Yap, yap, yap, yap. The Isle isn't a 3d chatroom. You sound like you don't even play the game and you're just stuck in the past of legacy. Just stop playing it if you hate it so much. Good lord.
When you realize that The Isle is one man's passion project for himself instead of an actual video game meant for people to buy and play, everything starts to make more sense.
Would explain the focus on human game play, if i recall right the first version of "The isle" was mend to be something familiar to the Evolve-Game where a team of Mercenary's vs. Dinosaurs. Also why Stego is untouchable, must be Dondis favorite Animal from his childhood.
"When you realize that The Isle is one man's passion project for himself instead of an actual video game meant for people to buy and play," I don't see that as a problem. There are great games that have same start. Problem just became when game was released too soon and now after all these iterations over years it is constantly changing is the problem. At moment we only can be sure that game has Dinosaurs and Humans(but not yet) as playables. This is only fact at moment, even when we look to past and possible future if EVRIMA won't stay. Everything else can change. This is that problem, we don't have enough stability for game considering past and most players don't have trust that game won't change drastically in future.
The isle immersion is actually insane, and probably going too far, ESPECIALLY considering it’s literally a dinosaur island in a modern world with colossal beasts and insane mutations with dinosaurs from all different times and places. It just needs to be dumbed down a touch, that’s all…
No idea wtf y//'re trying to say. The dinosaurs now look and move so cartoonishly that any notion of "realism" is actively laughable. It's a misdiagnosis anyway, there's no "immersion" problem. They update the visuals, do remodels, and implement new shaders because that's the only things the devs are succesful at. Anything else won't keep the game relevant or force children to impulse buy it.
@@troythedeconstructionist1382 thats kinda what i am saying, there's so much conflicting realism and non realism content that it begins to feel out of place
Immersion is what got me addicted to The Isle back in the day. I have 3000 hours on record. Hell, I got a new PC with Evrima in mind, since my laptop couldn't run it anymore. Now, I barely play anymore. I just don't have fun anymore, playing feels more like a chore and a test of my patience. But sure, the immersion is great. The weather system is nice. In the end, I agree with you. Legacy felt better despite being outdated now. It's a bloody shame.
I think you're describing exactly what the isle devs fallacy is. Thinking Realism equals Immersion. I too loved legacy for its immersion and now find myself not playing evrima nor legacy. In evrima the realism forces you so much to calculate, to think about your actions and all the systems that gotta be satisfied that you can't get immersed at all. Yes there are immersive sights and landscapes, beautiful lighting... but do you have time to take it in? Do you have the time to feel like a dinosaur just wandering through the forest or sitting on a rock with your pack watching the sun go down? No, because you better get that hex diet back up quick. If there ever was a chance to immerse yourself you are quickly ripped out by some nuisance or penalties of the "realism".
Dondi's biggest problem is he treats the playerbase like little props he expects to play exactly how he wants them to; it's why he adds so many mechanics that aren't fun but are meant to force players to play how he wants. He wants herbivores to go to certain areas at certain times with migration, he wants everyone to move across the map constantly with diets, he hates when players sit and talk in the chat cause it's not 'scary' or 'immersive' so he gets rid of global chat. He also got annoyed with fresh spawns being killed so easily so he funnels them into the sanctuaries despite also not wanting everyone in one spot. I'm reminded of Gabe Newell of Valve in a documentary when he got annoyed when someone asked him about realism cause to him it didn't matter, 'was it fun' was always the question to be answered. He didn't make the bullets show up on the wall from gunfire because of realism, it was to show the player they had control over the environment and give them an incentive to see what else they could do in the game. They didn't add weight physics for realism, they did it for (at the time) a new way to solve puzzles. I just wish Dondi would see that, but, considering he loves watching his playerbase get annoyed and 'trolled' by things like everyone falling off the cliffs because of the bushes hiding the edges in a, 'lol shouldn't be running everywhere,' kind of way, it's odd he wants the playerbase both to act realistic and do as he wants, but also to piss us off constantly with unfair deaths cause it's funny to him. I loved this game so much, I just hope it can salvage itself, but I know it won't if the design philosophy stays exactly the same.
He hates when players sit and talk in chat yet he really likes breaking our legs from cliffs and giving us unbearable stamina regen times... Like what the hell else are we supposed to do in that time??
@@zyqa Marvel at the 'realistic' lighting that is so sharp you can't see anything until noon and then every other time you need night vision on. XD You gotta have them realistic screen shots while you sit to heal that broken leg and recharge that stamina!
Also frankly as far as I can tell, he seems to believe people have unlimited time to do fuck all in his game You need … 4-6 hours to spend in one sitting just to reach adulthood for some species? Hello? Who the fuck has that much time regularly for a single video game in a week? Especially if there is seemingly no guarantee for an enjoyable time? I get animals aren’t constantly running around doing shit irl and nonstop pvp in animal skins isn’t survival but in the end it’s still has to be a game and people have lives to be had.
Which is funny cause the community seems to be the opposite on their discord. Its always "but pot has 900 dinosaurs why cant isle" argument and then i watched the game being made at a slower pace and get people to complain. Then they add more and catch up and people complain they are doing too much
As someone who fell in love with game design, I really appreciate your content. Your method of communicating your ideas is concise yet detailed. What I find the most frustrating with this genre is how much potential it has. The biggest issue with Evrima for me, is that they cannot seem to understand how games work. All the interaction that the isle has to offer currently is player interaction, and all the mechanics they add either hinder it or are irrelevant. The survival elements are implemented in a way that render them simply monotonous tasks or obstacles to the core gameplay - PvP. This is especially true for herbivores whose gameplay is completely neglected. Even when it comes to immersion Evrima falls short. It just seems like it should not be this complicated. As for ways to improve enjoyment without compromising immersion, it seems so obvious. Just off the top of my head: Herbivore competition, Seasonal food scarcity, Territory management, environmental events that affect gameplay, food stockpiling, rare AI prey items, character milestone objectives, weight class-based activities... I know having the ideas is different than implementing them, however, the mechanics they have added feel like it could have been so much more. Sadly they are reduced to annoyances and roleplay features.
The fact that they are adding mechanics we didn't ask for like the Camera system, Diets, and Stamina. The game was meant for immersion and realism, not enjoyment.
It has been PAINFULLY OBVIOUS to me (and I only started playing Legacy in 2019!!) that Dondi has a dream that only HE-CAN-SATISFY!... If you want to roll the dice with that, props to you, your money, your life... BUT! I can confidently say after having watched The Isle news videos, browsing the discord and researching the development of EVRIMA and testing it through updates and patches....that this is like some Multi Level Marketing, meets small time developer, meets smaller time publisher.... They could definitely do a lot more to bring cohesion and less contrast to marketing and actual gameplay and sadly, GAME DEVELOPMENT.
It feels like no one on the team calling the shots has taken a game design course. I send updates to my friend, who is in game design, and we both feel the lack of proper direction.
Moments of emersion are rare but they are really strong when they happen. I had been nested into a family of Bepies and it does have the intended effect when you're parents have to stop everything they're doing to defend 6 chicks from a random pig as we all cower off to the side, but as you said nesting is pretty much dead. I'd say the most immersive in general are the Bepie, Ptera, and Deino just because their nature makes them so far removed from everything else at the moment. You don't worry about mix packing and 6v1s as a Bepie. It just doesn't happen unless you go out of your way to make or find it.
I really like the isle's attempt to make the world feel natural and alive, but when it handicaps the gameplay overall it feels less like a survival game and more like a playable documentary gone wrong, i really hope sandbox comes back soon or even just turning off diets becomes an option in server settings so people can just play a game instead of being forced to do busy work for real hours that somewhat mimics a game.
I stopped playing after they added diets. They want me to do all of this complicated crap just to play as a dinosaur that's going to die in like 3 bites from something faster than it...
Diet system needs to be reworked if not completely remade, right now it is just a chore and you can't really call it realistic either, this is one of those cases where it would be way more fun if it was actually realistic. There is no reason for a carnivore to skip a perfectly good corpse because it's not in the arbitrary list of animals.
@@ALunaticWithAShotgunyou can still eat the organs of the corpse thats not on your diet if you want, that way you can still get something other than filling up your stomach from it.
The isle lost its soul a long time ago, mistrust in the devs and the game has left its mark and the wrong things are constantly being pushed. If people enjoy it good i am glad, however you deserve more and it hurts to see so much promised simply left to decay with time. Realism might be its best selling point but its also its GREATIST flaw there is so much time spent on trying to add realism that it strips away enjoyment for a lot of people. Not everyone obviously, the player base is still alive but from what it once was, its like gazing into a hallow shell
Hey man, I really don't care about the games you talk about, but I like listening to your videos because of how well your articulate your thoughts and opinions. It's really impressive! Your really cool!
Human players will behave like humans. If you want them to behave differently you need to reward those behaviors in a mechanical way: make grouping up within 3 meters of each other give a big resistance buff for horned herbivores and make nesting give synergetic buffs to the members of a family. As for the eating while basically still fighting a herd i think the only way to make that possible is to give raptors a huge buff for like 2 seconds after they've eaten, that way it would be extra risky to engage them. In nature this only happens because carnivores only need to take one member of a herd down to be satisfied, and herbivores are aware of this and they instinctively know that if they get into another fight without backing off they could get injuries that can infect and cost them their life. This exact thing cannot happen as strictly in a game where you don't have permadeath. your character may die but you can always restart with a different character and be back to where you left off in a couple of hours.
For some of the larger herbivore species they will actively beat the stuffing out of predators that dare to attack the herd. If the downed one isn't dead yet defence of it will usually happen(water buffalo), even then some will mourn preventing anything from touching it till they finish(elephants).
(Incoming brainstorming long comment) Making game mechanics that reward players acting more like their true animal counterparts are allways so intresting and tricky to me, and they are intresting to brain about hypothethically to me if I were to create a Savannah-like survival game. Group bonuses are something I have thought about before, or debuffs for solitary predators grouping up, but it’s also one of those things that you can infinitely fine tune, and of course designing your game and or base stats to make solitary or group play the most logical tactical choice is allways the best. Usually the reason irl carnivores don’t team up is because solitary hunting wields the most food to them per succesfull hunt- I wonder how you could replicate this the best in a game, for specialized prey to matter the most instead of random mass murder.
The big thing for lack of nesting for me is with the lack of global chat or group chat it can be so much harder to find people to nest with, you’re just waiting to run into someone
@@odd2007 That's usually the case but as someone who loves The Isle for it's immersion even I think they try to go a bit too far sometimes. Though the only thing that ever really bothered me was the camera changes and they apparently cancelled that one. I didn't mind the stam changes, on the contrary it gave me a massive advantage at first because I was already used to conserving my stamina even before the changes. Also I wouldn't call X Zaguer a doomer, he gives constructive criticism that I usually agree with.
I think they should put some herbies AI in the game which programmed and acts like a dinosaurus, like you know, grazing, migrating in herds, interacting with each others, it could potentially bring the realisme vibe into the game.
I can hear the pain and frustration in your voice... The answer is: Themselves And it's funny, I recently said something similar to this on the Helldivers discord and in a Path of Titans UA-cam video comment section. Which is... (In terms of The Isle and Helldivers) Eventually you have to sit down look at the situation and reflect on the GAMEPLAY. What is "fun"? Screw realism, screw logic. If a game is not fun and engaging people will leave. In terms of what I said in a Path section. I was basically arguing with folks who hate the "unrealistic" aspect of it. (IE: Heals, Buffing calls, etc.) But all that wacky insanity makes the game..."fun" and a downright romp and adventure to play. When Xaguar mentioned: "This isn't how players play..." And "Look at these creatures together." I got the: "Meanwhile in (Name)..." vibe as I thought back to the Hot springs block party I walked into in Path about 3 nights ago. 25+ dinos just dancing, roaring, and emoting. One dude even opened his discord, we all joined, and he started blasting club music mixes while we all joke about snorting salt rocks (to stay fed) and drinking spiked water (hotsprings water is green). It was just a freaking amazing time. Ultimately... Gameplay needs to come first. The Isle has better combat, controls, and graphics. It's crisp, and polished to a diamond shine. But that means very little when playing it feels like torture. Path is unrealistic in many areas. But it has great internal systems and mechanics. Yeah questing is boring as all hell. But it forces players to move about, thus changing things up (so you aren't just grinding in the same boring location) forcing the player to adventure/explore. Maybe you meet people? Maybe you die? Over time you unlock abilities and start to feel stronger. Making growth feel rewarding in some minor ways But in the end the gameplay gives it character. I didn't even realize this till one of my coworkers watched me play and asked me about the game. Which confused me. But he said this to me: "I love the adventures you go on. Was cool to see Venat (my Latenavarix) for the first time. Especially after that awesome adventure he had." Me: "Adventure?" Coworker: "You know. When you were playing as him in that forest, picking acorns or something but some komodo dragons showed up and started chasing him and he was jumping over rocks, winding through trees, and he lost em after hiding in some bushes." Me: "oh yeah!" Coworker: "Then some mad cow like thing attacked him but he was cornered and you had some crazy fight with it." Me: "The bars...a Barboldia." Coworker: "Yeah! And you and it dueled and then you fought underwater and Venat came out all fucked up, barely alive but with a trophy in his mouth like a badass." Then we laughed and beyond me being horrified he remembered my Path stories. He was right. Alot of what I see as boring stories end up being full blown tales. Only possible because of the insanity of the gameplay. Even retelling what happened is exciting. He also remembers (and laughs) at the table of my Dasp and the back to back Beatdowns it took one night. (Even sent me the orangutan in the ICU meme) Sadly. Isle stories don't usually go that way. It's usually. "we ambushed someone, wore em down, and ate em." Sometimes there are some epic duels "Omnis vs Pachys" but the bulk of Isle tales are about hiding, ambushing, and complaining about mixpacks or bugs. At this point I fear what's next after camera changes. Infection mechanics? IE: Get hit during a fight and you might get infected and die unless you do: ____? Bathroom mechanics? IE: Poop and pee away from your group so other players can track/smell you? (Also increases hunger and thirst) Too far into unrealistic gameplay can break a game. But going too far into realism can do the same thing. I wish things could/would turn around cause Isle players deserve better. Honestly...I miss watching Legacy Isle streams. Sometimes it felt like watching a chaotic dino simulator. Now..every stream I watch just feels the same. Kind of like how path streams where folks only PvP all feel the same. (IE: They just sit at Impact Crater and Deathmatch.)
