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Why Play on Official


Cadin

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I have been playing Ark since a little bit after Scorched Earth came out (So a little under 3 years) and I have tried playing Official Servers before but never got into it. Mostly because of how long it takes to do something and the fact that none of my friends wanted to play with me. After a year or so, I stopped playing so frequently but kept getting back into the game. Now, after all of the new updates to server hosting and everything, I've started playing again. However, now I have a question that no one can seem to answer. Why do people play on official?

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Easy.  I started playing on official back when the game was first released.  It was impossible to ever get me and my friends on the same server at the same time because they were all full.  Seriously with a max of 70 most servers were either maxed, or at around 68 or 69.  We decided to create our own dedicated server, got a bunch of folks to come play and it was fun!  One we got bored and most folks had left we decommissioned the server and did something else with it.  There is where the problem lies.  At some point pretty much all dedicated servers go away.  Oh sure, most server owners will tell you their server isn't going anywhere but my experience is they all do eventually.  So I'm back to official on a CrossArk server now, and found something that I'm enjoying.  I know it takes longer to do anything and I'm not in love with that part, but the fact that it's going to be there for the long haul is a great selling point for me.

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Because everything else is unappealing to me. On official I have lots of other players I can show off my buildings to, there's no risk that the server gets shut down overnight and no admin who can abuse their power. Also I don't want boosted rates since I don't want everything quick. Permanent 2x harvesting would be nice, but 5x or 10x? Get the hell out. I'd like 10x breeding though, raising takes so long that it's not fun to me and I pretty much stopped doing it.

 

Still:

#official5lyfe

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21 minutes ago, Cadin said:

I have been playing Ark since a little bit after Scorched Earth came out (So a little under 3 years) and I have tried playing Official Servers before but never got into it. Mostly because of how long it takes to do something and the fact that none of my friends wanted to play with me. After a year or so, I stopped playing so frequently but kept getting back into the game. Now, after all of the new updates to server hosting and everything, I've started playing again. However, now I have a question that no one can seem to answer. Why do people play on official?

Because on Xbox nobody plays on unofficial, except for the popular servers that reset every few days and have no longevity. I built up a huge base, tamed countless animals and started boss fights for tek. One day i woke up snd everything was gone, owner deleted the server. Most people don’t wanna pay for long periods unless they had a huge following, like Game of Thrones prim+.

All of the folk saying they are happy on unofficial are probably on PC because all of ours are dead :D Unless you’re perfectly fine with playing on less than 5 people unofficials

I like the slow pacing of official and once you level your utility tames, things start going pretty fast. Especially with industrial engrams. The only problem is the very slow rate of breeding/raising. I really don’t wanna babysit (literally) a giga for 12 days just so it can be killed by some “i’m in a huge tribe and it’s pvp bruh deal with it” nolife.

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I've never played unofficial so I might not be 100% accurate on my pros and cons but to me it's something like...

Pros:

- Able to trade/buy/sell with an insane amount of people on any official server on any map.  One thing that quickly comes to mind is buying bred rexes and things like that.

- Whenever there's an event, especially breeding, it's a huge reminder that holy f this game would be way too easy if these were always the rates.  So if I played unofficial, I'd want to play one with official rates.  The taming/breeding/xp/harvesting rates are a big reason many people play unofficial but to me is a huge negative.  The things that are very strong and should be hard and time consuming to get wouldn't be.

- Lots of choice in what servers to transfer to on other maps.  I have little setups on a bunch of different Ragnarok servers so that I can check all of them when I'm looking for wyvern eggs.  When I want to build something bigger on other maps besides my main, I can check out lots and see which one I like best.  Unofficials are generally just a cluster of one for each map right?

- Ark is a very grinding but rewarding game, and when I accomplish something on official it's exciting and a great feeling.  Again on the jacked up rates, I would feel like I did it on super easy mode.  It would kill a lot of what makes Ark great to me.

- No matter how much the people running the server promise you the server isn't going anywhere, that's never guaranteed.

 

Cons:

- Mods.  Obviously there are a lot of cool mods out there and by playing on official all you can do is hope that the devs like the same ones you do and eventually implement them on officials.

