You hit the nail in the head. I’d describe Palworld as a shameless clone of ARK with Pokemon mechanics bolted on top, and a focus on automating your base vs ARK’s attitude of “do everything yourself”.

But the main thing Palworld gets right is copying all the good things about ARK that had people play it for thousands of hours, while reducing or eliminating all the bad things people hated about ARK (while still playing it for thousands of hours).

Mostly it improves the formula by reducing busywork and how long things take - in ARK, basic tasks could take hours and require the player’s constant attention that whole time, whereas in Palworld almost nothing takes more than a few minutes. Hatching eggs is the main exception, and that’s entirely passive outside of putting it in its preferred climate and coming back to hatch it later.