I'm the project lead over on Path of Titans, and also worked on The Isle for a few years too. This was a really cathartic video! Watched it with Matt. Thanks for covering this and for the shout-out! :)
My partner just told me you commented and I nearly had a stroke! Thank you for everything you and Matt do for your community, my partner and I love collecting shells on the coasts of Path of Titans. What you've made has truly been a love letter to all of us dinosaur lovers. Glad you liked the video!
@@Zenny-TH-cam That's so great to hear. Really happy to know that you've been enjoying Path of Titans. I'll be sure to let the rest of the team know too!
can pot have a no need to quest style growth server? i like POT but the questing just totally and utterly turns me off. i just think to myself "wtf am i playing". i say this as one of many that wont play POT cos the questing
@@bestaround3323 50/50. Some people agree. Some people came to troll, alot of people came to defend the devs. Everyone pretty much had there own opinion, besides like a few people who would sacrifice there life for the devs lol.
Nine years. I have been following this game, for NINE YEARS. I was a kid when this game came out, absolutely mesmerized by the original map, the sounds, the environment, even though in the end all it was really was just a proof of concept and dinosaurs. I was there for when the very first new dinosaur was added - Therizinosaurus, I witnessed it absolutely massacre any Rex that looked at it, I was there for V2, HQ-Test, TestLevel deathmatch servers, Diabloceratops' release, Maiasaura's release, the very first Allopocalypse, the first round of public Quetz testing, the very first time a Hypo Rex was seen on servers, Levia Draconia skins, Jiggy/ZombieSaurian skins, the rise of modding and fall of modding, Rex's first facelift, V3's development and later abandonment, the first round of human testing, the second round of human testing. I have seen so many versions of this game come and go in nine years, so many questionable balance changes and additions or ideas thrown at the wall. So many concepts that were teased years ago that simply never saw the light of day (like humans). To say I have invested time and trust into this game, is a grave understatement. Nine years later, 1500 hours logged on Steam, and I confidently tell people not to play The Isle. I tell them of the game's horrible balance philosophy by typically infantilizing herbivores as simply "food" for the carnivores, I tell them of the game's insistence on "realism" in an overarching world and setting that defies it, I tell them of the horrific dramas and controversies surrounding the developers throughout the years, from the slander campaigns of ex-devs and rival game projects, to harboring and protecting criminal activity, to the lead dev's seeming insistence to trample all over his team's work by leaving for months and returning to derail any progress they've made with ludicrous demands. Nine years deep, nine years too late to get a refund or take back any time I've put into this game. Do I have regrets? A lot, mostly lamenting what this game COULD be under proper management and a lead that doesn't hate themselves, their project and everyone else around it. In spite of all that, I don't regret buying that game I fell in love with nine years ago. What I do regret, is seeing how far it's fallen since, and the unwavering disappointment I feel every time it finds a way to dig that hole deeper. When I saw the trailer of EVRIMA, it spawned a feeling in me for The Isle I hadn't felt in a long time. True to its name, Hope. I saw hope that after all these years of floundering around, jingling keys and jumping from lilypad to lilypad HOPING that the next one can still support a very old, very fat frog's weight, that these devs will have finally learned to swim. And when it came out, there was a resounding hollowness in me. I thought that maybe they were just rushed to meet player expectation, and that maybe, eventually, it would improve and shape up to be something resembling that trailer that filled the game with a newfound sense of direction and promise. That hollowness never left, and it follows me every time I even think about The Isle. I could rant for hours about the issues this game has, I HAVE ranted, but it's come to a point where I have said all I possibly can, felt all I'm able to, and now only watch the project's endless development - the perpetual moving of the goalpost with no real end in sight - with a jaded, tired point of view. I do not recommend that anyone play The Isle. It's a game reflective of its creator - the illusion of vision and promise, spoken through clenched teeth of a product that hates you for playing it. To anyone who read this long tangent of a weary, old living fossil in this genre, thank you for sticking around and hearing my thoughts. This game broke my heart, and I see it as only fitting to be there to see its fall, as I was there to see its rise.
i have been here for 10 now 💀, and i loved the community during the last stages of legacy but can no longer play because it isnt fun and takes too long. "fun isnt fun anymore" - someone. i just want a fun dino/surv game and out of the 3 options, none of them are really good.
been there for 10 too by now with 3k (4k if we count alt accounts) hours. I remember the time before legacy and all that stuff and I do still hold hope for Evrima, its starting to actually look like a game. That being said I never saw the game as "life destroying", it honestly got me to where I am now as I've met a lot of wonderful people on it with whom I still play games to this day. The games is simply one that isnt catered to a wide mass which is okay. That being said the devs are absolutely horrendous, powertripping beings and covering up what happened with Paradymshift and so much more is unexcusable. They gaslight, guilt trip and delete old sources just so they can be "in the right", one of the worst dev teams I've seen so far with only a few "human" devs in that mess. The Isle is a mess of a game starting from the very first string of code until recently. It used to be meant as a dino shooter similar to Primal carnage (the game Dondi was from) but shifted rapidly. that being said do what you want but be prepared to not have fun on the game for a good while. The Isle is one of these games where you need to be incredibly skilled to have fun (or just pick Deino or Stego, I guess).
Could not have said it better myself it’s sad to see the game turn into what it has become I was with it since the week of launch and I have nothing but a brimming hatred for the state of the game after everything
Play tester No 7. here. I want it known officially, that a solid 10 minutes were spent drifting my dinosaur. But that also a lot struggling did take place. We really were given no direction unless we asked for it, i know for a fact the play testers really tried everything to play the game properly, and we really had no idea what each other had done until after our playthrough. Also @Zenny is a beast.
The fact that Dondi ruins the every game he works on because of him simping on women is so funny to me, it's the same reason why he ruined Primal Carnage back in 2013.
Dondi defended a convicted kiddler and slandered his co-founder for telling his spouse he was cheating, among other documented bouts of bad character pointed out in this video. No game associated with him is ever going to draw a large crowd anymore simply because people see him as a bad person they shouldn't support by playing his game. I took my resources elsewhere.
@@Native_CreationOk but theyve been working on this game for over 10 years now.. even after abandoning the old version and starting from scratch, they're still going for it... these devs they may be slow and occasionaly have strange ideas but i think they will get evrima into good shape at least even if it takes them another 10 years
I met my now wife playing Legacy Isle several years ago. It pains me to see the state of the development and how much Dondi has absolutely alienated his loyal players and coworkers alike. Her and I both jumped over to Path of Titans not knowing who the lead developer was, knowing who he is now brings a huge smile to my face. Great video Zenny. More than earned my sub.
@@Icy_815 We were both Gigas. I was hunting as a full adult out near lighthouse, heard some movement around the hill and went to investigate. Found a group of 3 Juvie Gigas trying to survive in a remote location. She saw me running up and begged me not to eat them in local chat. I contemplated, and agreed not to eat them. I then spent the evening helping them grow to adult. This was on the river den server. Not sure if it's still around or not.
"The isle is the worst early access game, AND I CAN PROVE IT!!!!" Me: "I mean, i beleive you. Didnt have to do all this work for lil ol me, but im flattered anywho."
The funny thing is, the title is so on point I knew it had to be someone who was a fan that made the video. The community has such a love hate relationship with the isle.
That first 10 seconds of the video was a bloody nightmare! The thumbnail was made in photoshop by me, and trying to translate all those assets into blender for that scene was evil!
Let it be known that after the Paradym Incident the devs said they’d take a step back, as would Dondi, and they’d better their behavior. They did….for a few months. Now we’re back to the status quo of the developers acting like they’re better than everyone and Dondi continuing to be a complete manchild. The Isle is doomed to fail because they don’t learn from their mistakes.
Well I think a big part of it as well is the fact that there're rarely repercussions, Isle players already have to trudge through heaps of bullshit just in order to end up speaking to the devs so by that point they basically just can't be bothered (This is not to blame the fans though, after all this is only a problem because of how the devs structured the game)
Why am I just seeing a bunch of hatred even... don't play the game then. You wasted your $20 at the beginning. Investor my ass. Us who stay will possibly get a good outcome. Getting nothing but a good journey out of it is good enough for me. A project is art. You are rejecting this art.
35:40 - Fun fact: not even that, the stamina regenerates faster the longer you are laying down, so if you stood up to a sound and sat back down, it goes back to that speed it was regenerating at, meaning it wants the players to commit to resting, which again, no indicators or anything to help out the beginner players for :(
Still a worthless overcomplicated system that didn't need to be implemented. They constantly waste thousands of hours from their dev team to make mechanics like this that everyone HATES
@@tarkelson2457 i think it was done to try to make people manage their stam during combat more thoughtfully? like prevent people from playing recklessly, sitting for 3 seconds, then getting back into the fight? so.. basically once again trying to prevent fun for the sake of """"realism"""" lmao. i think their pursuit of realism really gets in the way of a lot of mechanics. they want everyone to play ONE way; like a real ass animal, no matter what that takes. they have a big fuckoff map because "animals don't encounter each other constantly, if you want to see dinosaurs all the time go play ark." which.. yes, real animals are not always in deathmatch mode and taking reckless risks for meaningless combat. that is technically correct. but it's not *fun.* i was working on another point but then got distracted because i realized they don't even necessarily want herbivores to play realistic, they want them to play like ai. they are obsessed with forcing herbi players to wander the map consistently, because that's what ai should be doing in order to be findable by carnis. having waypoints for ai to path towards (migration zones) makes sense. they don't care about how tremendously unfun it is to be restricted to tiny pockets of the map for however long until the mz changes, because the herbi's fun isn't a factor when it's ai. the fact that 90% of the map is unplayable for herbis doesn't matter because it's ai that exists for carnis to find. in no way whatsoever are herbis designed with a player's fun in mind. jesus fucking christ.
@mistermuse9543 wow that was long, but I agree. The game is made to be as miserable as possible. Every second in the game is agonizing, with no intuitive mechanics. We learned that dondi is a pathetic incel (no surprise there) which really explains the overall lack of quality in every aspect of the game. He cares more for his ego than anything else. He's killed like 5 games singlehandedly. He should not be in charge. I would giggle in joy of he went bankrupt and had to sell the isle
@@tarkelson2457 i hope it soon! sell the isle to some people who put the game before Ego please. Dondi logic is, U LIKE MY NEW FEATURE ? NO ? YES ? IF U LIKE IT I REMOVE IF U DONT I KEEP IT!
hey. Funfact: The "Hope" trailer was for a map called Isla Sparo. It was OVER TWO HUNDRED SQUARE MILES IN SIZE and the devs realized they wasted all their time on that and quickly rushed to make spiro before Evrima released.
another thing I'd like to note is that low player counts make up one a quarter of the problem. The lack of AI/NPCs is a big one. Many survival games whether it be DayZ or Ark have NPCs that serve specific purposes and guarantee that if you are not engaged in PvP at the moment, there's always the chance of PvE interactions. The Isle back when Evrima started hired on a man called Amar0k who's sole purpose what to make AI for the game. Too bad the planned roster has over 60 species so there's not much room for new AI only dinosaurs, which is especially frustrating given the fact many of the smaller animals planned would work well as AI. So the dev team's solution? Try to make the AI as intelligent as the players. A goal that is absolutely asinine for the resources they have. Because of this goal, they've been struggling to add anything to the game that does more than simply attack you, and due to their lack of care when it comes to optimization, any AI they bring in usually is taken out or gets lowered spawn rates soon after, making them a saving grace for only a handful of lucky players. They do not seem to understand AI can be simple and still effective, larger games like RdR2 and the Monster Hunter series has creature AI that is far more simplistic under the hood than what the isle wants to achieve. And yet the animals in those games serve their purpose and feel like a part of the world despite the fact. This is a problem with a lot of these "Creature sims" I've noticed. They all want to make experiences first, and video games second. They think pretty graphics and big plans with nothing to show are enough to get the ball rolling, and sadly these sub-genre of survival games has garnered a fan base simple-minded enough to be content with the bare minimum. One man even made thousands out of taking unreal asset store models walk in a desert. An event many say they learned from but many game still do similar things. "Untamed" gained funding through a half-baked tech demo with nothing but skin customization and walking. "The Depths" gained funding for the same thing but with swimming (funnily enough the dev of that project was a business major that knew the fan base were a bunch of suckers and just ran with the money soon after). It's a whole mess. TLDR: The devs tried to make a mountain out of a molehill when it comes to AI and that's why players have to rely almost entirely on other players being around to survive. A problem that plagues a majority of creature games. PS: Humans were planned from the start, Go look into their old kickstarter and you'll a far different and honestly more fun-sounding game than what we have now. 3 human factions, 3 carnivores.
The actual playable part of spiro was also only like a small chunk of the map, too, which absolutely fucked with the game performance bc your PC would be loading in a bunch of extra terrain you didn't even get to explore in-game.
@@IcedLance That's why i said best idea in the wrong hands. With anyone else more competent and with more self controle, It might have been one of the greatest game of the decade...
Dondi is by far the biggest piece of trash in the gaming industry. He's the reason why this game has been a failure for so long. He has single-handedly banned myself and over 200 of my friends from the Discord server for this game and from the steam forums permanently because he didn't like the fact that everyone was criticizing his game and his bad decisions. Also if you are dumb enough to write a negative review on his game he will permanently ban you
He is also (allegedly) an open sociopath whom has repeatedly abused minors, including manipulating them towards enacting on thoughts of suicide, as well as abusing employee members to tears both in discord meeting calls and in person. Just worth the addendum. Plus the game is unreal store asset flips with a few pretty hand made dino’s. (Allegedly).
Never good when a game dev films and uploads videos of himself killing players in the game and calling them trash and noobs. As well as actively attacking players and servers (such as players that “carebear” or rp / just hang out all together) just because he sees it as “not playing the game right” aka not how he wants everyone to play the game. Then putting them on blast on the games discussion forums. He basically fulled a KOSing troll gamer toxic community.
Dondi isn’t the greatest but you quite literally don’t acknowledge the work they put into this game and have no ideas how it works and you wanting 300-500 Players in a single server was enough to give it away,I don’t think you deserved to be banned for criticism but your “criticism” is just invalid negativity.
@ Are you ignorant on how servers work? DO you not realize that plenty of games have done hundreds and even thousands of players on a single server? It's not that hard to do. MMO's do it all the time. Planetside 2 is an FPS game that has hundreds of players per server. A ton of games have done this in the past. You should do some research and educate yourself before you post online and show your ignorance. I hope you realize that you can run a cluster of servers together that act as 1 single server. This is how you get hundreds of players on 1 "server" Not hard to do. Just expensive and takes knowledge and expertise. Something Dondi and his crew do not have.
@ it’s not about the isles being able to get up to 500 players it’s the fact that 500 players if far to many for the map,it shouldn’t be easy to find players you should have to actually look around.
I've never heard of this game, but learning about how a developer has a good thing going and fucks it up because they add change for change's sake is far too common in the games industry, along with treating your workers like garbage. Thanks for telling me about your favorite dinosaur game that's actively ruining your life Zenny, and I'm looking forward to Algorithm!