- Lag and crashing.  I assume that lag and crashing issues are much less of a problem on unofficials.  Using battlemetrics, it's not too hard to find a good server that isn't laggy and doesn't crash a lot on some maps.  Some maps, even the best ones are bad.  So depending on the map you want to play, this could be a huge con to officials.

- Rules and enforcement.  With officials, you're obviously stuck with the rules and everything being what they are across the board and if someone violates them it can take a while to get anything done about it.  With unofficial, you can find one that better matches what you want and I'd assume most, if not all, of them will be much quicker to enforce when someone is doing something they shouldn't be.

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14 minutes ago, AdligerAdler said:

I'd like 10x breeding though, raising takes so long that it's not fun to me and I pretty much stopped doing it.

See, to me that one would be the absolute worst.  During the breeding event with it being 3x, that was even waaaaaayyyyyy too easy for me to want it all the time.  Any higher than that would be absolutely absurd.  During 3x I would just hatch an insane amount of dinos all at once, hand feed them for like maybe 15 minutes depending on what they are, and then I can just set a timer on my phone for the next imprint(or in extreme cases for like an hour when they're gonna need their food checked) and leave them.  Plus any wyvern over like level 95 literally did not need to be fed at all ever.  I raised a bunch of high level wyverns fully imprinted using zero milk.

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22 minutes ago, MackTheKnife said:

Because on Xbox nobody plays on unofficial, except for the popular servers that reset every fee days and have no longevity. I built up a huge base, tamed countless animals and started boss fights for tek. One day i woke up snd everything was gone, owner deleted the server. Most people don’t wanna pay for long periods unless they had a huge following, like Game of Thrones prim+.

I like the slow pacing of official and once you level your utility tames, things start going pretty fast. Especially with industrial engrams. The only problem is the very slow rate of breeding/raising. I really don’t wanna babysit (literally) a giga for 12 days just so it can be killed by some “i’m in a huge tribe and it’s pvp bruh deal with it” nolife.

The last part is what I'm worried about. Does this kind of stuff happen often? I would hate to have grinded for days just to get foundation wiped and all my tames killed.

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16 minutes ago, Cadin said:

The last part is what I'm worried about. Does this kind of stuff happen often? I would hate to have grinded for days just to get foundation wiped and all my tames killed.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh yes it happens. Don’t trust ANYONE unless they are your personal friends from other games. Insiders know everything about Ark so never recruit players from this specific game.

Go to some online server browser and find an empty server number that can’t be seen through the auto list in the game so people won’t stumble onto it. Build up uninterrupted. If you’re going to raid people then tame your attack dinos on ANOTHER server so they can’t trace it. Trade with people you 100% trust because people will scam you or just kill everything outright.

It’s not for the faint of heart, i’ve broken a flatscreen (after a troll bypassed my 100 turrets by glitching under the map and killed said giga) and thrown several controllers at lethal speeds. A lot of blunders were due to servers kicking me out at horribly inconvenient times as well so you’re never safe.

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32 minutes ago, Cadin said:

I have been playing Ark since a little bit after Scorched Earth came out (So a little under 3 years) and I have tried playing Official Servers before but never got into it. Mostly because of how long it takes to do something and the fact that none of my friends wanted to play with me. After a year or so, I stopped playing so frequently but kept getting back into the game. Now, after all of the new updates to server hosting and everything, I've started playing again. However, now I have a question that no one can seem to answer. Why do people play on official?

Short version: Fundamentally speaking, people perceive fun in different ways and that is hard to grasp if you are not into a specific group, fun is something subjective to each one of us so this conversation is likely to go around circles.

 

I did the full round, extensively (months on each one), been part of Official PvP (large and small tribes), Official PvE and Unofficial server/solo.

I too found it to be more fun playing the game on a private situation, albeit in my case I was fortunate enough to have friends playing with me which justified a server. Ark shines the most with friends or solo in my case, I find that the "greater community" disrupts my enjoyment of Ark and creates too many distractions to my laser focused ambitions (whichever it is, bosses, epic base, taming etc...).

