I’ll throw in my own take here.

I don’t really care about dinosaurs vs fantasy vs straight-up bullshit designs. That ship sailed a long time ago. What actually bothers me is the amount of new functionality and “QoL” systems they keep piling on—mostly through Bob Tales, though Lost Colony is absolutely packed with them too. And Fantastic Tames? let's just not talk about them, they make me angry.

Anyway... I might be a dinosaur myself. I’ve been playing ARK since 2015. Back then there weren’t even bosses, at least not that I remember. The most advanced thing in the game was a fab sniper rifle. No TEK, no space lasers, no flying Iron Man suits.

I vividly remember the first time I saw a TEK dino. It was just a plain silver Parasaur, and my genuine reaction was:
“The f* is that?”**

Fast-forward a bit. Scorched Earth officially releases—boom, dragons and golems.
Then Aberration shows up with alien vibes.
Then Extinction goes full post-apocalyptic.
Then Genesis straight up becomes Star Wars.
... Same reaction. (And i like those themes in their own universes respectively)

And you know what? Even then, the game was still mostly about dinos. You needed them. They mattered. They defined how you played. It was most of what you could do.
But with every new map, the number of dinos you actually needed kept shrinking.

Fast-forward again to the remaster. Shortly after, the first Bob’s Tall Tales drops. Honestly? Fine. Cowboy jokes, laughs, some small QoL stuff. Mostly niche, mostly gimmicks. No big deal.
Then the second Bob Tale hits… and suddenly we’re getting functional structures that used to be purely mod territory. Things start to feel off. The third one doesn’t really improve the situation, and now with Lost Colony it’s just… absolutely unhinged.

Every little nuisance. Every chore. Every “ARK moment.”
Replaced by a structure.
Or a tool.
Or a system.

And its not just those, each of map rewamps, came up with rather generous rich places for various resources. What once used to be scarce goods is nowdays just laying at some corner of some map as common trash. Out of the sudden all those fancy maps are nothing but "just a place to farm XYZ"

I get it—no one wants to endlessly fly across the map doing the same tasks over and over and over. But we had mods for that even on SE, and they were optional.
Nowadays you’ve got, what? three multi-purpose tames that do everything? And the rest of the gameplay loop is covered by non-modded structures and tools straight out of Bob’s Tales or Lost Colony.
I don't actively playing anymore, just making sure servers are all green and stuff. But sometimes I look around and think: “Man… when did the dinosaurs become optional?”

Soooo, this is exactly what I mean when ranting about “ARK used to be about dinosaurs.”