MMOs may still be around, but they are no longer these behemoths they once were. World of Warcraft has been on the decline for years, and most semi-massively multiplayer online games usually work in chunks of multiplayer zones rather than one ever present multiplayer server. Destiny gave us a loot shooter that utilized a multiplayer system that created instances of each zone and limited the number of people there at any given time so you weren't overwhelmed while still giving you the feeling you were populating a world of other players, completing quests and killing monsters just like you. Likewise, the larger-than-average take on multiplayer in the wake of the MMO lead to battle royale games, or at the very least something like proto-battle royale games. It is probably incorrect to say that DayZ was the first of these types of games, but it was certainly one of the earlier and more popular incarnations (there is more than a few arguments to made for Minecraft as another). Rather than controlled zones, these games went with the singular server you'd join, just with a much smaller map and smaller population limits. The other major difference was how the gameplay loop was handled this time around: rather than giving you leveling mechanics that locked loot, dungeons, and abilities behind xp gates, you now had to scavenge and craft everything you had. It gave a sincere weight to every risk you took, knowing you could lose that rifle that took you forever to find or craft. Everything you had you built and scavenged with your own hands. Your base of operations was something you created from a floor plan you designed, and everything in it represented countless hours of work. Survival/crafting games became the new vogue for people wanting a truly open-ended experience, where each new game/character felt like a new approach to the mechanics and the world you knew. Add in the multiplayer aspect, and suddenly people became intensely protective. Losing in a World of Warcraft duel or PvP game meant a hurt in pride. Losing all you had in your base to a raid was a personal attack and a massive set back. The stakes were higher, and thus the adrenaline rush from successful play was through the roof. Following DayZ and Minecraft, several other games gave their own approach to the genre. Rust is by far the closest to the platonic version of this genre: you craft and gather resources, you play online with many other players (usually under a hundred), and you can loot, raid, or create and join clans. From this formula came Ark: Survival Evolved.
Ark's most obvious difference from other games in the genre is that you can tame, ride, or kill dinosaurs. Dinosaurs have had a difficult history in the video game sphere since the end of the 90s, with popular franchises such as Turok and Dino Crisis flailing with the new millennium. Dinosaurs may have been childish in the eyes of the games industry, which was striving more and more towards gritty realism or otherwise grimdark territory. Jurassic Park would have licensed games from time to time, but none of them would ever have a lasting impact outside of mild cult status, such as with Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis. As zombies became less popular in the early 2010s but survival games continued to thrive, there was a need to fill in this void of an omnipresent threat to give these games the tension needed. The Long Dark used the elements, Don't Stave used Lovecraftian horrors, Rust used other players, and Ark used dinosaurs. It stood out from the crowd pretty early on, even with a cripplingly buggy early access reputation, but what kept players playing was the ability to tame these prehistoric giants.
Taming dinosaurs in Ark has a similar appeal to catching Pokemon in Pokemon: it drives the collector in you (at least at first), and it gives you the satisfaction of knowing that you could turn that intimidating monster threatening the beach in which your base is perched into a powerful ally. Taming your first T-Rex in Ark is exhilarating. Finding the Rex itself can be a task itself as it usually only spawns in much more difficult areas of the map. Once you find it, it takes a difficult amount of tranqulizers to put out, and even then takes quite a bit of meat in order to tame. The process ends up being multi-tiered and difficult, but the reward is a behemoth with massive attack damage that can outright change the game. While the Rex has an obvious PvP or protectorate appeal, other dinosaurs can have surprising uses as well. Parasaurs are great pack mules early in the game, allowing you to ride them as a mount and have them carry all of the resources you've collected on an excursion. Triceratops (called Trikes in Ark, one of the many short-hands used throughout the game) are relatively good early game berry harvesters, which can help in garnering enough narco berries to start a stockpile of narcotics, the main ingredient in tranquilizer arrows or darts. In later sections of the game, Ankylosaurus can be tamed to gather stone and metal (of which they have a buff that cuts these resources' carry weight in half), or a Therizosaur, which can harvest wood at an alarming speed and quantity.
