QUESTION: Why do you choose Official?

[AngrySaltire]

One word. Legacy.

[Crows]

I still play official and I don't know why. 

The rates are crap, there's mega-tribes everywhere and most of the players are unforgiving and relentless. Always raiding you while you're offline... every single damn time that I've been wiped is while I'm offline for like 8 hours. 

[Coxet79]

My tribe quit playing official because we wanted to implement breeding of our tames more. However, we don't have enough time to breed with the way official rates are set up. Don't think we'll be going back ever again. Enjoying our unofficial play much more.

[Crows]

31 minutes ago, Coxet79 said:

My tribe quit playing official because we wanted to implement breeding of our tames more. However, we don't have enough time to breed with the way official rates are set up. Don't think we'll be going back ever again. Enjoying our unofficial play much more.

I swear, there's players who actually defend the current official server rates.  I understand that making the rates higher will result in a more negative effect, since mega-tribes will only get "richer" and more powerful, but they don't even need to increase gathering or taming rates, just breeding rates. They've already improved breeding by extending the imprint time to every 8 hours rather than 4, but the fact that dinos can take 5-12 days to raise is just pathetic, specifically on PvP servers where they'll most likely die within the next hour or week.

Edit: To combat the issue with improving the speed at which baby dinos grow, they can simply add a longer mating cooldown to females, like 2-3 days.

[CrackerJackx13]

51 minutes ago, Crows said:

I swear, there's players who actually defend the current official server rates.  I understand that making the rates higher will result in a more negative effect, since mega-tribes will only get "richer" and more powerful, but they don't even need to increase gathering or taming rates, just breeding rates. They've already improved breeding by extending the imprint time to every 8 hours rather than 4, but the fact that dinos can take 5-12 days to raise is just pathetic, specifically on PvP servers where they'll most likely die within the next hour or week.

Edit: To combat the issue with improving the speed at which baby dinos grow, they can simply add a longer mating cooldown to females, like 2-3 days.

well said. thanks for the input.

[SCEDeadeye]

The support is not there. rates are wrong and just not fun 

[Titus]

People kept trying to make lists of alphas and who was on what server.

[Guest DJRone89]

I stopped playing back when the XP, harvest, and tame rates were half what they are now.

Makes me laugh when people complain about dino nerfs but never played in the early EA days like when they did the massive health and melee nerf to all dinos. Balance was needed and people quickly adjusted but that was far worse than the flyer nerf at the time in comparison.

[CrackerJackx13]

3 hours ago, Coxet79 said:

My tribe quit playing official because we wanted to implement breeding of our tames more. However, we don't have enough time to breed with the way official rates are set up. Don't think we'll be going back ever again. Enjoying our unofficial play much more.

thanks for the input! well said.

[RasFW]

I got wiped off official. Decided to go unofficial to a server my girlfriend was playing on to just chill and play the game. Never looked back.

 

I stay unofficial for rates that aren't painful, helpful quality of life mods, LITERALLY no lag or rubber banding or constant server crashes caused by dupers. There's always an active admin around that's ready able and willing to help you if you get stuck on terrain or lose a dino to a glitch.

The PvP on our server is laid back and doesn't exclusively involve full base wipes. It's also respectful PvP without trash talking. Usually they don't even until you're offline. PvP is way more fun than officials PvT  (player vs turret).

[Chunk1664]

I stopped playing officials when despite sending in numerous screen shots of vile abuse  (sexual harrasment of female players and other players children)from other players nothing was done and the ticket was wiped when the official launch day came

[Mjsechrest]

1 hour ago, Titus said:

People kept trying to make lists of alphas and who was on what server.

lol nice sarcasm    You know Cracker Jack spent a lot of time on that intel 

[Mjsechrest]

16 minutes ago, Chunk1664 said:

I stopped playing officials when despite sending in numerous screen shots of vile abuse  (sexual harrasment of female players and other players children)from other players nothing was done and the ticket was wiped when the official launch day came

You're not the only one. We had racists spamming chat for weeks and we sent in multiple tickets and all were "closed" and nothing was done.  Pretty shameful 

[Chunk1664]

5 minutes ago, Mjsechrest said:

You're not the only one. We had racists spamming chat for weeks and we sent in multiple tickets and all were "closed" and nothing was done.  Pretty shameful 

Yeah i guess they were busy getting ready for the release but after sending in tickets and also asking for help via Twitter it was quite disappointing for such a brilliant game 

[ArianaGaming]

Hello,

Talking to people on Official PvE it is very clear. The dont want to make super dinos that auto-decay destroys.

