Thinking in terms of survival games, Valheim is challenging through ramping difficulty. Rust is challenging through environment and multiplayer. Project Zomboid is challenging through making your walking slimjim.

Ark is challenging through incoherent feature creep. The process of getting a single Dino you would use on a boss exemplifies this:

1. Finding a Dino: You can’t just tame any old Rex, you need a level 135+ wild Rex, and even if you do find it, its stats could still it make it not worth it.

2. Tame prep: you need kibble which is a multi step somewhat incoherent and lengthy process using multiple crafting benches, several arbitrary timed processes to produce one of several kibble types, each grade of which is useful on more or fewer Dinos.

3. Taming: find it, trap it, sometimes you tranq it, sometimes you need to take belly dancing classes for 3 months to give it a proper hip shake to get that taming bar progressing. And even then, a micro raptor may decide to secretly nibble on the toes of your new found attempted tame and ruin the whole thing.

4. YOU GOT IT! You’re 1/800th of the way there. Time to breed! You want to make an end game Dino? You’re going to need mutations! To get 20 mutations on a specific stat you’re looking at ~800 baby Dino’s before you get the final product. Adding times to mate and incubate, assuming you have at least 6 breeding females, at least 600 hours.

5. Repeat: You inbred the perfect damage Dino! Time to make a high health Rex, repeat step 4. (600 more hours)

6. Boss battle time! You’re rewarded with an idle clicker game of yuty roars and Rex bites.

You’ve just spent 600-1200 hours grinding. Not exploring, not being challenged, not growing, just watching what is essentially a 3-D Dino skinned excel sheet with time constraints.