Is The Gameplay Any Better?

[BionicFreak]

I do not care for graphics all that much, but I do very much care about gameplay mechanics and feel. Has there been ANY advancements in gameplay, compared to the original?

I have easily played over 1000 hours of Ark on my Xbox and the thing I always hated the most about it was how cheap the gameplay felt. I was really hoping this overpriced update would overhaul the gameplay to be something I could be proud of. Unfortunately, it looks like the gameplay is the exact same. No noticeable improvements to animations, combat, movement, etc.

Am I correct in assuming that nothing has really changed, outside of base-building, or am I wrong? I've only seen a few videos, so I haven't been able to test it out myself.
Is there any reason to buy this, aside from the visual improvements?

[Turkish Hair Graft]

Far as I know they've made some QoL changes to base building and added baby dinosaurs walking around.

[BionicFreak]

Originally posted by Raincoat Rick:

Far as I know they've made some QoL changes to base building and added baby dinosaurs walking around.

I cannot believe they thought this was a good idea. This should've been a free update, like they originally said it would be.

[Evono]

watching my GF play , seems to be ark with Better lighting , some UE5 Influence in animations and Lumen thrown over it
also even worse performance than ark anyway had.

[darkwingltd]

Honestly the game play seems about the same to me. I really wasn't expecting a major change as it's basically a port to the unreal 5 engine. there are a few things that are different but nothing earth shattering so far.

[guitarguy24279]

so far, building feels better and the structures are the proper height now instead of needing to be 2 tall to stand in. The dinos are smarter and will find paths to you instead of running at a wall like an idiot. The UI is cleaner, the load times are almost non existent now. The graphics do look better, but more than just high res models but lumen especially. The night actually looks and feels like night and not some black void. The water and snow physics are nice as well as the animations and volume effects (like being underwater), There are now baby dinos and everything feels a little better.. the only complaint is it's not optimized very well yet but it does look great and if you have a GOOD gpu and dlss, you can get some great fps. I'm getting about 100 fps on ultra with a 4090 and an older cpu