When the courtship system and nesting grounds were announced, that was a good indication that The Isle was veering hard into being a playable dinosaur documentary rather than the dino survival game it's been marketed as since 2015. The concept arts highlighting certain playstyles for dinos have made it *even more clear* that that's what they're going for, along with certain mechanics changes like changes to the stam system, the diet system, the migration system, your camera locking when your dino eats, the proposed extreme-close-up camera angle, and the removal of global and group chat for "realism reasons" (which is funny to me because the devs used to ALWAYS rail against "the realism argument" whenever someone criticized something in their game as being "unrealistic") Predictably, constantly maintaining a diet because you'll experience negative gameplay consequences if you don't, not being able to look around while you eat, having to monitor temperature on a nest, and having to sit still for minutes at a time to recover stam is *not actually fun*
I find it super ironic that devs who have for longest time been against the rules and customs of community realism servers are now basically trying to implement those rules into the base game through mechanics
when it comes to the part there 1 omni is eating the dibble, i recall the devs saying that this will be a thing in the future there you can eat someone while they are still alive. That system is part of the system that Giga will use there they can tear of meat from the dino while its still alive and slowly bleeding out.
The answer is, actually, very simple. They are making a game for Dondi. It's Dondi's game. That's no secret. Whatever he says goes, no matter what the players or other devs may think. Sometimes, begrudgingly, he may change the direction here and there, if the entire community hates something or begs for something, but he won't be happy about it. I mean, he never hides his contempt for the players, especially those who just want to have fun, realism be damned. Bullying people in The Isle's discord? On streams? Yeah. I think most of us heard or saw a snide comment or two, some even getting it themselves, sometimes for the most innocent of things. "You love this game? Hah. No, you don't. You idiot. You moron. This game fucking sucks. Get out. Come back when its finished." And, I mean, yeah... It's not finished. I always said that about The Isle - you'll never know what you'll end up getting. Only Dondi knows. Vaguely. So, I suppose, cherish the memories of the game you once enjoyed. You'll never getting that game, nor your old self, back.
Ok, I think I cooked. (Very sorry in advance for the long read) They should make the diet system completely optional, with no benefits or drawbacks to the system, just a list telling you what your dinosaur prefers to eat, this way, you can pitch to the realism players, as well as the people who don’t want to be restricted. Now for the nesting system, they could add asexual nesting as an option for players. Asexual nesting would act different from regular nesting. Players would be able to nest by themselves without the addition of a male. For every mutation the parent has = 1 completely random mutation for the baby. For example, if I only have the reinforced tendons mutation on my dinosaur, then my offspring would spawn in with only 1 random mutation. If I have 3 or 4 mutations, then the baby spawn in with 3 or 4 random mutations. This would allow players to gamble with what mutations they could get. Players would also be able to chose their skin before being nested in, instead of getting their parents skin. Regular nesting should remain the same. For the players that want to nest normally, the devs could add mating calls, which travel the same distance as a broadcast call, but sound distinct in order to let people know that person is interested in nesting. They could also make it so that every dinosaur has several unique versions of the calls 1-4. This would act very similar to how you can choose your players voice in ark ascended. Fun QOL mechanics could be implemented as well. I’ll put a list of some of the ideas I had down below. - scratching trees: scratching trees, as shown in Bary’s concept art, would make it so that you leave claw marks on the tree you scratched. This would let people know that another player is nearby, or has claimed territory. The claw marks you leave would be an indicator of your dinosaurs size. So troodon and omniraptor could leave small claw marks. Dinosaurs like dilophosaurus and baryonyx could leave medium claw marks, and theri, spino, etc could leave large claw marks. Ceratopsians, and dinosaurs that have less pronounced arms/claws, could leave rub marks on trees, or shrubs, making it so that if you rubbed a tree with your horns, some of the bark would be scraped off. Dinosaurs that don’t have horns could crush certain types of foliage instead. For example, ankylosaurus could slam its tail in the ground, leaving a small pit where its tail hit the ground. Tyrannosaurus could crush foliage the size of a banana tree (crushing foliage, and knocking down trees are different in this regard). - Simple emotes like scratching, and shaking: pretty self explanatory, you press a key, and your dinosaur would scratch itself, or shake. Tell me what you all think of my ideas.
Honestly the biggest problem about dinosaur survival games is that nobody actually wants to survive and experience the life of an animal they want to play a fighting game that happens to have dinosaurs as a playable characters. People just want a exploration focused fighting game instead of a survival game and it really shows.
Hope is all we have nowadays. Hope to see The Isle back to its glory days of fun , excitement and adventure. Survival is also part of that, but it doesn’t feel like the survival we all want.
This is a pretty apt way to put it, the Isle devs are forgetting some core fundamentals of game design where, you know, design it to be fun. A game. Something engaging for players to play...I used to play the isle for years in legacy, in all its jank, but the rose tinted glasses came off some time ago when I would leave the experience feeling worse then when I had started playing. I realized I wasn't playing because I was having fun, it was just from a sense of sunk cost. Where I'd already put in SO many hours playing just to get to adulthood for who knows how many times, I may as well keep suffering to do it all again. Lmao. The Isle I will hold a teeny special corner in my heart for reawakening my love for dinosaurs as a teen some years ago, but, like an old EX I want nothing to do with it anymore or experience it again lul.
My position on the isle is getting more and more complicated as time passes. Especially since gateway released the decisions made for the game have just been very questionable. The changes to Ptera alone seem to summarize the thinking behind the devs now. Ptera being able to fly is too punishing? Solution: Make its stam regen stupidly long but don’t change its stam drain, essentially make it a headache to play. Basically all the changes whether its stam, growth times, or the camera come down to, WHO THE FRICK ASKED?? I’ve only been on the isle a short while compared to everyone else, wasnt around during legacy’s peak. But the time I’ve had these past few years I’ve made amazing memories. Last year when 6.5 released was arguably the best time I’ve ever had playing the game. Everything was overall flexible and felt good, stam, growth times, everything. There were always plenty of people on and we were all hyped for gateway to release, it seemed the game could only get better moving forward. Then gateway released and came all the changes. There is no doubt in my mind that the changes to stam basically halved the player base. And I know cause most of my friends before left when this happened, and views on my isle videos plummeted starting late November, when gateway released. And the following months just brought more and more unecessary changes that only felt like a waste of time. Like what’s being said here the isle seems to be loosing its focus. Its potential is massive, but I hate the fact that it’s the main reason why I’m still here. I’m still on a break from the game while I wait for them to fix the constant fatal errors. I just want what I think could be the perfect dino survival, if it could just be done right and with its player base in mind. “Oh just play Path”, that game is the opposite problem where it has no immersion, I’m tired of hearing it. Truly feels like a dead end sometimes for the fanbase
@@MIApor Other than the all dots diet which was absurd, I don’t think it’s as bad as some think. Keeping it up was still extremely important. If you were caught with low stam, have fun trotting for your life. The current system is fine, but the main aspect it affects is travel, and it’s not good for ALL playables. The ones that have very stam demanding methods of travel (like Ptera flight and Beipi swimming) are the best examples, gonna do a lot of sitting for those guys. Where previously those two felt much easier to play. I really liked how balanced overall the roster was back in 6.5
I'm not sure why people say no one nests. I've gotten nested in multiple times in the past couple weeks and have participated in nesting many times. People do nest, but its a time sink and so not everyone does. I'm not sure the trailers are supposed to represent gameplay, but rather an idealistic view of what 'could be'. Cause the amount of dinos we see in trailers just isn't supported in the game really. Like the ptera clip, theres no way we'd ever have that many pteras in one spot unless someone was doing an event. And even if they do something like that (reminds me of when DefeatPete was streaming as a ptera once and a bunch of viewers joined), it lags out the game wherever the huge flock is. To me, the 'trailcams' are obviously staged and not to represent gameplay. I think that's why they're posed as trailcams, as if they were capturing real dinos on the isle, not players. I also just disagree that legacy 'feels better to play'. Thats super subjective. I personally find evrima way more engaging and fun than Legacy. Totally fine to prefer Legacy, but most of what you said in this video felt like a stretch to me.
I remember ranting about this game almost daily but since the new stamina changes and map dropped I have gone silent, stopped playing the game, stopped talking about it. This is the only channel I return to because it feels like the only normal person that’s no hater, nor spineless bootlicker. Honestly other games start to show up that have nothing to do with dinosaurs I’d be down to watch as well.
same. before i was ranting constantly because i believed there is hope that the game can reach its potential... but after those changes with the new map, stam, the camera incident... i just lost all hope and energy to care anymore.
I really like how The Isle is shaping. This is a survival game, we all asked for realism and migration before all of this due to how bad it was back in the day, players ganged up against each other, a lot of trolling and cannibalism groups. This way, it is much more rewarding, fun & unique experience. The Isle wouldn't be as how it is today if not for the community feedback.
My problem isn't the fact that they focus on immersion; it's how the devs attempt to make the game more immersive is the biggest problem. It's either half assed, unfun, or ironically unrealistic. What's worse is that many times their pursuit of immersion directly conflicts with very concept of the game being science fiction. You have an island filled with animals spanning a nearly 250 million year period some with near magical abilities but, expect them to act like real animals.
3:26 I asked punch why the dibble was being eaten and if it’s a new ability and he said he can’t answer that rn so I think that’s a new ability they were testing also feel we should give them a chance since the perk mechanic will really allow you to make your Dino unique to you
This is a really good point, one that I think should have been pointed out years ago. They try so hard to make this game so painfully realistic that they forget pure nature and being an animal out there isn't 'fun', especially a herbivore. Is eating all day and being scared for your life fun? Is being up against an unwinnable matchup and not being able to do anything other than die fun? Am I meant to willingly opt into a life like that in a game with no upsides? How can that be considered a game? Maybe if this was meant to be a simulator of sorts then it'd be more acceptable.
The comparissons you made with the "camera footage" remind me a lot of ARK´s early developement, where every update trailer showed scenarios that just ain´t possible in the game, because of the nature of it´s gameplay.
It’s not even realistic in “realism/role-play” to meet these completely unrealistic expectations. There are plenty of times I tried a “realism” server and everyone there is bored out of their minds so they keep the fights and engagement as long as possible for enrichment. Large carnivores nearly killing each other over a body, raptor packs attacking multiple targets in a herd then “conveniently” stopping once a body is down so they don’t get a rule break, Stegos getting involved in fights because they “accidentally” walk too close and some Carno 3-called at them so whoops! Now the Stego is aggressive and your prey gets to escape. So stupid.
@@stundorn5511 There’s literally nothing else to do in this game but fight, of course it’s a KOS DM. This isn’t a game like Wolfquest where they give you other things to do. There is no purpose in The Isle other than fighting. And you think the players are in the wrong for playing a boring fight simulator like a boring fight simulator?
It truly does feel like a game designed for Dondi to watch a prehistoric ecosystem thriving but without the players, he might as well just make an ai simulation of it
Subscribed, well-fucking-said. I think I will love this game if they just shaped more of their features and implementations around *having a good time* instead of a 1:1 ratio of prehistoric times (which cannot be achieved)
Their commitment to realism in every way except for paleoaccuracy baffles me. To me this entirely undermines the theme of realism - it’s not that every dinosaur game needs to reflect constantly updating research, it’s that the vision of the isle is contradictory and inconsistent. They’re willing to sacrifice fun for realism but not their Jurassic park models.
