[2018] Is this Map Design a Joke?

Originally posted by Outlaw Star: Considering they claimed hand-crafted in the trailer but then it's clearly copy pasted when you look at a map .... Yes the design is a joke, it's part of a much larger joke - A running joke in the company about how many times they can repackage Ark and get folks to buy it again.

The island footprints are reused multiple times but they have different large rock formations, plants and trees, discovery zones, resources, creature content and even biomes / weather. If you open up the map editor you'll see how the layering system works (all the unique islands are listed on the right side along with how many times they are used). We didn't have enough time to make unique icons for all the unique islands prior to launch, so we only made icons for each basic island shape and reused those.