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Game is 20x better on Unofficials, just fyi


Majix

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I see all this anger and qqing and just bless my stars I play on an Unofficial.  Yeah I know this post will make no sense at all, but I don't care. Happily playing on Unofficials for 2 years now and not once have I had issues with other players, or reconfiguration that forced wipes, or even wipe in itself.  I'd take the (very small mind you) chance of my server wiping than Official servers any day.  Starting over is fun on occasion.  

Look at the pros of Unofficial:

  • Fully admin'd and monitored
  • Nice community
  • QoL mods or radical changes that can enhance your play
  • Better server stability and maintenance
  • Ruleset for both PVP and PVE which is actually enforced with admins. 
  • Multiple map crossover (Including the non official maps)
  • Increased rates for a more casual/solo gameplay

Ok, yeah a few Cons:

  • Fear of server closing down (which can be negated with actual good host community)
  • Admin abuse (Again, finding that good host/admin who is mature enough)
  • You might have to feel generous and donate a few $$.

If people wish to share more cons, be my guest.  All I know is 2300+ hours, and still having fun.  If you are fed up with Officials, look to the UO servers, you might find something you like and will ask yourself, "Why the hell did I wait so long?"

 

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Definitely going to agree with you there. I tried officials in my earlier ARK days 2 years ago. Was not fun at all for numerous reasons. So after some research, I decided to find some unofficial servers to try. After looking around for one that had just the right multipliers, me and my friends tried it and boy, we will never go back to officials ever again.

I traveled over about 3 unofficial servers in my 2 year ark life so far. The first two were the same admin, just two different maps. It wiped once to change maps and try out a new larger game-changing mod. We had tons of fun in both instances, but soon, the admin couldn't afford to keep the server running, so I started searching for a new server, one that didn't have the large mod because it made us realize vanilla dino's are so much nicer.

We found a new server run by a gaming group, and to this day it's still running as far as I know. Me and friends left it willingly for my own server so we could have that ultimate freedom of trying anything we want on whatever map we felt like without contest. I tell ya, Ark might be a crappy game officially, but what you can do with it if you just strayed away from officials and the 'devs vision', saves it 100x over. Plus the mod community for this game is absolutely amazing.

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we play official servers for a purpose. not because they have horrible rates or because the community is toxic, but because there is a sense of accomplishment. unless you want to fork over more money to craft your own server rules, player dedicated simply doesn't offer the same experience that official servers offer. 

i know you think you're doing a good thing here by influencing people to switch. but i can bet that 98% of the people who read this have already gave player dedicated a shot, including myself. and there are advantages that player dedicated has over official. but it's just not for me.  

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3 minutes ago, Eclystius said:

I've considered trying out unofficial, but do you have a list of ones worth checking out? I'm still holding onto getting a foothold in pvp official. Maybe I'm crazy, but I like challenge ;p

There are literally thousands of configurations you would have to sift through, so you would need to decide what you want. Like vanilla settings with maybe slight increase in taming/breeding, or PVP ruleset servers.  Most hosting and advertising forums will have people showing what they run and what rules they do.  Its just finding what YOU prefer.  You may find a PVP server where there is no killing or raiding of anyone until a certain level, or having a 24 hour raid window, etc. 

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oh I don't care about the raiding and killing based on level... I got to build a small metal base and got 10 stacks of metal ingots in my first 48 hours and it wasn't found and destroyed for over a week while I put satelite bed/farming stations all over island on official.

I don't really want to play happy go lucky everyone gets along ark... but the 24 hour raiding window thing... that sounds interesting if it doesn't get too out of hand. I might have to look at how that works without bogging down the server with people being able to build too much or whatever. I have a habit of thinking of the cons as much as I think of positives ahead of time lol

I guess I kind of like the idea of being to pillage what people leave open for being silly enough to just leave it there and whatnot

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2 minutes ago, Shadex said:

I run an unofficial and have considered opening it up to players outside of our gaming community but honestly, most of what I have seen on the official servers and the forums would not be a good fit. :(

Here is the beauty of that, you get an asshat on your server, what are your options?

  1. Let him know who's the boss, and say hey, knock this $h!T off
  2. If he fails to listen, trap him in an area with gigas as he walks out to his death
  3. If he didnt get the message the first 2 times, simply ban and move on.