I agree with you about the Nesting problem. It is saddening me. Sorry... this was intended to be short, but I guess I want to share my view on this whole ordeal that is The Isle and some of the recent decisions: I do not think it is primarily a Problem with an Obsession with Immersion and Realism, but has to do with player behavior and is basically an social engineering problem so to speak. The Trailers are more of a vision and suggestion, and I would assume that for the most of us (old players and also new ones alike) it is clear that the footage in those trailer clips are staged. It is more of a shared vision. Immersion involves more than player roleplaying actual animal behavior in a clean display. It is also about actual survival experience over a longer stretch of time, where certain behavior come in naturally (be it good or bad, or even "immersionbreaking"). And as far as I was getting the changes with Evrimas stam system, it was a way to tackle the arcade-pace that for too many time certain group or sort of players would enforce on the other players because the fast regeneration allowed that. In the past (mostly from experience on Spiro) the argument of so many players was that there was nothing to do which was technically correct and Nesting was and is a choir and it being possible an unlikely event if not organized from outside. The focus of so many easily bored out players to start fighting without a reason lead in my opinion and observation to spiral down dynamic of toxic behavior, ranging from discord organized man-hunt groups, mixpacking "clans", vigilant peacekeepers, "cannis" and so much more. I had even the doubtful honor of having a chat with one hacker, hunting other hackers and witnessed also one hacker deino cleaning the rivers from the overly present Deino players, forcing them to play something else or leave. The amount of anarchy was at some points outrageous, because for so many there was nothing to do, and that situation needed to end. It was fun to observe human behavior for sure, but it did not contribute to me wanting to play the game motivated and for real. Had a lot of times just taking breaks. On Spiro after an Update (can't remember which one) the server, though being full, felt empty for the most part. Leading me to survive as Carno because of only meeting AI (sustaining me barely) and not having any encounter for hours though patrolling a vast area of known places. Turned out that on this server a group of Nesting Enthusiasts decided to populated a remote and rarely visited area, somewhere around SE along the "swamp". They were a huge Teno herd that managed to nest in over 60% of the servers population and thriving. Being nested in was a beautiful experience, but lead to the misery of predators, since they had only themselves to hunt each other and of course it ended sometime later when the DC community dimmed down in activity. The different player profiles were not compatable with the given framework. I think no matter what you change, there is always a chance to mess it up or that certain player will abuse it. It is hard to predict the outcome. That is there I want to be as fair as I can. Because Humans will always be Humans. By saying that I only mean to express that these trailers are not neccessarily born out of ignorance, misleading intent or delusional expectations to fool us. If it come to the discussion points like "but it is not realistic" these are always problematic, since we could not agree what actually is "realisitc" and what make someone immerse into a game. I subscribe to the notion that the devs might be taken too much focus on one thing or doing too many things at the same time, contributing to those messy phases where we all have to take a toll on our patience. When player argue in an emotional state you will see the community clashing due to the different understanding of those concepts and what to expect from the game. I would say that it is not "immersion" or "realism" as such but the devs trying to find the "middleground" for that experience of players immersing themselves in the game that feels connected to the vision that a dinosaur would feel like moving through it's environment. They really messed up around the timing where they decided to change the stam system at the worst possible time while having just released a new map to explore and putting the whole experience of fun exploration on it's head, damning player to afk (contrary to actually ending that) and let them struggle with the timing of diminishing diet, stomach fill, thirst and "managing" stam that made everything a choir. I managed to tackle the challenge with ptera one day, but it was all a choir and had not made fun anymore. In addition to that the way the dev team communicate their "experiments" and tests and showcase them with their half-thought through statements and the demeanor of dondi was not contributing to a healthy community having a sane discussion. About that trailer footage (specifically with diablo in display): Overall the setting and condition of the game puts us in "similar" situations like depicted but more stretched over the playfield. It is not possible to show that in one screen. Of course you are right, most players would fight in that example and act differently, but eventually, dependent on the server and players being around, some will escape or hide, one or two will keep the predator at bay or distracted and eventually one might die. NONE of the clips that try to convey those ideas can actually succeed in that. I agree that it might be more advisable to record actual player behavior to demonstrate the actual state of the game and I most certainly love those community server videos from petits that pretty much shows some of the experience that the game has to offer. And about the comparison to Legacy... it is a matter of taste, but I fullheartedly disagree on that ;) My longest break was around a year or so before Evrima released and coming only back when Deino and Ptera was introduced (was it Update 3?). It is too much text already: Thank you for your take on this and as always love your content. You keep me mentally up to date with the discussions on a constructive engaging way. Hope my text wall was not to much to endure. Have a nice Day!
Man this is why I still miss 2.5. The isle through natural pressures (Dinos making water scary, hackers, player stuff) and imposed pressures (diets, map convolution) has made the Isle feel more cramped despite it being on a massive map now. Back in 2.5 having fun fighting by the river was the main activity but it was actually fun. And the balance was a lot tighter, carno's while generally dominant were always a fun challenge to fight solo as a teno because it was like a tango with all the dodging and close calls. Stego's could still bully you, but taking them down was super fun because the game actually worked (mostly) and desync didn't teleport your skull into their tail. Utah was super fun to play in mobs and small groups for the same reason, the game worked. Update 3.0 accelerated the game's performance decay (not like in FPS, but in teleporting and TPS), made the map more convoluted, gave us our first taste of restricted movement (dinos and water) as well as setting the stage for diets
I really hope the Isle devs watch your videos, Xaguer, I share many of the same feelings on the heart of the game feeling lost, the community that used to be so strong left to rot as if they never mattered. Dondi has a vision, I believe that, but I just don’t know what that is anymore. So many people are moving on to PoT when they actually want to enjoy their gaming experiences.
i played the isle back in late 2015, around when it first came out, and even though it was bare bones i loved that game because i was excited by the potential i saw in it. sad to see that now its basically just a prettier version of the same bare bones game, with a few fancy, dead mechanics sprinkled on top. do hope one day dondi will sell it to a developer that actually wants to develop a game for people, or for God's sake pull his head out of his ass, but he never will. anyways, good video.
I like this actually. It's almost coming to a degree where it's no longer a game. And it's just that, an experience. You experience living as this creature. Who knows what it would be when technology advances?
This video is exactly what I’ve been thinking for so long man. It sucks playing Evrima and everything feels like an obstacle then you think about the old legacy days and it’s almost kinda upsetting how it feels like an entirely different game (It is but the real ones know what I mean). Maybe it’s the map too, literally feel like I can never find anyone and it’s so vertical and hard to traverse.
Legacy indeed felt different. Map too. It was amazing strutting through pines and redwoods, whole map was blue and green and felt so fresh and open and vast. Now it's a horrible tropical bush filled with rocks and what not... dinosaurs felt big huge even. Now grass and rocks with trees scales so weirdly tenonto looks like it's a size of a dog.
@@chaoticevil4038 i feel that. Youre often running through thick bush, only shades of green on the screen for several minutes, then bonk against a giant mountainside and have to backtrack all the way just to be stuck in the next series of boulders or the edge of a cliff a couple minutes later... its so frustrating getting anywhere
Immersion needs to be toped with being dynamic. Yes herbivores dont go out of thier way to save each other, but herbivores do fight each other. The game just needs to encourage herbs to fight other herbs. When it comes to dying, yes restarting is supposed to mimic the fact that yes you have only one life. But that is not fun and does not respect your time especially considering the ridiculous growth times the isle has.
U are definitly right i have played the isle evrima a long time ago when diets werent a big thing and the fun was so much more relaxing even thoe i was very good at hunting i always starve in gateway i cant find anybody
The isles legacy immersion was so real cuz it wasn’t so restricting, people say evrima is better but with all the pretty graphics I don’t have the thrill of the hunt
You're totally right. I loved Evrima update 3 - 3.5, but it really started to go downhill once they started adding diets. Not that diets are a bad thing, but it was the start of a continual trend of very poorly implemented mechanics.
Current implementation of a diet system is not really good tbf, it2s not realistic or fun it's just a chore. They need to make a system where eating herbivores is more beneficial for carnivores than eating other carnivores so instead of just endlessly killing each other, carnivores will have to hunt herbivores that are often stronger than them. Which will make herbivore gameplay more fun because they will have to defend themselves mroe often instead of just walking around and eating while carnivores have a deathmatch in hotspots.
Guys, I really don’t understand what you all want. You whined about stamina, so they fixed it for you. You whined that it was difficult to find food, now the food runs up to you and there is so much of it that the game starts to lag from the corpses. I agree about the camera. This is a crazy decision. But otherwise, I fully support the vector of development into realism and immersion. Global chat ruins immersion. If you want to sit and chat in a dinosaur skin and you don’t need diets, migrations, if all these mechanics are tiresome for you, then download VRchat or a similar game, there you can choose a dinosaur skin and more, make a map with a jungle there and sit and chat as much as you like. What is the problem? Why do you unify the word "fun" even? For some, it will be a "fun" to run around in a game with cheats and ruin the gameplay of other players, for others, it will be a "fun" to call on discord, gather in a mix pack and run around killing players. This is why developers must sacrifice the "fun" of some for the sake of their vision of the game as something whole and complete. If the developers don't see the game as some kind of Sims with dinosaurs where someone adopts other dinosaurs or uses them as pets, then I completely agree with them.
I really like nesting, but the problem is, you can't join a nest without having died, going back to the character screen, and then looking yo see if there are any publically available eggs or you have an outside source like discord where they can share a code. You still have to die first. It's incredibly imconvent and happening to catch an open nest when you die is rare. It should be like legacy where you can just join into a nest in game without all the extra steps. It's just too much work to nest to have a VERY rare chance of someone even seeing that you have eggs at the time of their death.
I never once thought this game was going down immersion, I have a inkling that Dondi might say or do something out of the blue because when he DOES actually play his game he comes to realize that some if not most of the ideas/stats they've done to their classes makes everything highly unbalanced having him do stupid shit that pissed everyone off. (Like the sudden and unneeded camera changes he wanted, probably done because he died to a stego once and got pissed off) I think people are looking to deep into this, if you dont like or want to play the game anymore, then dont, its not it'll be the first or last time you'll be wasting 20$ on something. Even tho I do agree the game might have progressed a lot further if it was in the hands of a better lead developer, but beggers cant be choosers.
The entire purpose of the dibble clip with the omnis is to show off the new pin mechanic. Sure they had a herd that didn’t necessarily help the dibble but anybody playing in a realism server will tell you it’s cause they had kids to protect as well. It would be stupid to show off the new mechanic but then just have a dibble nail an omni midway through would it not?
SO much potential just constantly squandered. I played hours and hours of legacy, and when Evrima launched it was so underwhelming I ignored it. And when it finally looked good enough to jump in some 2 years later, I quickly only found myself done with it after a few hours. It just doesn't feel or run as well as you'd expect for a multi year development game.
The first half of this video is weird because every dinosaur game does this. You’re getting mad at mechanic showcase videos for showing how the game is supposed to be played, but you don’t acknowledge that other games like path of titans do the exact same things in their trailers. The devs do not expect you to play exaclty like this, but they’re not gonna make a mechanic showcase trailer filled with the chaos that comes with playing officials or no rules servers, that would be dumb.
I think it might also be important to side with the idea that realism is not for everyone. I think the isle has this problem with going too far with immersion and realism, to where it becomes too much like real life, instead of a fun video game people can play and enjoy. Yes, realism is great, but when it goes too far, it is reminiscent of the pain and the chores you have to do in the real world, and we all can agree that real life, sucks. You spend years of your life and heaps of money growing, buying food, paying for school, just to die at a young age whether it be from a freak accident, crime, or something just happens. You have to work to take care of yourself and ensure you stay healthy, which is exactly what you have to do in The Isle. My point is, when a game becomes too much like real life, it can risk becoming far less enjoyable. Because real life sucks. That's why we play video games.
Usually games dont come out on early access and people dont constantly compare it to the previous versions of a game that wasn't finished. Every one of you had an idea of what rhe game was going to be, but that doesn't mean that it WAS going to be that way. EVERY single time a new update comes out there's is someone complaining bc its simply impossible to maintain the balance of a game that is not even 10% done, i mean, they are olanion adding 60 dinos plus humans, of course its going to change, and we still can intervene when they plan on adding horrible things like the camera shit, but people keeps complaining about absolutely everything when the game is simply not even near finished. I understand that what they are doing with the game do not match the specific idea you had when it first came out but i dont think it justifies complaining about half done mechanics that are still to be reviewed or reworked or trailers tha try to enhance the general idea of the game, of course they know people dont lie floating for three hours when playing beipi most online games exaggerate the inmrsion on their trailers and usually people are not born yesterday and know better as to buy a game for a trailer that doesn't show reql gameplay. Anyways, thats just my opinion, sorry for the long ass text
The Isle would make an AMAZING short film. Hell, with the time this thing stayed in development, one could've made an actual two hour long dinosaur film, probably. It being a game actively hinders it.
Really the scavenging pterosaurs and the way you get nutrients as a carnivore are the main issues for me. It would work better if Carnivores got nutrients from various ai, with no gut rummaging required, but their bellies could only be filled significantly by eating players. This would make nutrients less random and more straight forward, while giving more purpose to the ai, but also still giving them incentive to find players to hunt. The scavenging pterosaurs are just annoying and there are already other players to defend your food from. Not to mention small scavengers in the real world don't really act like that. They wait to the side until the larger animals have left because otherwise they risk injury or death. So not really the realistic feel the devs were going for anyway.
I wouldn't mind the diet system if it weren't for the fact you become practically useless without them. Personally, I think it would've been fine if without the diets you just grow at the dino's regular pace with no buffs (and of course none of those horrible debuffs), and with the diets you get increased growth and buffs from the respective diets
Y'all it's a cinematic trailer to show off a dino, not to accurately represent how players play in the game. They showed it off as an animal, which in the trailer, it acts like an animal, surprising.
