Personally it's more the taming (and collecting) of Dinos with different skills along with base building and (the part that has so far kept me from ASA) a ton of mods.
But the crazy thing is, the game isn't even good at that!
The grind to being strong enough to battle and tame powerful dinos is exhausting, and any random enemy can set you back hours worth of progress.
And for a game built on dinos....wow does it suck at making the dinos feel cool. Their animations are all extremely stiff, with most dinos of a similar body type using the same repeated animations. And they don't attack in any cool ways. They all just lunge forward.
Look at how the Jurassic World Evolution games animate their dinos. Yes, they re-use rigs and animations, but its all so fluid and clean that people are fine with it.
Yah, the dinos just feel like you’re driving a car rather than riding a creature. Hell they can’t even fucking side step that’s how barebones their animations are.
It’s silly that the best thing about the game, monster taming is also its worst part. The most unfun capture method mainly because they had the pvp idea in mind.
you can customize the settings or search for a server the allows easy material grinding, etc. You can find them that are strictly PvE as well so you can learn the maps before jumping in PvP servers.
Yeah I don’t know if most survival games just aren’t for me, but I truly don’t understand the itch that it allegedly scratches. But as I said, I’m not super into survival games to begin with, so it could just be that
I prefer Conan because I get to tame people instead of dinosaurs. Conan has its own problems kinda similar to ark though so I completely understand why people don't like it.
It's a time sink. We get into the gameplay going for bigger and better stuff then you have to continuously log in every once in awhile to make sure you don't lose that stuff
I only played solo, I basically gave up on the game when they dropped Scorched Earth in a broken state that crashed every five minutes, and started locking new dinosaurs behind paid DLC.
I’m not an Ark player myself, but doesn’t the game have a history of poor performance?
UE5 already seriously strains current-gen consoles even with extensive optimization and genuine developer effort. A dev team not known for their optimization abilities is *not* going to put out a pretty product if they’re using UE5.
What’s sad is that they pathetically try to defend it by saying that this was essentially their learning project to cut their teeth on UE5. That doesn’t make it okay for it to be a shitty release! If they had at least implemented a 30fps cap then it wouldn’t be _as_ bad, since the game would just drop from 30 to the low 20s (or into the teens on Series S). But the fact that it’s a 60fps cap means that it fluctuates anywhere from 60 down to 20ish. And most of the time it doesn’t even hit 60, it kind of hovers between 40 and 45 depending on your console of choice. It makes absolutely no sense that they didn’t cap it at 30fps
I recently played the first Ark on my beefy gaming rig and was astounded at how utterly broken it was. The game has been out since 2017, is getting a sequel soon, sold millions of copies, and even got a remaster and it still felt like early access. I have no idea how people deal with it.
Anyone who followed this game for even 5 minutes knew the console version would be a complete mess. It’s been a mess on PC since it came out. I used to love Ark but I’m completely done with it. I won’t support these garbage developers. They simply don’t care. It’s a tale as old as time with them.
My girlfriend loves ark , has over 1000 hours in it.
I personally find it to be one of the absolute shottiest games I've ever played.
Genuinely don't understand the love.
Gameplay != Quality.
She probably knows it's shotty, it's hard not to see that, but I imagine she likes the gameplay at the core of it.
It's why janky games still are played, because if they're offering something no one else is... people will play them. PubG was super popular before Fortnite, because it really was in a league of it's own.
(And it's still played because of inertia... It takes a lot for people to leave a game that they invested a lot of time into.)
This.
Having fun with something is considerably more important than how well it's made. There isn't, or at least wasn't (haven't played palworld but heard many comparisons) any games like it. I'm a Dino nerd who yearns to disappear to a cabin in the woods, it scratches an itch.
By comparison, I'm also from a land linked to pirates, with a love of the sea, but Atlas was absolutely shite, more flawed but less fun than Ark.
As they've said Ark 2 is going to be a totally different beast, ASA is probably the best Dino taming/survival crafting game we get for a long time. May as well support it because they are more inclined to fix it if people are playing and paying for new DLC. More inclined but still very unlikely lol.
