ARK: Review Evolved: Turkey Trial

[Buster]

As usual this is intened to be a constructive critique and not a rant post. I will go over the good, bad and ugly as usual. I hope this will prove useful to the development team for future events.

The Good:

The Turkeys, I feel were a cute addition to the game overall, even moreso they could be used to add more realism by having (normal) turkeys replacing the dodo spawns in the interior of the Island. Now I know a lot of people will disagrere with me here, but having the turkeys being reistant to dinosaur damage was a good thing, we need more instances where people actually have to use their brains rather than simply rely on their mounts to solve every little problem.

The Cheiftan hat. This thing looks amazing, it adds to an exotic Island feel and further improves roleplaying aspects for those whom maybe into that thing. Its costs were also fairly reasonable.

The dodorex, I was pleased to see ARK's mascott making a return to the ARK for this event. Even better that he could be tameable.

The Bad:

The Dodorex: While I was happy that he made a reutrn, I and I think many others were disappointed that he was not a permenant addition to the Island, that people could not have a few novelty mounts to keep in their bases. To be slightly fair, although many people asked for him to be tamed, no one specified a permenant tame, and while I felt that idea would be common sense, I think it was missed. It would behoove us maybe to be more specific when asking for future features.

Also the costs, a 1000 wishbones to summon the dodorex, while its clear that this was tailored to combating alpha tribes, it effectively made it impossible (and I hate using that word in describing things in ARK) for solo or small tribes to aquire enough materials to summon said creature. And while wishbones were found frequently on the super turkeys the turkeys themselves proved somewhat difficult to find, though I had no isses finding them myself, I did not find the numbers needed to craft the dodorex tribute.

The lack of thanksgiving content: Its not just turkeys that represent Thanksgiving, aside from the family celebration, thanksgiving is about food stuffing your face and offering your pets many yummy delights, you could have brought back pumpkins so we could craft pumpkin pie, Turkey's could have been cooked and stuffed, tinto berry sauce anyone? Maybe some better limited time taming foods? And decorations as well, the cornucopia is a decoration that is tied to Thanksgiving.

In in the devs defence here, Thanksgiving is not that long after halloween therefore the time they had to impliment more content for this event, along with focusing on the upcoming Christmas event, which naturally needs to take priority it is somewhat excuseable that this event was lackluster. Somewhat.

The Ugly:

Nontameable turkeys: Really? You add a cute little theme animal and make it nontameable? I was looking forward to having a small group of turkeys around my base. Now let it be said that in order for feasible turkey taming, they would have need to add a female and baby turkey model and change the animations, as actually turkeys do not walk around strutting all the time, as they do in this event.

Overlooking PVE and solo players: Now I know ARK is meant to be played with others and that pvp is a major aspect of the game so while it makes sense that there would be much more content tailored to that player base, the fact does remain you did add quite a cost barrier for those who play alone or in small groups, it is important to not to forget there are people whom like the building/roleplay aspect as well, with pvp taking a minor place in their playstyle.

In conclusion, sadly this particular event was a disappointment, I played and waited in order to give an impartial opinion rather than jumping to conclusions and give this event a fair shake. The idea was brilliant, its execution not so much. Also I know this was meant to test the feasbility of having bosses be summonable as well for pvp, but I still feel that more could have been done.

Again I will mention I am aware that there is only so much time in a day and that making holiday assets, especially on the scale of the halloween event takes time, perhaps more time they had before thanksgiving, also as stated earlier the Christmas holiday even must take priority since I am expecting widespread changes similar to the halloween event (Winter landscape*leafless trees, no bugs* weather changes and longer nights)

I hope that next year the Thanksgiving event will be updated with new content to better reflect this holiday and cater to more than just the pvp base, along with more reasonable costs, though admittedly i cannot offer numbers.

[Zadira]

What a great review! Very well said.

I have to disagree a little bit. Though I think I am actually agreeing with you, too. Maybe just adding a little bit to what you said. :)

The turkeys were way to op for pve and newer players. We play on an official pve server and found that we had to do a mindwipe in order to be able to kill it. Newer players would not be able to do that at all.

I am not sure but I don't think anyone on our server was able to collect all 60 wishbones, but not without lack of trying. The only ones able to collect any were high level players who were able to quickly gather the mats for the mindwipe.

I keep reminding myself that we are testing for the devs. I sure hope they see this review and use the info to help with the final game.

[Buster]

Originally posted by Kindleriver:

What a great review! Very well said.

I have to disagree a little bit. Though I think I am actually agreeing with you, too. Maybe just adding a little bit to what you said. :)

The turkeys were way to op for pve and newer players. We play on an official pve server and found that we had to do a mindwipe in order to be able to kill it. Newer players would not be able to do that at all.

I am not sure but I don't think anyone on our server was able to collect all 60 wishbones, but not without lack of trying. The only ones able to collect any were high level players who were able to quickly gather the mats for the mindwipe.

I keep reminding myself that we are testing for the devs. I sure hope they see this review and use the info to help with the final game.

I personally found that turkeys died easily enough to metal tools, though they did pack a punch...