That's a big reason I try to stay away from live service titles or competitive games. The players are treated like guinea pigs and are only considered in data sheets, and there's always a change in the meta or something in the game that's been good. I am heavily resistant to change, especially if it's for the worse, so massive respect to players with such strong passion and dedication to stick around. I'm sad to see The Isle being changed from a great game, to its own worst enemy.
Fun fact Alyssa, the old head dev was a pedophile and the current dev defends him for being one. Meaning, beyond reasonable doubt, he also grooms minors
I'm upset that the dirtbag getting totally wrecked and/or owned at the end of the story was by.... keeping millions of dollars. Other guy should sue him for slander, if just for fun.
There's one thing you haven't touched on in this video: Hackers. In an old collab with Gaming Beaver, Dondi mentioned that Chinese players buy multiple copies to rotate dinos on a single server. This created a problem with people puppeting a utah and rex on the same server at the same time. When Evrima released, hacking exploded, with almost all reports pointing to Chinese usernames or Chinese chat messages. Coincidentally the devs remain offline until the hackers leave, with reporters sometimes banned after. Since Gateway dropped, most Chinese players returned to Legacy, and looking at Legacy's server browser shows 2,000+ Chinese bots stuffed into full servers ($40K in game sales right there). Dondi makes big money on hackers, so the dev policy is to ignore/silence reports of hacking.
Honestly, the concept of hunting down humans in the dark with humans garbage ability to see in the dark, sounds hilarious and would be great….. for a diferent game
I will disagree on your point of spiro being a good map: but its not for the reasons you listed; The spiro map we got in the game was only a PART of spiro- in fact, it was only a 1/4 of the full map!!! The original vision for spiro was SO large that the isle devs contacted Epic games (since the isle uses unreal engine) to see how they could get it to work and Epic basically responded with a "wtf are you guys doing, that map is too big". IMAGINE the full spiro map with only 100 players. The Spiro we got in game STILL HAS TO RENDER THE FULL SPIRO MAP and that greatly hindered its performance
@@Zenny-TH-cam The entire dev cycle since the early days has been like this- biting off more than they can chew. Over 60 planned species of dinosaurs- Strains (mutant dinosaurs), Humans AND mutant humans, talk about feature creep. The game has some really great moments and I've made some great online friends via it but the development drama and general bullshittery is never ending. You could honestly yap for 3 hours just talking the development side of things alone: been playing and following since 2016, even got to be part of QA during the deathlyrage era: They would patch things and tell you to find an amount of bugs; if you didn't do enough bug reports you'd get straight up kicked- no patch notes or heads up what they were changing btw (I've heard current QA is much the same so make of that what you will). The isle is easily the best 15 buck train wreck I've had the privilege to watch and be a part of for what thats worth.
Dondi is an absolute moron. I've been screaming this at the top of my lungs for years that the maps are 10 times too big for 100 players. Dondi refuses to listen.
@@Gavincie y'know, some of this reminds me vaguely of star citizen, mostly the feature creep bit, certainly the "takes forever to make the damn game already." and some out of game drama. but i think the isle largely has it beat.
@@kenshinhimura9387YOU cannot speak on this as you want 300-500 players and that shows you clearly don’t know how things are,150-200 is more manageable you shouldn’t be finding players every time you turn a corner
The funniest part about getting lost on the map - top right, you can copy and paste your coordinates into online maps. The devs KNOW people have made maps that will read grid coords accurately, so they let you COPY yours. Instead of just GIVING you a map, you have to use an online one, and do work. In terms of food/resources, The server I play on, Petit Pieds, has a 240 player count and population control. If a lot of one dinosaur gets picked, that specie gets locked until some of them die or log out. This helps keep balance. This is achieved through what the server's owner has put in/chosen on the backend, and should really be handled by the game normally
@@snakycake4790 discounting the immediate rudeness... Who in this thread said that they did it by accident? O.o? Like, did you imagine that just so you could be angry at someone?
God forbid you mention how a map might be useful for players/is ALREADY being used by players in a roundabout way on the discord either, the players there are so vitriolic and wont allow any criticism or suggestions that the game might not be absolutely amazing and I found out that maps are an especially sore spot when it comes to that.
At 46:32 I was grimacing, expecting some unwarranted commentary about how the small tiers are boring. I was surprised you actually voiced one of the valid critiques against their existence, then specified how great their mechanics are in a vacuum. I really liked the new-player-unfriendly segment as well. I can't really picture just how many users are being driven away by the lack of guidance.
I was one of those players. I was brought in by a friend who basically taught me how to play and had fun in the first Evrima map. We spawned as Deinos and i got canni'd 5 minute of gameplay in... alright sure. Then i met some peoples who really made my life better overall which made The Isles fun and a good memory.... despite being a literal wasabi laced cactus.
See, my assumption was small dinos would exist predominantly where baby carnos spawn: the perfect size prey for baby big bois who cannot take on anything bigger. I was pretty peeved to find that wasn't the case at all.
51:50 "the most innovative survival game on the market of all time" This game offers the absolutely bare minimum that I expect from a survival game. Food, water, stamina, health, get stronger with time and "don't die". How is this innovative? Have you seen Green Hell? Or do you mean it's the best dino game on the market? It may have been the first Dino game of it's kind but it aged poorly. All it's competitors, even the eyesore Beasts of Bermuda, has more mechanics, maps and dinosaurs. At this point, I'd say Path of Titans wins this round by miles. 52:16 humans and monsters and whatnot have been "teased" since literally launch. Considering 9 years passed, I highly doubt it will ever come.
You know as a content creator for dinosaur games. It hurts to find out that Dondi also ruined other dinosaur games as well. One of which being Primal Carnage. Hence why Primal Carnage Extinction became a thing all Thanks to his unexperienced coding at the time.
Try telling the paleontologist/dino fans not to play a game about dinosaurs is like telling a Airforce Cadet you can watch but not fly aircraft. Note: I have watched the whole video, I just thought that part was funny.
So the gameplay loop is as follows: 1. Spawn 2. Look at some symbols 3. Assume the symbols are helpful and go to them using the smelling system or the compass 4. Get to the location and there's nothing there
@@Z123RE You shouldn't have to watch videos just to have a CHANCE at playing the game tho, that's the problem and like Zenny said, even when one of the players did EVERYTHING RIGHT according to the game, there was no food and he starved TWICE. When the base idea of your game cant even function correctly to give players the tiniest chance and figuring things out on their own, the game becomes a slog and is poorly made.
The Isle is a fascinating case study in very cool game concepts being utterly wrecked by a wacko developer. Thanks for taking the time to look at it. For anybody interested in more, I highly recommend Sovietwomble's video essay on survival games, which also looks very closely at The Isle.
Did I just watch an hour long video about a video game I've never heard about, got the urge to play it halfway through, only to lose it all in the end? Yup. Thanks!
The new stamina system is the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen. It seems really unintuitive. I like the idea of a deep stamina system, walking regenerates slowly, standing still increases the regeneration, and laying down increases it even more. That’s cool, then they had to make it EVEN MORE complicated.
Hey! I'm the founder of the Isle Wikia (or Isle Fandom), and I want to share my experience playing this game since 2016-2018... Dondi: I have nothing good to say. Dondi has always been a POS to me and others for no reason. And no, I did nothing to warrant his toxicity. This stems from simply asking questions and making a single joke on his twitch streams not even lying!!! Incident 1: I asked whether Carcharodontosaurus would be a reskin/model for Giga...how did Dondi reply? Oh...he had his Twitch moderator ban me for a few hours. (As someone who owns multiple wikis, getting accurate information is my main focus.) Incident 2: For some reason, certain Isle modders didn’t like me. This happened in Dondi’s personal Discord (which has since been deleted, if I remember correctly). They severely vandalized the wiki, insulted and belittled me, and Dondi did absolutely nothing to stop them. He just let it happen, and yes, he even seen it during this time and allowed the harassment. Incident 3/Final Straw: On Twitch again, I made an obvious joke about Friday the 13th: The Game being better than GTA 5. Once again, he had his moderator ban me for a few hours. (For the record, I do love F13 more than GTA 5, but it was still just a joke.) Then, live during that same Twitch session, he unfriended me and others on Steam. I have no good experiences with Dondi whatsoever. If you weren’t Anthomnia, yeah, that big Isle TH-camr, or even a celebrity, you meant nothing to him or his business. I haven’t played The Isle since then. When I tried again in 2024, I couldn’t even play because my drivers were outdated. I was barely editing the wiki for years because of how I felt about him. I left most of the work to other editors, but mainly for my Admins and I want to thank that fellow admin for stepping up when I wasnt. The Devs: Punchpacket, Chimichanga, DeathlyRage, Jiggy, Tapwing, Sledge, Levia Draconia, and Mar were the better part of the community from my experience but having Dondi attached had made me not wanna support him and his game, but these devs, I personally named actually answered my questions and never treated me like a nuisance. They helped me in big and small ways be it with trivial or big information, and I truly thank them for that. Some are former devs now, which they deserve a better boss, I want to staye especially with PunchPacket, he helped me when I got into a discussion with someone else in like 2017 about Rex having scales or feathers, the guy got instantly toxic and started to insult me, most members were confused like I was to why the guy was being toxic, the discord mod was having a power trip, and banned me, now fast way forward years later and Punchpacket unbanned when I told him the situation upon asking about something else and seen it didn't make sense to even ban me so he unbanned me. Wiki Section on Former Devs: I didn’t even know someone had edited that information on the wiki. I’ve corrected it all! Thanks, Zenny, for pointing it out! Question 1: Do I play Path of Titans? Answer: Hell yes, I do! I support Matt (Deathly) and Jiggy faithfully. I’ve been a backer, and bought it twice on PlayStation and on PC, and will soon get it on Xbox that should tell you a lot!!! Overall, amazing video!! Zenny!!
Thank you so much for sharing your experience! and its wonderful to hear that the wiki has been fixed up a little. you worked so hard on that wiki and it shows!
If Dondi were to watch this video, I can guarantee he would say, "Nah, this argument is invalid. You're just saying it because you have nothing else to do in MY game and you all have a skill issue!"
38:39: The Path of Titans experience. There's a hell of a lot left to be desired with Gondwa's map design and natural player interaction spots. Fantastic video though.
Nesting in current Isle vs pre Evrima Isle is to me the core reason community is practically non-existent in modern day Isle. In Legacy you had nesting hotspots vs general hotspots, closed off nesting sites from hotspots, massive herds and packs that would track those herds and pick off those who strayed or non-survival babies, herds that would naturally migrate when food bushes ran out and it hadnt rained in hours (when food would respawn outside of a server reset) and you would constantly see packs with juvies or fresh adults from their own nesting spots, it was a player created natural ecosystem. You didn't have to rely on finding a player who would stay on long enough to want to nest or stay the whole time, you didnt have cannibal herbivores making it impossible to nest or even grow, and you didnt have food at specific locations for random intervals across the map. The whole concept of nesting was to bring people together to work together to survive, now its trying to be that while removing all forms of access to the general player. You even have to have a CODE just to REQUEST a egg. How the hell is someone supposed to nest with no in game broadcasting chat and have to use third party apps to give the code out???
Hey man just letting you know you can set the eggs to "public" in the nest tab, which will allow any player in the character selection screen to select your nest and be hatched
This spells out exactly what I miss from legacy, sure there were issues but I dislike the current migration system because it never feels like that original player made decision to move out of necessity, I miss the giant herb migrations from rapids to twins.
this was absolutely brilliant. Lowkey "if Hbomberguy made a video on The Isle" kinda vibe. edit: apparently comparing a video-essayist to hbomberguy is an insult now...? idk what I missed. I like hbomberguy's videos, so it wasn't intended as an insult. (also they literally have exactly the same "I'm gonna go crazy over this but ohhhh just you wait" schtick, so... not backing down from the comparison)
Literally! By far the best isle critique video I've seen in a WHILE. Deleted the isle a month ago and am intending to keep it that way UNLESS it somehow becomes decent, or when new loadable arrive and I'll mess around with them for a bit
Bro i didnt even felt it was an hour until i saw your comment. Everypoint and criticism stuck to me as an isle player and PoT also. It was a great video
Bro all the glitchy cuts had me genuinely horrified. My GPU is on the frits, and I was afraid playing this vid while gaming was its nail in the coffin.
I have over 3k hours on The Isle Legacy. I decided to give Gateway a try without knowing what systems are implemented. It felt like a different game completely, and i hated almost every second of trying to find food as a carni
POT also allows for Mod support, which in turn helps keep interest in the game. While Dondi refuses it in The Isle because it doesn't align with his vision; a vision that is always forced on his community whether they like it or not because its what HE wants, not what the players want.
That's why The Isle will fail as a game and why it has never been able to get back to it's peak player count of 12k players which is not a lot of players for an online game.
The Mobs aren't that good. The design and animations are good. But the balancing in combat is terrible. Some molded dinos can be way more op then they should be. Or weaker then they should be.
@@fillit8839 The way we designed modding for PoT is that all creatures stats, including modded ones, can be adjusted with server settings! If there's a modded creature you're not happy with, you've got the power to adjust it however you'd like. :D
This isn’t true. Mod support currently isn’t available because all of the aspects of the game aren’t finished. Having a mod when elders and mechanics aren’t finished would make it pointless. Once all aspects of the gameplay loop are finished then adding mod support would be a possibility. Priorities.
thank you for not bloating this with those skits. It means I'm not taken out of the video for side content that has literally nothing to do with the review
it was annoying a lot of people, so instead of there being large animated parts interrupting the videos constantly the animation is a part of the video essay itself, with one small animated segment to plug my show. I may keep this this way for the future. people seem to really like it
@@Zenny-TH-cam Please do, it felt like a nice break up to the usual formula this genre of video (the video essay genre) of people usually just using some mix of pngs / v-tubers, gameplay footage, or pointing a camera at themselves irl. 3D animated segments are a really unique addition and got me a lot more focused. One small critique (really just a nitpick tbh), but I think it would've worked even better with just one more animated segment at the very end to sort of cap off the video. Like an animated outro to go with the animated intro that opened the video.
@Zenny-TH-cam For me I just got burned out on reviewers having these big epic stories in the middle of their review. I do like the NMS style inclusion here with the cute dinosaur pet. That was sweet.
me and my friend have 13 hours each and you wanna know how far we have EVER grown after playing EVERY dino?, 20 percent, 20 percent WHAT THE HELL????????? TWENTY PERCENT WITH 13 HOURS ON EVERY DINO, we hated the game and we just play mesozoico on roblox, ROBLOX that goes to show we prefer a ROBLOX game over a ACTUAL DINO GAME.
