Why Do I Find The Center UNDERWHELMING? Map Review | Ark Ascended 

They should have gone to Hawaii and taken notes on what the terrain looks like on the Big Island when it comes to lava fields and volcanic terrain

The Centre 2: attack of the beige

I agree with you kiah. There is a lack of color variety, all colors look like sandrock, and we need more variety in terms of color palet.

Very dissatisfied with the center myself

22:57 All currently known maps are "free maps". But that's no reason not to put the effort into creating a great remastered map. Each map is one piece of the final ASA product.

The nostalgia can’t be the same as the first time around no matter how hard you try to chase that proverbial dragon

clearly this was released before it should have been. Some parts look worse than the original.

100% feel it's not complete... seems like they spent a lot of time on some places and rushed some to get it out. The Ice palace looks so bad.

I feel the map is only ideal for servers that are going to have loads of massive tribes, however despite being a large map it's also quite empty of dinosaurs. There's plenty of areas that's just barren of life that felt like there should have been something

Nobody seems to realize wildcard never made this now the 5 dollar shadow mane clone is the problem, i never cared for the og center and honestly so im not really that bothered about the changes especially lava island that biome always irritated me, I’m assuming this team rushing it was a lose lose situation, if they delayed it would cause a uproar, if it releases it’s underwhelming,

I’m genuinely looking forward to starting the map in a bit. I started late in ASE’s life and never took the time to play it. All of the unique terrain features look incredible and there’s so much land for how much ocean there is.. The size of it is a bit overwhelming especially since I want to do a no flier run (except going to floating island) but I’m excited. Love your content Kiah. Hope you enjoy your time with the map!

It's because it looks like they're re using assets looks incomplete. That's why it looks like some parts are out of place

Wildcard dropped the ball hard.

it looks like a drip sand castle you made on the beach as a kid

Underwhelmed because you can never go back to the feeling of the originals when they came out. I was excited to play ASA on release, then I did for like 2 weeks and was like "Meh, it's still the same game, just looks prettier". Once that feeling wore of I uninstalled. Them coming out with pay for play dinos doesn't help things either IMO.

Don’t spend any money on this game… total pay to win with that new dino. Even if they nerf it, it’s just so scummy! 🤦‍♂️

I agree,The map definitely needs loads of tlc and fixes. However as someone who is trying center for the first time i can say it looks really promising and has some amazing areas and features. One of the absolutely greatest features being the shasta and how amazing it is and how well wc did on mastering the code for the saddle to work! The saddle is amazing and so is the whale, I actually compared it to the moro livyatan for size with it almost being the same size as the livyatan. Honestly once wild card fixes and improves this map, it will be much more exciting and a true base/home map central (no pun intended) to all the others.

From what I remember, when they first delayed it they said the map was being re-done by a third party partner which always brings a mixed bag of results and explains somewhat the feeling of it being less of a remake and more of a remaster. I'm just wondering what went on when the original delay was because the map wasn't quite up to the expected standard and three months later it still feels like it was just pushed out in whatever state it happened to be in. Hopefully it will continue to update over time, though now it's been made a live map I can't see it changing too much because it could break people's stuff.

I've never felt so uninspired and uninterested in playing Ark, which is really quite sad. I've enjoying watching a few videos here and there, but I'm very underwhelmed with the map and I feel like I'm probably not going to play it.

Wildcard take their time: WILDCARD!!! WHY U SLOW???? Wildcard release an unfinished map due to pressure: WILDCARD TAKE YOUR DAMN TIME

Im seeing alot of people say its a copy and paste and that it look identical to ASE center, when a comon complaint is that they changed the volcano island to much to the point its unrecognizable. If thisnisnt a contradiction i dont know what is.

i think the map is fine, its a really well done map, unlike the island that had so many issues and floating rocks textures foliage and a mess. this map actually looks decent. but the issue with this release is the mess with the the staff communicating poorly. we were hyped about this months ago, then they lied and lied and the people got tired of waiting and bored, and waiting 8 months since release? the interest for asa dropped. scorched saw 20k players return and then a few weeks later ase takes over again. this map brought a meager 5k players back for now on steam. its fatigue from a company who hired people who clearly arent that good at video game development. if they all were hired a month prior to launch, that means theyve had 9+ months to learn ue and if after almost a year they still cant figure it out then its the devs.

As this is my first time playing center , I actually love it😂 but then again I just love all things ark

The magic has gone. I agree with a lot of your thoughts. But mostly it’s things like the nights were beautiful in ase with its little light wisps and lightening storms. The loftiness is gone. I feel that they just copied and pasted this map into a single biome Groundhog Day map. I loved this map and all I think it needed was to “fill in” some of the vast areas. And the underworld was totally missed. It could have been some kind of aberration style prelude. In a word… meh. Love you vids Kiah

Never played the map on ASE, but my first impression was pretty much in line with most of what u said (minus details like the cave and skull island and so as I had never seen em) The map looks insanely boring with the 1 color tone and what bothers me even more is the overusage of rocks/rocky terrain

Your review is more than fair. I'm so disappointed with the state this map is in. I have no idea why they would ship it like this other than keeping the release date and ensuring they'd have somewhere their new kitty can spawn before they made it available for sale 😕

They focus so much to release the flame shadowmane and they forgot to fix the map. 😂😂😂 Damn...