The real game changer, however, comes in finally taming and building a saddle for a flying mount. Early in the game, the only flying mount you can get is a Ptaranadon, which is fast but can run out of stamina quickly and has poor carry weight. Running out of stamina causes the dinosaur to immediately start descending until it finds a place to land, regardless of what threat may be nearby. The Ptaranadon is not very useful for resource gathering, but it is excellent at location scouting, looking for tamable dinosaurs (especially when looking for a higher level tame, as you may have to fly a long distance to find one), or moving you somewhere far away to essentially give a fresh go at a new base, if you were confident enough to leave most of your belongings behind. The next up flying mount is the Argentavis (or Argy), which is essentially a giant hawk. It has an incredibly large pool of stamina allowing it to go long distances, and a large carry weight with a buff that halves the weight of stone and metal, making it excellent for harvesting. The Argy's downside is that it is much slower than the Ptaranadon, which can create risky situations if you are using one to get out of dodge quickly. If you play on other maps than The Island (Ark's default and first map), you can also find mounts such as Griffons and Wyverns, both extremely powerful and essentially near end game tames.
Getting these mounts, however, have their own difficulties. Taming them is one thing, but if you want to properly utilize them then you have to create a saddle, which can take a large amount of resources but also must be unlocked in the crafting tree. Unlike almost all other crafting based survival games, there is an explicit xp gate behind unlocking crafting recipes. The general game design behind crafting games usually comes from your efficiency in gaining resources (either from learning game mechanics or moving your base of operations to somewhere far more dangerous but more lucrative) and then crafting particular crafting benches or smithies that house the next branch in the crafting progression. It's excellent design since it rewards engaging in the game's internal mechanics in order to proceed. Ark, however, goes a completely contradictory approach that I would call ambitious. Rather than rewarding this kind of engagement with the underlying systems of the game, the game gives out Engram Points each level to the player, which can be spent on Engrams, which are essentially crafting blueprints. Blueprints are locked behind a level gate, so making certain saddles can mean grinding your way to that specific level before being able to make it. It sounds awful, but it works for the game's primary way of playing: with multiplayer. The idea behind it is that no one person ever has enough engram points to unlock every crafting recipe, meaning individuals are forced to specialize what they can make and balance this with what other friendly players have learned. Playing solo this can be a serious chore, however the game does allow game rule controls such as xp gain modifiers, taming speed, etc. that allow for you to tailor the game for solo play much better (assuming you aren't playing on an online server, in which host has these controls). When played properly, this can create an exciting incentive towards clan synergy, giving everyone specializations and forcing everyone to work together. None of this really becomes important until the latter half of the leveling path, though, so for the first half of the game it really is just pick what you want. A mild criticism of this system is that the engram path can sometimes feel a bit ambitious. For example, the Ptaranadon saddle isn't unlocked until around level 38, but if you are replaying the game as a new character it is very easy to optimize your play to the point where getting a Ptaranadon is viable at half that level. Likewise the Argy saddle isn't unlocked until an insanely steep level of 62, making grinding all the more likely if you know what you are doing. Of course, grinding is something that sort of comes with crafting games, and so before you can really utilize some of these dinosaurs you will be needing a base, some narcotics (as well as the stations that allow you to craft them), and some metal tools. Doing all of this, however, won't get you to level 62 before getting an Argy would be extremely handy.
These and several other mechanics too tedious to list out create a game that excels at encouraging co-op play, and has a tall ceiling before you feel you've gotten sick of it or otherwise beaten it. End game content is difficult and takes a lot of work to even prepare for, let alone get to. It is incredibly easy to dump a hundred hours into this game without really registering as having done anything to further your way to the actual end of the game, and the truth of the matter is getting to the end game doesn't really matter. There is more than enough exploration (on several massive maps, four of which are free, no less), unique dinosaur taming, and base building to be worth the money and time. The game can be a glitchy mess, especially for some of its ports (the Switch port is absolute garbage and you should never buy it), but rarely does it ever get in the way of the fun pouring out of your computer screen. The MMO's biggest fault was thinking we needed a tailored experience with peers to have fun. As it turns out, which just needed a highly involving, complex toy box to play around in.
8.5
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