A recent distraction

A recent distraction?

Hey guys,

Sorry for my current delay as of late, but having a designated time off uni and the fact it was my birthday on the 28th, I decided to enjoy my little bit of respite whilst I could although I realise I should be working, but when I was given this game for my birthday I couldn't help myself, to which I was pleasantly surprised when I as eager to get on it the next day. Now for me to become heavily involved in a game is something I find rather hard to find from time to time, primarily due to a variety of reasons, people spoil the endings, friends don't play it anymore, a new more exciting title comes out perhaps or your simply given a game and told by your friend you already have friends and a tribe there.

Now although I do consider this a professional distraction, it is also a great first-hand experience of what I and my friends consider as good gameplay.

Although I speak of this highly by stating good gameplay, I think if you ask any respectful player of the game there is definitely one topic that at the top of the list..... it's lag.

Unfortunately against my nature and hopefully those with veteran gaming experience, also know that lag is by far the most annoying bug of a game. Yet again, I am engrossed in it in such a way I feel it necessary to explain why I think I'm drawn to this game.

Initially, I thought to be an Unreal Engine game, which I know are few and far between, it is a great source to see the outcome of what people make with the same engine that I use, but this doesn't go without saying, it does have its flaws. I also realised that the hosting/local play options are great, with the only major worry of the game-world affecting your progress, but when you actually join the multiplayer server, I think the very existence of you and everyone else all have a small effect on everything within the game.

This goes from certain areas being blocked off or inaccessible due to other people building forts/civilisations in which they can thrive in (for example, taking over caves or areas of great resources in order to stay on top), so with these additional resources you gain access to better items in which in turn better you as a player, but this can also come at a great cost (for example, with the cave, you also find stronger beasts lurking there to defend the precious resources you need) so I can summarise this game to have the "evolving" game-play along with experience to create such an immersive game.

Additional Note:

There is one key mechanic within this game, which I believe makes me want to return to the game more and in turn making it more immersive due to how much involvement I wish to have with the game. This is the degrade mechanic.

Now, this does seem to make or break a situation in the game, for instance:

You have several tamed dinosaurs around a small base that you have made, now in order to keep them safe, you have to put a barrier around my base so that nobody on foot can just come in take your supplies kill everything you have and get away.

Now the good thing about your tames is that they also protect what you have to an extent, but you also need to feed these dinosaurs in order for them to do so, so you would have to learn the skill in order to create a food trough, then you need to find the food (be it from berries or raw meat, depending on the dinosaurs you have) and food degrades over time so you have to consistently make sure there is always food in order for everything to ultimately survive when you are offline.

Furthermore, depending on your level and skills you have learnt you can craft certain objects to alter this degrade effect, the first being preserving campfire (which only seems to x1.5 to the timer) then to a preserving bin (which is x2.5 to the timer), the difficulty here is to level up in order to get the skill points in order to learn the skill needed to create these things. So as you can see, the topic of survival evolved is certainly matched in the mechanics due to this evolving scale - which is also capped at 100.