The server I'm on is open, and advertised so we get new people almost daily. Even through some of those new people, not 1 issue that couldn't have been  handled through words and rule education.  Had one exception that someone had pure luck timing and newly spawned in on someones base who happened to just hatch a batch of Rexes whom the new person claimed and just had no idea what was happening, but it was remedied within minutes.

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11 minutes ago, RazerX said:

So for somebody like myself who has played solo/local for many months and wants to try out a server, is the best way to find one to post a thread?

There is a section of the forums dedicated to folks advertising their servers, you might want to check it out.

Here is a link to the one for PC.

https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/forums/forum/90-server-advertisements/

 

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I strongly disagree with this.

From a PVP perspective unofficial servers act like a honey pot for bad and lazy players who can't handle the intense competition of official servers. These lesser quality 'Beta' players demand all sorts of ridiculous rules and regulations to accommodate their lack of ability and laziness.
 
As a result you end up with ridiculous rules such as the following which I've seen on several servers:
- Don't kill 'passive dinos' when raiding
- Players should only destroy a minimal amount of the structure when raiding.
- No 'griefing'
- No KOS
- Not allowed to attack the same tribe twice in a certain time period
- Must not build within 100m of a base
 
Not only are these rules against the spirit of PVP but they are also are not clearly defined or well thought out. What exactly is "minimal amount"? What happens if the enemy stores all their loot on their passive dinos? What the fk is "griefing", similarly how do you exactly measure 100m?
 
Even if you manage to find a server that isn't running some kind of social justice ruleset then you still have to put up with admins and their abuse. What many players fail to grasp about unofficial servers is that they are run more like a business, that just happens to not be profitable. The admins are the CEOs and they want their little server to be successful. If that means they have to engage in unethical behaviour ie admin abuse then so be it, they'll do it if it benefits their server.
 
Admin abuse is unfortunately very common on unofficial servers especially if your tribe is PVP competitive like we are. We go onto a server, build up extremely fast and begin PVP as early as we can. Typically the other tribes then complain, threaten to leave and then the admin will step in. Admin abuse comes in various forms. Sometimes the admin will try to be stealthy and unlock all the doors to your base, other times it will be overt such as outright banning you or he will spawn in a whole bunch of free stuff for the tribe your fighting.
 
Admin abuse can't be countered and it can even happen when you have known the admin for a decent amount of time. We had one case where we'd known the admin of a private server from helping his tribe previously on an Official server. He invited us to join him on his private server as he was looking to boost server pop and grow his server.
So we joined did our usual thing (PVP other players) and then a week later I go to join the server and I'm banned. I msg him on steam about this and he comes on our Discord to explain the situation. In a nice enough way he tells us that our methods were basically killing off his server population and therefore he had to ban us.
 
Also apart from silly rules and bad admins a lot of unofficial servers are crammed with pointless mods that you are forced to install/download to play on. Stuff like glass/see through walls and other non functional junk like pretty looking sign posts. It's rare to find a mod that actually adds anything meaningful to the game.
 
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10 minutes ago, ForzaProiettile said:
I strongly disagree with this.

From a PVP perspective unofficial servers act like a honey pot for bad and lazy players who can't handle the intense competition of official servers. These lesser quality 'Beta' players demand all sorts of ridiculous rules and regulations to accommodate their lack of ability and laziness.
 
As a result you end up with ridiculous rules such as the following which I've seen on several servers:
- Don't kill 'passive dinos' when raiding
- Players should only destroy a minimal amount of the structure when raiding.
- No 'griefing'
- No KOS
- Not allowed to attack the same tribe twice in a certain time period
- Must not build within 100m of a base
 
Not only are these rules against the spirit of PVP but they are also are not clearly defined or well thought out. What exactly is "minimal amount"? What happens if the enemy stores all their loot on their passive dinos? What the fk is "griefing", similarly how do you exactly measure 100m?
 
Even if you manage to find a server that isn't running some kind of social justice ruleset then you still have to put up with admins and their abuse. What many players fail to grasp about unofficial servers is that they are run more like a business, that just happens to not be profitable. The admins are the CEOs and they want their little server to be successful. If that means they have to engage in unethical behaviour ie admin abuse then so be it, they'll do it if it benefits their server.
 
Admin abuse is unfortunately very common on unofficial servers especially if your tribe is PVP competitive like we are. We go onto a server, build up extremely fast and begin PVP as early as we can. Typically the other tribes then complain, threaten to leave and then the admin will step in. Admin abuse comes in various forms. Sometimes the admin will try to be stealthy and unlock all the doors to your base, other times it will be overt such as outright banning you or he will spawn in a whole bunch of free stuff for the tribe your fighting.
 
