ARK, the popular early access survival game on steam, is still in beta and hasn't finished making the core game yet. But they have now put out their first piece of paid dlc.
Players of the game are pissed, and in the day since this launched, the player base has dropped nearly 20%
So we can assume after a day that 20% of the player base quit playing & is never coming back? I'll give you that people are pissed, but most of them would probably be pissed at any point to pay for this DLC.
Based on
this article from PC Gamer, it's a whole new game area with new biomes, weapons, gear, animals/mounts, etc. All of which players can transfer from the new game area back to the original area.
It is indeed a whole new map & content for the game.
I have been playing this game since January, keep in mind that I'm a filthy console peasant, in what the Xbox calls "Game Preview" mode. You pay roughly half the full release retail price for early access to what amounts to a beta release. This is a fairly new concept, at least with the Xbox, not sure about Steam. I've only done this with one other title - Elite: Dangerous. ED seemed to be a more polished product, but that may be because I came in during the final stages of preview phase. But you run the risk of burning yourself out on the game before it even gets an official release, which was the case with me & ED.
As for Ark, my friends pitched it to me as "Minecraft for adults with dinosaurs." This is somewhat accurate. You don't get the terraforming that I've seen in Minecraft, but there is a great deal of customization in the structures you can build with the resources you gather. Dinosaurs can be tamed for use as personal transport, pack mules, resource gatherers & offense/defense. Depending on whether you're on a PvP or PvE server, certain dinosaurs are a neccessity.
One thing most of the player base is forgetting - there has been an almost steady stream of new content throughout the process. They haven't been content to just "work out the bugs", although perhaps they would have been better off if this was the case. Almost monthly they have has a patch that fixed some issues as well as added new content, usually in the form of new dinos (Allosaurus!! Giant Beaver!), new player structures or equipment (grappling hooks, chemistry table), or new map areas to explore (redwood biome). About 4 months ago, they even released an entire new map available for play (The Center).
So while all the (free) new content seems to be unappreciated by most, the issue still remains that there is still a lot of work to be done on the base game. IMO, most of the issues arise from poor implementation of basic gaming concepts. It's like they hired a bunch of programmers straight out of school, & they're having to write their own code from scratch. Issues with item collusion as it's super easy to get stuck inside of terrain. Losing tamed dinosaurs because they glitch through the ground because the dinosaurs get rendered before the terrain. The inventory UI is unbelievably frustrating, and I don't know who the team leader is on the lighting & shadows department, but they need to be shown the door. Water reflections & lighting/shadows in places like caves do not work that way! Reflection from light sources is a nightmare. Some aspects of the game are so bad it's hard to tell if it's just bad programming or just creative choices... the sun tracks across the sky until sunset at which point... it then speeds BACK across the sky to then turn into a "moon", which tracks across the sky (wanna guess what happens when it's time for sunrise?).
As for the new paid DLC? Think "hard" mode. Water is a scarce resource. Certain dinos that make life easier on the previous maps (Quetzals) aren't available here. I haven't been able to explore much yet since I'm too busy surviving, but metal resources don't appear to be as plentiful, and without the quetzals to haul large amounts of metal ore around, it doesn't matter anyways.
I'm looking forward to being able to mess around with the new DLC some this upcoming week. Keep in mind that you've paid half price (30 bucks) for the original game, & now 20 bucks for the DLC, so you're still getting all that for less that the full retail release. Add to that I think the base game is on sale for even less than 30 bucks right now (I'm not sure, the MS store won't tell me the sale price since I already own it). I've had a lot of fun so far & looking forward to more.
