I modded for enough games to say that there was never much of a two sided communication between Dev and Mod-Community and was never able to do everything I could imagine in their Mod kits. I m pretty sure there are games out there that allow you more modding than ARK, but there are pletty where you can do less. You still have all the power of Unreal. You could basically made your own game just using the player character or maybe a few dinos.
About your ladder and the creative part. What you actually want to do here is getting a player from point a to b on a vertical axis. There are plenty of ways to do it. Besides that, you have access to all the Unreal tools, so yeah, you can do a ladder. You need your own interaction and inputs and a bit of math, but doing ladder in a scale of CS ladders should be fairly easy.
I dont know mate, I mean I tried to pull of a objective based gamemode for two teams and as you can imagine nothing of such things are implemented in Ark and still, I got it working. Yes, it could be more easy to use, but if you really want, you will find a way. Still, I am not saying you can do everything cause you cant but if you have to kill a feature you just have to find another doable one.
I guess by that selection you want to tell me that they life longer thanks to modding. Congratulations, you are right! 
But they did well for at least half a year up to one year. So there is plenty time to add a more stable ADK in terms of Ark. It’s doing fine right now and it will do for some time. I never disagreed that Mods are bad. They are awesome and can help. I think I even stated that before, but your game does not fall because of lacking modding. A sold copy is a sold copy. In general you do not make money by just having players play your game for hundreds of hours.
Besides that, have you tried modding in Arma? You can and you have some power, but its way less than UE4 offers. And there is almost no communication between dev and community. I mean the devs even put docs up that are just wrong about their technology. It just does not work that way.
About source I can only say good things, but you cant do the same “massive multiplayer open world stuff” in there so I guess thats nothing to go back to.
Cant say anything about Skyrim. Might be the golder egg here and might wanna go back there?!
You just made me compare games that are 6+ yrs older and now you are telling me I should not compare Rust, H1Z1 and Ark? Are you drunk, mate?
Besides that it seems that the playtime is the only graph that was suitable for your argument? Have you compared audience (2weeks). Insane difference. I mean we are talking here about how much modding helps you in the long run, right. So we do not really care about any playtime a year ago, right? Besides that, I stated already that modding is great and helps. But as you see, there are no mayor differences between a modable game and one without. And even if you would do the math, Rust would lose. Which is a shame since that is the only game I really like of all the 4 mayor survival mp games.
Well, as I pointed out, I do a objective based two team gamemode which is nothing the tool provides. I had to do my own HUD, teamsetup, interaction system, pickups, gamemodelogic, etc. Couldn’t do everything I wanted but still enough.
To stay in your picture: Yes, you are right, you might not be able to built a car, but maybe a bike, a skateboard or maybe something like a glider because you have more than just a stone pick but not all you want. And you still have your hands (vanilla UE4) which allow you to do all the things you need. Might not be compatible with all the existing tools Ark has, but it might work.
I talked about ladders already but about your structure thing:
So I tested it. Its not firing twice. Not sure what you are talking about. Its firing once for each instance (server, client1, client2, …). So whatever issue you have, I am sure we can figure it out. How about you drop by in the IRC and let me know that you are there. I am sure we can sort that out for you. Cause if it justs need that bit of help to kill this complaining, I all in!
I guess we all should calm down a bit. If these tools are not suitable for one, one should cosider leaving the ADK behind. There will not be a massive change in the near future. You can come back whenever you want check again. And yes, everyone is right that things could be better and that the kit could be more powerful and communication is lacking, but complaining on the forum each day is the easiest way out you guys have.
I think that whole contest is getting into the heads of people… money money money…