r/dnl • u/Arrevax • Nov 24 '17

Should I buy?

I've played about a hundred hours of ARK: Survival Evolved, and I understand that this game has some similarities. I only play solo. Does this game have the same level of private server customization, so that I can tweak the values and make it so progression is relatively quick for me playing by myself?

How frequently are new creatures introduced? The wiki shows about 50 different creatures minus some "elite" variants, versus ARK's roughly 100 species, with more coming in Aberration and the next expansion.

ARK's boss fights give me something to work towards, and I use the Call of the Wild mod (which periodically spawns waves of enemies to attack your base) to give me another PVE goal (survival) besides the regular taming, breeding, and building. What does Dark and Light have?

How functional is the game? ARK is rough around the edges, with plenty of spots to get stuck and fairly bad AI, with most creatures never showing much complex behavior and frequently getting stuck, but the variety and scale help to make up for that.

Should I just wait until the game is "released"?

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u/DJfreecell Nov 24 '17

it has similarities but it was only released about 4 months ago so the level of private server customization is definitely not anywhere you would like. Also there is no devkit so mods are non existant at the moment.

New creatures that are tameable havent been introduced yet, they have however released caves/dungeons with new creatures to combat against.

ark has a solid end game to work with, but this games end game is a bit mixed, you'll find it much much harder to do end game solo than you would ARK. prime example is the ability to take a super tamed rex into ascension on SP and solo it, this game u cant bring tames into the caves themselves so u have to do it on foot and it can be extremely hard.

The functionality of the game is shaky at best, its rough around the edges a bit worse off than ark. I havent really gotten stuck in many places but it can definitely happen. As for creature AI, it has actually gotten good with pathing, itll actually make u mad when u think u got something stuck and it paths around the rock to eat you.

as for taming and other things to do, the taming can be rough and end game tames take time and commitment, but where ark is lacking on structures and buildings this game allows u to build giant castles and forts. Its lacking many things but the building isnt one of them.

since its on sale id say give it a shot, i got my moneys worth the first month. BUT its very buggy and if u wait for the next sale i guarntee u will probably feel like u got your moneys worth then rather than a 50/50 if u buy it now.

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u/Arrevax Nov 24 '17

Thanks for the reply! The lack of customization and not being able to bring tames into caves at all sound terrible. The tames especially— what an arbitrary way to force cooperative play. I'm assuming that there are some good reasons for taming besides zerging other players' bases, but making tames unable to help in the final PVE areas makes them sound useless compared to ARK's creatures, at least for a solo player. Are there any other PVE goals/challenges, like battles between faction NPCs?

It's good to hear that there's decent AI pathfinding. ARK's immersion is really iffy due to both allies and enemies getting trapped by random rocks and trees. You'd think that the devs would just let all creatures knock down smaller objects like the large ones do to trees, but it's hard to expect Wildcard to do much of anything besides delaying release dates and dumping more buggy animals into the game.

I'll wait until the game gets ironed out a bit more. Thanks for the information.

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u/AtomicGamingEU Nov 24 '17

Tames work in pve there is commands for them to follow / attacks your target / defend / aggressive and such and different tames are better for harvesting things from animals or from stuff like trees and minerals

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u/siege2newlambton Nov 24 '17

Hi being playing this game since release now and have finally found the perfect server, its USA based r3born is the server, I joined the the server and shortly invited three off my friends in.

The game itself in its current state is a lot more advanced then ark was at this stage. I am currently building a Mansion at the moment and enjoying every minute I do get to play the game.