[Pietro]

I loved this! Now for the dev worshippers to come in to tell you how much you are stupid for not liking this event xD

[Red River]

too few turkeys even after x4 increase and the need to kill 60+ of them given how tough and protected they are is just psychotic...

[Heru Ra Ha]

It took me one day to make the chief hat, i couldve gone for the Dodo rex but meh, sorry i think 1000 wishbones was not nearly in the same region as impossible. While i was doing other stuff and i had it on day 1 of the event. I didnt know

People who play solo can also mod the game they want, so there is no need to think about people who play this game alone or pve.

[Buster]

Originally posted by Der Riesenraddieb:

It took me one day to make the chief hat, i couldve gone for the Dodo rex but meh, sorry i think 1000 wishbones was not nearly in the same region as impossible. While i was doing other stuff and i had it on day 1 of the event. I didnt know

People who play solo can also mod the game they want, so there is no need to think about people who play this game alone or pve.

OK well I am writing this review of someone who does not mod the game and thus plays it as it is given out(I would say as the devs intended but that would not be accurate) as such saying you can mod the game to fix it does not really help anything. Especially since offical multiplayer servers are not moddable.

Your saying its OK for the devs to basically release a subpar product because modders will "fix it". Thats not a healthy attitude that a developer should take. They need to strike a balance for the all types of players in the game, a hard but nessesary task.

[Broken Reality]

Originally posted by Der Riesenraddieb:

It took me one day to make the chief hat, i couldve gone for the Dodo rex but meh, sorry i think 1000 wishbones was not nearly in the same region as impossible. While i was doing other stuff and i had it on day 1 of the event. I didnt know

People who play solo can also mod the game they want, so there is no need to think about people who play this game alone or pve.

Actually they do need to think about solo players and pve players. There are a large number of both and not every PVE player plays on their own server where they can summon in the item. There are after all Official PVE servers. Even if they could where is the fun in doing so? From the tone of your post you are a pvp player who looks down on PVE players somewhat.

[Irkalla]

Originally posted by Der Riesenraddieb:

It took me one day to make the chief hat, i couldve gone for the Dodo rex but meh, sorry i think 1000 wishbones was not nearly in the same region as impossible. While i was doing other stuff and i had it on day 1 of the event. I didnt know

People who play solo can also mod the game they want, so there is no need to think about people who play this game alone or pve.

It really rubs me the wrong way when the first thing someone responds with is "solo's can mod the game" The point should be that they shouldn't have to play god in a game to enjoy the events. Going that route they could just punch in the codes and get the items they wanted. But then they aren't actually playing the game. The whole point is to play.

[Xyberviri]

The turkeys look out of place imho.

[plainclothespolice]

Originally posted by Buster:

The lack of thanksgiving content: Its not just turkeys that represent Thanksgiving, aside from the family celebration, thanksgiving is about food stuffing your face and offering your pets many yummy delights, you could have brought back pumpkins so we could craft pumpkin pie, Turkey's could have been cooked and stuffed, tinto berry sauce anyone? Maybe some better limited time taming foods? And decorations as well, the cornucopia is a decoration that is tied to Thanksgiving.

In in the devs defence here, Thanksgiving is not that long after halloween therefore the time they had to impliment more content for this event, along with focusing on the upcoming Christmas event, which naturally needs to take priority it is somewhat excuseable that this event was lackluster. Somewhat.

I don't blame them for the toned down amount of content. Thanksgiving is only celebrated in the USA, after all (Canada, too, but wiki says it's at the beginning of October and I have no idea if it is similar to an American Thanksgiving). Seems logical to put more effort into events for holidays that are celebrated in a large number of countries. But I agree, the implementation of the content they did put in could have been executed a whole lot better.

[Buster]

Originally posted by irkalla:

Originally posted by Der Riesenraddieb:

It took me one day to make the chief hat, i couldve gone for the Dodo rex but meh, sorry i think 1000 wishbones was not nearly in the same region as impossible. While i was doing other stuff and i had it on day 1 of the event. I didnt know

People who play solo can also mod the game they want, so there is no need to think about people who play this game alone or pve.

It really rubs me the wrong way when the first thing someone responds with is "solo's can mod the game" The point should be that they shouldn't have to play god in a game to enjoy the events. Going that route they could just punch in the codes and get the items they wanted. But then they aren't actually playing the game. The whole point is to play.

Exactly, these events should be accessable to everyone with a little bit of effort, and without mods or cheats.

Originally posted by Xyberviri:

The turkeys look out of place imho.

Wild turkeys existed since the early Miocene (23 to 5 million years ago) So they technically could have a place in ARK However the models will need reworking,(and new models added) new animations and such, since Turkeys don't parade around(all the time) like they currently do in ARK, also they can fly :p

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey_%28bird%29

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocellated_turkey

[Red River]

the devs are just too lazy to implement different requirements for different playmodes.
there's really no need for 1k or 60 bones in SP because it's 100% solo experience...

[TruthDemon]

Originally posted by Kindleriver:

I am not sure but I don't think anyone on our server was able to collect all 60 wishbones, but not without lack of trying.

I collected 62, with a giga, over the entire week. They were WAY too rare to find and collect. the only reason I managed to get 60 was I had 2 other people from 2 tribes assisting me. This was just horrid, glad it's over.