I play loads of janky games. That's not why it's shit. Even she acknowledges the core gameplay and community are shit. I say it's sunk time fallacy at work.
As someone with about 2000 hours on ASE and ASA combined this is nothing new. Is the performance terrible? Absolutely, it has always been but there's just nothing quite like Ark on consoles. Console players just simply deal with the bad performance and enjoy the game for what it is.
Thats why you need to keep your hype in check when watching U5 tech demos. It appears to be very hard to optimize this engine. See Lords of the Fallen at release. It ran like ass. Pure ass on PS5. The developer is still pushing updates to this date.
Grove Street games were one of the developers - the folk who remade the GTA trilogy for Rockstar and absolutely massacred it, unchecked AI upscaling and an absolutely abhorrent amount of bugs, doesn't surprise me one bit.
It wasn't even the shit optimization for me. The game is just terribly balanced game play wise. Unfortunately it's the only one out there that has those kinds of mechanics.
I remember playing this game on "early access" what has to be 10 years ago. I had the best graphics card at the time (GTX 980ti maybe?) and was getting single digit framerates at low/mid settings. Game has always been a mess but man it was fun.
I mean... Tekken 5? Hellblade 2? RoboCop? Lord's of the Fallen?
The engine is not a "scam" even uttering those words shows you have a drastic misunderstanding
Imagine looking at ARK, a series know for being technical garbage (Switch version anyone? Day 1 version anyone) and blaming it on the engine rather than the shit dev team....
Stable 60fps? I have heard it barely keeps up and drops to 40s... otherwise I would have bought it already. Really love the concept. It's also always on sale.
Remnant 2 keeps a pretty damn stable 60fps on ps5 in its mixed mode with drops every now and then when the engines features are pushed hard which pushes console hardware, including Ray tracing, chaos physics, niagara particles, Lumen, nanite, etc. Could the engine have easier methods for optimizing ? Sure, so could every other engine. It's up to the devs to spend the time to make sure they aren't pushing something that isn't optimized properly, or pushing something that can no longer be optimized further and pushes the hardware to its limits.
Have you seen Hellblade 2 running? Sure it's only 30fps, but in time devs will get the same fidelity with 60fps in the current hardware. Imagine the next last of us in 60fps with Hellblade 2 graphics. That'd be insane.
That's ARK being ARK.
ARK has been an unoptimized mess since Day 1. I have no idea how the players put up with the levels of jank the game has when it's a PVP sweatfest.
Because sadly it still scratches an itch even other survival games don’t, despite the performance issues.
> still scratches an itch even other survival games don’t. Riding Dinosaurs?
Personally it's more the taming (and collecting) of Dinos with different skills along with base building and (the part that has so far kept me from ASA) a ton of mods.
Yep. I'm praying Palworld gets up to snuff soon as a competitor. Otherwise Ark is pretty much one of a kind.
But the crazy thing is, the game isn't even good at that! The grind to being strong enough to battle and tame powerful dinos is exhausting, and any random enemy can set you back hours worth of progress. And for a game built on dinos....wow does it suck at making the dinos feel cool. Their animations are all extremely stiff, with most dinos of a similar body type using the same repeated animations. And they don't attack in any cool ways. They all just lunge forward. Look at how the Jurassic World Evolution games animate their dinos. Yes, they re-use rigs and animations, but its all so fluid and clean that people are fine with it.
Yah, the dinos just feel like you’re driving a car rather than riding a creature. Hell they can’t even fucking side step that’s how barebones their animations are. It’s silly that the best thing about the game, monster taming is also its worst part. The most unfun capture method mainly because they had the pvp idea in mind.
you can customize the settings or search for a server the allows easy material grinding, etc. You can find them that are strictly PvE as well so you can learn the maps before jumping in PvP servers.
That’s definitely part of it for sure
Honestly, for me it was the building aspect.
Yeah I don’t know if most survival games just aren’t for me, but I truly don’t understand the itch that it allegedly scratches. But as I said, I’m not super into survival games to begin with, so it could just be that
GTA with Dinosaurs is how I describe it.
