ARK: Review Evolved, Winter Wonderland

[Buster]

Time for our my traditional revies of the seasonal events. This one will be a bit different as it will be shorter than most, again divied into the good, bad, and ugly.

Im sure a lot of people will disagree with me on this one but whatevers.

The good:

The new landscape was just breath taking, the snow covered trees and just the stark change from fall to winter really was impressive.

The colder temps I felt were also a great addition to the event, and honestly I really hate saying this(It really sounds snobby) but a lot of people complaining about the cold need to learn to play, I explored the various places in the south and daytime temps were in the high 50s low 60s, and easily survivable with basic shelters and campires.

The new spawns, having the mammoths, argies and penguins migrate all throughout the map was a great touch, it added a sense of animal migrations, even more so when certain animals stopped spawning before that was corrected. While unintentional added a nice touch in my opinion.

The epic LOOT, raptor claus was a huge blessing and I feel the devs nailed it with the loot here, the presents were fourth coming and chances were high that you could score something epic, not to mention the crafting materials and coal were also accessable as well, thus avoiding the major grindfest of previous events. And while people may complain that the dodorex is game breaking, they need to realize they are playing a type of WAR game and losses are to be expected, even though it maybe exceedingly frustrating.

Persistance, I am pleased that this time holiday loot will remain in the player inventory this time, allowing use for future occasions.

The neutral: The new years ball drop, While I love the concept behind this the fact remains that many people seemed to consider it lackluster, although personally I would have loved to get some top hats,(I missed the event) but I think more could have been included in celebration, since I missed this aspect I don't really have an opinion on this, hence the new and hopefully one time use category.

The bad: This one is going to be rather short.

Insect spawns and creatures, while I reconize there was a lot on the devs plate at the time this was being worked on, the fact that the ants, scorpions and dragonflies, frogs/snakes were active during this season was an oversight, these animals should have been removed/ or in hibernation till the event was over, if people needed chitin the caves could have been the source for these animals where they would be active all year. Maybe next year?

The ugly:(more subjective)

The event length, this event was far too short in my opinion, granted while the raptor claus should be disabled and soon, the fact that the winter map is supposedly ending in a few days leaves absolutely no time for work on a spring time map and weather conditions, various spawns or mechanics. Especially since we were spoiled with a few months of the epic fall landscape.

In conslusion I found this event to be one of the best events the devs have created, right next to the halloween event, with the new landscapes, dynamic weather and spawns, and the epic loot. I was also disheartened and appalled at the major, major amount of negativity that many forum posters had towards this event, while there was some constructive feedback over 90 percent of it was nothing but whining and crying, and I sincerely hope that the developers will ignore these people, whom seem to have no sense of fun/take the game way too seriously, and continue on with these events which add a little more fun and charm to something that would otherwise be monotonous.

[jeffwcollins]

Very well said.

[Annethema]

I personally loved the event, unfortunatly most game events soon get spoiled and/or discintinued by a spoiled, self entitled minority.

[jeffwcollins]

Agreed. I think as a survival game that these people need to learn how to survive during all seasons.

[mayhem]

That's excellent feedback.

I enjoyed the Winter Wonderland a lot and completely agree with OP's points. There was a lot more eating, but with my base in the South I didn't really have many issues. Practically wore gillie and hide armor the whole time.

(16 Fortitude)

It would be really cool to see it go to a half covered snow island for a few weeks, then another update to spring.

[Bracus]

IMO:

All these seasonal changes should last only like a week. We have biomes to make the island diverse, we dont need these kind of things for this long. The snow is soo bright during the day that hurt my eyes ( even after turned off bloom and lightshafts ).
The presents: i liked these things tho as i said before this santa ho ho ho took too long it annoyed me. This should start some days before christmas and stop right after christmas. The other things about presents: the best platforms aren't craftable, not even after the +15 slot fix... The devs should calculate a bit first not just put a random increase on the smithy AFTER they add the things.
Started a new char to check how hard is to survive as a new spawn. Well it's easily doable ( but im pretty much experienced in the game not just brought it ). I can imagine it was pretty hard for a new player.

[BART CHIMPSON]

Personally i dont think that the winter season was aimed for being a realistic enviroment, just the strong complement for x-mas...