I am enjoying the immersion, that’s why I like it. I have been playing long enough to know how to survive and I don’t find the game as dreadful as everyone is making it sound. I just play and look for action and the isle always delivers on that front, stop reading everyone’s opinions on little details and just play and have fun
I agree with this. It feels like Evrima is better in a lot of ways but lost its sense of spirit from legacy. Devs are much too preoccupied with redoing and re-redoing simple mechanics like stamina, camera,
The trailer is just a trailer all games have this that makes the game look completely different then the actual game. Love your videos but you read too much between line that sometimes there's nothing there.
ive been saying for years that the isles obsession with realism is at odds with player enjoyment and gameplay. its a problem they've never wanted to address.
i miss the days when myself and friends would sit on the edge of trips watching over a heard and have a giga silently creep up behind us and rampage out of the treeline and we would all scatter in horror, it wasn't Jurassic park roleplay it was the isle! I remember the day they put in the block buildings on v2, I said to everyone (our discord 2k strong at that point) this is the start of the end.. all that time ago, now what I remember, feels like a dream.
The main problem is that herbivores usually have a prey-mindset and will (most of the time) stand to the side while one of their own kind are getting killed by a predator. This can especially be seen when lions/hyenas are hunting wildebeest and zebra and the rest of the herd won’t really do antthing
I get what you're saying but I'm going reserve judgement until all the major mechanics become implemented. I've been playing on the hordetest, and a lot of my problems with the gameplay loop have been addressed with mutations. It's just an early version, but it's done a lot in making the experience feel more engaging. I'm actually enjoying the isle more than I ever have in this test branch. Nests are actually important now, because hatchlings inherit bonus mutations from their parents. The game feels more experimental and replayable. You could play the same animal multiple times and have different builds based on your mutations. I think the isle can be immersive to a fault, but let the devs cook first. You can't judge a meal before it's finished just because you tasted the ingredients beforehand. This next update is looking very promising to me, and I think it might even usher in a new era of prosperity for the game.
i don’t get why you made those comments about the diblo vs omni fight…. i mean that whole video was made to show off a new dinosaur, it doesn’t need to show exactly how players behave. the reason why the diblos didn’t go help the other diblo that was being attacked was to show people the new pounce to pin mechanic for omnis, it’s not trying to “show” what players will do. why are you trying to make it seem like they think we play like that? of course they know we don’t, it’s a video/trailer for the game. SO MANY OTHER GAMES make trailers that exaggerate their gameplay or make unrealistic scenarios for their trailers/videos, why is it a bad thing when the isle does it?
Every time I look at games like The Isle or Path of Titans I just see missed potential. instead of an MMO they should have focused on a single player experience with in depth dino AI and then add multiplayer co-op on top of that so you can have an actual "immersive" experience each time you play.
You sound legitimately defeated at the end there my dude. I'm sorry passion for dinosaurs and game design and this game is bringing you this. If there's any solace in it for you, know that your videos have legitimately given me so much enjoyment and zest for The Isle and for the genre itself after a long shortage for it over the last year! And I thank you for bringing forth informed and sound critiques of these games, especially The Isle. I'm glad it's not *just* the fact that I never managed to get a grip of the gameplay (even in Legacy mind you) that made me feel like a game that "should" have been made for me, in fact was not. I think The Isle will probably continue to have a die-hard fanbase, whichever way the devs take it from here, and I hope it will be a game I can return to and actually enjoy playing again some day. But I think Path of Titans is an objectively better experience for a much larger audience, and that it managed to actually capture some of the magic that I love which The Isle had back in 2017-19, and built a lot further on it (at the cost of a couple of points in realism and immersion or whatever). I hope you keep up with the great work regardless of whether you hold onto this game. Though I also hope you continue to discuss the animal profiles and concept art for it when they're released becuase I really enjoy those!
I honestly enjoy the game, I think allowing people to have servers where they can change.The settings like even disable diets would be a good edition. Now me personally I ( f worb )love the diet system, Adds so much variety and different playstyle Sometimes.
Thing is most think the game is fun (evidenced by the player reviews and most player play-time being so high, this would indicate that), this game is trying to do what many of us want to see happen in a Dino game, Evrima is still in Alpha/early Beta and is still trying stuff out, its definitely a work in progress, there are other Dino games with a more casual feel, that style of gameplay is catered for, the Isle Devs have done a lot of work to get Evrima to this point, much of it subtle and experimental, unfortunately some playing don't recognize the work done and the further work still to go, the testing the experimentation in this Alpha. They think instead they are playing a finished product ("Where's my Rex!!!" being the classic out of touch proclamation) Anyway these videos about Evrima are now starting to feel passive aggressive (almost concern trolling), and I'm not enjoying them as much as I use too
I don't get the point of this video, what's the problem if they release a trailer portraiting how dinosaurs would act in real life it's a multiplayer game ofc it wont b like real life, it's just a well built trailer so you can see the new dino and mechanics that are about to be released in a cool way, do you expect them to release dibble and the trailer be a pvp dibble 1v6 omnis with energetic music in the background? This game has a bunsh of problems i agree it's not even close to the state i want it to be in but i don't think the stuff u talked abt in this video as anything to do with it
@@dinkelkong5043 In the video it was talked abt how the trailer doesent match the actual gameplay like i said ofc not it's a trailer it's a realistic dinosaur game they are making it more cinematic
@@bludwho yeah but it shows that they go for realism and realism isnt really fun. Having to build your nest and allat is kimda annoying or that they expect you to walk in slow mo to every destination.
Thank you for this. I had seen The Isle long ago, and constantly heard people sing the praises of it, and I just literally never understood it. A dinosaur game where you play as the dinosaurs and there is a decent roster of them? Neat. But... This? This sucks. I thought I was going crazy, unable to see almost any redeeming qualities in it, other than: "Look, dinosaurs!" And I had the same issues with it, plus others. Too often, lazy and uninspired developers conflate "realism" with "immersion," and thus often consider "realism" a positive aspect inherently, when it is just neutral by itself, but often is actively negative when implemented by these kinds of people. And it's often funny, because, as a video game, these things are unrealistic in tons of ways already anyway, so there's no reason to chase that idea in itself - you do it if it benefits the game, and you lamp-shade why you didn't do it if it doesn't benefit the game. The "survival special" of just slapping extra versions of health and stamina meters into the mix in the form of food and water is boring and doesn't add any meaningful new mechanics to the game. Most other survival type games will have you scrounge for resources to use to get food and water, which is basically the sole mechanic used for literally everything else in the games too anyway, aside from some combat system, so it's completely unnecessary. At best, they can be used to try to encourage exploration or lead people to specific spots or force some form of committal to encounters or something, but non-survival games are able to do those things all the time too, so there are clearly other ways to achieve those goals. Baby-sitting meters is not a fun concept by itself, you have to inject real mechanics to make it fun, and most games fail at that Also, funny enough, a ton of survival games have water drain so quickly and give you so little from the food - despite most species getting the majority of their water intake from eating, not drinking - even though water is the more boring of the two meters to fill. Usually either just waiting or holding forward to get to a source. Sio not only did they make it less "immersive," but also made it less fun in doing so, by forcing people to take breaks from any mechanics that might actually be engaging to babysit their character instead. The Isle has even less. Since you're dinosaurs, you just drink water and eat meat or plants unprepared, there's not even the little bit of resource management thrown in. They could be used to force encounters, but, given the combat mechanics of the game, and how clunky and muddled most of that is, combined with the cost-benefit analysis of how they tend to work out, the game seems to actually discourage interactions between players in such a way. Even when you win, you usually don't do so unscathed, which means a whole lot more waiting around doing nothing interesting to heal. The game's survival mechanics are more shallow than most others, though also over-complicated in some areas that just make it even more tedious, not more fun. The combat is sloppy and un-reactive and not very engaging, probably partly from the clinging to "immersion" and partly from lack of creativity. And it doesn't even have good exploration - there's not really anything different to do or get anywhere other than water sources, and there's not even really anything to see anywhere either, as low of a bar as that is. This game is just kind of lacking... Game. I'm hard pressed to think of a survival game that isn't literally just this game but better in every aspect, but often lacking the player characters visually be dinosaurs. That is the sole point this game has going for it: "Be a dinosaur." The game tries to rail-road its strict vision of dinosaur activity so heavily that it strangles player agency and meaningful mechanical engagement. It has "game-play" in the same way that a D.V.D. menu game does. You don't get to play as a dinosaur, you have to baby-sit a dinosaur. Big difference. The thesis of this game is clearly: "Look at dinosaurs behave like dinosaurs." So I have no idea why it exists in this state. Why not just use the models and engine to make a documentary series? Or Pokemon Snap but with dinosaurs? That would at least harmonize the clear design direction and the mechanics, instead of making them basically unrelated. Sure, you wouldn't get to play as a dinosaur, but, as mentioned before, since there isn't really a game here, you already don't get to. The Isle is just WolfQuest with lizards. And that's not a good thing. It's nice to finally see some sanity regarding the game. These developers have had more than enough time and resources to make a decent, feature-complete game. The fact that this is what we currently have speaks incredibly poorly of their aptitude or management. "If it's not fun, what's the point?"
The concept of the game is amazing, but the main problem I see is that they don’t incentivize how to play the game in any way, so people will just end up playing the most powerful things in the game and kill each other. I’ve honestly wanted to try making a game like the isle, keeping niches unique to each species but not using dinosaurs. I had 12 species each with something special about them that would hopefully make each one fun to play how it was intended. If I ever work on it hopefully it will turn out as good as I hope. But hopefully the isle gets better.
I've been playing The Isle since the beginning of 2022. Ever since Gateway arrived, Evrima hasn't been fun anymore, it's so bad that I'm already thinking about switching to Path of Titans.
I think this was probably going to be the outcome when Dondi stated ‘Horror realism’ Survival first of all isn’t fun and horror makes it worse. Realism immersion is suppose to take the enjoyment out of the way and I think Dondi didn’t care in the first place. He’s got Primal carnage to make all the money in the world with so this project Dosent matter to him. I truly think the only game actually doing it right is Path of Titans who are working to create AI dinosaurs who will actively perform the realistic gameplay mechanics instead of us. BUT it will entice players to join in the setting without having to harass other players to follow, and will be enjoyable no matter what cause it is open to choose and your never punished on your diet, location, what you hunt, how you hunt. Just keep you dino fed and alive.
The focus on immersion doesn't just feel worse, it's also LESS immersive. There are ways to incentivize these realistic scenarios but they dont seem to care about those more systemic immersion changes.
Honestly they need to get eldering and perks in so you want survive and keep your dino alive, rn its free for all bc people get bored *cough cough stego players*, stay alive is what the fun is supposed to be while also gaing more and more capabilities the longer you survive, the ideology is there but lack of playables and those system iteself are what's hurting them as of now, that also goes in hand with tweaking the dieting as you implement those systems, the game plan is there just gonna take time
What the devs (re: Dondi) don't realise is that players are sometimes better at enforcing "realism" than the games they play. For example, I frequent a semi-realistic Path of Titans server with player-made rules, and they never feel intrusive or menial to follow. If anything, it's more relaxed than officials.
Yap, yap, yap, yap. The Isle isn't a 3d chatroom. You sound like you don't even play the game and you're just stuck in the past of legacy. Just stop playing it if you hate it so much. Good lord.
pin of shame?
@@MarmoSegsi Not even a pin of shame because the guys right, every video this guy posts is him shitting on evrima for absolutely no reason lmao
It is still shit though and with the rate of updates coming to the game its gonna stay that way for years.@@sirlanceington1
no offence Zaguer but this guys right lol, your take is absolute shit lmao.
@@sirlanceington1 I mean, he has a point. It's just that everyone else shits on what the actual point of the game was and treat it as dino fortnite.
When you realize that The Isle is one man's passion project for himself instead of an actual video game meant for people to buy and play, everything starts to make more sense.
This.
Would explain the focus on human game play, if i recall right the first version of "The isle" was mend to be something familiar to the Evolve-Game where a team of Mercenary's vs. Dinosaurs. Also why Stego is untouchable, must be Dondis favorite Animal from his childhood.
yup, Dondi's pet project, no more no less. he was rich af even before legacy even existed so he can do whatever he wants
@@АнастасияВаракина-е9с Dondi is a parasite. The game would be better off without him.
"When you realize that The Isle is one man's passion project for himself instead of an actual video game meant for people to buy and play,"
I don't see that as a problem. There are great games that have same start. Problem just became when game was released too soon and now after all these iterations over years it is constantly changing is the problem.
At moment we only can be sure that game has Dinosaurs and Humans(but not yet) as playables. This is only fact at moment, even when we look to past and possible future if EVRIMA won't stay. Everything else can change. This is that problem, we don't have enough stability for game considering past and most players don't have trust that game won't change drastically in future.
The isle immersion is actually insane, and probably going too far, ESPECIALLY considering it’s literally a dinosaur island in a modern world with colossal beasts and insane mutations with dinosaurs from all different times and places. It just needs to be dumbed down a touch, that’s all…
it's honestly the lack of immersion that's the problem. When youre in dead zones with no ai or food it feels empty asf
No idea wtf y//'re trying to say. The dinosaurs now look and move so cartoonishly that any notion of "realism" is actively laughable. It's a misdiagnosis anyway, there's no "immersion" problem. They update the visuals, do remodels, and implement new shaders because that's the only things the devs are succesful at. Anything else won't keep the game relevant or force children to impulse buy it.
@@troythedeconstructionist1382 thats kinda what i am saying, there's so much conflicting realism and non realism content that it begins to feel out of place
@@troythedeconstructionist1382 uh impulse buy? I was literally lied to
Well, it needs to work consistently first.
Immersion is what got me addicted to The Isle back in the day. I have 3000 hours on record.
Hell, I got a new PC with Evrima in mind, since my laptop couldn't run it anymore.