Also, having a server to ourselves, which is less polluted with "average structures" and more wildlife roaming about its a completely different experience. PvP can be fun, but based on available time I have, I cannot be competitive unless I abdicate really important stuff in my life, which I will not obviously. So its an easy skip.

Now days games are all about "live services" and working on large communities, I do not share the sentiment, what I want in my games now is this:

"More co-op, less massive."

But hey, that is me. :D

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5 minutes ago, MackTheKnife said:

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh yes it happens. Don’t trust ANYONE unless they are your personal friends from other games. Insiders know everything about Ark so never recruit players from this specific game.

Go to some online server browser and find an empty server number that can’t be seen through the auto list in the game so people won’t stumble onto it. Build up uninterrupted. If you’re going to raid people then tame your attack dinos on ANOTHER server so they can’t trace it. Trade with people you 100% trust because people will scam you or just kill everything outright.

It’s not for the faint of heart, i’ve broken a flatscreen and thrown several controllers at lethal speeds. A lot of blunders were due to servers kicking me out at horribly inconvenient times so you’re never safe.

Thank you! One more question is, what do you mean by "online server browser"? Are there specific websites that do this?

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4 minutes ago, Cadin said:

Thank you! One more question is, what do you mean by "online server browser"? Are there specific websites that do this?

I think there’s one main listing but it lists ALL servers, there are a crap ton more than what you see in the game generated ones. Many servers need to be typed in the search bar to be found.

Arkserversonline is what i used

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50 minutes ago, MackTheKnife said:

Because on Xbox nobody plays on unofficial, except for the popular servers that reset every few days and have no longevity. I built up a huge base, tamed countless animals and started boss fights for tek. One day i woke up snd everything was gone, owner deleted the server. Most people don’t wanna pay for long periods unless they had a huge following, like Game of Thrones prim+.

All of the folk saying they are happy on unofficial are probably on PC because all of ours are dead :D Unless you’re perfectly fine with playing on less than 5 people unofficials

I like the slow pacing of official and once you level your utility tames, things start going pretty fast. Especially with industrial engrams. The only problem is the very slow rate of breeding/raising. I really don’t wanna babysit (literally) a giga for 12 days just so it can be killed by some “i’m in a huge tribe and it’s pvp bruh deal with it” nolife.

And the other 10,000 server owners?

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I played official for the first 2000+ hours of my ARK time. The other 2000+ hours have been unofficial. The reason I quit official were the lagg. Back then it was very common for servers to be 255+ ping often. I had a tribe, 6 RL friends and we were big in the trade market. The incentive was there, the huge network, the similarities between every server. One by one my friends dropped out until it was just me left for a time. We had an alliance of 10+ tribes with whom were all from our original legacy server, spanning 15 different servers all with their own specialties for breeding etc. 

It got boring by myself maintaining all our old bases so I let a few drop. I eventually got bored and quit for a time. When I came back, a lot changed and auto decay took my base (obviously) I could have gotten set up by allies still playing but I didnt feel like having my life taken up by ARK. I played SP for a bit, got a few friends into a dedicated server, bought a 2nd xbox and maintained a server for the same friends and I. Was a pain. Multiple server wipes (not by choice) and after 6~ months my friends went to official again and I refused. Played SP for a bit until Unofficial Nitrado rentals came out to Xbox.

Tried a server and never looked back. So much more fun, I could actually do anything I wanted, when I wanted. I didnt have to dedicate a whole weekend to a raise during kicks and stuff. Wasnt plagued by bugs mostly exclusive to Official (for example - all this right now. I logged in our server and had 0 problems) After that server got stale I tried a forum buddies' server and never looked back.

Everyone has a bad stigma about unofficials. Just need the right admin. I feel 100% confident that my progress will be here once I get back, and I have taken a break since then. Came back to everything still there.

 

I feel the biggest perks, for me, about Official are the large network of players, trading and old friends. Its a double edged blade though - as those large networks of people were mostly trying to eff you. The cons outweigh the pros and unofficial is where its' at for me.

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