That's the first time I've EVER done a more comedic edit within my 3d animation work, so hearing you liked it means alot! I wanna experiment with more comedy in the 3d animation space
I don't usually leave comments on stuff but the level of production quality on this video is absolutely insane for how little subs you have and I love it. Personally I love how you don't just blindly complain and say something is bad, you introduce a system, explain why it's bad/flawed, and then offer a suggestion, which is the best way to critique something. Good luck on your pilot by the way, that was a cool section!
I think it's always healthy to atleast try and offer a solution when its possible, I know my videos can be alot of complaining for complainings sake but the last thing I want are my videos to come across as super negative
I understand Dev's intention for Gateway, but with current playercounts, it's just...really, really fucking bad. If servers had double, maybe even triple the amount of players they have now, encountering players would be far more common. I'd like to see herds of herbivores like they're intended to be, packs of raptors, clusters of carno's. Not everyone basically rolling solo like some kind of exfil game. I'm a new player myself, and the biggest gripe is just how god damn empty it all is. I spend 4 hours completely and entirely isolated, and 8/10 times I encounter a player, it's another carnivore and we're gonna have to fight to the death for food.
@@KeinZantezuken Theres only one with more than 200 players reliably, and at once you do both run into lots of people, also/however how much of that is related to manually enforced group/pack/herd limits is a fair criticism or consideration.... Both in context to how it prevents you from seeing large actual herds, and also how it forces people to spread out But you do reliably find people all over the map at all hours with 250 people(Im unaware of any server with even 300 slots, and the only one with over 200 slots thats even close to full ever is Petit Pieds which has 250 and usually a queue for 20-80 people)
@@tandava-089 Large herds will not work in the Isle cause they just start killing everything. That's why they created the custom herd limits and punishments for violating those. I can see these kinds of herds in the future though when the game is more of a game.
This isn't even a new problem for the game, I've played the game for a LONG time before quitting in 2020 due to the actions of the devs being unforgiveable to me. Much older maps like V3 and V2 often had the problem of being just totally barren of other players in certain areas.
HOLY SWEET GOLLY!!! It’s as if you’ve pulled a lot of my own thoughts out of my head and described them in a way I never could! This video is a literal godsend and I hope everyone, especially the devs, see it and take it to heart. I’m a TH-camr who’s built his channel around the isle and path of titans but especially the former. I started the game later into its development but gosh no other game hooked me quite like it. It has been my escape for years and I made so many memories, and I struck gold with my first few videos just consisting of zany moments I’ve encountered. It was an exciting thought to think I could actually earn big by playing my favorite game. But over the course of the games development I’ve come to understand how horribly stressful it is to support this game. The core gameplay is there, but the game has new issues that build every update that have become increasingly frustrating. Whether it’s game breaking bugs, meta defining mutations that leave no options for players, but especially players being extremely hard to find at times. I remember the hype around the gateway map, and I do think it’s a gorgeous map, but I also can’t deny I had a better time in Spiro just because it was smaller and made it easier to find people. I have a lot more I want to say, but you pretty much summed it up. Thank you so much for putting your thoughts out there!
I didn't think so many isle players would resonate with this video! its been kind of nice seeing everyone on here who has been playing this game for years.
@ You have no idea how prevalent the points you’ve made are. People missing the spiro days, migrations, lack of tutorials, others. I have my own thoughts that I’ve wanted to summarize in a video just like this but I don’t think I could have done it like you just did. So the fact it exists makes be very happy
I just wanna say man, please keep this production quality up, no doubt it takes ages and far too long for far too little gain now but I genuinely think you have a chance of making it big man, these videos are amazing whilst not feeling repetitive.
@@Zenny-TH-cam Nah man honestly, not only are we blessed with good presentation, narration and someone who isn't focusing on the politics of something but rather the qualities of the actual game, its a breath of fresh air. Never mind as well we basically get a free mini series just for watching your vids.
Played TI since progression mode (way before Evrima), eating the lil blue plants to get points to be bigger dinos. Super fun and I loved being in realism servers (TheIsle.Realism I miss you my beloved) where I got to recreate prehistoric ecosystems with other players. Was so fun connecting with other dino lovers and finding out new dinos by word of mouth of other people. No insta-killing unless something needed to eat so you had time to explore and experience the dino you wanted to play. One experience I vividly remember to this day was when I was in a Diabloceratops herd and I was in the back; I got ambushed by an Allosaurus and managed to run away into open grounds and then when I thought it would catch up with me... an Acrocanthosaurus bursts out of the tree line and almost instantly shreds the Allosaurus, inadvertently saving my life when I could've easily been its meal too.
I find it fascinating that all these years later you still have memories from the isle! It shows this game has a place in the hearts of gamers, but they are scared away by the shrear brutality of its mechanics and players
@@Zenny-TH-cam Oh definitely, the game itself is such a good tool for community gameplay but Dondi just seems to want to brute force it by shoving the game through constantly changing funnels. Wish Dondi would take a step back and, like you said, decide what he wants this game to be and advertise it as such. At this rate, it'll be overshadowed by PoT and forgotten, left as the rose-tinted memories of many dino game lovers of what could've been.
I think the best part about this video is the fact that it isn’t cynical. The hate comes from a place of passion because you can see where a good game is, but it’s buried under all this garbage. Absolute banger.
As ones like StelloTyrannus have said, this is amazing. I agree with every single point made here with the SOLE exception (that I can think of) being that I would never call it THE worst in EA as there are many that are legit scams, constantly milking fans with funding/dlc, and games that are just...not playable. I've seen so many worse games with much worse devs, so I could never in good faith say it's THE worst in EA. At the very least, The Isle doesn't pump out DLC in early access (I'm looking at you Ark during EA days and many other games lately), doesn't beg for money in constant campaigns (Paleo Pines u PoS it's not an EA game but it SHOULD be it's absolutely terrible), and does have a playable product that can indeed be very fun. But boy do I hate what has been done to it. I've been watching this game's development since before I made this channel and I adored the concept, the designs, the setting! I loved the legacy map's vibe and ambience (the more modern forest look is great) and was gutted when it was changed to Tropical Island number 4643. It hurt a lot, but...I mean...I GUESS....the graphics are great at least and it was nice to see dinos get more put into their kit that isn't tail ride and M1 until someone dies. I'm by no means a legacy diehard fan, but I really miss the setting that map set had. That was the first poor turning point for me and then many, many more from the diet system to the migration crap followed suit. I had a lot more to say here but youtube says my long comment is offensive and won't post it I guess so I'll just shorten it majorly. Your video is incredible and I thank you so much for making it. The sheer amount of effort involved here is insane and I can't say enough how well made it is. Really. I can't. TH-cam won't let me. ;o; It's painful to see a project as lovely as this could have been end up treated this way. To see glimpses of greatness buried by piles of filth and poor choices. It hurts a lot. I'm so happy to have watched this it really does feel nice to see others experience the same things and voice them. Your criticism is incredibly fair vs just being "game and devs bad" and it's so well thought out, voiced, animated...all of it is amazing. Thank you for making this and I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Take care. ;o;/ (TH-cam keeps saying this is a nasty comment so hopefully this shows up! ;o; I really want to offer some kudos to your work and youtube's making it so difficult.)
Honestly saphir, the very fact that the Devs tried to shut you down when all you are doing is advertising and showcasing wtf they're doing and spreading hype is SUCH a red flag. Especially when they never document their own streams that have important info and not everyone can watch them
@@TheCaptain-ky1sx On one hand I can understand why they were upset that streams were being reposted with little editing (well SOMETIMES little. Usually I cut vast amounts of it, but that's not the point here), but on the other it is, as you said, the only way many people can see them. Also, many other channels were doing it with more followers than I and were still able to after which kinda irked me (mostly it was the fact they were fine with it ~1 year or two before dondi got hissy or something). Nevertheless, it was technically a good change for the channel even if I really disliked having to change from a simpler style and inflating the run time. Rendering those things took longer than making them. 😭 I stopped solely due to that. I wanted to continue, but I felt my heart sink each time a stream alert popped up...it was time to step away from them. I'd like to return to doing them, but I can still feel that dread and my CPU still sucks so I'll wait on it for now. Thank you so much for the kind words, it really means the world! I was very happy to be of some service, I remember the hype I felt waiting for news of the game.....plus, as you've said, the documentation. The devs have said things in streams that come back to bite them and I think they know that.🤔
@@StelloTyrannus Thank you so much! And no problem! I always love seeing you around. I hope everything has been well. 🙏 Your icon is very memorable and I admit it always makes me smile to see it. I'm bad with usernames so that's usually how I recognize people.
That story about the dev sabotaging a game’s code before leaving was crazy, but then the reality of what actually happened was even more crazy. I thought this video would be hyperbole, but it really isn’t 😅
Unlikely. The devs are massive man children, all of them. Especially kissen, Dondi, and probably punchpacket. Not a single one of the developers in this game can handle criticism. If you know about the pesky situation, you would know how immature they all are. They cannot take constructive criticism, and actively ban anyone who gives it or opposes to the changes they plan on implementing to the game. The devs cannot handle being told what they can do to improve their game. A person who tries to offer helpful feedback is either ignored, insulted, or banned.
I've been playing the Isle here and there for idk how long, I have 400 hours in the game, and at the risk of embarrassing myself, I didn't know the new stamina regen scaled.
That makes a tad more sense, it's rewarding your patience which is neat, but even with that the rate of stamina regen is still way to long. I understand it's that way to allow carnivores to hunt more viable ad prey can't just run away everytime bit it's excessive I feel
@@kenshinhimura9387 This is my preferred method of growing and playing :-p Go fill food and water, find a bush in BFE, alt tab and smoke and eat and watch some youtube. Then repeat till your full grown and ready to play the game XD (some playables grow fast, get hungry quick, and dont really allow for this as well, but for anything medium sized and above, this is obviously the correct way to play 😛)
@ Indeed 😛 XD Considering how long your playing to grow up and whatever I dont mind the requirements of the game allowing for it, but the lack of anything else to do, and the fact that the game actually incentivizes you to play that way are both obvious shortcomings. I dont honestly mind however the whole experience not being constant fast paced edge of your seat split second live or die. Its nice also to not be constantly so hungry and thirsty you cant sit down for 10 mins and hang out, relax your wrists, and just socialize a bit. They just need to give you more to do thats worth doing, and frankly while the map isnt 'too big' to run into people realiably/easily on the higher server pop community servers... It is however 'too big' in the sense that even with high server pops and being able to run into enough people theres just still MASSIVE areas of the map that are realistically just totally unused (except for someone to maybe go afk in)
I relate to the new player segment so hard. I am a seasoned Isle player, but I am also a full-time college student who does not read devblogs. I get on, have to look up what these strange new scent icons are, go to the migration and patrol zones, don't find food, forget what key does what ability, have to look it up, forget those controls the next time I get on, get bored of trying to find food, log off, and the cycle repeats next month or in three months when I try to play again. I have 1,048 hours in The Isle and began playing in 2019.
I believe this is the most entertaining way to talk about anything ever. Your narration hooks me in. The Editing is very comfortable to follow. THE DAMN 3D STORY BITS??? GIVING ME GOOSEBUMPS! This is peak and top quality TH-cam at its finest. You are an amazing creator, sparking passion so hard i can smell it. Your channel will rise and you will get what you deserve. meant to have the video in the background as i play... guess what i havent touched the last 50 minutes. keep creating, you are absolutley awesome!
I watched transformers prime as a kid! It's honestly what drove me to animating robots today if I'm being honest! I hope someday this channel gets big enough that I can fund my own animated series using my animation stuff
This is the most accurate critique of this game I have ever seen. And I have almost 300 hours in this game. It is very frustrating for a new player. And it is a shame bc when you do understand how it works, it's incredibly addictive and fun. I feel like once the game finally catches up to the fact that any new community members need a tutorial level it'll be a much easier transition for new players. Hopefully the devs don't continue to trash the balance of the animals like they've been doing so far.
this is a genuinely fair critique of the game and it's developers. not all hope is lost but for the game to get back on track a lot needs to change for this game i once loved so dearly
There is also the fact, well more of a conjecture on my part but I can't deny myself its incredibly suspicious, that Dondi/The Isle dev showed blatant favoritism toward streamers and content creators as to promote his game either willingly or unwittingly by giving them access to otherwise unaccessible dinos. Do mind it was back when the native branch wasn't abandonned yet so most videos about the game didn't include Evrima gameplay. I still remember how cheated I felt when I realized I'd never get to play as the big turkey thing I can't be bothered to look the name of, among others.
That's 25 thousand people who followed his array of contents, in reality, 25k subs is not only, it's a hell of a lot Thanks for hearing out my TED talk
About long dev cycles There is a game that I love with a passion, the game is called Project Zomboid, it would be a fantastic video BTW, and it has been in development SINCE 2009, YES TWO THOUSAND AND NINE, YES, I REALLY MEAN 2009. And it still receives updates, arguably, its one of the best maintained games in existance Also fantastic video, absolutely love it
A bunch of buddies and I tried to play the Isle some months ago and had absolutely miserable experiences. It’s incredibly difficult to find food as a baby carno with the absolutely criminal lack of AI animals running around to eat. More often than not, we would all die of starvation as babies before we had a chance to find each other and group up. We tried over and over again, sometimes managing to get together and hunt, but largely we just kept starving to death over and over because there was just NOTHING to eat and we couldn’t grow enough to be able to take on players. We haven’t touched it since.
I was a little flabbergasted when you told that they scrapped isla spiro, last time I played the game was when they introduced the deinosuchus and I thought to myself "wow this map looks really nice, I'm interested to see where this is going" LUL
The thing with The Isle is that the game is only enjoyable when you're able to interact with other people, the introduction of Gateway (a map so massive you can go hours without seeing anyone) led to players actually creating MORE hotspots than before so that they were always guaranteed player interaction.
3:18 Humans did get added in sadly, and now they are working on adding in humanoid monsters for no reason whatsoever 8:32 Players actually do kill for no other reason then because they feel like it.... you get cannibal stegos and dibbles ALL the time on the isle who WILL kill you just because they can The game is so incredibly buggy that some people like me can't even launch the game period after one update and nothing done fixes the issue.... They have such broken code that instead of fixing it they just keep tossing new code untop of the old Also how do we know Dondi was telling the truth? For all we know he lied about his ex coder to shift blame unto someone no longer on the scene for his crappy decisions
@@klon97 They JUST released a thing about it like idk... less than 2 months ago anyways. More concept art 🙄 But, clearly, Dondi is OBSESSED with making the isle knockoff primal carnage X
Honestly I don’t see how it’s sad that humans are getting added. I think what people fail to realize is that there is NO survival game where you get to play as both a dinosaur or a human. Primal Carnage is a PvP team based game and Ark Survival Evolved only lets you play as a dinosaur if you include mods. The only valid criticism really is balancing issues. Everything else about how “humans don’t fit” or “I don’t want humans in my dinosaur game” is just idiotic to me. The Isle, while not entirely obviously and could’ve done a much better job at showing it, has had the idea of playable humans in it since the start.