I felt underwhelmed playing the new center as well! They just didn’t do enough you can definitely tell it was rushed

Its ugly they are being lazy w the maps

The map overall looks good but I guess is thats maybe the creatures took priority in the last stretch to release and they never fixed the textures on stuff... it looks like they never turned down the gamma on some spots and yeah the volcano is too green it needs more igneous rock other than that alteast the ocean is still the highlight compared to ASE

I've never played the Center and I'm not looking forward to playing it. I'll give it a shot but I'm not impressed. It looks thrown together.

From now on, I will call the boss arena 'The Gazebo' 🤣

its official, im going back to ASE.

God damn i feel sorry for ascended simps 🤣

Enjoyed your video. It's amazing how easy the Center is compared to SE. I really enjoyed it in ASE but the cave spawns were insane on single player Xbox and were unplayable. I'm hoping it will be better but since I was crashing every 15 minuets on SE, I'm not too hopeful.

This was a nice well in depth review. This is my first time playing The Center and while there’s some gorgeous areas aside from the horrible lag and frame rate dropping the map feels kind of rushed like they just wanted to get it out which I understand given it had a set back and while there is a patch coming which is good but I genuinely wish they didn’t rush it for the sake to just get the map out

My RX 580 graphics card doesn't like ASA, so I'm resigned to watching others in ASA but so far, Center has disappointed. that is not penguin palace, it's a crime scene.

I agree with most of your points, except for the skull island, I prefer the ASE skull island with its lava, and the ability to go inside this one seems like a copy of the skulls in the forglar mod map

I never played The Center on ASE so I cannot comment on the differences. Also I am still bobing on a beach in ASA The Center. But after watching you're video makes me wonder how much consumer input Wild Card gets when developing. Rag and Lost Island are the goto for my kids and me. Currently we play through a nitrado server and just yesterday moved it from scorched to center. Day 1 is fun, but my son loved ASE center and is a bit saddened with this version.

the pyromaine is half the price of my cigs at 5 bucks and that makes you sad? Any cheaper and we're expecting slavery. They should be charging for these maps and any other content instead of the trickle of funds they have to pay devs that see this and go "fuck that Im just going to copy and paste." I literally buy copies of this game for friends that are interested like its a go-fund-me because I want this company to last until at least aberration. We have to stop turning our nose up at supporting what we love else we get that same lack of love back. 35 bucks in totally going to put out reskins as much as possible. They were charging every map for building from the ground up. They arent charging that anymore so I am getting what I expect everytime I see something that "is just another reskin". Conclusion: I got exactly what I think I paid for so Im not dissapointed and enjoy it for what that is. Sad it doesnt cost more.

I agree wiyh you Kiah! I went into the Center with some optimism due to UE5, just to be disappointed. I played it on ASE and was not a fan then and I'm less of a fan now! I think I will pass on this map and play something else. Im really frustrated with WC and pay walls. Thanks Kiah. Your review is spot on!

It's simple really; the map was never great to begin with and people hyped it up like it was the best and that it would get this huge overhaul. None of these ideas came from WC, people made it up themselves and are paying for convincing themselves of it now. Center was always Island 2.0 at best but with less to do.

A rushed job. Wildcard still haven't learnt their lesson.

Yeah first review myself was disappointing. All the same trees and rocks. Rock colours all the same. Snow biom is like a spring melt. Ice castle is barren. Boss arena was a total L , was such a unique arena. On and on..

The maps are not free. We all had to pay for the game again with all the maps to be moved to UE5. They are paid for content now with more pay walled DLC. It's one thing having paid mods, but why is there now dinos in the paid for game that we can't interact with unless you open your wallet again....

So they released the next map and it's a buggy mess, they still haven't even fixed the caves in scorched her I can't even go into them. I just get a giant magenta beam of light covering my entire screen and same thing with the dragon den. I'm just kind of done with Ark again It's so disappointing that they just keep doing the same bullshit..

Definitely a lot of brown in this map. Love the overall look of the ice palace but the brown rocks and cliffs that intersect with it look awful. I myself am not a fan of the shasta... it aggros everything. Can't even go a few yards without something attacking even at the surface... the ice palace was going to be my final resting place for all the maps and just cluster everything back here but i just dont like the look of it at the moment.

Center is probably the map I played the most on ASE but the lack of green and over abundance of this sandstone lowers my enthusiasm to play this updated version. The green ob area looks worse than before. Doubt they’ll change the colors for this map only hope they don’t use this same rock texture for future maps. Also hope they allow for some areas to remain open and not add so many trees like they did to the lava island to the highlands on Rag.

