Recent reviews by AlbinoRaven666

Cutting out the drama, and tackling this review as if I were tackling a new game(which it essentially is after the re-branding and game updates). If you’re a new person looking at this game, ignore the mass of bad reviews. They’re old players upset at a change in direction. If you’re looking at this game as someone who can’t miss the old game mechanics because you never played it before now, this is the review for you! So here are the pros and cons, in my opinion, of this game so far. It is “Early Access”, so please take that into account when considering your purchase.

Pros:
- New Map. Only a fourth of it is really open to the world as it is in development. But I think it’s beautiful. I know more POIs are to come as development continues, so apart from it getting a little dull quickly in low-pop servers, I really like the visual appearance of the new map. It also runs a lot better on my computer and I haven’t come across too many visually ridiculous graphical glitches.

- Strongholds. They offer 45ish static, flat, stone surfaces to build on across the map. There is a negative aspect to this that I will mention in cons, but other than those to be mentioned things I really like that they give you flat surfaces to build on. I really like that the building system allows for a lot more building customization. Four stories, and a wide plot, and a more “the sims” style structure placement system allows for a lot of creativity.

-More crafting options. Everything from the structures you can build to the decor you can create, there is a lot of crafting diversity. Not only can you have a cool layout for your stronghold you can decorate it too. Granted, a lot of cosmetic recipes are ones you have to buy via crates, so there is that aspect, but you can still be pretty creative with the things standard in game.

- More harvesting and looting options. You can grow crops, house bees, mine stone/copper/zinc, collect iron/springs/plastic/screws from cars, wood from trees and log piles, hunting, etc. in regards to stuff you actually mine or farm. Where you can find loot is pretty similar to before, everywhere, and the specific loot containers you can find around, such as coolers, ammo boxes, cabinets etc. are abundant. Plus, they have this loot cycle system thing going on. I’m not sure exactly how it works, but the loot seems pretty good this wipe! So far, anyway.

- “Marketplace”... So you start out in this military base that has a sort of merchant you can sell stuff to. Anything you find out in the world can be sold and everything has a value based on rarity. This is how you eventually make the money to buy your stronghold plot mentioned above. It’s not a real currency, just an in game element to make things a bit more difficult, or interesting, I think. Nothing is that unreasonable, cost and sale-value wise, and I think this opens up a pretty interesting concept. Especially since there seems to be a starter quest of some sort that I completely ignored.

- Item rarity tiers. Basically, everything you find out in the world has a very common to very rare sort of rarity system. Obviously, the rarer they are the harder they are to find, but also they are often more powerful/hold more/do more/etc., and valuable in sale. I like this aspect, some don’t.

- Weapons… There’s always the balance issues and stuff like that, but I don’t have a problem with any of the projectile weapons. Melee I’ll mention in cons.

Cons:
- Animal and Zombie AI is horrid. Still. Bears rarely attempt to attack you, even when you walk right passed them. They just rear up and roar. Very rarely, they will chase you..The scariest thing about them is the janky animation on their jaw. God, it’s like some sort of smile-dog stuff. But you can out run them and get out of their aggro range very quickly. Wolves act as wolves do, they attack if you get in their aggro range. But, they still run a bit weird, in a weird circle around you sometimes, and I still think they pop up way too often, especially at night. Rabbits; they do as expected; run and be food. Deer work mostly as expected, and run away from you, but sometimes their mechanics do weird things. They’ll stand up propped up weird on their hind legs, or end up on top of stuff. I’ve even seen them move without the running animations plenty of times.

- Zombies get their own AI bullet point, haha. I like that more of them show up when there are more people on the server… But they seem that more of them show up everywhere. What should happen, is that the zombies should gravitate in higher numbers to the areas of more activity. So, there would be more zombies around 2-5 people then there would be around 1. That’s not how it works. I generally play on low-pop servers because I like the sandbox survival aspect more than the combat aspect, and I can always tell when people log onto the server because upward of 20+ zombies will appear from nowhere around me over the span of 30 seconds. Not only is this super annoying, it’s just lazy mechanics. They also do, literally, pop up right up in front and behind you. They should strole to you from out of sight, not spawn right in front of you. Lazy. I like that they're a threat now, it’s not that, I just don’t like their spawning mechanics. And their movements get really erratic if you’re shooting at them from anything out of reach.

- Melee combat is horrid against AI. Sure, it is better in my opinion, than what it was. If i get a well aimed head shot with an axe or machete the zombie dies before it can hit me. But if I only get a body shot, or miss, and run passed the gigantic reach of the zombie it’s me from 10 feet away. I’m sure this is a latency issue, or a client-host sync issue, or something like that they just can’t get right yet.. But it’s pretty damn annoying and makes you think twice about engaging anything without a projectile weapon.

- No private servers.. Well, sort of. There are a few "whitelist" servers that have been privatized and approved for certain large parts of the community, but you can't set up your own server as a normal Just Survive gamer like you can in other sandbox survival games. It's very unfortunate, especially because they could charge for it and, heck, I'd pay for one if I could support it.

- Dev communication has always been… untrusted by the community. You can hardly blame them, really, Daybreak really has managed to jerk around those of us interested in the survival aspect of the game over kotk, allowed us to feel abandoned, shown we weren’t as important as kotk, and so on. They seem to be doing a much better job of communicating now that they can actually focus back on Just Survive, but they still push through live updates that the majority of the testing community has said isn’t ready yet, and so on and so forth. In fact, the vast swarm of negative reviews are due to game-changes the company seemed to think the community wanted that...they really didn’t. Luckily, I bought this thing for $20 ages ago, knew fully what to expect by that huge “early access” notice, and take everything created and stated by the devs with a grain of salt. I really enjoy this game, but it’s not the most I’ve ever been immersed in the community or development ever for a game.

- Community… I’d say stick to the reddit and try to find some chill people to play with. This game is one of those games that creates drama and angst, especially on the steam discussions, but the Reddit does a good job of limiting that sort of thing.

Anyway, that's it for now. My current viewpoint on the game. Hope it helps.

I love this game. Yes, it still needs work, it is still being updated by the devs and all that fun stuff... But I love a game where I can actually be a dinosaur, and still have being on the human side be rewarding too.