Now, I barely play anymore. I just don't have fun anymore, playing feels more like a chore and a test of my patience.
But sure, the immersion is great. The weather system is nice.
In the end, I agree with you. Legacy felt better despite being outdated now. It's a bloody shame.
Same, laptop got outdated so I just stopped playing
I think you're describing exactly what the isle devs fallacy is. Thinking Realism equals Immersion. I too loved legacy for its immersion and now find myself not playing evrima nor legacy. In evrima the realism forces you so much to calculate, to think about your actions and all the systems that gotta be satisfied that you can't get immersed at all. Yes there are immersive sights and landscapes, beautiful lighting... but do you have time to take it in? Do you have the time to feel like a dinosaur just wandering through the forest or sitting on a rock with your pack watching the sun go down? No, because you better get that hex diet back up quick. If there ever was a chance to immerse yourself you are quickly ripped out by some nuisance or penalties of the "realism".
Dondi's biggest problem is he treats the playerbase like little props he expects to play exactly how he wants them to; it's why he adds so many mechanics that aren't fun but are meant to force players to play how he wants. He wants herbivores to go to certain areas at certain times with migration, he wants everyone to move across the map constantly with diets, he hates when players sit and talk in the chat cause it's not 'scary' or 'immersive' so he gets rid of global chat. He also got annoyed with fresh spawns being killed so easily so he funnels them into the sanctuaries despite also not wanting everyone in one spot.
I'm reminded of Gabe Newell of Valve in a documentary when he got annoyed when someone asked him about realism cause to him it didn't matter, 'was it fun' was always the question to be answered. He didn't make the bullets show up on the wall from gunfire because of realism, it was to show the player they had control over the environment and give them an incentive to see what else they could do in the game. They didn't add weight physics for realism, they did it for (at the time) a new way to solve puzzles.
I just wish Dondi would see that, but, considering he loves watching his playerbase get annoyed and 'trolled' by things like everyone falling off the cliffs because of the bushes hiding the edges in a, 'lol shouldn't be running everywhere,' kind of way, it's odd he wants the playerbase both to act realistic and do as he wants, but also to piss us off constantly with unfair deaths cause it's funny to him. I loved this game so much, I just hope it can salvage itself, but I know it won't if the design philosophy stays exactly the same.
He hates when players sit and talk in chat yet he really likes breaking our legs from cliffs and giving us unbearable stamina regen times... Like what the hell else are we supposed to do in that time??
@@zyqa Marvel at the 'realistic' lighting that is so sharp you can't see anything until noon and then every other time you need night vision on. XD You gotta have them realistic screen shots while you sit to heal that broken leg and recharge that stamina!
Also frankly as far as I can tell, he seems to believe people have unlimited time to do fuck all in his game
You need … 4-6 hours to spend in one sitting just to reach adulthood for some species? Hello? Who the fuck has that much time regularly for a single video game in a week? Especially if there is seemingly no guarantee for an enjoyable time?
I get animals aren’t constantly running around doing shit irl and nonstop pvp in animal skins isn’t survival but in the end it’s still has to be a game and people have lives to be had.
@@zyqaokay VR chat with your furry friend if you want just a chatting game.
@@ditzydoodle8381no play VR chat if want a chatting game.
They are trying to do 60 things at once, rather then 6 things with 10 times the power. They want to make a full game, and everything is half baked.
Which is funny cause the community seems to be the opposite on their discord. Its always "but pot has 900 dinosaurs why cant isle" argument and then i watched the game being made at a slower pace and get people to complain. Then they add more and catch up and people complain they are doing too much
I don't agree, everyone has their role on the team, you can't make a sound designer help in the rigging of models, it just doesn't work like that
As someone who fell in love with game design, I really appreciate your content. Your method of communicating your ideas is concise yet detailed.
What I find the most frustrating with this genre is how much potential it has.
The biggest issue with Evrima for me, is that they cannot seem to understand how games work. All the interaction that the isle has to offer currently is player interaction, and all the mechanics they add either hinder it or are irrelevant. The survival elements are implemented in a way that render them simply monotonous tasks or obstacles to the core gameplay - PvP. This is especially true for herbivores whose gameplay is completely neglected.
Even when it comes to immersion Evrima falls short. It just seems like it should not be this complicated. As for ways to improve enjoyment without compromising immersion, it seems so obvious. Just off the top of my head: Herbivore competition, Seasonal food scarcity, Territory management, environmental events that affect gameplay, food stockpiling, rare AI prey items, character milestone objectives, weight class-based activities...
I know having the ideas is different than implementing them, however, the mechanics they have added feel like it could have been so much more. Sadly they are reduced to annoyances and roleplay features.
The nesting will NEVER, EVER, Work without the global chat and offers to spawn.
itd be so easy to implement too
Global would ruin evrima
I disagree, but imo the solution is just to make it optional on community servers and make it on on some officials and off on others. Choices.
Global chat is currently an option that can be enabled in community servers
@@cartonofmilk8351 they released it for 2 days and no it was just fine
The fact that they are adding mechanics we didn't ask for like the Camera system, Diets, and Stamina. The game was meant for immersion and realism, not enjoyment.
What realism? The dinosaur look and move like cartoon characters. It's realism for people too dumb to recognize reality.
lol
The game isn't made By us, by playing the Evrima Alpha we chose to go on the journey with the Devs and not be a backseat driver
@@smefour "The game isn't ours so it's allowed to be shit. Not like I paid for it though... Mommy's credit card did :D"
@@troythedeconstructionist1382 so you say
It has been PAINFULLY OBVIOUS to me (and I only started playing Legacy in 2019!!) that Dondi has a dream that only HE-CAN-SATISFY!... If you want to roll the dice with that, props to you, your money, your life... BUT! I can confidently say after having watched The Isle news videos, browsing the discord and researching the development of EVRIMA and testing it through updates and patches....that this is like some Multi Level Marketing, meets small time developer, meets smaller time publisher.... They could definitely do a lot more to bring cohesion and less contrast to marketing and actual gameplay and sadly, GAME DEVELOPMENT.
It feels like no one on the team calling the shots has taken a game design course. I send updates to my friend, who is in game design, and we both feel the lack of proper direction.
Moments of emersion are rare but they are really strong when they happen. I had been nested into a family of Bepies and it does have the intended effect when you're parents have to stop everything they're doing to defend 6 chicks from a random pig as we all cower off to the side, but as you said nesting is pretty much dead. I'd say the most immersive in general are the Bepie, Ptera, and Deino just because their nature makes them so far removed from everything else at the moment. You don't worry about mix packing and 6v1s as a Bepie. It just doesn't happen unless you go out of your way to make or find it.
how can i feel the immersion if i can´t even play the game because its to laggy
Yea I was about to say the same thing
Just buy an rtx4070 what’s the problem..?
@@pain002 not everyone can just buy a new GPU on a whim in this economy much less one from the newest generation
Just steal a computer from NASA
@@pain002 I am convinced that this is sarcasm so have my like.
I really like the isle's attempt to make the world feel natural and alive, but when it handicaps the gameplay overall it feels less like a survival game and more like a playable documentary gone wrong, i really hope sandbox comes back soon or even just turning off diets becomes an option in server settings so people can just play a game instead of being forced to do busy work for real hours that somewhat mimics a game.
I stopped playing after they added diets. They want me to do all of this complicated crap just to play as a dinosaur that's going to die in like 3 bites from something faster than it...
Diet system needs to be reworked if not completely remade, right now it is just a chore and you can't really call it realistic either, this is one of those cases where it would be way more fun if it was actually realistic. There is no reason for a carnivore to skip a perfectly good corpse because it's not in the arbitrary list of animals.
@@ALunaticWithAShotgunyou can still eat the organs of the corpse thats not on your diet if you want, that way you can still get something other than filling up your stomach from it.
The isle lost its soul a long time ago, mistrust in the devs and the game has left its mark and the wrong things are constantly being pushed. If people enjoy it good i am glad, however you deserve more and it hurts to see so much promised simply left to decay with time. Realism might be its best selling point but its also its GREATIST flaw there is so much time spent on trying to add realism that it strips away enjoyment for a lot of people. Not everyone obviously, the player base is still alive but from what it once was, its like gazing into a hallow shell
And there is nobody in the isle “community” who isn’t aware of its issues and isn’t annoyed with it. Innocence lost.
Hey man, I really don't care about the games you talk about, but I like listening to your videos because of how well your articulate your thoughts and opinions. It's really impressive! Your really cool!
Human players will behave like humans.
If you want them to behave differently you need to reward those behaviors in a mechanical way: make grouping up within 3 meters of each other give a big resistance buff for horned herbivores and make nesting give synergetic buffs to the members of a family.
As for the eating while basically still fighting a herd i think the only way to make that possible is to give raptors a huge buff for like 2 seconds after they've eaten, that way it would be extra risky to engage them. In nature this only happens because carnivores only need to take one member of a herd down to be satisfied, and herbivores are aware of this and they instinctively know that if they get into another fight without backing off they could get injuries that can infect and cost them their life.
This exact thing cannot happen as strictly in a game where you don't have permadeath.
your character may die but you can always restart with a different character and be back to where you left off in a couple of hours.
For some of the larger herbivore species they will actively beat the stuffing out of predators that dare to attack the herd. If the downed one isn't dead yet defence of it will usually happen(water buffalo), even then some will mourn preventing anything from touching it till they finish(elephants).
(Incoming brainstorming long comment)
Making game mechanics that reward players acting more like their true animal counterparts are allways so intresting and tricky to me, and they are intresting to brain about hypothethically to me if I were to create a Savannah-like survival game.
Group bonuses are something I have thought about before, or debuffs for solitary predators grouping up, but it’s also one of those things that you can infinitely fine tune, and of course designing your game and or base stats to make solitary or group play the most logical tactical choice is allways the best.
Usually the reason irl carnivores don’t team up is because solitary hunting wields the most food to them per succesfull hunt- I wonder how you could replicate this the best in a game, for specialized prey to matter the most instead of random mass murder.
i like the choice of no music in this one
The big thing for lack of nesting for me is with the lack of global chat or group chat it can be so much harder to find people to nest with, you’re just waiting to run into someone
I've had a long suspicion they were putting dinosaur gameplay on rails to make human gameplay viable. Now I'm fully convinced.
and in the next video from the next doomeryou will be convinced again.. and again... and again.
@@odd2007 That's usually the case but as someone who loves The Isle for it's immersion even I think they try to go a bit too far sometimes. Though the only thing that ever really bothered me was the camera changes and they apparently cancelled that one. I didn't mind the stam changes, on the contrary it gave me a massive advantage at first because I was already used to conserving my stamina even before the changes.
Also I wouldn't call X Zaguer a doomer, he gives constructive criticism that I usually agree with.
@@odd2007 You completely missed the point I was making.
I think they should put some herbies AI in the game which programmed and acts like a dinosaurus, like you know, grazing, migrating in herds, interacting with each others, it could potentially bring the realisme vibe into the game.
You *can* answer *THAT* question though: Dondi has always been making a game for HIMSELF.
The devs have stated such on the Discord, multiple times.
I can hear the pain and frustration in your voice...
The answer is: Themselves
And it's funny, I recently said something similar to this on the Helldivers discord and in a Path of Titans UA-cam video comment section.
Which is...
(In terms of The Isle and Helldivers)
Eventually you have to sit down look at the situation and reflect on the GAMEPLAY.
What is "fun"? Screw realism, screw logic. If a game is not fun and engaging people will leave.
In terms of what I said in a Path section. I was basically arguing with folks who hate the "unrealistic" aspect of it. (IE: Heals, Buffing calls, etc.)
But all that wacky insanity makes the game..."fun" and a downright romp and adventure to play.
When Xaguar mentioned:
"This isn't how players play..."
And
"Look at these creatures together."
I got the: "Meanwhile in (Name)..." vibe as I thought back to the Hot springs block party I walked into in Path about 3 nights ago.
25+ dinos just dancing, roaring, and emoting. One dude even opened his discord, we all joined, and he started blasting club music mixes while we all joke about snorting salt rocks (to stay fed) and drinking spiked water (hotsprings water is green).
It was just a freaking amazing time.
Ultimately...
Gameplay needs to come first.
The Isle has better combat, controls, and graphics. It's crisp, and polished to a diamond shine.
But that means very little when playing it feels like torture.
Path is unrealistic in many areas.
But it has great internal systems and mechanics.
Yeah questing is boring as all hell. But it forces players to move about, thus changing things up (so you aren't just grinding in the same boring location) forcing the player to adventure/explore. Maybe you meet people? Maybe you die?
Over time you unlock abilities and start to feel stronger. Making growth feel rewarding in some minor ways
But in the end the gameplay gives it character.
I didn't even realize this till one of my coworkers watched me play and asked me about the game. Which confused me.
But he said this to me:
"I love the adventures you go on. Was cool to see Venat (my Latenavarix) for the first time. Especially after that awesome adventure he had."
Me: "Adventure?"
Coworker: "You know. When you were playing as him in that forest, picking acorns or something but some komodo dragons showed up and started chasing him and he was jumping over rocks, winding through trees, and he lost em after hiding in some bushes."
Me: "oh yeah!"
Coworker: "Then some mad cow like thing attacked him but he was cornered and you had some crazy fight with it."
Me: "The bars...a Barboldia."