Admin abuse can't be countered and it can even happen when you have known the admin for a decent amount of time. We had one case where we'd known the admin of a private server from helping his tribe previously on an Official server. He invited us to join him on his private server as he was looking to boost server pop and grow his server.
So we joined did our usual thing (PVP other players) and then a week later I go to join the server and I'm banned. I msg him on steam about this and he comes on our Discord to explain the situation. In a nice enough way he tells us that our methods were basically killing off his server population and therefore he had to ban us.
 
Also apart from silly rules and bad admins a lot of unofficial servers are crammed with pointless mods that you are forced to install/download to play on. Stuff like glass/see through walls and other non functional junk like pretty looking sign posts. It's rare to find a mod that actually adds anything meaningful to the game.
 

And this is why I want to buy my own server and run it as a proper business. I am going to save your post and use it as a reminder to all staff, that if you go the way of socialism, it will fail as much as it does in real life. It will be a mission goal of the business to have stable reliable servers, that have reliable customer support, that do not friend anybody, and will stick to policy, with that policy clear and transparent. Must remain objective the whole way. In fact, I am wondering about if I should even play on my own server. I will not be playing pvp for sure. Any game characters will not have admin powers. And here is a very good reason for why I should not abuse my position. A server that cost over $4000 AUD to buy, and a ton of work to setup and get running, and a lot of work to build up a player base. Why ruin it?

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20 minutes ago, Sphere said:

And this is why I want to buy my own server and run it as a proper business. I am going to save your post and use it as a reminder to all staff, that if you go the way of socialism, it will fail as much as it does in real life. It will be a mission goal of the business to have stable reliable servers, that have reliable customer support, that do not friend anybody, and will stick to policy, with that policy clear and transparent. Must remain objective the whole way. In fact, I am wondering about if I should even play on my own server. I will not be playing pvp for sure. Any game characters will not have admin powers. And here is a very good reason for why I should not abuse my position. A server that cost over $4000 AUD to buy, and a ton of work to setup and get running, and a lot of work to build up a player base. Why ruin it?

It seems you have very noble intentions. I salute you.
 
Yes sadly a lot of servers operate with these poorly written rules which seem to be setup deliberately like that - vague and undefined to give the admin some leverage and leeway so that they can selectively interpret them to suit their own agenda.
 
My recommendation as to you playing on your own server would be that you don't unless you have strong self control. I understand you'd be hosting a PVE server but even so if another tribe does something that isn't strictly against the rules but would really annoy the hell out of you such as making a wall around your base. In this case would you be able to resist the temptation to login into admin mode and silently delete the wall? Perhaps a good test of this is to ask yourself do I resort to using cheat codes in single player games when things get hard? If not then you probably have enough restraint to play on your own server.
 
If you can then by all means play on your own server but I'd also recommend if you do play on your server that you do it anonymously. Use a different name so that no one knows your the admin because honestly once players find out the admin plays on his own server you will get accusations of admin abuse even if your completely legit.
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Coming from a new persons perspective from a PVP stance, what chance would a brand new person who just purchased the game have vs an official PVP where you have people constantly roaming the spawn points killing everyone they see? What good would that do?  All that would do is turn that new person to getting refunded or just plain quitting.  There is so many things Wildcard can do to stop this greifing but won't because they are at the moment focused on making CDs for people to buy.  I am trying to offer ideas for new people who join this game to seek out Unofficials first to get their foot in the door, and if they should, wish to try out Official PVP they at least got a grasp on what to expect and how to proceed.

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8 hours ago, ForzaProiettile said:

In this case would you be able to resist the temptation to login into admin mode and silently delete the wall? Perhaps a good test of this is to ask yourself do I resort to using cheat codes in single player games when things get hard? If not then you probably have enough restraint to play on your own server.

 
If you can then by all means play on your own server but I'd also recommend if you do play on your server that you do it anonymously. Use a different name so that no one knows your the admin because honestly once players find out the admin plays on his own server you will get accusations of admin abuse even if your completely legit.

Well the thing about silently deleting the wall is, it should be approached just like in the medical industry. A doctor should not treat thyself. Hard to be objective if it's personal. Most sane people agree with this.

And yes, I agree with anonymous. Because if you play as a player, and people know who that is, they start pestering you for customer support from in-game, or want free stuff, or want to start poking you with ideas, or want you to do stuff with them but with cheats. It's no good.