After that it is the high degree of lag.

Only as a 3rd option they say it is too slow with the rates.

Making me conclude that the people that still play and say they quit - want higher rates.

Making me conclude that the time it takes to make super dinos (1 year or more) can all be destroyed in 8 days.

---

So if anyone is truly interested in why - the answer is simple it is too hard in the long run. Ok for 60 days gaming. After that time people get tired of loosing storage box after storage box, dino after dino.

Personally I know how to get around it and have now adapted to it, meaning a new gaming style. I am still spread out all over the map and have lots of pillared land. So it is just a question of time until Wild Card have pillared servers again. When all learn the new auto decay destruction feature. Infact I hear more and more complaints about pillars on Official now than in the last 60 days.

 

Regards,

Ariana

[CrackerJackx13]

i stoped playing daily, now im only once a week because of the lag, the crashing, the ddossing of player(dont join partys) and servers during a raid, the people posting racists and personal info in world chat, along with most of all the undermapping, every map you can get under, you think they would have added a death barrier, i hear also the support to get dinos/players back that were lost because they fell under a map or got lost in the transfer is not as good as it used to be, ontop of that the player count on offical PVP has dropped significantly, i still do the List though, talk to most of the megas daily to keep up the list. anyone else have theses issues?

[ArianaGaming]

Hello again,

Yes all that I talked to say that only the Island map is playable. I play on XBOX so ddos is mostly directed to player IP.

Regards,

Ariana

[Martellus]

I tried official PVP and PVE for the first 14-18 months of Ark, neither worked out for me.

The reason I left PVP at the time was due to my priorities in life, I have other things I like to do, I have a job, a family, friends and such. Time for me is short for what PVP requires, and I am no fan of large Tribes (been in one and it was awesome, but its not personal enough and it quickly becomes a second job). This made the competitive nature of the game not efficient to me, so I ditched it.

I then moved to PVE as the next natural course of action, the problem is the place looks like a dump, the island looks crappy with all that garbage and I would try to clean out the trash every time I could, I would demolish often. I wanted something more native looking, more untouched... 

Now in unofficial / private I am successfully running a vanilla server (with minor adjustments such as taming Titanosaurs) for nearly a year. We finally found a balance and soon we will expand our cluster to include new maps, such as Aberration. For a person such as myself, I cannot think to play Ark in any other way now, private server is the only path for me and I love it, my experience improved over time as I could explore the game content, especially end game content at my own pace and peace of mind. This is why PVE content is becoming more and more essential for us, the more the devs can give us, the better.

Cheers my fellow survivors! 

[CaptainRaa]

Hello,
Talking to people on Official PvE it is very clear. The dont want to make super dinos that auto-decay destroys.
After that it is the high degree of lag.
Only as a 3rd option they say it is too slow with the rates.
Making me conclude that the people that still play and say they quit - want higher rates.
Making me conclude that the time it takes to make super dinos (1 year or more) can all be destroyed in 8 days.
---
So if anyone is truly interested in why - the answer is simple it is too hard in the long run. Ok for 60 days gaming. After that time people get tired of loosing storage box after storage box, dino after dino.
Personally I know how to get around it and have now adapted to it, meaning a new gaming style. I am still spread out all over the map and have lots of pillared land. So it is just a question of time until Wild Card have pillared servers again. When all learn the new auto decay destruction feature. Infact I hear more and more complaints about pillars on Official now than in the last 60 days.
 
Regards,
Ariana

I agree completely with pillars. If done correctly it keeps bases and dinosaurs spread out and makes a huge difference to server stability. Anyone who has played official pve for over a thousand hours knows this and I hope WC does too. The game simply can't handle 70 people per server so we try to keep ours at half that by detering lots of new player coming in at once. We still help new guys and are fine with tribes transferring in from other servers as we leave lots of space open inland which is where they all go anyway. In Pve pillars are your friend. Also I agree with the decay timers as Ark was never intended as a play once every week game. You must log in and tend your base and dinos every few days or it will disappear and let more active players take your place. Otherwise maps would be full of inactive bases and dinos. Build breed and maintain what you are able to do or don't play on official. Rates are too low though I agree

[Scheneighnay]

Overpopulation is a massive issue in official PVE. Huge areas get blocked off, and even if you find a plot barely large enough to build in, wild dinos in starting areas are few and far between because of it.

Official PVE servers need a total population limit- not just a limit on how many players can be online at once, but a limit on how many characters and their structures/dinos can exist on a server before it's closed off to new joins.