ARK: Survival Evolved

we're gonna need a thread for this eventually, so why not now?

the Pelagornis dossier has me wondering about exactly what the story is gonna be. near as i can tell, it looks like it's gonna be an island-in-the-sea-of-time situation where some of the animals and people have been brought directly from where they originated to the setting of ARK without having changed in the meantime like alot of the others. Pelagornis is especially enigmatic here because it predates alot of the other animals chronologically so since it's clearly supposed to be the real-world species it must be a recently-arrived species to the setting, as opposed to teh trikes which have clearly evolved quite a bit

Part that makes me eager for Pelagornis is I had made a fan dossier for it months back and the recent reveal for it is virtually identical to the one I made. Have a look-
https://steamcommunity.com/app/346110/discussions/0/490125103636168527/

Tapejara was revealed last week.

Spoiler:

Also E3 trailer with Redwoods and Titanosaurus.

Redwoods are beautifull! Titanosaurus...I think I should see this guy very very far!

another real-world species, huh? and it's a living helicopter...

good to see some biome diversification and a bit more technology, too

Wasn't the game originally supposed to fully release this month? or did it get pushed back a bit?

as far as i can tell it's just scheduled for sometime this year. i'm guessing it'll come out for the holiday season.

Many of you know about the popular game ARK: Survival Evolved.

Well, the game has just announced some coolness, and that's the addition of a new feature where you can play as animals trying to survive in the island's environment as well as humans. I'm probably going to buy an Xbox One specifically for this purpose. I admit it, they've convinced me.

For those of you who are new to ARK (or who need a refresher), here're your species options thus far:

ARK Species:

Merged this thread with a pre-existing thread in this subforum.

I do enjoy ARK despite it's inaccuracies. Without modifying the amount of resources that you obtain through hitting trees and rocks though, I feel that the early game drags on just a bit too long.

This business with the "play as the creatures" update has got me thinking. This game is supposed to be very mod-friendly. Perhaps, if anyone here is good at modding games like this, or if some of us worked together on it, we could make a Jurassic Park-themed mod, retooling the island as Isla Nublar or Isla Sorna, remodelling the dinosaurs and altering their behaviors to suit Jurassic Park's versions. It would be like Live The Legend as a live-action, visual experience.

It'd be pretty cool. A lot of work, but pretty cool.

There's actually quite a few mods out that include things like tall electric fences so I could see that happening actually. If only that Editor wasn't so large in file size!

Well there are too many updates for the game regarding about dossiers. After Tapejara, they were teasing us with some lost dossiers. Looks like the animals belong to the confirmed desert biome.
Boss Desert? (Smaug lizard)

Spoiler:

Lotosaurus?

Spoiler:

Teratornis?

Spoiler:

Mothra?

Spoiler:

Kamacuras?

Spoiler:

Grasshopper firefly hybrid?

Spoiler:

Another mystery creature. Dune Worms

Spoiler:

Also in PAX West will reveal more. I hope they will reveal full desert biome

How a long time!
So new updates.
Scorched Earth expansion.

Tapejara and Archaeopteryx

Scorched Earth looks cool and all--it was a good call for them to just make a separate arid area apparently apart from the main setting (as opposed to somehow trying to squeeze a desert into an already multi-biome island)--but if they're gonna include so many explicitly fantasy creatures as opposed to fictionalized versions of fossil animals then they should just make it its own game

good to see one other thing in the second video, though: perching your flying mounts on vertical surfaces

I'd be lying if I said Scorched Earth didn't look cool. But I won't be getting it.

They took what I liked about the game, dinosaurs, and threw it all out in Scorched Earth. Too many fantasy creatures, I have tons of options for games with dragons, dinosaurs not so much.

Not to mention the game is already broken with the constant grind it is and they now want money for a game that's not even finished. If I buy scorched earth.

I came here for a dinosaur game, not a fantasy game. It's sad that all anyone cares about now is Scorched Earth

i thought i'd bump the thread. it's looking like the game is very near completion now, since there are only five more creatures to be added to the game that have been revealed through the dossiers: Hesperornis, Hyaenodon, Megalania, Megatherium, and Yutyrannus

Ark: Survival Evolved: New Expansion Announced
http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/09/05/ark-survival-evolved-dev-reveals-new-expansion-aberration

now that the game's come out and i've gotten a good handle on the ecosystems of the Island (i've been doing alot of flying around, trying to act very cautiously after i got my face ripped off by a thylacoleo literally seconds after touching down in the redwoods for the first time on my first or second day of playing the game, so i've seen alot more than i've actually directly interacted with) and i've started to notice some things that seem to be missing from Ark's species list:

• either a rauisuchian or Ornithosuchus. even with two other crocodilians in-game, it seems kind of incomplete without one of these. the obvious choice for the former is Postosuchus, but i think Ornithosuchus would be a better choice--it'd be another low-level small carnivore, amphibious like the Kaprosuchus but smaller and more predisposed towards land. i've even got the basic idea that it could having a bleeding attack like the sabertooth salmon, but on land.
  