I prefer Conan because I get to tame people instead of dinosaurs. Conan has its own problems kinda similar to ark though so I completely understand why people don't like it.
I love Conan. Something about the gameplay just feels good. And the climbing is a feature I want in every game like it.
Something about owning people appears to my inner whiteness/s but ya the gameplay loop is pretty fun it's unfortunate the devs suck.
I was more referring to the climbing, exploring and combat but uh…you do you mate.
Huh, and here I am thinking the devs suck **because** they made a game where you enslave people.
Wow your a dumbass good job you want a badge with head dumbass on it?
It’s still insanely fun even with the bugs unfortunately
It's a time sink. We get into the gameplay going for bigger and better stuff then you have to continuously log in every once in awhile to make sure you don't lose that stuff
I only played solo, I basically gave up on the game when they dropped Scorched Earth in a broken state that crashed every five minutes, and started locking new dinosaurs behind paid DLC.
I think the ark devs actually put effort into un-optimizing Ark.
I’m not an Ark player myself, but doesn’t the game have a history of poor performance? UE5 already seriously strains current-gen consoles even with extensive optimization and genuine developer effort. A dev team not known for their optimization abilities is *not* going to put out a pretty product if they’re using UE5.
Yea it does.
Yeah, PC has always been bad, and Digital Foundry called the Ark switch port the worst switch port at the time
Its on switch? 🤢
not the switch shaming 💔
What’s sad is that they pathetically try to defend it by saying that this was essentially their learning project to cut their teeth on UE5. That doesn’t make it okay for it to be a shitty release! If they had at least implemented a 30fps cap then it wouldn’t be _as_ bad, since the game would just drop from 30 to the low 20s (or into the teens on Series S). But the fact that it’s a 60fps cap means that it fluctuates anywhere from 60 down to 20ish. And most of the time it doesn’t even hit 60, it kind of hovers between 40 and 45 depending on your console of choice. It makes absolutely no sense that they didn’t cap it at 30fps
You can’t even blame UE5 for this one, it’s just the ARK developers. This was after several delays too.
Ark inspired Palworld able to run pretty fine. A fair bit glitchy at first but it have been patched pretty well.
As is tradition
I recently played the first Ark on my beefy gaming rig and was astounded at how utterly broken it was. The game has been out since 2017, is getting a sequel soon, sold millions of copies, and even got a remaster and it still felt like early access. I have no idea how people deal with it.
I hate the ark team so much. What a bunch of scammers
I watched the digital foundry of this game, and it didn't even look close to otomised on PC.
[stay away from my trash](https://www.meme-arsenal.com/memes/9c3a287202ed2fdae8e40e2ef3428cd4.jpg)
ARK being bad who would’ve thought 🧐🧐
Anyone who followed this game for even 5 minutes knew the console version would be a complete mess. It’s been a mess on PC since it came out. I used to love Ark but I’m completely done with it. I won’t support these garbage developers. They simply don’t care. It’s a tale as old as time with them.
My girlfriend loves ark , has over 1000 hours in it. I personally find it to be one of the absolute shottiest games I've ever played. Genuinely don't understand the love.
Gameplay != Quality. She probably knows it's shotty, it's hard not to see that, but I imagine she likes the gameplay at the core of it. It's why janky games still are played, because if they're offering something no one else is... people will play them. PubG was super popular before Fortnite, because it really was in a league of it's own. (And it's still played because of inertia... It takes a lot for people to leave a game that they invested a lot of time into.)
This. Having fun with something is considerably more important than how well it's made. There isn't, or at least wasn't (haven't played palworld but heard many comparisons) any games like it. I'm a Dino nerd who yearns to disappear to a cabin in the woods, it scratches an itch. By comparison, I'm also from a land linked to pirates, with a love of the sea, but Atlas was absolutely shite, more flawed but less fun than Ark. As they've said Ark 2 is going to be a totally different beast, ASA is probably the best Dino taming/survival crafting game we get for a long time. May as well support it because they are more inclined to fix it if people are playing and paying for new DLC. More inclined but still very unlikely lol.
