I kind of had a similar feeling. I mean, I enjoyed it the first time, but I was really into it the second time. Maybe that's because I watched the previous ones before watching it. Good point about "Force Awakens," I agree. It was basically a Jurassic Park reboot, but different. The story was essentially the same, yet it wasn't. I liked the characters and the dinos that were in it.

Well yeah, it's primarily PVP, but I only play in single player mode (PVE). I have made an Ark friend and have been invited to play on an official PVP server. However, I'm doing some things on my own and not sure I'm ready to join. I'm not of fan of PVP, but apparently this server has neutral tribes and thus they don't do a lot of PVP.

Not only dinos, but other similar creatures as well. like the ape, Gigantopithecus, and the monkey, Mesopithecus. But, there's also tech stuff and weapons such as various firearms including small guns, rifles, grenades, and rocket launchers. Some things in the game seem to be more effective against dinos than humans and vice versa. One of the creatures, Dimorphodon, specifically targets humans, even when they're riding a dino. Usually when you attack a dino, it targets your dino, but not you.

I've played nearly 600 hours and I'm still playing and enjoying this game. Updates are frequent, including new items, creatures, bug fixes, and optimizations. I've also become a part of the community on Steam and the official forums at www.survivetheark.com. I believe the game is still in the alpha (pre-beta) stage, but it's really good for an alpha. One thing I like about the community is that I also feel like a beta tester, reporting bugs or issues I find.

It is very fun, I think. I'm afraid playing on a PVP server won't be as fun because people will try to kill you and your creatures. Although, I also think it would be fun to play co-op with other people. On default settings it takes a very long time to tame some dinos. My new Ark friend recently said she found a level 120 (which is currently the max level for wild creatures) Spinosaurus and that it was going to take 4 hours to tame. Server admins can change a wide variety of settings to increase taming speed, harvesting amounts, XP earned, difficulty, etc. You can do that for single player mode, too. I've changed some settings, making it a little bit easier. I'm still playing on default difficulty, which seems to mean that I won't see a wild dino above level 40 and I probably won't see supply drops with higher levels of gear. Gear has different levels such as Primitive (the most basic), Apprentice, Journeyman, and Mastercrafted (the highest). Depending on the level of the gear, it's stats can be higher along with crafting costs. So, an Apprentice Pike will have a higher damage stat than a Primitive one. Saddles will have more armor.

I am aware that the game is supposed to be coming to the PS4. I think the ETA is this summer. XBox One already has it in it's Early Access-like program. So, XBox players are testing out the game now, just like us PC gamers. However, the versions are not cross-platform compatible. So, a PC gamer isn't going to be on the same server as an XBox gamer. The PC version is a expected graduate from Early Access this summer, too.

I'll also mention that I've started a fresh new game/character/map a few times now. I've been backing up my local files and reverting to them when something goes wrong (like death). I have made an error with that which made me decide to start over again a few months ago.

I'll be happy to continue talking to you about Ark. You can hit me up some time if you want to talk about it. I also recommend the link I provided in my last comment. I've also been watching Paul Soares, Jr., Zueljin, and Sl1pg8r on YouTube. Paul plays in single player mode while Zueljin and Sl1pg8r play together on a private server along with other really cool people.

Yeah, survival games seem to be pretty popular. I like them, though. Minecraft and Terraria have given me a strong desire to play similar games. This game, to me, is much like them. There's survival, crafting, pets, exploration, etc. It seems to me, still, that FPS games are extremely popular, especially FPS or survival games that feature zombies. I really don't understand the great appeal for that.

Yeah, the amount of grinding sucks. It does seem to (by default) take a long time to incubate an egg. I haven't messed with breeding yet, so I have no personal experience to speak of. Yes, there are air conditioners (along with various other high tech items). Air conditioners actually help by increasing hypothermal and hyperthermal insulation. With the right amount of them (4 or more), you can incubate an egg no matter the environmental temperature, apparently.

Yeah, you can get some pretty OP creatures. However, they recently did a huge rebalance of stats, which has upset a huge amount of people as many tamed creatures received a larger nerf. Some creatures, such as Giganotosaurus are sill quite OP.

I enjoy the Pokemon-like "gotta catch 'em all" aspect.

Yes, some creatures take a very long time to tame. There are also other challenges such as an increase in the speed of how long it will take them to wake up from being knocked out. There is a hardcore option for permadeath, but it is not on by default. When you die, you can spawn in certain general areas or on a bed you've made. You can then go back to where you died and retrieve the items you lost.

The game is still in Early Access and there's plenty of criticism about it. One of the main things is that it's not yet very optimized, so it runs poorly for most people. Even with my GTX 690, I'm only getting about 50 FPS and I have to force the game to use DirectX 10 instead of 11 just to get that. I also use other command line launch options such as removing sky details. I have also created a special shortcut for it that makes it run as a high priority process. I have also "unparked" my CPUs and told the game to "use all available cores." The game looks great in DirectX 11 mode and without all of my special options, but I lose 10-30 FPS by running it that way.

Thanks for the reply! =)

I've heard of Rust, but don't know anything about it.
What does "WRT" mean? Well, yeah, I don't like dying and I don't like losing items upon death. When I play Minecraft I use the command that lets you keep your inventory upon death. But, yeah, it's very dangerous in Ark to die and then have to go try to retrieve what you lost. Your body may be there, or eaten. Even if it is eaten, you'll have a pack that sits there for a certain amount of time, giving you time to retrieve it. However, that pack does despawn (along w/ your body) after that time is up. Retrieving your pack from some places can be near impossible, like if you fell into lava in a cave or died in the deep sea. But, yeah, I use a back up system for death and when other things go wrong, like losing a dino.

Some games still have demos, but not all of them.