• a proxy for seals. simple enough, just a relatively small mammal that you can find on shorelines, possibly just the really rocky ones and in cold zones, a rich source of meat and maybe a blubber resource (an alternative fuel, perhaps?). maybe there could be a dynamic where it's mostly small seals in groups and one or a few big bulls which defend the group when you show up, and maybe this could figure into how the seals are tamed, with the big ones being untameable and you have to kill them and can then tame the rest by feeding them non-violently.
  
• smaller insects. i get that the Arks are basically alien zoos and they only put what they want in there, and that there are already some proxies for these, but i think Ark's ecosystem looks a little incomplete without the presence of at least flies buzzing around a carcass.
  
• rodents. not just small ones to complement the insects i mentioned above (just basic rats, untameable and only dangerous if they somehow spawn in huge groups, like at least twice as big as the biggest groups to spawn in and work together in the vanilla game) but also some slightly larger ones like Josephoartigasia as proxies for the capybara, and something for rabbits or gophers--Ceratogaulus comes to mind.
  
• Archelon. with all the other animals in the sea, it's a bit jarring that the also-iconic Archelon has been left out. i know there's already Carbonemys which shows up in water just as often as on land, but that's not really the same--it's a snapping turtle, not a sea turtle.
  
• another cat. Smilodon's in there, of course, but that only covers the bases for big cats. what about smaller ones, a proxy for bobcats or servals?
  
• a brontothere-type or Arsoinitherium. the former could be a rhino proxy for warmer climes, probably with a different temperament, and the latter could have something unique with its horns--i seem to remember hearing that they were hollow and used to make noise, so maybe it could be something related to that. one or both could be used as a proxy for hippos, too.
  
• a proxy for flamingos. there's plenty of shallow water, it seems fitting that there should be some smaller flying animal straining around in the water that'll fly off if you startle them. maybe another pterosaur of some kind.
  
• a camelid. i know that'd be more fitting as a Scorched Earth exclusive because deserts, but camels and camelids live and lived in other environments, too. their gimmick could be that they almost never need to be fed.
  
• one or two other hominids. either something along the lines of Australopithecus or maybe just a "small human" composite of fossil hominids, a Neanderthal, or both. i saw a teaser in a video a while back of a mod adding NPC Bush People to the game and it's honestly pretty cool--adds some depth to the setting if you're playing mostly alone and can encounter various tribes that are already established elsewhere and interacting with them either peacefully or not (but i wouldn't include the basic RPG elements since that kinda ruins the survival element). the game-changer for including other hominids would be that they're also running around with weapons and armor, which, naturally, you can loot from their bodies or otherwise just steal from them. maybe they could be placed around supply drops with the idea just being that, because they've lived in the Ark for so long, they just know where all the regular supply drops are and try to take advantage of that. it could be divvied out such that the smaller hominids are more animal-like and can be found in various places, hunting and gathering and limited to Stone Age weapons, while the others are more advanced and diverse. these other hominids could be characterized with an unpredictable temperament where they spawn in groups who will have just about any temperament already demonstrated in the game but you can't tell which just by looking at them (that'd be handled by there technically being about a dozen different versions of the hominids with those different temperaments but they all appear identical)
  

what does everyone else think?

btw, don't bother looking for me on any servers--i plan on playing Ark solo for the foreseeable future, mainly because i don't trust other players to not be assholes even on a PvE server. i do hope i can basically invite others into my personal Ark later on, just to show them everything i've built. i may jump over to that eventually (assuming my PS4 is set up for that--i honestly can't remember) but i won't be doing that for a while, and if i do i'll probably be acting more nomadically than i currently am

also i notice that they've apparently decided to include that gecko thing that Obi-Wan was riding around on in Revenge of the Sith in the expansion pack XDDDDD

Ark: Survival Evolved Coming To Switch In 2018
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2018/03/21/ark-survival-evolved-coming-to-switch-in-2018.aspx