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7 hours ago, Majix said:

Coming from a new persons perspective from a PVP stance, what chance would a brand new person who just purchased the game have vs an official PVP where you have people constantly roaming the spawn points killing everyone they see? What good would that do?  All that would do is turn that new person to getting refunded or just plain quitting.  There is so many things Wildcard can do to stop this greifing but won't because they are at the moment focused on making CDs for people to buy.  I am trying to offer ideas for new people who join this game to seek out Unofficials first to get their foot in the door, and if they should, wish to try out Official PVP they at least got a grasp on what to expect and how to proceed.

What you described is legitimate PVP.  This word "griefing" seems to get thrown around a lot by 2nd tier players as an excuse to why they aren't winning. 

The best way to learn this game is to go on an Official PVP server and play for at least a month. Sure you will probably get slaughtered a few times that is the nature of the game but if you can accept that and build on your mistakes and learn. Then you will truly ascend to become a better class of player.

I've played close to 4000 hours now and I often see new players they join an Official server and us or someone else will wipe them and kills all their stuff and most often they won't come back, instead you'll see them via Battlemetrics playing on some unofficial servers with safety rules.

About 1 in 4 players are made of the right stuff. You blow up their wood hut, take all their stuff and they come back the next day and they're building a new one somewhere and slowly upgrading it to stone. You then wipe them out again and they again go and build a base somewhere but this time its metal. When you see this kind of player you know he is cut for competitive PVP. He doesn't complain in chat, he just gets on with the job. These are the kind of new players that I look for if I need to recruit someone.

 

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10 hours ago, ForzaProiettile said:
I strongly disagree with this.

From a PVP perspective unofficial servers act like a honey pot for bad and lazy players who can't handle the intense competition of official servers. These lesser quality 'Beta' players demand all sorts of ridiculous rules and regulations to accommodate their lack of ability and .....
 

I completely agree with you. However, there are two things you are not considering.

1. Most people who play ark don't enjoy the metas of extreme pvp.. including everything constantly thinking in the mind set of "kill or be killed" to the massive time investment and logistical endeavour that is farming on official.

2. Unofficials do not have access to a very large unified playerbase like officials. Indeed that admin that banned you was probably right about his server population. If you constantly wipe everyone on unofficials, you will be on a server by yourself.

 

That being said, there are servers that offer full balls to the wall pvp.. even more so than official due to the likely boost in rates (less fear of losing progress). These server advertise heavily and have a very limited rule set, if any at all. Just have to find a good one.

 

Also, admin abuse is indeed a major problem.. 95% of servers ive joined have had it in some form or another.

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1 hour ago, DoJoStarfox said:

Also, admin abuse is indeed a major problem.. 95% of servers ive joined have had it in some form or another.

I wonder if it's because of an entitlement, because of server ownership. However they forget that it's not simply their server, it's everybody elses server too. Otherwise you might as well play singleplayer.

Also 95% of statistics are made up.

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1 hour ago, DoJoStarfox said:

Also, admin abuse is indeed a major problem.. 95% of servers ive joined have had it in some form or another.

Lol nope.. Not my server im the only admin there and been an admin for over 2 year on xb1 and about 6 months on pc now.. I can reassure you i have meet and dealt with all kinds of ppl from all over the world and once they realize that simple rules shouldn't be broken they are fine with it  for most of them.

I will nvr play on official server and since im running my own rented unofficial server at 60 slots for 15 bucks a month headache free with tons of mods to pick and choose from with slightly boosted rates .. why would i go back to officials and give my self a headache in a first place..

On my XB1 server had over 400 player base now just waiting for WC to implement  cross play PC/XB1 its gonna be awesome.

Also yes im an admin but i will not spawn stuff I actually like to play the game to the fullest and dont care about the 15 bucks a month to run a server..

In my opinion Unofficial rented dedicated server are the way to go if you want to experience ARK to the fullest.  

 

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29 minutes ago, Sphere said:

I wonder if it's because of an entitlement, because of server ownership. However they forget that it's not simply their server, it's everybody elses server too. Otherwise you might as well play singleplayer.

Also 95% of statistics are made up.

It was based on a real statistic.

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37 minutes ago, DoJoStarfox said:

It was based on a real statistic.

