I played Ark survival evolved for over 800 hours, most of that is on non dedicated with my friends, this is how i enjoy the game. I want you to know this because the tether distance system in this game is absolute garbage, some maps are just unplayable like The Centre and despite all of this 800 hours.

i enjoyed this game, however the new game not only KEPT the terrible tether system but it is now hard capped at 800 meters at all times. this is a tiny amount of space to play to the point we decided after buying the game to not play until it was fixed. still not fixed and still hard capped months after release and even after the release of scorched earth (this was also months late but that's a whole other can of worms).

i cant help but feel this is because a single company has all the server hosting rights and their service is total ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. My personal experience with Nitardo was akin to a robbery, i payed for a server because how else am i gonna play with my friend how convenient. Then the server kept diapering or not launching or not being joinable, every issue resulted in a days long wait that i was paying for mind you at EXORBITANT rates. overall we played on the server 3 times and 1 of those ended an hour in when his game crashed and he could no longer join the server no matter what.

don't buy this game, don't support Nitardo ♥♥♥♥ em both

Edit: While everything above is still true i would like to point out some other super scummy stuff that has happened.

1) PAYED MODS ya if you where one of the 2 people who payed for mods for fallout 4 you must be on the design team because this is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ pathetic, Most people have already payed for this game twice (and 5 major DLCs that dropped with the 1st game) and you wanna lock community made content behind a paywall ♥♥♥♥ you, now if the modders where receiving 100% of the proceeds i would actually be ok with this because modders do a lot of good work, but they are not... Snail games/Wildcard gotta get their pound of flesh.

2) The DLC maps are being ported over with the same game breaking bugs and meshing issues that existed in the 1st game, these issues have been known about for literal years in most cases so we now know how lazy the map ports are. IDK what is taking them 6 months to port a single map over because they are not fixing them in that time. but they will release a secondary dlc with every map for "bonus content" so entire tames and game mechanics are now locked behind a 2nd paywall, but don't worry because all the new content is still in the game you just cant interact with it in any way.

If i could rate this game any worse than simply a no i would do it because this is a pathetic attempt at a remaster and the devs should all quit their jobs over this embarrassment they have spent the better part of a decade of their lives working on.