces you to play in a tribe but there is a constant threat of encountering aggressive players) and is very unforgiving (If anyone played KMMOs could know what it means when a game is about THE GRIND, and this game wants you to hoard high amounts of materials to progress in the tech tree and craft higher end items. with official multiplier rates it's very very grindy. Atop of that you could lose anything, anytime, anywhere.) The grind is eased by the clan system, which are from now on are mentioned as tribes. Players could form tribes and share bases and mounts and basically all their wealth.

To even maximalize time sink effect, taming or breeding dinos and other beasts, takes from an hour to 16+hrs, without the ability to completely leave the game unattended for extended periods.

Building placement is very tricky and is hard to use properly. Given your mats are earned with hard work, this is very annoying in certain situations.

Game balance is heading in a disastrous direction after tamed dinos had their stats nerfed badly.
Instead game designers should have at least lowered mat requirements and taming duration globally.

Graphics are very unoptimized and settings are currently broken ( you have to reapply settings every now and then(after alt-tabs, steam overlay. View distance for instance won't differ on max and low settings, some settings give better results when maxed out than on medium)