There's no humans in the isle. There are PLACEHOLDER humans on SOME servers, but Humans as a playable mechanic have not been added. Fun fact for you, those "playable humans" were the exact same "playable humans" they added back in....I wanna say 2012ish for about 6 months before removing them.
It’s so refreshing seeing another TH-camr outside of the usual isle content creators talk about the game and give their thoughts and criticisms, since almost always the same group of people constantly yapping about the game (I’m guilty) so hearing someone else yap is nice lol. Also the editing is absolutely phenomenal you’re going to blow up some day! 54:28 This doesn’t surprise me at all considering how he balances the game. If he doesn’t like something it’s either flat out removed or completely changed, making whatever was changed a whole different thing than it was before. Honestly this game can be amazing if stupid shit like this didn’t happen constantly. On a positive note I do think that this game will eventually grow into what it was supposed to become and it has the potential to become something amazing, but the road to get there is a long and painful one. I’ve taken a pretty long break from content on this game due to the constant repetitive bullshit within the games balancing decisions. It feels like each new update removes fun from the game for the sake of realism or just bad balance changes which make the game aggravating to play. A quick example, when dibble was added they increased the weight drastically from 2 tons to 3 tons just because it didn’t look right with the model. For those who don’t play the isle, this is the equivalent of giving spiderman in marvel rivals 600 hp just because the devs think spiderman should be lore accurate instead of accounting for the balance of the game. Anyway sorry for the wall amazing video can’t wait to see more! Edit: 51:53 I honestly think humans are the best thing for this game, I’m very confident that they won’t be nearly as broken as people think they’ll be. The first person perspective is a crazy disadvantage, and I don’t want to self promote but I think you’ll find the humans vs Dino’s isle video I did interesting since it kinda shows what’s going to happen once humans are in the game. (It’s a slaughter)
In the words of my flatmate, whom worked on this dumpster fire of a project: We came, we tried, we saw how even implementing tribal humans was a disaster in the thematic veins of pompeii, we left almost immediately.” So yeah, I’d temper expectations honestly.
Ok instead of migration zones they should’ve put herbivore food spawns on a timer so it encourages natural migration of herbivores therefore carnivores with some zones having faster food spawning making them natural spots to nest but also obviously makes them good places for carnivores lurk around. They should’ve taken a look at actual animal behavior and used that to help design the game.
The system they had on spiro, where each food grew especially in one location(say beach for coconuts, fields for marigolds, etc) and maybe you might find one small plant here and there outside its primary area, but not enough to fill an adults diet, let alone a herds... It was a great system. The plants respawned in their area, and if you wanted more than one diet type you had to go to a different location where that diet grew. The new system is JUST garbage. Like, its a bad idea even. At best, if done JUST right, it could be a neat supplementary system, say something that doesnt exist all the time but allows large herds to all go to to get enough diet for everyone. As is the migration system is still broken anyways. Half the plants are bugged. Theyll be visible and can be smelled, but not edible. All the food types will respawn together in the same location, without despawning the old food that is no longer edible but remains on the map. And you CANT even travel as a herbie without being willing to abandon a healthy diet and live with massive debuffs on grass. before the migration would last long enough to move as soon as anyone got there reliably. Now, itll fast rotate between like the same 2 locations, and never actually move from either of those spots, just activate and deactivate at each like every 5-15 mins. Its a horrible system that is literally broken and has been since it was implemented(the patrol zones are more broken and never have any food associated with them at all) The old system was a smart, clean, functional, well designed system. Idk what this is, but its never even worked as its supposed to.... But even at that, its a terrible freaking idea. Its literally just an attempt to control the player behavior while basically destroying the whole value of there being a diet system at all. Same goes with how organs/gore are balanced in context to different diet types and how that relates to behavior. When over half the meat of a body is gone once you take the organs out, and the organs provide so much of each type of nutrient, at a better hunger/nutrient ratio, theres no point in each different playable offering different nutrients because now they all just give you every type, and your better off taking the organs every time anyways. So now theres no incentive to look for something that specifically provides a nutrient type you need because everything does, and the actual difference in nutrients provided is so negligible that its literally pointless to consider when picking what to prioritize hunting, for instance
On an unrelated note to my previous comment, I am baffled that you did not mention at all about how being an herbivore in any server other than a semi realistic or realistic rule set community server is just having a massive target on you at all times from every single other herbivore as well as carnivores. The amount of times I was straight up chased down and murdered by other herbivores for no other reason than me existing in the same area as them is insane. I cannot recount the times that I was minding my own business and chilling while I waited for my stamina to come back only to be KOSd by some random player who crossed a whole body of water to get me. Nightmare game, nightmare players, nightmare everything.
Deinosuchus is the sole reason I began playing this game. I'm an avid dinosaur enthusiast but I never felt the drive to play a game that wpuld cost me so many hours... however, as a Florida man, being the monster in the water is just such a fun gameplay loop for someone playing more casually like myself
adding humans with guns sounds like a nice concept for a dinosaur survival game that is, however, if the humans are just NPCs that hunt all dinosaurs, like a general predator. if they're playable then it's literally just ark without all the fun parts
It is genuinely crazy to me that you can put THIS much effort into a video in 2025 and only have 25k subscribers. Keep fighting the good fight dude, this video was fantastic and you're among the last of a dying breed.
As someone who's played Legacy Isle, I agree. The game literally reset from scratch FOUR TIMES and is never going to see the light of day. PoT and BoB are closer to finishing than that dogshit "Realism" game.
whatever you say, path of titans cant even be compared to the isle. Even if they have entire dino ecosystem, they still can't give what the isle gives. Graphics are also way worse. So sticking with the isle is the best option. And the rest is a total bullshit, what X said, what X done, etc. who cares? Just give me a good game and do whatever you want in your personal life.
Honestly I was so upset when PoT became pay to play online on the switch. I absolutely loved playing it but I just can't justify paying for that. I know it's 100% not PoT's fault but it's a kick in the guts. It's just not playable offline.
Hey @Zenny The wiki page about Deathlyrage has "strangely" enought be fixed 3 HOURS ago! Less than 24H after you posted that video. Not it's written: ParadymShift (Marketing Director; fired from dev team for messaging minors.) Sledge (Gun designer, also assisted with human development) DeathlyRage (Former Dev) looter (main programmer) Malanth (Programmer) Levia Draconia (artist) Vlad Konstantinov (Concept artist) Models He made the 3d-arts for "The Stomping Land", which were implemented in "The Isle" in 2015. (Currently most Sandbox Dinosaurs, like the Theri, old Rex, Carno, Austro, Puerta)
Look POT is a glorified kids game. I’ll always say that. It’s to bright and colorful and the fact there’s no risk involved in losing your Dino’s is just. Pandering to me.
@Adude420 that's understandable if it doesn't feel right for you. I will say that I find path of titans to be easy. It's a game about fighting snd getting back up on the horse. The isle is more a game that makes fights more Horrifying where as path of titans makes fights glorious! I enjoy both
@@Zenny-TH-cam POT actually has a solo permadeath test server that I regularly play on. Pretty fun and can be intense since the critters are much stronger. Lost a couple of juveniles to them. Sadly you still have a discord group from time to time but I really hope that the devs will invest into it and turn it into a similar hardcore mode like the Isle.
The developers for the Isle are some of the most egocentric, narcissistic people ive ever seen create a game, they don't listen to what the community actually wans, im surprised people still play it.
I think I've lost count on how many wrong decisions this game development team has made over the years. From horribly bad game mechanics to quite the sassy and rude team behind the game itself (specifically Dondi), I decided to quit playing it many years ago. I've been following the development here and there but boy there has never been a reason to reinstall it. Great video with great input! I hope the team behind the game sees it and reconsiders some of their decisions.
I'm watching this at 2am and can't stop despite being dead tired. Kudos to making such a well made and put together video that judges this game in a harsh but fair light. I haven't been around the community for quite as long as you have (started in 2021ish) and while I have more hope for the game then others I totally get where you're coming from. This game needs work and I don't know if or when it'll ever get it. Would really love to see the new player experience be improved in particular. I've seen way too many people watch videos like mine, try the game, and then hate it because they don't know what's going on. Hoping things like this will help the game develop for the better, I guess time will tell. *edit 11:00 I can relate to this way too well for my own good...
28:40 I've posted the idea for a tutorial MAP and GAME MODE to teach new players specifically how the game works with scripted events IN A DIAGRAM I DREW BY HAND, spelling it out for the devs.
I've been with Isle since the demo, it was such a fun experience growing up with it, but ultimately it bred hatred and toxicity. Hostility just kept ramping up over the years and I became more and more hesitant to play, until everything with Deathly happened, and the re-code. I never went back after seeing Evirma, it's just not The Isle anymore, but a different game entirely. It's less optimized, a different art-style, it's not focused on lore and story anymore but some sense of 'realism' that destroys enjoy-ability. My interest was completely gone especially after following its development for so long. Seeing concepts and talk about story-driven stuff was so exciting, I remember man-eating plants, dinosaurs being created by some unknown entity, cannibalistic humanoids that could climb walls and ceilings, strains, the consequences of what you ate physically changing your dinosaur. So much I looked forward to seeing, only for it to be destroyed. I'll never forget the horror and excitement of hearing a hypo-tyrannosaurus roar in the far distance and everyone on a server collectively losing their minds.
The problem with Isle is that the head developer is exacly same developer who created Primal Carnage. Basically The Isle + humans with guns = Primal Carnage 2
Nice video. I'm a Path of Titans player and know the Isle only from TH-cam videos. But I heard a lot about Dondi and he's the main reason why I never tried the Isle in the first place. PoT has its own problems and flaws (default public servers have problems with Discord groups, community servers are the way to go ) but at least the devs are communicating very clearly on what they work and development speed is pretty good.
Yeah same here. I actually was close to buying The Isle in 2015 but my pc couldn't run it at the time. I'm glad I didn't and bought PoT instead, especially with the Dondi stuff in mind. Just don't need that kinda drama to think about too and that's coming from a dirty officials scrub like myself lol
@@AlienxX-XxFunnily enough, the Dino models are one of the minor reasons I'm not buying the Isle. Maybe it has more to do with the animations but they just look so janky somehow, it's hard to describe. Definitely better than the older Path of Titans Models tho.
I'm the project lead over on Path of Titans, and also worked on The Isle for a few years too. This was a really cathartic video! Watched it with Matt. Thanks for covering this and for the shout-out! :)
My partner just told me you commented and I nearly had a stroke! Thank you for everything you and Matt do for your community, my partner and I love collecting shells on the coasts of Path of Titans. What you've made has truly been a love letter to all of us dinosaur lovers.
Glad you liked the video!
@@Zenny-TH-cam That's so great to hear. Really happy to know that you've been enjoying Path of Titans. I'll be sure to let the rest of the team know too!
Hey Jiggy!!!
can pot have a no need to quest style growth server? i like POT but the questing just totally and utterly turns me off. i just think to myself "wtf am i playing". i say this as one of many that wont play POT cos the questing
@@Bowbro69 play community servers, they've got passive growth (and sometimes you are instantly an adult for some of them)
This video was reposted over 20 times in the isles discord lmao
I saw it posted afew times... oh no
How did thet react
@@bestaround3323 50/50. Some people agree. Some people came to troll, alot of people came to defend the devs. Everyone pretty much had there own opinion, besides like a few people who would sacrifice there life for the devs lol.
Well here goes an hour of my life. I will watch this video with great interest!
I truly look forward to your thoughts mate! Your videos on the isle truly cemented those years back in the isles prime!
BEAVER! Much love to you!
love u beaver
Glad to see you still keeping up with the community beaver ♥️
And now you play p2w dinosaur game on the phone...
Nine years.
I have been following this game, for NINE YEARS. I was a kid when this game came out, absolutely mesmerized by the original map, the sounds, the environment, even though in the end all it was really was just a proof of concept and dinosaurs. I was there for when the very first new dinosaur was added - Therizinosaurus, I witnessed it absolutely massacre any Rex that looked at it, I was there for V2, HQ-Test, TestLevel deathmatch servers, Diabloceratops' release, Maiasaura's release, the very first Allopocalypse, the first round of public Quetz testing, the very first time a Hypo Rex was seen on servers, Levia Draconia skins, Jiggy/ZombieSaurian skins, the rise of modding and fall of modding, Rex's first facelift, V3's development and later abandonment, the first round of human testing, the second round of human testing.
I have seen so many versions of this game come and go in nine years, so many questionable balance changes and additions or ideas thrown at the wall. So many concepts that were teased years ago that simply never saw the light of day (like humans). To say I have invested time and trust into this game, is a grave understatement. Nine years later, 1500 hours logged on Steam, and I confidently tell people not to play The Isle. I tell them of the game's horrible balance philosophy by typically infantilizing herbivores as simply "food" for the carnivores, I tell them of the game's insistence on "realism" in an overarching world and setting that defies it, I tell them of the horrific dramas and controversies surrounding the developers throughout the years, from the slander campaigns of ex-devs and rival game projects, to harboring and protecting criminal activity, to the lead dev's seeming insistence to trample all over his team's work by leaving for months and returning to derail any progress they've made with ludicrous demands.
Nine years deep, nine years too late to get a refund or take back any time I've put into this game. Do I have regrets? A lot, mostly lamenting what this game COULD be under proper management and a lead that doesn't hate themselves, their project and everyone else around it. In spite of all that, I don't regret buying that game I fell in love with nine years ago. What I do regret, is seeing how far it's fallen since, and the unwavering disappointment I feel every time it finds a way to dig that hole deeper.
When I saw the trailer of EVRIMA, it spawned a feeling in me for The Isle I hadn't felt in a long time. True to its name, Hope. I saw hope that after all these years of floundering around, jingling keys and jumping from lilypad to lilypad HOPING that the next one can still support a very old, very fat frog's weight, that these devs will have finally learned to swim. And when it came out, there was a resounding hollowness in me. I thought that maybe they were just rushed to meet player expectation, and that maybe, eventually, it would improve and shape up to be something resembling that trailer that filled the game with a newfound sense of direction and promise. That hollowness never left, and it follows me every time I even think about The Isle.
I could rant for hours about the issues this game has, I HAVE ranted, but it's come to a point where I have said all I possibly can, felt all I'm able to, and now only watch the project's endless development - the perpetual moving of the goalpost with no real end in sight - with a jaded, tired point of view.
I do not recommend that anyone play The Isle. It's a game reflective of its creator - the illusion of vision and promise, spoken through clenched teeth of a product that hates you for playing it. To anyone who read this long tangent of a weary, old living fossil in this genre, thank you for sticking around and hearing my thoughts.
This game broke my heart, and I see it as only fitting to be there to see its fall, as I was there to see its rise.
i have been here for 10 now 💀, and i loved the community during the last stages of legacy but can no longer play because it isnt fun and takes too long. "fun isnt fun anymore" - someone. i just want a fun dino/surv game and out of the 3 options, none of them are really good.
been there for 10 too by now with 3k (4k if we count alt accounts) hours. I remember the time before legacy and all that stuff and I do still hold hope for Evrima, its starting to actually look like a game. That being said I never saw the game as "life destroying", it honestly got me to where I am now as I've met a lot of wonderful people on it with whom I still play games to this day. The games is simply one that isnt catered to a wide mass which is okay.