[22Habu22]

I froze to death SO many times, but I'm sad to see the event end'm a warning that argents would be on Herb wouldve been nice tho lol

[Buster]

引用自 Bracus：

IMO:

All these seasonal changes should last only like a week. We have biomes to make the island diverse, we dont need these kind of things for this long. The snow is soo bright during the day that hurt my eyes ( even after turned off bloom and lightshafts ).
The presents: i liked these things tho as i said before this santa ho ho ho took too long it annoyed me. This should start some days before christmas and stop right after christmas. The other things about presents: the best platforms aren't craftable, not even after the +15 slot fix... The devs should calculate a bit first not just put a random increase on the smithy AFTER they add the things.
Started a new char to check how hard is to survive as a new spawn. Well it's easily doable ( but im pretty much experienced in the game not just brought it ). I can imagine it was pretty hard for a new player.

A weekly seasonal cycle in the completed game would be epic, each week of the month corresponding to each season, however we only have three seasons currently. And the game is nowhere complete. And a week, maybe two weeks is not enough time to make a fleshed out spring map.

[Bazil]

引用自 Bracus：

IMO:
Started a new char to check how hard is to survive as a new spawn. Well it's easily doable ( but im pretty much experienced in the game not just brought it ). I can imagine it was pretty hard for a new player.

As a person who started during this event I can say pretty easily that if you weren't willing to go and look up how to surivive on the internet it was pretty annoying because the game itself tells you very little about how to deal with the cold or what the cold does.

I looked it up on google after a few tries and it wasn't that bad if you knew what you had to do to deal with it. But if you went in blind (and I'm sure a lot of people did and while a lot of people will fault them for that, I don't think that's fair) then it's actually very much an exercise in futility because mechanics that you have time to get used to under normal circumstances become massively punishing.

Now that said, after the change to how cold things were things were much easier.

My groups main issue with the event though is less that whole difficult cold thing and more about how we think the whole island being covered by snow looks a bit ugly. Maybe we'll be begging for it back in a few weeks though, who knows? I wonder if there could be a server setting to leave it on winter.

[Rafi]

If you bought the game, like I did, during the winterland event you would probably be less happy with the event.

Very small radius and amount of heat generated from the camp fire, ridiculous food consumption rate and the constant grind after dying: pick, flint, torch and rinse and repeat many many times, forget getting any of the 'presents' - simply not possible for a lowbie, even if you did get lucky and picked up this present, your chance of keeping it for any length of time were pretty slim at best.

On the other hand it gave me a real challenge and I throughly enjoyed that for the most part, I just wish I wouldn't have to repeat the above steps over and over ad nauseum.

Now that I've become a member of a tribe and no longer have to struggle, it all became kind of trivial and it makes me wonder if the game can really capture my attention without an actual challenge from the environment (that I assume will happen when the event is removed).

It appears the game is a mindless grindfest at higher levels :)

[Bracus]

引用自 Buster：

引用自 Bracus：

IMO:

A weekly seasonal cycle in the completed game would be epic, each week of the month corresponding to each season, however we only have three seasons currently. And the game is nowhere complete. And a week, maybe two weeks is not enough time to make a fleshed out spring map.

Well either do a seasonal cycle or keep the biomes ( and make more kind ). We dont need both i think.

[Bandit]

Why on earth should they have removed the bugs?

The holiday event was nice but tired of snow as many would agree. Oh, and tell the devs to deal with all the China exploiters too so we can enjoy the event. You are probably on a pve carebear server from the sound of things.

This review is corny and lame. Not even sure why I read it. No real content and lame observations lacking anything meaningful.

"A nice touch!" hahaha. Here is my review of your review.

Learn to review.

[Buster]

引用自 Bandito Black：

Why on earth should they have removed the bugs?

The holiday event was nice but tired of snow as many would agree. T

his review is corny and lame. Not even sure why I read it. No real content and lame observations lacking anything meaningful.

"A nice touch!" hahaha. Here is my review of your review.

Learn to review.

Since you apparently have no grasp on what bugs, frogs, and snakes do during winter I shall enlighten you, They either die, or bury themselves to avoid freezing, they don't go prancing around in subzero weather.

[Bandit]

Yeah and dinosaurs with huge bases on their backs are realistic too.

[Ulysses]

I started a new character a couple days ago, and based on all the whining on the forums, expected it to be enormously difficult. I'm now level 35 and have yet to freeze once, and I'm far from a good player. The concept of "survival" seems to be lost on some, I think.