Based upon? What statistic was it based upon that made 95%? Because so far all I have seen is a subjective response of a user experience, being quantified in a guesstimate of 95%, that is very vague in revealing the background of said statistic. I highly doubt that subjective user experience is a large collective of unofficial servers. So far I have only cited your experience as one person. It also does not state if those servers were big time servers that were being taken seriously by the host, or was simply somebody's little bit of fun with some spare cash or a computer that was free. We don't even know the criteria of what constitutes admin abuse. Because for some people, simply enforcing the rules is admin abuse. For others, the player demanding that somebody be banned because feelings, but not banned, is admin abuse. Admin abuse could be simply doing customer support. Admin abuse could be somebody winning an event and receiving winnings. Then there are the admins who simply hand out anything and everything to everyone, because that's how their server is run, for fun. You never know if that's the normal for that server. In your number of 95%, we don't get a lot of data, and in fact, it's all subjective to your experience, that we don't know anything about.

But hey, in your words, it was servers you joined. But it was based on a real statistic.

I doubt this number is a real number, but rather it's more of a feeling that people have. This stereotype is damaging to legitimate server hosts, that want to run things fair and simple. Please stop propagating this nonsense. But if you do want to continue, sure. Here is something to think about then. Now this is not something I want to do. But think about this. The host owns the server. On that server, the host can declare that all green bases are to be destroyed.

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I'm the owner of a big ark pc server network and I myself can tell you that players cry about admin abuse as soon as they either get banned for being idiots or because someone else raided them. At the moment, I host 12 servers and I'm doing this since 2015, so basically from the beginning of the ark adventure.

I got blamed for admin abuse dozen of times even by players that I banned for posting their nazi content in chat. We have a very limited rule set, but players even break those very few rules. And yes, if a group of players is damaging your server reputation by ruining everyone else fun on the server, you as an admin talk to them and if they don't change their behaviour, it's sometimes neccescary to ban them. Why? Because players change the server. The same thing is happening on officials, but for Wildcard, it isn't important if servers are populated or not. For unofficial hosts, it is. We are paying 700€ each month to keep servers running for 2 years already and we are none of those p2w hosts that are selling stuff for $$$. We are doing all the work in our free time and with our own money.

I personally would always recommend to play on unofficials, but you should care to find a server without admins spawning in items etc.! Don't hear about players whining about admin abuse. Create your own opinion! As I mentioned in the beginning of my posts, there are a lot of players who get banned for being idiots and then blaming admins for no reason.

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5 minutes ago, Kogadins said:

I'm the owner of a big ark pc server network and I myself can tell you that players cry about admin abuse as soon as they either get banned for being idiots or because someone else raided them. At the moment, I host 12 servers and I'm doing this since 2015, so basically from the beginning of the ark adventure.

I got blamed for admin abuse dozen of times even by players that I banned for posting their nazi content in chat. We have a very limited rule set, but players even break those very few rules. And yes, if a group of players is damaging your server reputation by ruining everyone else fun on the server, you as an admin talk to them and if they don't change their behaviour, it's sometimes neccescary to ban them. Why? Because players change the server. The same thing is happening on officials, but for Wildcard, it isn't important if servers are populated or not. For unofficial hosts, it is. We are paying 700€ each month to keep servers running for 2 years already and we are none of those p2w hosts that are selling stuff for $$$. We are doing all the work in our free time and with our own money.

I personally would always recommend to play on unofficials, but you should care to find a server without admins spawning in items etc.! Don't hear about players whining about admin abuse. Create your own opinion! As I mentioned in the beginning of my posts, there are a lot of players who get banned for being idiots and then blaming admins for no reason.

I suggest you find a way to get a return on your efforts. As much as people seem to think that gaming companies should be run as a charity, the reality is different. Money pays your bills and puts coffee in your mug. And just as I said before, and you also mentioned, the big "admin abuse" is most of the time an admin having to enforce the rules, because of the practices of players who blatantly break them rules, and disrespect the rights of others to play within the mechanics of the game and established rules.

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18 minutes ago, Sphere said:

I suggest you find a way to get a return on your efforts. As much as people seem to think that gaming companies should be run as a charity, the reality is different. Money pays your bills and puts coffee in your mug. And just as I said before, and you also mentioned, the big "admin abuse" is most of the time an admin having to enforce the rules, because of the practices of players who blatantly break them rules, and disrespect the rights of others to play within the mechanics of the game and established rules.

I appreciate your words! We have been succesful with allowing players to donate to the server but without getting any advantages in return. They get a forums donator tag. This way, we have a few people donating every month and we are getting 30-50% of the server costs back this way.

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