That being said the devs are absolutely horrendous, powertripping beings and covering up what happened with Paradymshift and so much more is unexcusable. They gaslight, guilt trip and delete old sources just so they can be "in the right", one of the worst dev teams I've seen so far with only a few "human" devs in that mess. The Isle is a mess of a game starting from the very first string of code until recently. It used to be meant as a dino shooter similar to Primal carnage (the game Dondi was from) but shifted rapidly.
that being said do what you want but be prepared to not have fun on the game for a good while. The Isle is one of these games where you need to be incredibly skilled to have fun (or just pick Deino or Stego, I guess).
Could not have said it better myself it’s sad to see the game turn into what it has become I was with it since the week of launch and I have nothing but a brimming hatred for the state of the game after everything
wtf do you mean the games sick as and yes ive been on the isle for a million years too and its seriously the best dino game out there
adapt or die
What a read, thank you for writing!
Play tester No 7. here. I want it known officially, that a solid 10 minutes were spent drifting my dinosaur. But that also a lot struggling did take place. We really were given no direction unless we asked for it, i know for a fact the play testers really tried everything to play the game properly, and we really had no idea what each other had done until after our playthrough.
Also @Zenny is a beast.
The fact that Dondi ruins the every game he works on because of him simping on women is so funny to me, it's the same reason why he ruined Primal Carnage back in 2013.
HE WAS THE ONE WHO RUINED PRIMAL CARNAGE???
OH, NOW IT'S PERSONAL.
wait he made primal carnage?!
@ He was one of the main devs yes.
@ Yep
Oh wtf he was on it too!?
Dondi defended a convicted kiddler and slandered his co-founder for telling his spouse he was cheating, among other documented bouts of bad character pointed out in this video. No game associated with him is ever going to draw a large crowd anymore simply because people see him as a bad person they shouldn't support by playing his game. I took my resources elsewhere.
Oh my god i misread that as killer and for a good few seconds i was like "oh, a corrupt game dev covering for a Murderer?"
@wildtamer4461 Both are bad, very bad.
@@headwreak1768 Yeah but one is definitely worse.
@@honeybadger6275 Depends on who got got. Some people deserve it - like kiddlers.
@@honeybadger6275 which one?
I remember being a 15 year old playing the isle and being super exited for the full game, and now I'm 24 waiting for it to just be finished
With so many amazing games on Steam, you don’t have to wait around for The Isle. There is a whole world of other adventures to explore in the meantime
these kind of games don't finish, they become abandoned
@@Native_CreationOk but theyve been working on this game for over 10 years now.. even after abandoning the old version and starting from scratch, they're still going for it... these devs they may be slow and occasionaly have strange ideas but i think they will get evrima into good shape at least even if it takes them another 10 years
Man this game just sounds like Scam Citizen but less greedy.
@@Native_Creation And then there's star citizen.
I met my now wife playing Legacy Isle several years ago. It pains me to see the state of the development and how much Dondi has absolutely alienated his loyal players and coworkers alike. Her and I both jumped over to Path of Titans not knowing who the lead developer was, knowing who he is now brings a huge smile to my face. Great video Zenny. More than earned my sub.
Aww that’s cute🥰
I have to know what dinosaurs you guys were playing when you met now
Holy heck that's so cute!
@@Icy_815
We were both Gigas.
I was hunting as a full adult out near lighthouse, heard some movement around the hill and went to investigate. Found a group of 3 Juvie Gigas trying to survive in a remote location. She saw me running up and begged me not to eat them in local chat. I contemplated, and agreed not to eat them.
I then spent the evening helping them grow to adult.
This was on the river den server. Not sure if it's still around or not.
This is the video that made me realize i, in fact, had the wrong version downloaded for months
happens to us all
no you had the GOOD version downloaded for months i miss legacy
"The isle is the worst early access game, AND I CAN PROVE IT!!!!"
Me: "I mean, i beleive you. Didnt have to do all this work for lil ol me, but im flattered anywho."
I said IM GONNA PROVE IT. SIT DOWN!
@Zenny-TH-cam Yes sir!
🫡
@@Zenny-TH-camOkay D:
The funny thing is, the title is so on point I knew it had to be someone who was a fan that made the video. The community has such a love hate relationship with the isle.
Having the thumbnail be the actual start of the video gives a really crazy effect when you click on it- really cool.
That first 10 seconds of the video was a bloody nightmare! The thumbnail was made in photoshop by me, and trying to translate all those assets into blender for that scene was evil!
@@Zenny-TH-camWell my friend you did damn good with it😎👍🏻 also halfway through the video and I’ve been loving it good stuff😁
Let it be known that after the Paradym Incident the devs said they’d take a step back, as would Dondi, and they’d better their behavior. They did….for a few months. Now we’re back to the status quo of the developers acting like they’re better than everyone and Dondi continuing to be a complete manchild. The Isle is doomed to fail because they don’t learn from their mistakes.
Well I think a big part of it as well is the fact that there're rarely repercussions, Isle players already have to trudge through heaps of bullshit just in order to end up speaking to the devs so by that point they basically just can't be bothered (This is not to blame the fans though, after all this is only a problem because of how the devs structured the game)
Sounds like Trump.
Dondi sounds like a guy who would vote for Trump.
@@casedistorted53%
Why am I just seeing a bunch of hatred even... don't play the game then. You wasted your $20 at the beginning. Investor my ass. Us who stay will possibly get a good outcome. Getting nothing but a good journey out of it is good enough for me. A project is art. You are rejecting this art.
@@TheAnxiousOwl Do you have a mental disability?
35:40 - Fun fact: not even that, the stamina regenerates faster the longer you are laying down, so if you stood up to a sound and sat back down, it goes back to that speed it was regenerating at, meaning it wants the players to commit to resting, which again, no indicators or anything to help out the beginner players for :(
Still a worthless overcomplicated system that didn't need to be implemented. They constantly waste thousands of hours from their dev team to make mechanics like this that everyone HATES
@@tarkelson2457 i think it was done to try to make people manage their stam during combat more thoughtfully? like prevent people from playing recklessly, sitting for 3 seconds, then getting back into the fight? so.. basically once again trying to prevent fun for the sake of """"realism"""" lmao.
i think their pursuit of realism really gets in the way of a lot of mechanics. they want everyone to play ONE way; like a real ass animal, no matter what that takes. they have a big fuckoff map because "animals don't encounter each other constantly, if you want to see dinosaurs all the time go play ark." which.. yes, real animals are not always in deathmatch mode and taking reckless risks for meaningless combat. that is technically correct. but it's not *fun.*
i was working on another point but then got distracted because i realized they don't even necessarily want herbivores to play realistic, they want them to play like ai. they are obsessed with forcing herbi players to wander the map consistently, because that's what ai should be doing in order to be findable by carnis. having waypoints for ai to path towards (migration zones) makes sense. they don't care about how tremendously unfun it is to be restricted to tiny pockets of the map for however long until the mz changes, because the herbi's fun isn't a factor when it's ai. the fact that 90% of the map is unplayable for herbis doesn't matter because it's ai that exists for carnis to find. in no way whatsoever are herbis designed with a player's fun in mind. jesus fucking christ.
@mistermuse9543 wow that was long, but I agree. The game is made to be as miserable as possible. Every second in the game is agonizing, with no intuitive mechanics. We learned that dondi is a pathetic incel (no surprise there) which really explains the overall lack of quality in every aspect of the game. He cares more for his ego than anything else. He's killed like 5 games singlehandedly. He should not be in charge. I would giggle in joy of he went bankrupt and had to sell the isle
@@tarkelson2457 i hope it soon! sell the isle to some people who put the game before Ego please. Dondi logic is, U LIKE MY NEW FEATURE ? NO ? YES ? IF U LIKE IT I REMOVE IF U DONT I KEEP IT!
hey. Funfact: The "Hope" trailer was for a map called Isla Sparo. It was OVER TWO HUNDRED SQUARE MILES IN SIZE and the devs realized they wasted all their time on that and quickly rushed to make spiro before Evrima released.
another thing I'd like to note is that low player counts make up one a quarter of the problem. The lack of AI/NPCs is a big one. Many survival games whether it be DayZ or Ark have NPCs that serve specific purposes and guarantee that if you are not engaged in PvP at the moment, there's always the chance of PvE interactions. The Isle back when Evrima started hired on a man called Amar0k who's sole purpose what to make AI for the game. Too bad the planned roster has over 60 species so there's not much room for new AI only dinosaurs, which is especially frustrating given the fact many of the smaller animals planned would work well as AI. So the dev team's solution? Try to make the AI as intelligent as the players. A goal that is absolutely asinine for the resources they have. Because of this goal, they've been struggling to add anything to the game that does more than simply attack you, and due to their lack of care when it comes to optimization, any AI they bring in usually is taken out or gets lowered spawn rates soon after, making them a saving grace for only a handful of lucky players.
They do not seem to understand AI can be simple and still effective, larger games like RdR2 and the Monster Hunter series has creature AI that is far more simplistic under the hood than what the isle wants to achieve. And yet the animals in those games serve their purpose and feel like a part of the world despite the fact. This is a problem with a lot of these "Creature sims" I've noticed. They all want to make experiences first, and video games second. They think pretty graphics and big plans with nothing to show are enough to get the ball rolling, and sadly these sub-genre of survival games has garnered a fan base simple-minded enough to be content with the bare minimum. One man even made thousands out of taking unreal asset store models walk in a desert. An event many say they learned from but many game still do similar things. "Untamed" gained funding through a half-baked tech demo with nothing but skin customization and walking. "The Depths" gained funding for the same thing but with swimming (funnily enough the dev of that project was a business major that knew the fan base were a bunch of suckers and just ran with the money soon after). It's a whole mess.
TLDR: The devs tried to make a mountain out of a molehill when it comes to AI and that's why players have to rely almost entirely on other players being around to survive. A problem that plagues a majority of creature games.
PS: Humans were planned from the start, Go look into their old kickstarter and you'll a far different and honestly more fun-sounding game than what we have now. 3 human factions, 3 carnivores.
The actual playable part of spiro was also only like a small chunk of the map, too, which absolutely fucked with the game performance bc your PC would be loading in a bunch of extra terrain you didn't even get to explore in-game.
@ I forgot about that part. Man. ambition can be either a blessing or a curse.
SO, TLDR, one of the greatest concept ever imagine put between the worst possible hands... tragic
Pin this.
a tale as old as time 😔
But don't forget, the guy who mismanaged it is also the guy who came up with it in the first place.
Genius and madness are often inseparable...
@@IcedLance That's why i said best idea in the wrong hands.
With anyone else more competent and with more self controle, It might have been one of the greatest game of the decade...
"worst possible hands" is stretch, lets be thankful gamemill didnt make the game
Dondi is by far the biggest piece of trash in the gaming industry. He's the reason why this game has been a failure for so long. He has single-handedly banned myself and over 200 of my friends from the Discord server for this game and from the steam forums permanently because he didn't like the fact that everyone was criticizing his game and his bad decisions. Also if you are dumb enough to write a negative review on his game he will permanently ban you
He is also (allegedly) an open sociopath whom has repeatedly abused minors, including manipulating them towards enacting on thoughts of suicide, as well as abusing employee members to tears both in discord meeting calls and in person. Just worth the addendum. Plus the game is unreal store asset flips with a few pretty hand made dino’s. (Allegedly).
Never good when a game dev films and uploads videos of himself killing players in the game and calling them trash and noobs. As well as actively attacking players and servers (such as players that “carebear” or rp / just hang out all together) just because he sees it as “not playing the game right” aka not how he wants everyone to play the game. Then putting them on blast on the games discussion forums. He basically fulled a KOSing troll gamer toxic community.
Dondi isn’t the greatest but you quite literally don’t acknowledge the work they put into this game and have no ideas how it works and you wanting 300-500
Players in a single server was enough to give it away,I don’t think you deserved to be banned for criticism but your “criticism” is just invalid negativity.
@ Are you ignorant on how servers work? DO you not realize that plenty of games have done hundreds and even thousands of players on a single server? It's not that hard to do. MMO's do it all the time. Planetside 2 is an FPS game that has hundreds of players per server. A ton of games have done this in the past. You should do some research and educate yourself before you post online and show your ignorance. I hope you realize that you can run a cluster of servers together that act as 1 single server. This is how you get hundreds of players on 1 "server" Not hard to do. Just expensive and takes knowledge and expertise. Something Dondi and his crew do not have.
@ it’s not about the isles being able to get up to 500 players it’s the fact that 500 players if far to many for the map,it shouldn’t be easy to find players you should have to actually look around.
I've never heard of this game, but learning about how a developer has a good thing going and fucks it up because they add change for change's sake is far too common in the games industry, along with treating your workers like garbage. Thanks for telling me about your favorite dinosaur game that's actively ruining your life Zenny, and I'm looking forward to Algorithm!
@admiralalyssa it's kind of a love hate relationship. In the scenes that I love dinosaurs and dinosaurs hate seeming me alive and enjoying myself
That's a big reason I try to stay away from live service titles or competitive games. The players are treated like guinea pigs and are only considered in data sheets, and there's always a change in the meta or something in the game that's been good. I am heavily resistant to change, especially if it's for the worse, so massive respect to players with such strong passion and dedication to stick around. I'm sad to see The Isle being changed from a great game, to its own worst enemy.
Fun fact Alyssa, the old head dev was a pedophile and the current dev defends him for being one. Meaning, beyond reasonable doubt, he also grooms minors
It’s 10 years in early access. That’s all you need to know.
I'm upset that the dirtbag getting totally wrecked and/or owned at the end of the story was by.... keeping millions of dollars. Other guy should sue him for slander, if just for fun.
There's one thing you haven't touched on in this video: Hackers.
In an old collab with Gaming Beaver, Dondi mentioned that Chinese players buy multiple copies to rotate dinos on a single server. This created a problem with people puppeting a utah and rex on the same server at the same time. When Evrima released, hacking exploded, with almost all reports pointing to Chinese usernames or Chinese chat messages. Coincidentally the devs remain offline until the hackers leave, with reporters sometimes banned after. Since Gateway dropped, most Chinese players returned to Legacy, and looking at Legacy's server browser shows 2,000+ Chinese bots stuffed into full servers ($40K in game sales right there). Dondi makes big money on hackers, so the dev policy is to ignore/silence reports of hacking.
Honestly, the concept of hunting down humans in the dark with humans garbage ability to see in the dark, sounds hilarious and would be great….. for a diferent game
It wouldn't even work with the current assets. You can't have tiny humans look at storebought pixelated grass all day long.
