Sad fact of this game is that when you get farther, the game becomes less fun, especially when you die and now have to go retrieve your stuff and everything around you insta-kills you, which is especially bad in the Plains and Deathsquitos. Island hopping is a cool novelty until you pretty much have to do it all the time late game as you advance which makes building anything long-term redundant. There is no real point to it all except to get to the next tier, and then you do everything all over again, rinse and repeat until you finish it and... then what? The game is pretty much lacking any type of multiplayer, so compared to Conan Exiles, its a loss. The content and sense of progression, boss kills, new items, etc, is nothing compared to Terraria, so it lacks there too. Maybe in the longterm this game will be something, and it's early access, so I'm not going to fault it that much, but it has a long way to go to even get close to those games, and the hype it receives is really undeserved imo.

**A little more of an elaborate explanation I posted later in the thread;

I don't have a problem with the content, or lack of content, that the game has, and have already stated in the OP that I accept that it is a work in progress and will not fault it for that. My problems, more or less, come down to how that content is implemented, the gameplay and progression, overall sense of scale and, ultimately, how it will affect longterm play.

As it relates to Conan Exiles, there is a sense of community there, interaction with other players (outside of your friends), not for just the PvP content, but how you can immerse yourself in the world with other players. This game doesn't have that, as there's no real reason to play on public servers since progression is long, and the power gap is far too wide for drop-in players, especially if they are new. You can mitigate this by helping them out and giving them stuff, but that comes with other problems, such as lack of experience with the game, skill levels, and general know-how of the game and its mechanics, which may be a slow process.

As it relates to Terraria, bosses are much more interesting, varied and rewarding. In Valheim, they are just a stepping stone to the next tier, and somewhat "story" related, while in Terraria, they are an additional level of progression by also dropping various items. I mean, overall, the big difference between the two is itemization. Perhaps Valheim is not really a fair comparison, but I've seen it thrown around so it was worth mentioning. I would absolutely recommend someone play Terraria over Valheim.

Rust is more of a PvP oriented game, and not really a fair comparison either. The length of progression in Valheim might be more easily relatable to The Forest, but I didn't get that far in that game to really know much about it, only that it seemed to me more like a huge tree chopping grind. Never got in to Ark, either, but I heard that was quite a bit of a grind as well, with many servers being traps for new players to eventually lose all of their junk to more established clans. Played it once or twice with a few friends, but it never drew me in like Conan Exiles did.

All in all, the mechanics of the game will need to be heavily tweaked, because there is a lot of unnecessary annoyances present here that will do more to frustrate potential players, notably with grind, than draw them in... unless, of course, you're a big fan of these types of games and can get past that, but I see the number of players dropping off over the coming weeks, and see the surge of interest as nothing more than another flavor of the month social media pump and dump, mostly undeserved, imo, and probably with some sort of ulterior motive (tinfoil hat), but it is what it is and doesn't impress me as much as it appears to impress other people.

**Another little snip from the thread;

So, I've yet to really elaborate on my problems with the game, mostly because putting it into words is time consuming, but here it is;

The combat is laughably simple, I'm surprised anyone thinks its even remotely good. Just about all NPC's have the same attack pattern. There is a dodge, but it's actually not necessary, since you have just enough time to walk out of range of every mob trying to hit you (even trolls) and move back in for a counter attack (except for trolls, since bows are so much better as a counter), and walk-dodging is preferable in the long term since stamina loss/regen is so punishing considering how often it rains, which when stacked with cold is just ugh.

The grind for ore isn't necessarily that bad, but it's the fact that you have to do it multiple times because each piece of gear can or needs to be upgraded 3-4 times. I couldn't imagine playing with a bunch of people, because once you strip the entire landscape of copper, for example, the boat rides to get more and bring it back would just be irritating to me. Maybe some people see that as a longterm accomplishment, which is fine and dandy until you: kill the boss, move to the next biome, start the grind for your new gear all over again.

Mentioned in the OP, the extreme power gap based on your default state, how quickly everything overpowers you and your total reliance on your gear + food buffs makes dying in any of the late game areas especially frustrating, and potentially dangerous. So you die on top of a mountain... well, now you're harassed by the drakes, wolves, etc, which hit extremely hard, in addition to the cold damage, I can easily see people losing their stuff as early as this (and in fact do, considering some threads that pop up here), and it gets worse when you reach the Plains and have to deal with guided missiles in the form of Deathsquitos, which aren't all that hard to kill, but they fly and they're fast, and, of course, without anything to power you up, its instant death.

Building is actually the most fun aspect of the game, and let me preface this by saying I am not a graphics snob in the slightest, but... it's all pretty drab and ugly looking, especially the stone. There isn't a whole lot to complain about here, but they definitely need to expand the building blocks; corner tiles, for one, and stone needs more than just walls. If anything, this is the one major thing the game can really stand out about. I can forgive most of its problems if I'm given a huge assortment of tools to build with. It'll increase longevity in at least one way.

As for the grind, well, it can be hit or miss. Sometimes I don't mind it, other times it's egregious (upgrading gear). One article tried to tell me there were no "chores" in this game... like, really? Come on... You gotta farm for literally everything, and that in and of itself is a chore, but also you gotta fill your torches, your campfires, you gotta hunt and cook your food, mine and smelt your ore, all of which takes time and feels more like a job than something to have fun with (the early new-game-smell is more entertaining when it comes to this). Once this process gets tweaked and more streamlined, it'll be the least of the games problems, but to say this game isn't grindy as hell is just plain wrong.

Exploration is where the game is really at fault, too. It's fun and interesting until it no longer isn't and you've seen everything the game has to offer you. That burned down house/village? Yeah, seen it before. That troll cave? Exact same layout every time. That Crypt? At least its randomly generated, but otherwise just a hallway romp. There needs to be way more to look at, especially with sailing. You have the big sea creature to farm off of, but that's the only "special" encounter I've seen out there, other than the serpent which is cool the first time and then just annoying after that. Where are the isolated islands with cool, unique treasures? I can see this being something that's expanded on a lot in the future too, so I'll just leave it at that.

Finally, the itemization. I don't think any game has done this as well as Terraria. It's just fun to explore and find cool items. Perhaps this game should go this route, too. They don't have to be randomly generated, but a healthy list of cool things to find and use that buff various aspects of the game would add some needed long term gameplay. There should be hundreds of things to find; weapons, armor, vanity gear, unique tools, some interesting flora to grow, different building blocks, the list could go on and on. If there's going to be a grind, make the grind more interesting by rewarding persistence and willingness to get out there and find things.

And maybe just an addendum; the bosses. Hopefully we'll get more of these, and hopefully they include some cool unique drops as noted above as well. If I want to kill a boss multiple times, I should be rewarded with a drop list of cool things to try and get. Outside of the more irritating aspects of this game, it's just about where all of the "difficulty" comes from.

I think two cool things that should be considered as well are;

A very large and interconnected "underworld", which could be used as a means to avoid sailing and get to other islands, and also act as it's own biome, or maybe multiple biomes... I'll steal some ideas from Terraria and say a glowing mushroom biome would be pretty neat, a volcanic one, and then maybe an extremely dark biome that would require slow movement and a healthy amount of wall torches to map.

And then maybe a future boss could drop an item that lets you breathe underwater for long periods of time, then you could use the wishbone to locate sunken cities that can be another biome as well.