At the end of the day we got a new island had they spent any more time on it we probably would have not got it or at least two more months a cut and paste gave us a lion and called it good

6:10 they promised the map in feb, then promised again on another date. so the certification of what we got was probably the version we got and then had to wait till certification. if they didn't get the certification it be put back on the back burner and pissed a lot of people off. yeah, you might be happy to wait little longer, but you would still probably be mad at the failed promises once again like a lot of other people, and content creators. the main problem i see is they are too busy focusing on modders, and not even focusing on their own portion. even lending maps our for other partnered studios to work on. heck the mentioned scorched wasn't even a finished map when it came out and so wasn't the other map that came with it. it was release early to pay someones debt for breaking a contract clause. i'm disappoint with the map as well but i am excited to play it despited the meshes, unfinished spots, there is a part underwater where it teleports you back on top. etc. the pyromane is fine to me. just another shadowmane variant of the fire subclass. but feel it should been a scorched earth exclusive rather than the center. 70% water map and fire type tame that is weak to basically mammoths and water areas, managarmmr and crystal wyvern when they come out in the future. the map does need a lot of fixing. i think the volcanic island is fine. think of it as a pre-erupted area. sorry for big comment.

Can they fix the caves that we can't go into in scorched Earth because I'm blinded by magenta across my entire screen before you release the next map that everyone's disappointed with..

The best creature yo tame the Pyro is the Mammoth. It can extinguish the kitty with it's water spray. Then tank the hits to deal damage. Also a debuff to fire attacks because it has fur.

Wildcard continually dropping the ball. Rushing maps because they need money. Creating another dlc, this time an op pet that kills pvp unless you pay them 5 dollars. The water looks great because it has nothing to do with wildcard so it actually works. They use fluidninja so they literally did nothing but click a few buttons and ocean is there and perfect. The reason you know that is true is go under the ocean and see the lack of quality given to another Underwater biome. And holes in the mesh, way worse than before. They are shit.

HARD agree as an OG veteran myself. Center "remastered" is just...the same map. Frankly i cant even tell the difference and i have 2k hrs on OG Center. And the grubby visuals of the Pyromane combined with the underwhelming map just leave me feeling...meh. Wildcard had MONTHS of delay and THIS is the final result?? Island is cool and i am happy to remain there until Ab.

The center was always a mid map even on ase. Never cared for playing on it. Aberration and ragnarok are the absolute best imo.

Playing on a center expire in Aug server. Best part is the lag is better compared to the overbuilt and over tame populated island maps.

I thought it looked great until I looked around more and found a buggy mess and alot didnt play it on PS too many crashes so its not that bad for us, but I see your point very much the same everywhere I was super excited to get on PvP only to see the huge meshholes

its funny when taking down trees with a tame how they spasm out as they fall to the ground, but by hand they are fine. or trees that you can't even harvest.

To me is the fact that the lighting is so bad and texture on ps5 the island looks way much better

Idk man ASE center looked better imo might be blinded by nostalgia

Thanks Kiah, very balanced impressions.

its a copy and paste with micro transactions to make more money ! not much love put into this map from what ive seen apart from the new creatures and caves

From what you showed of the boss areana it makes me wana tame spinos for the boss instead of rexs or sloths this go for it

I think it's an awsome map

Feels rushed and lazily made. Ocean is so blank on the edges that look bad. Not even a bottom. Winter biome, really. The original was blah and they left it that way. For the most part it feels underwhelming because I played extremely well made mods, even unfinished. Foglar and Amissa blow this away.

wildcard revamped map has killed lots of fun, island with overplanted tree, SE with less desert, Center with not so center anymore.. not to count lots of unique and fun stuff they removed... anyway, as we know wc loves to work on unnecessary stuffs while substantial things keep untouched

Only sandstone

I know it's early access but every map has had problems on release day. Parts of scorched earth have mesh hole that you can get trapped in. The island had your dinos falling through the ground. I like content but take more time. Make sure everything works properly. It would be appreciated.

At first, I didnt like Volcano Island either, but the more I explored, I realized they were going for a more "Skull island" look. From King Kong. After that, I started to enjoy it more.

It's not the island that's about the only opinion I have on it. So tired of the island and looking forward to moving to the center for better resource collection. The textures and portions of the ocean "blue screen bottoms near water falls" are a mess though. Also, bottom saddle for the whale really just caused me to write it off but that's just me.

question ... i play on ps5 and there was a new mod i downloaded it ... shut my ps5 down went to do some adulting come back and cant find the mod ... would u by chance have a clue what might have happened? thx for the help

I’ve never played the center on ASE so idk what to expect

if this is what the center looks like, i fear for Aberration...

you are a pve bob

I'd like to see if any of you do better. I'm not a game designer, but I can assume it's hard. It's a damn good game, and I appreciate the time they put into to make it better. I'm just saying.

I am of two minds about the new Center. If you compare the two, there are improvements in some areas, but they ruined it in others. There are areas i have noticed where it seems like the landscape is incomplete (no textures on some flat areas). Skull island makeover looks good, but doesn't look as imposing to me now. The map just feels incomplete to me... I hope they roll out some patches to fix it. But this IS WC we are talking about.