I will disagree on your point of spiro being a good map: but its not for the reasons you listed; The spiro map we got in the game was only a PART of spiro- in fact, it was only a 1/4 of the full map!!! The original vision for spiro was SO large that the isle devs contacted Epic games (since the isle uses unreal engine) to see how they could get it to work and Epic basically responded with a "wtf are you guys doing, that map is too big". IMAGINE the full spiro map with only 100 players. The Spiro we got in game STILL HAS TO RENDER THE FULL SPIRO MAP and that greatly hindered its performance
Never actually thought about that. This dev team have such an incredible mind for scale! But oh boy do they fail to pull it off
@@Zenny-TH-cam The entire dev cycle since the early days has been like this- biting off more than they can chew. Over 60 planned species of dinosaurs- Strains (mutant dinosaurs), Humans AND mutant humans, talk about feature creep. The game has some really great moments and I've made some great online friends via it but the development drama and general bullshittery is never ending. You could honestly yap for 3 hours just talking the development side of things alone: been playing and following since 2016, even got to be part of QA during the deathlyrage era: They would patch things and tell you to find an amount of bugs; if you didn't do enough bug reports you'd get straight up kicked- no patch notes or heads up what they were changing btw (I've heard current QA is much the same so make of that what you will). The isle is easily the best 15 buck train wreck I've had the privilege to watch and be a part of for what thats worth.
Dondi is an absolute moron. I've been screaming this at the top of my lungs for years that the maps are 10 times too big for 100 players. Dondi refuses to listen.
@@Gavincie y'know, some of this reminds me vaguely of star citizen, mostly the feature creep bit, certainly the "takes forever to make the damn game already." and some out of game drama.
but i think the isle largely has it beat.
@@kenshinhimura9387YOU cannot speak on this as you want 300-500 players and that shows you clearly don’t know how things are,150-200 is more manageable you shouldn’t be finding players every time you turn a corner
The funniest part about getting lost on the map - top right, you can copy and paste your coordinates into online maps. The devs KNOW people have made maps that will read grid coords accurately, so they let you COPY yours. Instead of just GIVING you a map, you have to use an online one, and do work. In terms of food/resources, The server I play on, Petit Pieds, has a 240 player count and population control. If a lot of one dinosaur gets picked, that specie gets locked until some of them die or log out. This helps keep balance. This is achieved through what the server's owner has put in/chosen on the backend, and should really be handled by the game normally
This was something I considered talking about because it feels like a no brainer
From a UX perspective, like much of it, it's either laziness or incompetence
you are so dumb, you think they did that by accident?
@@snakycake4790 discounting the immediate rudeness... Who in this thread said that they did it by accident? O.o? Like, did you imagine that just so you could be angry at someone?
God forbid you mention how a map might be useful for players/is ALREADY being used by players in a roundabout way on the discord either, the players there are so vitriolic and wont allow any criticism or suggestions that the game might not be absolutely amazing and I found out that maps are an especially sore spot when it comes to that.
At 46:32 I was grimacing, expecting some unwarranted commentary about how the small tiers are boring. I was surprised you actually voiced one of the valid critiques against their existence, then specified how great their mechanics are in a vacuum.
I really liked the new-player-unfriendly segment as well. I can't really picture just how many users are being driven away by the lack of guidance.
I was one of those players. I was brought in by a friend who basically taught me how to play and had fun in the first Evrima map. We spawned as Deinos and i got canni'd 5 minute of gameplay in... alright sure. Then i met some peoples who really made my life better overall which made The Isles fun and a good memory.... despite being a literal wasabi laced cactus.
See, my assumption was small dinos would exist predominantly where baby carnos spawn: the perfect size prey for baby big bois who cannot take on anything bigger. I was pretty peeved to find that wasn't the case at all.
51:50 "the most innovative survival game on the market of all time" This game offers the absolutely bare minimum that I expect from a survival game. Food, water, stamina, health, get stronger with time and "don't die". How is this innovative? Have you seen Green Hell? Or do you mean it's the best dino game on the market? It may have been the first Dino game of it's kind but it aged poorly. All it's competitors, even the eyesore Beasts of Bermuda, has more mechanics, maps and dinosaurs. At this point, I'd say Path of Titans wins this round by miles. 52:16 humans and monsters and whatnot have been "teased" since literally launch. Considering 9 years passed, I highly doubt it will ever come.
You know as a content creator for dinosaur games. It hurts to find out that Dondi also ruined other dinosaur games as well. One of which being Primal Carnage. Hence why Primal Carnage Extinction became a thing all Thanks to his unexperienced coding at the time.
Try telling the paleontologist/dino fans not to play a game about dinosaurs is like telling a Airforce Cadet you can watch but not fly aircraft.
Note: I have watched the whole video, I just thought that part was funny.
Its not like we are swimming in choices.
Its either this or PoT, or some other few that are barely worth mentioning.
Can confirm, was the Airforce Cadet
@@Rabbit-o-witzHey! BoB… at least has devs that are only pushovers instead of pedo supporters, so there’s that?
You may have missed the point of the video. It wasn't to dissuade people from playing the game.
Then they'll proceed to leak state secrets just to prove they're qualified *cough* War Thunder players *cough*
So the gameplay loop is as follows:
1. Spawn
2. Look at some symbols
3. Assume the symbols are helpful and go to them using the smelling system or the compass
4. Get to the location and there's nothing there
Are you sped. That's if you go in blind without watching any video
If you're a new player? Yeah, pretty much.
@@Z123REWhy would you watch outside media to understand the game you want to play? The gane itself should tell you how to play it, fool.
@@Z123RE You shouldn't have to watch videos just to have a CHANCE at playing the game tho, that's the problem and like Zenny said, even when one of the players did EVERYTHING RIGHT according to the game, there was no food and he starved TWICE. When the base idea of your game cant even function correctly to give players the tiniest chance and figuring things out on their own, the game becomes a slog and is poorly made.
@@Z123RE Games are made to be played without needing to seek out external information
The Isle is a fascinating case study in very cool game concepts being utterly wrecked by a wacko developer. Thanks for taking the time to look at it. For anybody interested in more, I highly recommend Sovietwomble's video essay on survival games, which also looks very closely at The Isle.
That soviet wobble video is wild dude, it's so good
@@Zenny-TH-cam Oh man, I hadn't watched the video yet and didn't realize you already gave Womble a shout out. Hell yeah brother!
28:49 First time watcher, I'm flabbergasted you've done the QA for player experience for the game itself for free.
That's fucking dedication mate.
Did I just watch an hour long video about a video game I've never heard about, got the urge to play it halfway through, only to lose it all in the end? Yup. Thanks!
The new stamina system is the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen. It seems really unintuitive. I like the idea of a deep stamina system, walking regenerates slowly, standing still increases the regeneration, and laying down increases it even more.
That’s cool, then they had to make it EVEN MORE complicated.
Have I ever played this game? No
Am I interested in the drama surrounding it? No
Did i watched the video anyway? Yes
Thank you zenny
The best kind of zenny viewer, confused, but intrigued
Same
Hey! I'm the founder of the Isle Wikia (or Isle Fandom), and I want to share my experience playing this game since 2016-2018...
Dondi: I have nothing good to say. Dondi has always been a POS to me and others for no reason. And no, I did nothing to warrant his toxicity. This stems from simply asking questions and making a single joke on his twitch streams not even lying!!!
Incident 1: I asked whether Carcharodontosaurus would be a reskin/model for Giga...how did Dondi reply? Oh...he had his Twitch moderator ban me for a few hours. (As someone who owns multiple wikis, getting accurate information is my main focus.)
Incident 2: For some reason, certain Isle modders didn’t like me. This happened in Dondi’s personal Discord (which has since been deleted, if I remember correctly). They severely vandalized the wiki, insulted and belittled me, and Dondi did absolutely nothing to stop them. He just let it happen, and yes, he even seen it during this time and allowed the harassment.
Incident 3/Final Straw: On Twitch again, I made an obvious joke about Friday the 13th: The Game being better than GTA 5. Once again, he had his moderator ban me for a few hours. (For the record, I do love F13 more than GTA 5, but it was still just a joke.) Then, live during that same Twitch session, he unfriended me and others on Steam.
I have no good experiences with Dondi whatsoever. If you weren’t Anthomnia, yeah, that big Isle TH-camr, or even a celebrity, you meant nothing to him or his business. I haven’t played The Isle since then. When I tried again in 2024, I couldn’t even play because my drivers were outdated. I was barely editing the wiki for years because of how I felt about him. I left most of the work to other editors, but mainly for my Admins and I want to thank that fellow admin for stepping up when I wasnt.
The Devs: Punchpacket, Chimichanga, DeathlyRage, Jiggy, Tapwing, Sledge, Levia Draconia, and Mar were the better part of the community from my experience but having Dondi attached had made me not wanna support him and his game, but these devs, I personally named actually answered my questions and never treated me like a nuisance. They helped me in big and small ways be it with trivial or big information, and I truly thank them for that. Some are former devs now, which they deserve a better boss, I want to staye especially with PunchPacket, he helped me when I got into a discussion with someone else in like 2017 about Rex having scales or feathers, the guy got instantly toxic and started to insult me, most members were confused like I was to why the guy was being toxic, the discord mod was having a power trip, and banned me, now fast way forward years later and Punchpacket unbanned when I told him the situation upon asking about something else and seen it didn't make sense to even ban me so he unbanned me.
Wiki Section on Former Devs: I didn’t even know someone had edited that information on the wiki. I’ve corrected it all! Thanks, Zenny, for pointing it out!
Question 1: Do I play Path of Titans?
Answer: Hell yes, I do! I support Matt (Deathly) and Jiggy faithfully. I’ve been a backer, and bought it twice on PlayStation and on PC, and will soon get it on Xbox that should tell you a lot!!!
Overall, amazing video!! Zenny!!
Thank you so much for sharing your experience! and its wonderful to hear that the wiki has been fixed up a little. you worked so hard on that wiki and it shows!
@@Zenny-TH-cam It was a passion until Dondi made me outright regret it sadly.
It's tragic how he has that effect on everyone
@Zenny-TH-cam I was a big supporter and I just walked away 0 regrets.
POT is my main focus! About...I'll say 1,000k+ hours on multiple platforms haha
Ohai! *waves*
If Dondi were to watch this video, I can guarantee he would say, "Nah, this argument is invalid. You're just saying it because you have nothing else to do in MY game and you all have a skill issue!"
38:39: The Path of Titans experience. There's a hell of a lot left to be desired with Gondwa's map design and natural player interaction spots.
Fantastic video though.
Nesting in current Isle vs pre Evrima Isle is to me the core reason community is practically non-existent in modern day Isle. In Legacy you had nesting hotspots vs general hotspots, closed off nesting sites from hotspots, massive herds and packs that would track those herds and pick off those who strayed or non-survival babies, herds that would naturally migrate when food bushes ran out and it hadnt rained in hours (when food would respawn outside of a server reset) and you would constantly see packs with juvies or fresh adults from their own nesting spots, it was a player created natural ecosystem. You didn't have to rely on finding a player who would stay on long enough to want to nest or stay the whole time, you didnt have cannibal herbivores making it impossible to nest or even grow, and you didnt have food at specific locations for random intervals across the map. The whole concept of nesting was to bring people together to work together to survive, now its trying to be that while removing all forms of access to the general player. You even have to have a CODE just to REQUEST a egg. How the hell is someone supposed to nest with no in game broadcasting chat and have to use third party apps to give the code out???
Hey man just letting you know you can set the eggs to "public" in the nest tab, which will allow any player in the character selection screen to select your nest and be hatched
This spells out exactly what I miss from legacy, sure there were issues but I dislike the current migration system because it never feels like that original player made decision to move out of necessity, I miss the giant herb migrations from rapids to twins.
this was absolutely brilliant. Lowkey "if Hbomberguy made a video on The Isle" kinda vibe.
edit: apparently comparing a video-essayist to hbomberguy is an insult now...? idk what I missed. I like hbomberguy's videos, so it wasn't intended as an insult. (also they literally have exactly the same "I'm gonna go crazy over this but ohhhh just you wait" schtick, so... not backing down from the comparison)
Literally! By far the best isle critique video I've seen in a WHILE. Deleted the isle a month ago and am intending to keep it that way UNLESS it somehow becomes decent, or when new loadable arrive and I'll mess around with them for a bit
That's not a compliment
I wouldn't insult Zenny like that. 😅
great comparison to a wonderful assayist
I bet his mother is very proud
I have to say respect to you. YOu are one of the few people Zenny where i watch an entire 1h video without beeing tempted to click off.
Trying to edit a video about a multiplayer game while holding viewer retention was stressful as hell, so glad it all worked out
Bro i didnt even felt it was an hour until i saw your comment. Everypoint and criticism stuck to me as an isle player and PoT also. It was a great video
Agree man. Zenny and sseth are the only two ytber that I can watch for 1 hour and not get bored
Bro all the glitchy cuts had me genuinely horrified. My GPU is on the frits, and I was afraid playing this vid while gaming was its nail in the coffin.
I have over 3k hours on The Isle Legacy. I decided to give Gateway a try without knowing what systems are implemented.
It felt like a different game completely, and i hated almost every second of trying to find food as a carni
Babe, quick, go to sleep; Zenny uploaded!
Wakey wakey time to be feed some PEAK
XD XD XD
Lol
@@Zenny-TH-camfed*
POT also allows for Mod support, which in turn helps keep interest in the game. While Dondi refuses it in The Isle because it doesn't align with his vision; a vision that is always forced on his community whether they like it or not because its what HE wants, not what the players want.
That's why The Isle will fail as a game and why it has never been able to get back to it's peak player count of 12k players which is not a lot of players for an online game.
The Mobs aren't that good. The design and animations are good. But the balancing in combat is terrible. Some molded dinos can be way more op then they should be. Or weaker then they should be.
i am pretty sure they said mod support will return one day but a very long time
@@fillit8839 The way we designed modding for PoT is that all creatures stats, including modded ones, can be adjusted with server settings! If there's a modded creature you're not happy with, you've got the power to adjust it however you'd like. :D
This isn’t true. Mod support currently isn’t available because all of the aspects of the game aren’t finished. Having a mod when elders and mechanics aren’t finished would make it pointless. Once all aspects of the gameplay loop are finished then adding mod support would be a possibility. Priorities.
thank you for not bloating this with those skits. It means I'm not taken out of the video for side content that has literally nothing to do with the review
it was annoying a lot of people, so instead of there being large animated parts interrupting the videos constantly the animation is a part of the video essay itself, with one small animated segment to plug my show. I may keep this this way for the future. people seem to really like it
@@Zenny-TH-cam Please do, it felt like a nice break up to the usual formula this genre of video (the video essay genre) of people usually just using some mix of pngs / v-tubers, gameplay footage, or pointing a camera at themselves irl. 3D animated segments are a really unique addition and got me a lot more focused.
One small critique (really just a nitpick tbh), but I think it would've worked even better with just one more animated segment at the very end to sort of cap off the video. Like an animated outro to go with the animated intro that opened the video.