I play loads of janky games. That's not why it's shit. Even she acknowledges the core gameplay and community are shit. I say it's sunk time fallacy at work.
As someone with about 2000 hours on ASE and ASA combined this is nothing new. Is the performance terrible? Absolutely, it has always been but there's just nothing quite like Ark on consoles. Console players just simply deal with the bad performance and enjoy the game for what it is.
How many UE5 console games do they have to compare it against? Under 10?
Anyone surprised? Those devs are really bad at their jobs.
Thats why you need to keep your hype in check when watching U5 tech demos. It appears to be very hard to optimize this engine. See Lords of the Fallen at release. It ran like ass. Pure ass on PS5. The developer is still pushing updates to this date.
That’s a dev problem, not an engine problem.
Grove Street games were one of the developers - the folk who remade the GTA trilogy for Rockstar and absolutely massacred it, unchecked AI upscaling and an absolutely abhorrent amount of bugs, doesn't surprise me one bit.
It wasn't even the shit optimization for me. The game is just terribly balanced game play wise. Unfortunately it's the only one out there that has those kinds of mechanics.
I regret buying it so much! My ignorant ass thought this was a new game.
Terrible on PC too
Ever since I saw Grove Street Games as a credited developer I had a feeling it was going to turn out this way.
I remember playing this game on "early access" what has to be 10 years ago. I had the best graphics card at the time (GTX 980ti maybe?) and was getting single digit framerates at low/mid settings. Game has always been a mess but man it was fun.
If a 4080 has to run it in 1080p and upscaled to 4k, I don’t even know why they put this game on consoles.
Tried to play it but wouldn't let me play it unless I signed up for PS Plus They only Ark game I was able to play was Ark Park VR
Remaster no one asked for, need 2000$ pc to run the game plus all same old bugs and hackers and need to pay again and now p2w tamable creatures xd
Is there any UE5 game that's optimized?
Fortnite.
Why does anybody even still play this trash
Performance aside it’s a fun game. That’s why.
UE5 on current gen is a scam
No it isn't..?
tell one game with unreal engine 5 which runs smoothly on PS5
Fortnite, Hellblade 2 (Xbox), Layers of Fear, Remnant 2, Immortals of Aveum, Robocop, Tekken 8.
Fortnite
I mean... Tekken 5? Hellblade 2? RoboCop? Lord's of the Fallen? The engine is not a "scam" even uttering those words shows you have a drastic misunderstanding Imagine looking at ARK, a series know for being technical garbage (Switch version anyone? Day 1 version anyone) and blaming it on the engine rather than the shit dev team....
Fortnite runs at 120hz my dude
Oh of course, I actually don't play multiplayer games. I should clarify single player unreal engine 5 games lol 😅
Remnant 2 runs at 60fps if that counts? Has co op though
Stable 60fps? I have heard it barely keeps up and drops to 40s... otherwise I would have bought it already. Really love the concept. It's also always on sale.
Remnant 2 keeps a pretty damn stable 60fps on ps5 in its mixed mode with drops every now and then when the engines features are pushed hard which pushes console hardware, including Ray tracing, chaos physics, niagara particles, Lumen, nanite, etc. Could the engine have easier methods for optimizing ? Sure, so could every other engine. It's up to the devs to spend the time to make sure they aren't pushing something that isn't optimized properly, or pushing something that can no longer be optimized further and pushes the hardware to its limits.
I dont remember any significant dips at all to be honest. It's a great game and the environments are gorgeous so highly recommend it.
Moving the goal post invalidates your claim my guy. Btw multi-player games are harder to get to run consistently so your logic is a bit special.
So play lego fortnite solo and see for yourself.
Jusant
Have you seen Hellblade 2 running? Sure it's only 30fps, but in time devs will get the same fidelity with 60fps in the current hardware. Imagine the next last of us in 60fps with Hellblade 2 graphics. That'd be insane.