Coworker: "Yeah! And you and it dueled and then you fought underwater and Venat came out all fucked up, barely alive but with a trophy in his mouth like a badass."
Then we laughed and beyond me being horrified he remembered my Path stories. He was right.
Alot of what I see as boring stories end up being full blown tales.
Only possible because of the insanity of the gameplay. Even retelling what happened is exciting.
He also remembers (and laughs) at the table of my Dasp and the back to back Beatdowns it took one night. (Even sent me the orangutan in the ICU meme)
Sadly. Isle stories don't usually go that way.
It's usually. "we ambushed someone, wore em down, and ate em."
Sometimes there are some epic duels "Omnis vs Pachys" but the bulk of Isle tales are about hiding, ambushing, and complaining about mixpacks or bugs.
At this point I fear what's next after camera changes.
Infection mechanics? IE: Get hit during a fight and you might get infected and die unless you do: ____?
Bathroom mechanics? IE: Poop and pee away from your group so other players can track/smell you? (Also increases hunger and thirst)
Too far into unrealistic gameplay can break a game. But going too far into realism can do the same thing.
I wish things could/would turn around cause Isle players deserve better.
Honestly...I miss watching Legacy Isle streams. Sometimes it felt like watching a chaotic dino simulator.
Now..every stream I watch just feels the same.
Kind of like how path streams where folks only PvP all feel the same. (IE: They just sit at Impact Crater and Deathmatch.)
When the courtship system and nesting grounds were announced, that was a good indication that The Isle was veering hard into being a playable dinosaur documentary rather than the dino survival game it's been marketed as since 2015. The concept arts highlighting certain playstyles for dinos have made it *even more clear* that that's what they're going for, along with certain mechanics changes like changes to the stam system, the diet system, the migration system, your camera locking when your dino eats, the proposed extreme-close-up camera angle, and the removal of global and group chat for "realism reasons" (which is funny to me because the devs used to ALWAYS rail against "the realism argument" whenever someone criticized something in their game as being "unrealistic")
Predictably, constantly maintaining a diet because you'll experience negative gameplay consequences if you don't, not being able to look around while you eat, having to monitor temperature on a nest, and having to sit still for minutes at a time to recover stam is *not actually fun*
I find it super ironic that devs who have for longest time been against the rules and customs of community realism servers are now basically trying to implement those rules into the base game through mechanics
They like to contradict themselves a lot
when it comes to the part there 1 omni is eating the dibble, i recall the devs saying that this will be a thing in the future there you can eat someone while they are still alive. That system is part of the system that Giga will use there they can tear of meat from the dino while its still alive and slowly bleeding out.
The answer is, actually, very simple.
They are making a game for Dondi.
It's Dondi's game. That's no secret. Whatever he says goes, no matter what the players or other devs may think.
Sometimes, begrudgingly, he may change the direction here and there, if the entire community hates something or begs for something, but he won't be happy about it.
I mean, he never hides his contempt for the players, especially those who just want to have fun, realism be damned. Bullying people in The Isle's discord? On streams? Yeah. I think most of us heard or saw a snide comment or two, some even getting it themselves, sometimes for the most innocent of things.
"You love this game? Hah. No, you don't. You idiot. You moron. This game fucking sucks. Get out. Come back when its finished."
And, I mean, yeah... It's not finished. I always said that about The Isle - you'll never know what you'll end up getting. Only Dondi knows. Vaguely.
So, I suppose, cherish the memories of the game you once enjoyed. You'll never getting that game, nor your old self, back.
Ok, I think I cooked. (Very sorry in advance for the long read)
They should make the diet system completely optional, with no benefits or drawbacks to the system, just a list telling you what your dinosaur prefers to eat, this way, you can pitch to the realism players, as well as the people who don’t want to be restricted.
Now for the nesting system, they could add asexual nesting as an option for players. Asexual nesting would act different from regular nesting. Players would be able to nest by themselves without the addition of a male. For every mutation the parent has = 1 completely random mutation for the baby. For example, if I only have the reinforced tendons mutation on my dinosaur, then my offspring would spawn in with only 1 random mutation. If I have 3 or 4 mutations, then the baby spawn in with 3 or 4 random mutations. This would allow players to gamble with what mutations they could get. Players would also be able to chose their skin before being nested in, instead of getting their parents skin. Regular nesting should remain the same. For the players that want to nest normally, the devs could add mating calls, which travel the same distance as a broadcast call, but sound distinct in order to let people know that person is interested in nesting.
They could also make it so that every dinosaur has several unique versions of the calls 1-4. This would act very similar to how you can choose your players voice in ark ascended.
Fun QOL mechanics could be implemented as well. I’ll put a list of some of the ideas I had down below.
- scratching trees: scratching trees, as shown in Bary’s concept art, would make it so that you leave claw marks on the tree you scratched. This would let people know that another player is nearby, or has claimed territory. The claw marks you leave would be an indicator of your dinosaurs size. So troodon and omniraptor could leave small claw marks. Dinosaurs like dilophosaurus and baryonyx could leave medium claw marks, and theri, spino, etc could leave large claw marks. Ceratopsians, and dinosaurs that have less pronounced arms/claws, could leave rub marks on trees, or shrubs, making it so that if you rubbed a tree with your horns, some of the bark would be scraped off. Dinosaurs that don’t have horns could crush certain types of foliage instead. For example, ankylosaurus could slam its tail in the ground, leaving a small pit where its tail hit the ground. Tyrannosaurus could crush foliage the size of a banana tree (crushing foliage, and knocking down trees are different in this regard).
- Simple emotes like scratching, and shaking: pretty self explanatory, you press a key, and your dinosaur would scratch itself, or shake.
Tell me what you all think of my ideas.
Honestly the biggest problem about dinosaur survival games is that nobody actually wants to survive and experience the life of an animal they want to play a fighting game that happens to have dinosaurs as a playable characters. People just want a exploration focused fighting game instead of a survival game and it really shows.
Hope is all we have nowadays. Hope to see The Isle back to its glory days of fun , excitement and adventure. Survival is also part of that, but it doesn’t feel like the survival we all want.
This is a pretty apt way to put it, the Isle devs are forgetting some core fundamentals of game design where, you know, design it to be fun. A game. Something engaging for players to play...I used to play the isle for years in legacy, in all its jank, but the rose tinted glasses came off some time ago when I would leave the experience feeling worse then when I had started playing. I realized I wasn't playing because I was having fun, it was just from a sense of sunk cost. Where I'd already put in SO many hours playing just to get to adulthood for who knows how many times, I may as well keep suffering to do it all again. Lmao.
The Isle I will hold a teeny special corner in my heart for reawakening my love for dinosaurs as a teen some years ago, but, like an old EX I want nothing to do with it anymore or experience it again lul.
MOM!! ANOTHER ZAG VIDEO JUST DROPPED
My position on the isle is getting more and more complicated as time passes. Especially since gateway released the decisions made for the game have just been very questionable. The changes to Ptera alone seem to summarize the thinking behind the devs now. Ptera being able to fly is too punishing? Solution: Make its stam regen stupidly long but don’t change its stam drain, essentially make it a headache to play. Basically all the changes whether its stam, growth times, or the camera come down to, WHO THE FRICK ASKED??
I’ve only been on the isle a short while compared to everyone else, wasnt around during legacy’s peak. But the time I’ve had these past few years I’ve made amazing memories. Last year when 6.5 released was arguably the best time I’ve ever had playing the game. Everything was overall flexible and felt good, stam, growth times, everything. There were always plenty of people on and we were all hyped for gateway to release, it seemed the game could only get better moving forward.
Then gateway released and came all the changes. There is no doubt in my mind that the changes to stam basically halved the player base. And I know cause most of my friends before left when this happened, and views on my isle videos plummeted starting late November, when gateway released. And the following months just brought more and more unecessary changes that only felt like a waste of time.
Like what’s being said here the isle seems to be loosing its focus. Its potential is massive, but I hate the fact that it’s the main reason why I’m still here. I’m still on a break from the game while I wait for them to fix the constant fatal errors. I just want what I think could be the perfect dino survival, if it could just be done right and with its player base in mind. “Oh just play Path”, that game is the opposite problem where it has no immersion, I’m tired of hearing it. Truly feels like a dead end sometimes for the fanbase
The stam system in 6.5 was terrible, the changes are good now.
@@MIApor Other than the all dots diet which was absurd, I don’t think it’s as bad as some think. Keeping it up was still extremely important. If you were caught with low stam, have fun trotting for your life.
The current system is fine, but the main aspect it affects is travel, and it’s not good for ALL playables. The ones that have very stam demanding methods of travel (like Ptera flight and Beipi swimming) are the best examples, gonna do a lot of sitting for those guys. Where previously those two felt much easier to play. I really liked how balanced overall the roster was back in 6.5
Playing path would definitely help your channel. Just saying XD
@@tjarkschweizer I know that and I hate that fact😭
@@StelloTyrannus My apologies 😅
I didn't consider how painful that realization must be.
I'm not sure why people say no one nests. I've gotten nested in multiple times in the past couple weeks and have participated in nesting many times. People do nest, but its a time sink and so not everyone does. I'm not sure the trailers are supposed to represent gameplay, but rather an idealistic view of what 'could be'. Cause the amount of dinos we see in trailers just isn't supported in the game really. Like the ptera clip, theres no way we'd ever have that many pteras in one spot unless someone was doing an event. And even if they do something like that (reminds me of when DefeatPete was streaming as a ptera once and a bunch of viewers joined), it lags out the game wherever the huge flock is. To me, the 'trailcams' are obviously staged and not to represent gameplay. I think that's why they're posed as trailcams, as if they were capturing real dinos on the isle, not players. I also just disagree that legacy 'feels better to play'. Thats super subjective. I personally find evrima way more engaging and fun than Legacy. Totally fine to prefer Legacy, but most of what you said in this video felt like a stretch to me.
I remember ranting about this game almost daily but since the new stamina changes and map dropped I have gone silent, stopped playing the game, stopped talking about it.
This is the only channel I return to because it feels like the only normal person that’s no hater, nor spineless bootlicker.
Honestly other games start to show up that have nothing to do with dinosaurs I’d be down to watch as well.
same. before i was ranting constantly because i believed there is hope that the game can reach its potential... but after those changes with the new map, stam, the camera incident... i just lost all hope and energy to care anymore.
I really like how The Isle is shaping. This is a survival game, we all asked for realism and migration before all of this due to how bad it was back in the day, players ganged up against each other, a lot of trolling and cannibalism groups. This way, it is much more rewarding, fun & unique experience. The Isle wouldn't be as how it is today if not for the community feedback.
Nesting is more popular in pot than it is in the isle, and pot doesn't even have official nesting mechanics lol
My problem isn't the fact that they focus on immersion; it's how the devs attempt to make the game more immersive is the biggest problem. It's either half assed, unfun, or ironically unrealistic. What's worse is that many times their pursuit of immersion directly conflicts with very concept of the game being science fiction. You have an island filled with animals spanning a nearly 250 million year period some with near magical abilities but, expect them to act like real animals.
trikes fighting, suddenly a wild t rex runs out and lights out.
3:26 I asked punch why the dibble was being eaten and if it’s a new ability and he said he can’t answer that rn so I think that’s a new ability they were testing also feel we should give them a chance since the perk mechanic will really allow you to make your Dino unique to you
I would say, that the game feels way different if you actively play it, not just checking updates and play for few hours after that
This is a really good point, one that I think should have been pointed out years ago. They try so hard to make this game so painfully realistic that they forget pure nature and being an animal out there isn't 'fun', especially a herbivore. Is eating all day and being scared for your life fun? Is being up against an unwinnable matchup and not being able to do anything other than die fun? Am I meant to willingly opt into a life like that in a game with no upsides? How can that be considered a game? Maybe if this was meant to be a simulator of sorts then it'd be more acceptable.
The comparissons you made with the "camera footage" remind me a lot of ARK´s early developement, where every update trailer showed scenarios that just ain´t possible in the game, because of the nature of it´s gameplay.
It’s not even realistic in “realism/role-play” to meet these completely unrealistic expectations. There are plenty of times I tried a “realism” server and everyone there is bored out of their minds so they keep the fights and engagement as long as possible for enrichment. Large carnivores nearly killing each other over a body, raptor packs attacking multiple targets in a herd then “conveniently” stopping once a body is down so they don’t get a rule break, Stegos getting involved in fights because they “accidentally” walk too close and some Carno 3-called at them so whoops! Now the Stego is aggressive and your prey gets to escape. So stupid.
theydont do therulebreak stuff any more from what ive seen kill everything
@@stundorn5511 There’s literally nothing else to do in this game but fight, of course it’s a KOS DM. This isn’t a game like Wolfquest where they give you other things to do. There is no purpose in The Isle other than fighting. And you think the players are in the wrong for playing a boring fight simulator like a boring fight simulator?
It truly does feel like a game designed for Dondi to watch a prehistoric ecosystem thriving but without the players, he might as well just make an ai simulation of it
Subscribed, well-fucking-said. I think I will love this game if they just shaped more of their features and implementations around *having a good time* instead of a 1:1 ratio of prehistoric times (which cannot be achieved)
Their commitment to realism in every way except for paleoaccuracy baffles me. To me this entirely undermines the theme of realism - it’s not that every dinosaur game needs to reflect constantly updating research, it’s that the vision of the isle is contradictory and inconsistent. They’re willing to sacrifice fun for realism but not their Jurassic park models.