@ShadowDragonDev know what I was thinking that by the end of production. The video could of used another segment at the 3/4 mark and the end
@Zenny-TH-cam For me I just got burned out on reviewers having these big epic stories in the middle of their review.
I do like the NMS style inclusion here with the cute dinosaur pet. That was sweet.
me and my friend have 13 hours each and you wanna know how far we have EVER grown after playing EVERY dino?, 20 percent, 20 percent WHAT THE HELL????????? TWENTY PERCENT WITH 13 HOURS ON EVERY DINO, we hated the game and we just play mesozoico on roblox, ROBLOX that goes to show we prefer a ROBLOX game over a ACTUAL DINO GAME.
I really hope the devs watch this and objectively take the feedback to heart. This feedback is a gift. Man... RIP Spiro
With how well animated everything is I was not expecting the audiojungle bit. That got me good.
That's the first time I've EVER done a more comedic edit within my 3d animation work, so hearing you liked it means alot! I wanna experiment with more comedy in the 3d animation space
you dont need to prove a single thing man, ask any isle owner and they can confirm that its infact awfull
this is not to prove anything, it's to warm everyone.
Don't say that! Don't say I don't need to prove it! That means the last 5 years of my life were for nothing!
@@Zenny-TH-camDon't say that.. it's true but don't say it
AAAAAHAHHHHHH
I don't usually leave comments on stuff but the level of production quality on this video is absolutely insane for how little subs you have and I love it. Personally I love how you don't just blindly complain and say something is bad, you introduce a system, explain why it's bad/flawed, and then offer a suggestion, which is the best way to critique something. Good luck on your pilot by the way, that was a cool section!
I think it's always healthy to atleast try and offer a solution when its possible, I know my videos can be alot of complaining for complainings sake but the last thing I want are my videos to come across as super negative
Lmfao, DeathlyRage making The Isle But Better and being so successful after being slandered as not caring is such a power move!
They beat Arc for the worst non-relesed game to feature dinosaurs that people actually play.
I understand Dev's intention for Gateway, but with current playercounts, it's just...really, really fucking bad. If servers had double, maybe even triple the amount of players they have now, encountering players would be far more common.
I'd like to see herds of herbivores like they're intended to be, packs of raptors, clusters of carno's. Not everyone basically rolling solo like some kind of exfil game. I'm a new player myself, and the biggest gripe is just how god damn empty it all is. I spend 4 hours completely and entirely isolated, and 8/10 times I encounter a player, it's another carnivore and we're gonna have to fight to the death for food.
or it's a toxic cannibal herbivore who doesn't care that you are also an herbivore they want to kill you on site
Playercount is not gonna solve inherent issues of the map, there are servers with 300 players for example
@@KeinZantezuken Theres only one with more than 200 players reliably, and at once you do both run into lots of people, also/however how much of that is related to manually enforced group/pack/herd limits is a fair criticism or consideration....
Both in context to how it prevents you from seeing large actual herds, and also how it forces people to spread out
But you do reliably find people all over the map at all hours with 250 people(Im unaware of any server with even 300 slots, and the only one with over 200 slots thats even close to full ever is Petit Pieds which has 250 and usually a queue for 20-80 people)
@@tandava-089 Large herds will not work in the Isle cause they just start killing everything. That's why they created the custom herd limits and punishments for violating those. I can see these kinds of herds in the future though when the game is more of a game.
This isn't even a new problem for the game, I've played the game for a LONG time before quitting in 2020 due to the actions of the devs being unforgiveable to me. Much older maps like V3 and V2 often had the problem of being just totally barren of other players in certain areas.
HOLY SWEET GOLLY!!!
It’s as if you’ve pulled a lot of my own thoughts out of my head and described them in a way I never could! This video is a literal godsend and I hope everyone, especially the devs, see it and take it to heart. I’m a TH-camr who’s built his channel around the isle and path of titans but especially the former. I started the game later into its development but gosh no other game hooked me quite like it. It has been my escape for years and I made so many memories, and I struck gold with my first few videos just consisting of zany moments I’ve encountered. It was an exciting thought to think I could actually earn big by playing my favorite game. But over the course of the games development I’ve come to understand how horribly stressful it is to support this game. The core gameplay is there, but the game has new issues that build every update that have become increasingly frustrating. Whether it’s game breaking bugs, meta defining mutations that leave no options for players, but especially players being extremely hard to find at times. I remember the hype around the gateway map, and I do think it’s a gorgeous map, but I also can’t deny I had a better time in Spiro just because it was smaller and made it easier to find people. I have a lot more I want to say, but you pretty much summed it up. Thank you so much for putting your thoughts out there!
I didn't think so many isle players would resonate with this video! its been kind of nice seeing everyone on here who has been playing this game for years.
@ You have no idea how prevalent the points you’ve made are. People missing the spiro days, migrations, lack of tutorials, others. I have my own thoughts that I’ve wanted to summarize in a video just like this but I don’t think I could have done it like you just did. So the fact it exists makes be very happy
I just wanna say man, please keep this production quality up, no doubt it takes ages and far too long for far too little gain now but I genuinely think you have a chance of making it big man, these videos are amazing whilst not feeling repetitive.
The quality is well worth it once I see everyone having such a good time in the comments
@@Zenny-TH-cam Nah man honestly, not only are we blessed with good presentation, narration and someone who isn't focusing on the politics of something but rather the qualities of the actual game, its a breath of fresh air.
Never mind as well we basically get a free mini series just for watching your vids.
Played TI since progression mode (way before Evrima), eating the lil blue plants to get points to be bigger dinos. Super fun and I loved being in realism servers (TheIsle.Realism I miss you my beloved) where I got to recreate prehistoric ecosystems with other players. Was so fun connecting with other dino lovers and finding out new dinos by word of mouth of other people. No insta-killing unless something needed to eat so you had time to explore and experience the dino you wanted to play.
One experience I vividly remember to this day was when I was in a Diabloceratops herd and I was in the back; I got ambushed by an Allosaurus and managed to run away into open grounds and then when I thought it would catch up with me... an Acrocanthosaurus bursts out of the tree line and almost instantly shreds the Allosaurus, inadvertently saving my life when I could've easily been its meal too.
I find it fascinating that all these years later you still have memories from the isle! It shows this game has a place in the hearts of gamers, but they are scared away by the shrear brutality of its mechanics and players
@@Zenny-TH-cam Oh definitely, the game itself is such a good tool for community gameplay but Dondi just seems to want to brute force it by shoving the game through constantly changing funnels.
Wish Dondi would take a step back and, like you said, decide what he wants this game to be and advertise it as such. At this rate, it'll be overshadowed by PoT and forgotten, left as the rose-tinted memories of many dino game lovers of what could've been.
I had some of the best times of my life playing progression. Made some really good friends and fun AF memories.
I think the best part about this video is the fact that it isn’t cynical. The hate comes from a place of passion because you can see where a good game is, but it’s buried under all this garbage. Absolute banger.
I can hear Dondi malding already
As ones like StelloTyrannus have said, this is amazing. I agree with every single point made here with the SOLE exception (that I can think of) being that I would never call it THE worst in EA as there are many that are legit scams, constantly milking fans with funding/dlc, and games that are just...not playable. I've seen so many worse games with much worse devs, so I could never in good faith say it's THE worst in EA. At the very least, The Isle doesn't pump out DLC in early access (I'm looking at you Ark during EA days and many other games lately), doesn't beg for money in constant campaigns (Paleo Pines u PoS it's not an EA game but it SHOULD be it's absolutely terrible), and does have a playable product that can indeed be very fun.
But boy do I hate what has been done to it.
I've been watching this game's development since before I made this channel and I adored the concept, the designs, the setting! I loved the legacy map's vibe and ambience (the more modern forest look is great) and was gutted when it was changed to Tropical Island number 4643. It hurt a lot, but...I mean...I GUESS....the graphics are great at least and it was nice to see dinos get more put into their kit that isn't tail ride and M1 until someone dies. I'm by no means a legacy diehard fan, but I really miss the setting that map set had. That was the first poor turning point for me and then many, many more from the diet system to the migration crap followed suit.
I had a lot more to say here but youtube says my long comment is offensive and won't post it I guess so I'll just shorten it majorly. Your video is incredible and I thank you so much for making it. The sheer amount of effort involved here is insane and I can't say enough how well made it is. Really. I can't. TH-cam won't let me. ;o;
It's painful to see a project as lovely as this could have been end up treated this way. To see glimpses of greatness buried by piles of filth and poor choices. It hurts a lot. I'm so happy to have watched this it really does feel nice to see others experience the same things and voice them. Your criticism is incredibly fair vs just being "game and devs bad" and it's so well thought out, voiced, animated...all of it is amazing.
Thank you for making this and I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Take care. ;o;/
(TH-cam keeps saying this is a nasty comment so hopefully this shows up! ;o; I really want to offer some kudos to your work and youtube's making it so difficult.)
Very well said Saphir. And thx for the mention:)
It's good to see you here Saphir
Honestly saphir, the very fact that the Devs tried to shut you down when all you are doing is advertising and showcasing wtf they're doing and spreading hype is SUCH a red flag. Especially when they never document their own streams that have important info and not everyone can watch them
@@TheCaptain-ky1sx On one hand I can understand why they were upset that streams were being reposted with little editing (well SOMETIMES little. Usually I cut vast amounts of it, but that's not the point here), but on the other it is, as you said, the only way many people can see them. Also, many other channels were doing it with more followers than I and were still able to after which kinda irked me (mostly it was the fact they were fine with it ~1 year or two before dondi got hissy or something). Nevertheless, it was technically a good change for the channel even if I really disliked having to change from a simpler style and inflating the run time. Rendering those things took longer than making them. 😭 I stopped solely due to that. I wanted to continue, but I felt my heart sink each time a stream alert popped up...it was time to step away from them. I'd like to return to doing them, but I can still feel that dread and my CPU still sucks so I'll wait on it for now.
Thank you so much for the kind words, it really means the world! I was very happy to be of some service, I remember the hype I felt waiting for news of the game.....plus, as you've said, the documentation. The devs have said things in streams that come back to bite them and I think they know that.🤔
@@StelloTyrannus Thank you so much! And no problem! I always love seeing you around. I hope everything has been well. 🙏 Your icon is very memorable and I admit it always makes me smile to see it. I'm bad with usernames so that's usually how I recognize people.
That story about the dev sabotaging a game’s code before leaving was crazy, but then the reality of what actually happened was even more crazy. I thought this video would be hyperbole, but it really isn’t 😅
I hope the isle's current devs see this and bring the isle back to its former glory
Unlikely. The devs are massive man children, all of them. Especially kissen, Dondi, and probably punchpacket. Not a single one of the developers in this game can handle criticism. If you know about the pesky situation, you would know how immature they all are. They cannot take constructive criticism, and actively ban anyone who gives it or opposes to the changes they plan on implementing to the game. The devs cannot handle being told what they can do to improve their game. A person who tries to offer helpful feedback is either ignored, insulted, or banned.
I've been playing the Isle here and there for idk how long, I have 400 hours in the game, and at the risk of embarrassing myself, I didn't know the new stamina regen scaled.
Stamina doesn’t regenerate slower the lower your stam is, your stam regenerates faster based on how long you’re sitting down.
That makes a tad more sense, it's rewarding your patience which is neat, but even with that the rate of stamina regen is still way to long. I understand it's that way to allow carnivores to hunt more viable ad prey can't just run away everytime bit it's excessive I feel
It takes like 15 minutes. It's insane. I have enough time to tab out and watch TH-cam videos while my stam regens.
@@kenshinhimura9387 This is my preferred method of growing and playing :-p
Go fill food and water, find a bush in BFE, alt tab and smoke and eat and watch some youtube.
Then repeat till your full grown and ready to play the game XD
(some playables grow fast, get hungry quick, and dont really allow for this as well, but for anything medium sized and above, this is obviously the correct way to play 😛)
@@tandava-089 extremely engaging gameplay
@ Indeed 😛 XD
Considering how long your playing to grow up and whatever I dont mind the requirements of the game allowing for it, but the lack of anything else to do, and the fact that the game actually incentivizes you to play that way are both obvious shortcomings.
I dont honestly mind however the whole experience not being constant fast paced edge of your seat split second live or die.
Its nice also to not be constantly so hungry and thirsty you cant sit down for 10 mins and hang out, relax your wrists, and just socialize a bit.
They just need to give you more to do thats worth doing, and frankly while the map isnt 'too big' to run into people realiably/easily on the higher server pop community servers...
It is however 'too big' in the sense that even with high server pops and being able to run into enough people theres just still MASSIVE areas of the map that are realistically just totally unused (except for someone to maybe go afk in)
I relate to the new player segment so hard. I am a seasoned Isle player, but I am also a full-time college student who does not read devblogs. I get on, have to look up what these strange new scent icons are, go to the migration and patrol zones, don't find food, forget what key does what ability, have to look it up, forget those controls the next time I get on, get bored of trying to find food, log off, and the cycle repeats next month or in three months when I try to play again. I have 1,048 hours in The Isle and began playing in 2019.
I believe this is the most entertaining way to talk about anything ever. Your narration hooks me in. The Editing is very comfortable to follow. THE DAMN 3D STORY BITS??? GIVING ME GOOSEBUMPS! This is peak and top quality TH-cam at its finest. You are an amazing creator, sparking passion so hard i can smell it. Your channel will rise and you will get what you deserve.
meant to have the video in the background as i play... guess what i havent touched the last 50 minutes. keep creating, you are absolutley awesome!
I strive to have videos that people CAN listen to, but end up watching. I consider it a challenge
All I can say about Dondi is...just put the fries in the bag man.
The original version of this game sounds like it would have been fun to play
this animated intro is amazing
i wish transformers prime was half as good as algorithm
I watched transformers prime as a kid! It's honestly what drove me to animating robots today if I'm being honest! I hope someday this channel gets big enough that I can fund my own animated series using my animation stuff
This is the most accurate critique of this game I have ever seen. And I have almost 300 hours in this game. It is very frustrating for a new player. And it is a shame bc when you do understand how it works, it's incredibly addictive and fun. I feel like once the game finally catches up to the fact that any new community members need a tutorial level it'll be a much easier transition for new players. Hopefully the devs don't continue to trash the balance of the animals like they've been doing so far.
All this game are tutorials and it'll thrive with the amount of players that won't be refunding it constantly
"interactions are always tense.."
(shows a beipi giving a crab to a ptera)
so fucking tense
this is a genuinely fair critique of the game and it's developers. not all hope is lost but for the game to get back on track a lot needs to change for this game i once loved so dearly
There is also the fact, well more of a conjecture on my part but I can't deny myself its incredibly suspicious, that Dondi/The Isle dev showed blatant favoritism toward streamers and content creators as to promote his game either willingly or unwittingly by giving them access to otherwise unaccessible dinos. Do mind it was back when the native branch wasn't abandonned yet so most videos about the game didn't include Evrima gameplay. I still remember how cheated I felt when I realized I'd never get to play as the big turkey thing I can't be bothered to look the name of, among others.