I agree with you about the Nesting problem. It is saddening me. Sorry... this was intended to be short, but I guess I want to share my view on this whole ordeal that is The Isle and some of the recent decisions:
I do not think it is primarily a Problem with an Obsession with Immersion and Realism, but has to do with player behavior and is basically an social engineering problem so to speak.
The Trailers are more of a vision and suggestion, and I would assume that for the most of us (old players and also new ones alike) it is clear that the footage in those trailer clips are staged.
It is more of a shared vision. Immersion involves more than player roleplaying actual animal behavior in a clean display. It is also about actual survival experience over a longer stretch of time, where certain behavior come in naturally (be it good or bad, or even "immersionbreaking").
And as far as I was getting the changes with Evrimas stam system, it was a way to tackle the arcade-pace that for too many time certain group or sort of players would enforce on the other players because the fast regeneration allowed that. In the past (mostly from experience on Spiro) the argument of so many players was that there was nothing to do which was technically correct and Nesting was and is a choir and it being possible an unlikely event if not organized from outside. The focus of so many easily bored out players to start fighting without a reason lead in my opinion and observation to spiral down dynamic of toxic behavior, ranging from discord organized man-hunt groups, mixpacking "clans", vigilant peacekeepers, "cannis" and so much more. I had even the doubtful honor of having a chat with one hacker, hunting other hackers and witnessed also one hacker deino cleaning the rivers from the overly present Deino players, forcing them to play something else or leave. The amount of anarchy was at some points outrageous, because for so many there was nothing to do, and that situation needed to end.
It was fun to observe human behavior for sure, but it did not contribute to me wanting to play the game motivated and for real. Had a lot of times just taking breaks.
On Spiro after an Update (can't remember which one) the server, though being full, felt empty for the most part. Leading me to survive as Carno because of only meeting AI (sustaining me barely) and not having any encounter for hours though patrolling a vast area of known places. Turned out that on this server a group of Nesting Enthusiasts decided to populated a remote and rarely visited area, somewhere around SE along the "swamp". They were a huge Teno herd that managed to nest in over 60% of the servers population and thriving. Being nested in was a beautiful experience, but lead to the misery of predators, since they had only themselves to hunt each other and of course it ended sometime later when the DC community dimmed down in activity.
The different player profiles were not compatable with the given framework. I think no matter what you change, there is always a chance to mess it up or that certain player will abuse it. It is hard to predict the outcome. That is there I want to be as fair as I can. Because Humans will always be Humans.
By saying that I only mean to express that these trailers are not neccessarily born out of ignorance, misleading intent or delusional expectations to fool us.
If it come to the discussion points like "but it is not realistic" these are always problematic, since we could not agree what actually is "realisitc" and what make someone immerse into a game.
I subscribe to the notion that the devs might be taken too much focus on one thing or doing too many things at the same time, contributing to those messy phases where we all have to take a toll on our patience. When player argue in an emotional state you will see the community clashing due to the different understanding of those concepts and what to expect from the game.
I would say that it is not "immersion" or "realism" as such but the devs trying to find the "middleground" for that experience of players immersing themselves in the game that feels connected to the vision that a dinosaur would feel like moving through it's environment. They really messed up around the timing where they decided to change the stam system at the worst possible time while having just released a new map to explore and putting the whole experience of fun exploration on it's head, damning player to afk (contrary to actually ending that) and let them struggle with the timing of diminishing diet, stomach fill, thirst and "managing" stam that made everything a choir.
I managed to tackle the challenge with ptera one day, but it was all a choir and had not made fun anymore.
In addition to that the way the dev team communicate their "experiments" and tests and showcase them with their half-thought through statements and the demeanor of dondi was not contributing to a healthy community having a sane discussion.
About that trailer footage (specifically with diablo in display):
Overall the setting and condition of the game puts us in "similar" situations like depicted but more stretched over the playfield. It is not possible to show that in one screen.
Of course you are right, most players would fight in that example and act differently, but eventually, dependent on the server and players being around, some will escape or hide, one or two will keep the predator at bay or distracted and eventually one might die.
NONE of the clips that try to convey those ideas can actually succeed in that. I agree that it might be more advisable to record actual player behavior to demonstrate the actual state of the game and I most certainly love those community server videos from petits that pretty much shows some of the experience that the game has to offer.
And about the comparison to Legacy... it is a matter of taste, but I fullheartedly disagree on that ;)
My longest break was around a year or so before Evrima released and coming only back when Deino and Ptera was introduced (was it Update 3?).
It is too much text already: Thank you for your take on this and as always love your content. You keep me mentally up to date with the discussions on a constructive engaging way.
Hope my text wall was not to much to endure.
Have a nice Day!
Man this is why I still miss 2.5.
The isle through natural pressures (Dinos making water scary, hackers, player stuff) and imposed pressures (diets, map convolution) has made the Isle feel more cramped despite it being on a massive map now.
Back in 2.5 having fun fighting by the river was the main activity but it was actually fun. And the balance was a lot tighter, carno's while generally dominant were always a fun challenge to fight solo as a teno because it was like a tango with all the dodging and close calls. Stego's could still bully you, but taking them down was super fun because the game actually worked (mostly) and desync didn't teleport your skull into their tail. Utah was super fun to play in mobs and small groups for the same reason, the game worked.
Update 3.0 accelerated the game's performance decay (not like in FPS, but in teleporting and TPS), made the map more convoluted, gave us our first taste of restricted movement (dinos and water) as well as setting the stage for diets
I really hope the Isle devs watch your videos, Xaguer, I share many of the same feelings on the heart of the game feeling lost, the community that used to be so strong left to rot as if they never mattered. Dondi has a vision, I believe that, but I just don’t know what that is anymore. So many people are moving on to PoT when they actually want to enjoy their gaming experiences.
i played the isle back in late 2015, around when it first came out, and even though it was bare bones i loved that game because i was excited by the potential i saw in it. sad to see that now its basically just a prettier version of the same bare bones game, with a few fancy, dead mechanics sprinkled on top. do hope one day dondi will sell it to a developer that actually wants to develop a game for people, or for God's sake pull his head out of his ass, but he never will. anyways, good video.
Thank you for voicing everything that we were all thinking. Someone had to say this out-loud.
I like this actually. It's almost coming to a degree where it's no longer a game. And it's just that, an experience. You experience living as this creature. Who knows what it would be when technology advances?
This video is exactly what I’ve been thinking for so long man. It sucks playing Evrima and everything feels like an obstacle then you think about the old legacy days and it’s almost kinda upsetting how it feels like an entirely different game (It is but the real ones know what I mean). Maybe it’s the map too, literally feel like I can never find anyone and it’s so vertical and hard to traverse.
Legacy indeed felt different. Map too. It was amazing strutting through pines and redwoods, whole map was blue and green and felt so fresh and open and vast. Now it's a horrible tropical bush filled with rocks and what not... dinosaurs felt big huge even. Now grass and rocks with trees scales so weirdly tenonto looks like it's a size of a dog.
@@chaoticevil4038 i feel that. Youre often running through thick bush, only shades of green on the screen for several minutes, then bonk against a giant mountainside and have to backtrack all the way just to be stuck in the next series of boulders or the edge of a cliff a couple minutes later... its so frustrating getting anywhere
Couldn't agree more. I keep finding myself playing Legacy more and more recently, even though I would like it to be Evrima. Great video as always!
Immersion needs to be toped with being dynamic. Yes herbivores dont go out of thier way to save each other, but herbivores do fight each other. The game just needs to encourage herbs to fight other herbs. When it comes to dying, yes restarting is supposed to mimic the fact that yes you have only one life. But that is not fun and does not respect your time especially considering the ridiculous growth times the isle has.
U are definitly right i have played the isle evrima a long time ago when diets werent a big thing and the fun was so much more relaxing even thoe i was very good at hunting i always starve in gateway i cant find anybody
The isles legacy immersion was so real cuz it wasn’t so restricting, people say evrima is better but with all the pretty graphics I don’t have the thrill of the hunt
Same dude I lag so much when I play I can't use herra cus it lags to much
Another glass raised for path.
You're totally right. I loved Evrima update 3 - 3.5, but it really started to go downhill once they started adding diets. Not that diets are a bad thing, but it was the start of a continual trend of very poorly implemented mechanics.
Current implementation of a diet system is not really good tbf, it2s not realistic or fun it's just a chore. They need to make a system where eating herbivores is more beneficial for carnivores than eating other carnivores so instead of just endlessly killing each other, carnivores will have to hunt herbivores that are often stronger than them. Which will make herbivore gameplay more fun because they will have to defend themselves mroe often instead of just walking around and eating while carnivores have a deathmatch in hotspots.
This is one of the best Path of Titans ads ever 😂
Guys, I really don’t understand what you all want.
You whined about stamina, so they fixed it for you. You whined that it was difficult to find food, now the food runs up to you and there is so much of it that the game starts to lag from the corpses.
I agree about the camera. This is a crazy decision. But otherwise, I fully support the vector of development into realism and immersion.
Global chat ruins immersion. If you want to sit and chat in a dinosaur skin and you don’t need diets, migrations, if all these mechanics are tiresome for you, then download VRchat or a similar game, there you can choose a dinosaur skin and more, make a map with a jungle there and sit and chat as much as you like. What is the problem?
Why do you unify the word "fun" even?
For some, it will be a "fun" to run around in a game with cheats and ruin the gameplay of other players, for others, it will be a "fun" to call on discord, gather in a mix pack and run around killing players. This is why developers must sacrifice the "fun" of some for the sake of their vision of the game as something whole and complete.
If the developers don't see the game as some kind of Sims with dinosaurs where someone adopts other dinosaurs or uses them as pets, then I completely agree with them.
I really like nesting, but the problem is, you can't join a nest without having died, going back to the character screen, and then looking yo see if there are any publically available eggs or you have an outside source like discord where they can share a code. You still have to die first. It's incredibly imconvent and happening to catch an open nest when you die is rare. It should be like legacy where you can just join into a nest in game without all the extra steps. It's just too much work to nest to have a VERY rare chance of someone even seeing that you have eggs at the time of their death.
I never once thought this game was going down immersion, I have a inkling that Dondi might say or do something out of the blue because when he DOES actually play his game he comes to realize that some if not most of the ideas/stats they've done to their classes makes everything highly unbalanced having him do stupid shit that pissed everyone off. (Like the sudden and unneeded camera changes he wanted, probably done because he died to a stego once and got pissed off)
I think people are looking to deep into this, if you dont like or want to play the game anymore, then dont, its not it'll be the first or last time you'll be wasting 20$ on something.
Even tho I do agree the game might have progressed a lot further if it was in the hands of a better lead developer, but beggers cant be choosers.
The entire purpose of the dibble clip with the omnis is to show off the new pin mechanic. Sure they had a herd that didn’t necessarily help the dibble but anybody playing in a realism server will tell you it’s cause they had kids to protect as well. It would be stupid to show off the new mechanic but then just have a dibble nail an omni midway through would it not?
yes
SO much potential just constantly squandered. I played hours and hours of legacy, and when Evrima launched it was so underwhelming I ignored it. And when it finally looked good enough to jump in some 2 years later, I quickly only found myself done with it after a few hours. It just doesn't feel or run as well as you'd expect for a multi year development game.
They focus so much on making it visually appealing that they don’t make the game run functionally.
The first half of this video is weird because every dinosaur game does this. You’re getting mad at mechanic showcase videos for showing how the game is supposed to be played, but you don’t acknowledge that other games like path of titans do the exact same things in their trailers.
The devs do not expect you to play exaclty like this, but they’re not gonna make a mechanic showcase trailer filled with the chaos that comes with playing officials or no rules servers, that would be dumb.
I think it might also be important to side with the idea that realism is not for everyone. I think the isle has this problem with going too far with immersion and realism, to where it becomes too much like real life, instead of a fun video game people can play and enjoy. Yes, realism is great, but when it goes too far, it is reminiscent of the pain and the chores you have to do in the real world, and we all can agree that real life, sucks. You spend years of your life and heaps of money growing, buying food, paying for school, just to die at a young age whether it be from a freak accident, crime, or something just happens. You have to work to take care of yourself and ensure you stay healthy, which is exactly what you have to do in The Isle.
My point is, when a game becomes too much like real life, it can risk becoming far less enjoyable. Because real life sucks. That's why we play video games.
Usually games dont come out on early access and people dont constantly compare it to the previous versions of a game that wasn't finished. Every one of you had an idea of what rhe game was going to be, but that doesn't mean that it WAS going to be that way. EVERY single time a new update comes out there's is someone complaining bc its simply impossible to maintain the balance of a game that is not even 10% done, i mean, they are olanion adding 60 dinos plus humans, of course its going to change, and we still can intervene when they plan on adding horrible things like the camera shit, but people keeps complaining about absolutely everything when the game is simply not even near finished. I understand that what they are doing with the game do not match the specific idea you had when it first came out but i dont think it justifies complaining about half done mechanics that are still to be reviewed or reworked or trailers tha try to enhance the general idea of the game, of course they know people dont lie floating for three hours when playing beipi most online games exaggerate the inmrsion on their trailers and usually people are not born yesterday and know better as to buy a game for a trailer that doesn't show reql gameplay. Anyways, thats just my opinion, sorry for the long ass text
The Isle would make an AMAZING short film. Hell, with the time this thing stayed in development, one could've made an actual two hour long dinosaur film, probably.