I still cant believe you only have 25k subs
I'm getting there slowly, I just love making videos. Everyone's so damn lovely in the comments!
My word I forgot!
I thought he was 100-120k!
That's ludicrous. He's putting in the work for much more.
That's 25 thousand people who followed his array of contents, in reality, 25k subs is not only, it's a hell of a lot
Thanks for hearing out my TED talk
One more now.
@@Visitormassacre make that 2!
About long dev cycles
There is a game that I love with a passion, the game is called Project Zomboid, it would be a fantastic video BTW, and it has been in development SINCE 2009, YES TWO THOUSAND AND NINE, YES, I REALLY MEAN 2009. And it still receives updates, arguably, its one of the best maintained games in existance
Also fantastic video, absolutely love it
that dev cycle...may actually just beat out star citizens. hahaha.
Fucking hell, that game is STILL in development??? Christ, that game is almost as old as me
@wildtamer4461 not only that, the game just keeps getting better
A bunch of buddies and I tried to play the Isle some months ago and had absolutely miserable experiences. It’s incredibly difficult to find food as a baby carno with the absolutely criminal lack of AI animals running around to eat. More often than not, we would all die of starvation as babies before we had a chance to find each other and group up. We tried over and over again, sometimes managing to get together and hunt, but largely we just kept starving to death over and over because there was just NOTHING to eat and we couldn’t grow enough to be able to take on players. We haven’t touched it since.
>Game is amazing while in development
>Gets completely ruined by devs making moronic decisions
Many such cases
I was a little flabbergasted when you told that they scrapped isla spiro, last time I played the game was when they introduced the deinosuchus and I thought to myself "wow this map looks really nice, I'm interested to see where this is going" LUL
The thing with The Isle is that the game is only enjoyable when you're able to interact with other people, the introduction of Gateway (a map so massive you can go hours without seeing anyone) led to players actually creating MORE hotspots than before so that they were always guaranteed player interaction.
3:18 Humans did get added in sadly, and now they are working on adding in humanoid monsters for no reason whatsoever
8:32 Players actually do kill for no other reason then because they feel like it.... you get cannibal stegos and dibbles ALL the time on the isle who WILL kill you just because they can
The game is so incredibly buggy that some people like me can't even launch the game period after one update and nothing done fixes the issue.... They have such broken code that instead of fixing it they just keep tossing new code untop of the old
Also how do we know Dondi was telling the truth? For all we know he lied about his ex coder to shift blame unto someone no longer on the scene for his crappy decisions
No way, i thought they dropped the idea of humanoid monsters after legacy?
@@klon97 They JUST released a thing about it like idk... less than 2 months ago anyways.
More concept art 🙄
But, clearly, Dondi is OBSESSED with making the isle knockoff primal carnage X
Humanoid monsters are stupid. But if humans are in the game im def gonna play again.
Honestly I don’t see how it’s sad that humans are getting added.
I think what people fail to realize is that there is NO survival game where you get to play as both a dinosaur or a human. Primal Carnage is a PvP team based game and Ark Survival Evolved only lets you play as a dinosaur if you include mods.
The only valid criticism really is balancing issues. Everything else about how “humans don’t fit” or “I don’t want humans in my dinosaur game” is just idiotic to me.
The Isle, while not entirely obviously and could’ve done a much better job at showing it, has had the idea of playable humans in it since the start.
There's no humans in the isle. There are PLACEHOLDER humans on SOME servers, but Humans as a playable mechanic have not been added. Fun fact for you, those "playable humans" were the exact same "playable humans" they added back in....I wanna say 2012ish for about 6 months before removing them.
It’s so refreshing seeing another TH-camr outside of the usual isle content creators talk about the game and give their thoughts and criticisms, since almost always the same group of people constantly yapping about the game (I’m guilty) so hearing someone else yap is nice lol. Also the editing is absolutely phenomenal you’re going to blow up some day!
54:28 This doesn’t surprise me at all considering how he balances the game. If he doesn’t like something it’s either flat out removed or completely changed, making whatever was changed a whole different thing than it was before. Honestly this game can be amazing if stupid shit like this didn’t happen constantly.
On a positive note I do think that this game will eventually grow into what it was supposed to become and it has the potential to become something amazing, but the road to get there is a long and painful one.
I’ve taken a pretty long break from content on this game due to the constant repetitive bullshit within the games balancing decisions. It feels like each new update removes fun from the game for the sake of realism or just bad balance changes which make the game aggravating to play. A quick example, when dibble was added they increased the weight drastically from 2 tons to 3 tons just because it didn’t look right with the model. For those who don’t play the isle, this is the equivalent of giving spiderman in marvel rivals 600 hp just because the devs think spiderman should be lore accurate instead of accounting for the balance of the game.
Anyway sorry for the wall amazing video can’t wait to see more!
Edit: 51:53 I honestly think humans are the best thing for this game, I’m very confident that they won’t be nearly as broken as people think they’ll be. The first person perspective is a crazy disadvantage, and I don’t want to self promote but I think you’ll find the humans vs Dino’s isle video I did interesting since it kinda shows what’s going to happen once humans are in the game. (It’s a slaughter)
In the words of my flatmate, whom worked on this dumpster fire of a project: We came, we tried, we saw how even implementing tribal humans was a disaster in the thematic veins of pompeii, we left almost immediately.”
So yeah, I’d temper expectations honestly.
comparing marvel rivals to the isle is insane lmfao
Transformers and dinosaurs combined on TH-cam is always gonna have a watch from me
as someone who also sunk over 1k hours into this game, I agree, this game hasnt lived up to its true potential and is saddening
Ok instead of migration zones they should’ve put herbivore food spawns on a timer so it encourages natural migration of herbivores therefore carnivores with some zones having faster food spawning making them natural spots to nest but also obviously makes them good places for carnivores lurk around.
They should’ve taken a look at actual animal behavior and used that to help design the game.
The system they had on spiro, where each food grew especially in one location(say beach for coconuts, fields for marigolds, etc) and maybe you might find one small plant here and there outside its primary area, but not enough to fill an adults diet, let alone a herds... It was a great system.
The plants respawned in their area, and if you wanted more than one diet type you had to go to a different location where that diet grew.
The new system is JUST garbage.
Like, its a bad idea even.
At best, if done JUST right, it could be a neat supplementary system, say something that doesnt exist all the time but allows large herds to all go to to get enough diet for everyone.
As is the migration system is still broken anyways. Half the plants are bugged. Theyll be visible and can be smelled, but not edible. All the food types will respawn together in the same location, without despawning the old food that is no longer edible but remains on the map.
And you CANT even travel as a herbie without being willing to abandon a healthy diet and live with massive debuffs on grass.
before the migration would last long enough to move as soon as anyone got there reliably. Now, itll fast rotate between like the same 2 locations, and never actually move from either of those spots, just activate and deactivate at each like every 5-15 mins.
Its a horrible system that is literally broken and has been since it was implemented(the patrol zones are more broken and never have any food associated with them at all)
The old system was a smart, clean, functional, well designed system.
Idk what this is, but its never even worked as its supposed to....
But even at that, its a terrible freaking idea. Its literally just an attempt to control the player behavior while basically destroying the whole value of there being a diet system at all.
Same goes with how organs/gore are balanced in context to different diet types and how that relates to behavior.
When over half the meat of a body is gone once you take the organs out, and the organs provide so much of each type of nutrient, at a better hunger/nutrient ratio, theres no point in each different playable offering different nutrients because now they all just give you every type, and your better off taking the organs every time anyways.
So now theres no incentive to look for something that specifically provides a nutrient type you need because everything does, and the actual difference in nutrients provided is so negligible that its literally pointless to consider when picking what to prioritize hunting, for instance
On an unrelated note to my previous comment, I am baffled that you did not mention at all about how being an herbivore in any server other than a semi realistic or realistic rule set community server is just having a massive target on you at all times from every single other herbivore as well as carnivores.
The amount of times I was straight up chased down and murdered by other herbivores for no other reason than me existing in the same area as them is insane. I cannot recount the times that I was minding my own business and chilling while I waited for my stamina to come back only to be KOSd by some random player who crossed a whole body of water to get me.
Nightmare game, nightmare players, nightmare everything.
Oh brother i swear to god you having just 25k subs has to be a crime
We are getting there, gonna be working my hardest this year to get more content out. It's just hard while working a full time job
Agreed, very criminal
Deinosuchus is the sole reason I began playing this game. I'm an avid dinosaur enthusiast but I never felt the drive to play a game that wpuld cost me so many hours... however, as a Florida man, being the monster in the water is just such a fun gameplay loop for someone playing more casually like myself
adding humans with guns sounds like a nice concept for a dinosaur survival game
that is, however, if the humans are just NPCs that hunt all dinosaurs, like a general predator. if they're playable then it's literally just ark without all the fun parts
It is genuinely crazy to me that you can put THIS much effort into a video in 2025 and only have 25k subscribers. Keep fighting the good fight dude, this video was fantastic and you're among the last of a dying breed.
I'll make videos like this until the day I die! I love this!
I swear this guy is gonna start a revolution
As someone who's played Legacy Isle, I agree. The game literally reset from scratch FOUR TIMES and is never going to see the light of day. PoT and BoB are closer to finishing than that dogshit "Realism" game.
whatever you say, path of titans cant even be compared to the isle. Even if they have entire dino ecosystem, they still can't give what the isle gives. Graphics are also way worse. So sticking with the isle is the best option. And the rest is a total bullshit, what X said, what X done, etc. who cares? Just give me a good game and do whatever you want in your personal life.
Honestly I was so upset when PoT became pay to play online on the switch. I absolutely loved playing it but I just can't justify paying for that.
I know it's 100% not PoT's fault but it's a kick in the guts. It's just not playable offline.
Hey @Zenny
The wiki page about Deathlyrage has "strangely" enought be fixed 3 HOURS ago!
Less than 24H after you posted that video.
Not it's written:
ParadymShift (Marketing Director; fired from dev team for messaging minors.)
Sledge (Gun designer, also assisted with human development)
DeathlyRage (Former Dev)
looter (main programmer)
Malanth (Programmer)
Levia Draconia (artist)
Vlad Konstantinov (Concept artist) Models
He made the 3d-arts for "The Stomping Land", which were implemented in "The Isle" in 2015.
(Currently most Sandbox Dinosaurs, like the Theri, old Rex, Carno, Austro, Puerta)
The isle wiki moderator commented a few hours ago talking about they fixed the wiki
"Can we talk about the mail, I've been dying to talk about the mail!" Ahh thumbnail
I dead ass had that scene as a reference for the thumbnail! glad someone noticed!
The build up to the Path of Titans flex against Dondi was a chef's kiss moment. Made the clear loss of sanity you were going under totally worth it.
it was the only way to end such a video. it just felt right to bring up path of titans!
Look POT is a glorified kids game. I’ll always say that. It’s to bright and colorful and the fact there’s no risk involved in losing your Dino’s is just. Pandering to me.
It feels like it babys you the whole time you play the game in my opinion
@Adude420 that's understandable if it doesn't feel right for you. I will say that I find path of titans to be easy. It's a game about fighting snd getting back up on the horse.
The isle is more a game that makes fights more Horrifying where as path of titans makes fights glorious!
I enjoy both
@@Zenny-TH-cam POT actually has a solo permadeath test server that I regularly play on. Pretty fun and can be intense since the critters are much stronger. Lost a couple of juveniles to them. Sadly you still have a discord group from time to time but I really hope that the devs will invest into it and turn it into a similar hardcore mode like the Isle.
The developers for the Isle are some of the most egocentric, narcissistic people ive ever seen create a game, they don't listen to what the community actually wans, im surprised people still play it.
I think I've lost count on how many wrong decisions this game development team has made over the years. From horribly bad game mechanics to quite the sassy and rude team behind the game itself (specifically Dondi), I decided to quit playing it many years ago. I've been following the development here and there but boy there has never been a reason to reinstall it. Great video with great input! I hope the team behind the game sees it and reconsiders some of their decisions.
I'm watching this at 2am and can't stop despite being dead tired. Kudos to making such a well made and put together video that judges this game in a harsh but fair light.
I haven't been around the community for quite as long as you have (started in 2021ish) and while I have more hope for the game then others I totally get where you're coming from. This game needs work and I don't know if or when it'll ever get it.
Would really love to see the new player experience be improved in particular. I've seen way too many people watch videos like mine, try the game, and then hate it because they don't know what's going on. Hoping things like this will help the game develop for the better, I guess time will tell.
*edit 11:00 I can relate to this way too well for my own good...
Thev the goat knows
fancy seing you here :)
Undoubtedly the best isle tuber out there. Keep it up man, your videos are soo entertaining.
28:40 I've posted the idea for a tutorial MAP and GAME MODE to teach new players specifically how the game works with scripted events IN A DIAGRAM I DREW BY HAND, spelling it out for the devs.
I've been with Isle since the demo, it was such a fun experience growing up with it, but ultimately it bred hatred and toxicity.
Hostility just kept ramping up over the years and I became more and more hesitant to play, until everything with Deathly happened, and the re-code.
I never went back after seeing Evirma, it's just not The Isle anymore, but a different game entirely. It's less optimized, a different art-style, it's not focused on lore and story anymore but some sense of 'realism' that destroys enjoy-ability. My interest was completely gone especially after following its development for so long.
Seeing concepts and talk about story-driven stuff was so exciting, I remember man-eating plants, dinosaurs being created by some unknown entity, cannibalistic humanoids that could climb walls and ceilings, strains, the consequences of what you ate physically changing your dinosaur. So much I looked forward to seeing, only for it to be destroyed.
I'll never forget the horror and excitement of hearing a hypo-tyrannosaurus roar in the far distance and everyone on a server collectively losing their minds.
The problem with Isle is that the head developer is exacly same developer who created Primal Carnage. Basically The Isle + humans with guns = Primal Carnage 2
Nice video. I'm a Path of Titans player and know the Isle only from TH-cam videos. But I heard a lot about Dondi and he's the main reason why I never tried the Isle in the first place. PoT has its own problems and flaws (default public servers have problems with Discord groups, community servers are the way to go ) but at least the devs are communicating very clearly on what they work and development speed is pretty good.
The isles mechanics and models are 10000x better than PoT no disrespect, and the isle doesn't include extra in-game fees you have to pay.
Yeah same here. I actually was close to buying The Isle in 2015 but my pc couldn't run it at the time. I'm glad I didn't and bought PoT instead, especially with the Dondi stuff in mind. Just don't need that kinda drama to think about too and that's coming from a dirty officials scrub like myself lol
@@AlienxX-XxFunnily enough, the Dino models are one of the minor reasons I'm not buying the Isle. Maybe it has more to do with the animations but they just look so janky somehow, it's hard to describe. Definitely better than the older Path of Titans Models tho.
@@AlienxX-Xxpot doesn’t have an extra in game fees you have to pay lol
@Vanny1980 For tyrannotitan it did