It being a game actively hinders it.
Really the scavenging pterosaurs and the way you get nutrients as a carnivore are the main issues for me. It would work better if Carnivores got nutrients from various ai, with no gut rummaging required, but their bellies could only be filled significantly by eating players. This would make nutrients less random and more straight forward, while giving more purpose to the ai, but also still giving them incentive to find players to hunt.
The scavenging pterosaurs are just annoying and there are already other players to defend your food from. Not to mention small scavengers in the real world don't really act like that. They wait to the side until the larger animals have left because otherwise they risk injury or death. So not really the realistic feel the devs were going for anyway.
I wouldn't mind the diet system if it weren't for the fact you become practically useless without them. Personally, I think it would've been fine if without the diets you just grow at the dino's regular pace with no buffs (and of course none of those horrible debuffs), and with the diets you get increased growth and buffs from the respective diets
Y'all it's a cinematic trailer to show off a dino, not to accurately represent how players play in the game. They showed it off as an animal, which in the trailer, it acts like an animal, surprising.
The video is about a bigger issue than that one trailer. Its an example
I am enjoying the immersion, that’s why I like it. I have been playing long enough to know how to survive and I don’t find the game as dreadful as everyone is making it sound. I just play and look for action and the isle always delivers on that front, stop reading everyone’s opinions on little details and just play and have fun
At this point why dont they make it take 20 years to grow a dinosaur and make it so if you die you can never play again. That will be more realistic.
I agree with this. It feels like Evrima is better in a lot of ways but lost its sense of spirit from legacy. Devs are much too preoccupied with redoing and re-redoing simple mechanics like stamina, camera,
it basically lost its soul.
maybe they could add a buff for herbivores when they are in a group. and the same thing can be added to carnivores like omniraptor or dilophosaurus
The trailer is just a trailer all games have this that makes the game look completely different then the actual game. Love your videos but you read too much between line that sometimes there's nothing there.
ive been saying for years that the isles obsession with realism is at odds with player enjoyment and gameplay. its a problem they've never wanted to address.
i miss the days when myself and friends would sit on the edge of trips watching over a heard and have a giga silently creep up behind us and rampage out of the treeline and we would all scatter in horror, it wasn't Jurassic park roleplay it was the isle!
I remember the day they put in the block buildings on v2, I said to everyone (our discord 2k strong at that point) this is the start of the end.. all that time ago, now what I remember, feels like a dream.
Remember when this was suppose to be a survival game humans vs. dinos vs. unspeakable horrors and all three were playable?
im so glad people with brains still exist. you speak the truth cuz no one else is brave enough to stand against the devs
For me the isle is stilo better than mega mix pack in pot. And for your almost last questions, i like how its going just hate how slow its going
The main problem is that herbivores usually have a prey-mindset and will (most of the time) stand to the side while one of their own kind are getting killed by a predator. This can especially be seen when lions/hyenas are hunting wildebeest and zebra and the rest of the herd won’t really do antthing
I get what you're saying but I'm going reserve judgement until all the major mechanics become implemented. I've been playing on the hordetest, and a lot of my problems with the gameplay loop have been addressed with mutations. It's just an early version, but it's done a lot in making the experience feel more engaging. I'm actually enjoying the isle more than I ever have in this test branch. Nests are actually important now, because hatchlings inherit bonus mutations from their parents. The game feels more experimental and replayable. You could play the same animal multiple times and have different builds based on your mutations. I think the isle can be immersive to a fault, but let the devs cook first. You can't judge a meal before it's finished just because you tasted the ingredients beforehand. This next update is looking very promising to me, and I think it might even usher in a new era of prosperity for the game.
This has to be the most real video on your channel
i don’t get why you made those comments about the diblo vs omni fight…. i mean that whole video was made to show off a new dinosaur, it doesn’t need to show exactly how players behave. the reason why the diblos didn’t go help the other diblo that was being attacked was to show people the new pounce to pin mechanic for omnis, it’s not trying to “show” what players will do. why are you trying to make it seem like they think we play like that? of course they know we don’t, it’s a video/trailer for the game. SO MANY OTHER GAMES make trailers that exaggerate their gameplay or make unrealistic scenarios for their trailers/videos, why is it a bad thing when the isle does it?
Every time I look at games like The Isle or Path of Titans I just see missed potential. instead of an MMO they should have focused on a single player experience with in depth dino AI and then add multiplayer co-op on top of that so you can have an actual "immersive" experience each time you play.
You sound legitimately defeated at the end there my dude. I'm sorry passion for dinosaurs and game design and this game is bringing you this. If there's any solace in it for you, know that your videos have legitimately given me so much enjoyment and zest for The Isle and for the genre itself after a long shortage for it over the last year! And I thank you for bringing forth informed and sound critiques of these games, especially The Isle. I'm glad it's not *just* the fact that I never managed to get a grip of the gameplay (even in Legacy mind you) that made me feel like a game that "should" have been made for me, in fact was not.
I think The Isle will probably continue to have a die-hard fanbase, whichever way the devs take it from here, and I hope it will be a game I can return to and actually enjoy playing again some day. But I think Path of Titans is an objectively better experience for a much larger audience, and that it managed to actually capture some of the magic that I love which The Isle had back in 2017-19, and built a lot further on it (at the cost of a couple of points in realism and immersion or whatever).
I hope you keep up with the great work regardless of whether you hold onto this game. Though I also hope you continue to discuss the animal profiles and concept art for it when they're released becuase I really enjoy those!
I honestly enjoy the game, I think allowing people to have servers where they can change.The settings like even disable diets would be a good edition.
Now me personally I ( f worb )love the diet system, Adds so much variety and different playstyle Sometimes.
Thing is most think the game is fun (evidenced by the player reviews and most player play-time being so high, this would indicate that), this game is trying to do what many of us want to see happen in a Dino game, Evrima is still in Alpha/early Beta and is still trying stuff out, its definitely a work in progress, there are other Dino games with a more casual feel, that style of gameplay is catered for, the Isle Devs have done a lot of work to get Evrima to this point, much of it subtle and experimental, unfortunately some playing don't recognize the work done and the further work still to go, the testing the experimentation in this Alpha. They think instead they are playing a finished product ("Where's my Rex!!!" being the classic out of touch proclamation)
Anyway these videos about Evrima are now starting to feel passive aggressive (almost concern trolling), and I'm not enjoying them as much as I use too
Exactly, the devs will NEVER win with these people, I cannot stand the commentary creators that don’t help this situation, instead they feed the mob.
just because you don’t want to see the prevalent issues with the game doesn’t mean others don’t.
@@UserNamedTenonto here’s your victim card
I don't get the point of this video, what's the problem if they release a trailer portraiting how dinosaurs would act in real life it's a multiplayer game ofc it wont b like real life, it's just a well built trailer so you can see the new dino and mechanics that are about to be released in a cool way, do you expect them to release dibble and the trailer be a pvp dibble 1v6 omnis with energetic music in the background? This game has a bunsh of problems i agree it's not even close to the state i want it to be in but i don't think the stuff u talked abt in this video as anything to do with it
Its not the trailer bro. Its that they design their game like portrayed in the trailer, which just adds annoying mechanics.
@@dinkelkong5043witch annoying mechanics do they show in the trailer that are annoying?
@@dinkelkong5043 In the video it was talked abt how the trailer doesent match the actual gameplay like i said ofc not it's a trailer it's a realistic dinosaur game they are making it more cinematic
@@bludwho yeah but it shows that they go for realism and realism isnt really fun. Having to build your nest and allat is kimda annoying or that they expect you to walk in slow mo to every destination.
Thank you for this. I had seen The Isle long ago, and constantly heard people sing the praises of it, and I just literally never understood it. A dinosaur game where you play as the dinosaurs and there is a decent roster of them? Neat. But... This? This sucks. I thought I was going crazy, unable to see almost any redeeming qualities in it, other than: "Look, dinosaurs!"
And I had the same issues with it, plus others. Too often, lazy and uninspired developers conflate "realism" with "immersion," and thus often consider "realism" a positive aspect inherently, when it is just neutral by itself, but often is actively negative when implemented by these kinds of people. And it's often funny, because, as a video game, these things are unrealistic in tons of ways already anyway, so there's no reason to chase that idea in itself - you do it if it benefits the game, and you lamp-shade why you didn't do it if it doesn't benefit the game.
The "survival special" of just slapping extra versions of health and stamina meters into the mix in the form of food and water is boring and doesn't add any meaningful new mechanics to the game. Most other survival type games will have you scrounge for resources to use to get food and water, which is basically the sole mechanic used for literally everything else in the games too anyway, aside from some combat system, so it's completely unnecessary. At best, they can be used to try to encourage exploration or lead people to specific spots or force some form of committal to encounters or something, but non-survival games are able to do those things all the time too, so there are clearly other ways to achieve those goals. Baby-sitting meters is not a fun concept by itself, you have to inject real mechanics to make it fun, and most games fail at that
Also, funny enough, a ton of survival games have water drain so quickly and give you so little from the food - despite most species getting the majority of their water intake from eating, not drinking - even though water is the more boring of the two meters to fill. Usually either just waiting or holding forward to get to a source. Sio not only did they make it less "immersive," but also made it less fun in doing so, by forcing people to take breaks from any mechanics that might actually be engaging to babysit their character instead.
The Isle has even less. Since you're dinosaurs, you just drink water and eat meat or plants unprepared, there's not even the little bit of resource management thrown in. They could be used to force encounters, but, given the combat mechanics of the game, and how clunky and muddled most of that is, combined with the cost-benefit analysis of how they tend to work out, the game seems to actually discourage interactions between players in such a way. Even when you win, you usually don't do so unscathed, which means a whole lot more waiting around doing nothing interesting to heal.
The game's survival mechanics are more shallow than most others, though also over-complicated in some areas that just make it even more tedious, not more fun. The combat is sloppy and un-reactive and not very engaging, probably partly from the clinging to "immersion" and partly from lack of creativity. And it doesn't even have good exploration - there's not really anything different to do or get anywhere other than water sources, and there's not even really anything to see anywhere either, as low of a bar as that is.
This game is just kind of lacking... Game. I'm hard pressed to think of a survival game that isn't literally just this game but better in every aspect, but often lacking the player characters visually be dinosaurs. That is the sole point this game has going for it: "Be a dinosaur." The game tries to rail-road its strict vision of dinosaur activity so heavily that it strangles player agency and meaningful mechanical engagement. It has "game-play" in the same way that a D.V.D. menu game does. You don't get to play as a dinosaur, you have to baby-sit a dinosaur. Big difference.
The thesis of this game is clearly: "Look at dinosaurs behave like dinosaurs." So I have no idea why it exists in this state. Why not just use the models and engine to make a documentary series? Or Pokemon Snap but with dinosaurs? That would at least harmonize the clear design direction and the mechanics, instead of making them basically unrelated. Sure, you wouldn't get to play as a dinosaur, but, as mentioned before, since there isn't really a game here, you already don't get to.
The Isle is just WolfQuest with lizards. And that's not a good thing.
It's nice to finally see some sanity regarding the game.
These developers have had more than enough time and resources to make a decent, feature-complete game. The fact that this is what we currently have speaks incredibly poorly of their aptitude or management.
"If it's not fun, what's the point?"
The concept of the game is amazing, but the main problem I see is that they don’t incentivize how to play the game in any way, so people will just end up playing the most powerful things in the game and kill each other. I’ve honestly wanted to try making a game like the isle, keeping niches unique to each species but not using dinosaurs. I had 12 species each with something special about them that would hopefully make each one fun to play how it was intended. If I ever work on it hopefully it will turn out as good as I hope. But hopefully the isle gets better.
I've been playing The Isle since the beginning of 2022. Ever since Gateway arrived, Evrima hasn't been fun anymore, it's so bad that I'm already thinking about switching to Path of Titans.
dondi's like yanderedev if he was a jurassic park fanboy instead of a weeb
The funniest thing to me about Isle's realism and immersion is how unrealistic and minimally immersive it really is.
I think this was probably going to be the outcome when Dondi stated ‘Horror realism’ Survival first of all isn’t fun and horror makes it worse. Realism immersion is suppose to take the enjoyment out of the way and I think Dondi didn’t care in the first place. He’s got Primal carnage to make all the money in the world with so this project Dosent matter to him.
I truly think the only game actually doing it right is Path of Titans who are working to create AI dinosaurs who will actively perform the realistic gameplay mechanics instead of us. BUT it will entice players to join in the setting without having to harass other players to follow, and will be enjoyable no matter what cause it is open to choose and your never punished on your diet, location, what you hunt, how you hunt. Just keep you dino fed and alive.
The focus on immersion doesn't just feel worse, it's also LESS immersive. There are ways to incentivize these realistic scenarios but they dont seem to care about those more systemic immersion changes.
Honestly they need to get eldering and perks in so you want survive and keep your dino alive, rn its free for all bc people get bored *cough cough stego players*, stay alive is what the fun is supposed to be while also gaing more and more capabilities the longer you survive, the ideology is there but lack of playables and those system iteself are what's hurting them as of now, that also goes in hand with tweaking the dieting as you implement those systems, the game plan is there just gonna take time
What the devs (re: Dondi) don't realise is that players are sometimes better at enforcing "realism" than the games they play. For example, I frequent a semi-realistic Path of Titans server with player-made rules, and they never feel intrusive or menial to follow. If anything, it's more relaxed than officials.