Just a question

[SharkLordSatan]

Which do you guys usually prefer to play on: Official Servers, Unofficial/Player-Dedicated or just plain ol' Singleplayer?

In all honesty I vastly prefer Player Dedicated servers to Official Ones. There's nothing wrong with Official Servers, it's just I literally can NOT wait 7+ hours just for a level two T-Rex that could end up being killed by a pack of Sabres or something ridiculous. Hence, I prefer to play on PVP servers that at least have taming speed and harvesting amped up. Call me a wuss but I don't have the patience to finish a full-on stone base that took MONTHS to complete only for it to get knocked down by two Gigas from some Alpha Tribe. If I'm gonna build a base or at least rebuild/relocate, I wanna do it fast.

And frankly I like Singleplayer; it's a good excuse to have maxed-out cheats on it and whatnot. Also, IMO it's the easiest way for me to get all of the Dino Dossiers.
I play on Xbox One btw.

[UDGxKnight]

Honestly I enjoy playing on my own world or host a non-dedicated, boosted taming is the bomb, mainly because I don't have the time for an official server where so much can happen while I am gone and tames take waayyyyy too long. I play on Xbox one also, but I do wish I could play on PC though for the mods.

[SharkLordSatan]

Yeah! I definitely agree on taming speed; it's basically a must for me lol. Getting 100+ meat for a rex? No prob. 200 Narcotics? A little difficult but won't stress me out. 4 hours JUST for a Doedicurus? Hell no. God forbid.

I wish I could play on PC as well, but my laptop can't handle it seeing as it can't even load the F2P SOTF. The farthest I've gotten is the character creation screen.

[JuanGoTeM]

I play on an Official PVP server, and I love it. I've never played on a Player Dedicated Server, so I'm used to normal game mechanics.

 

From the start of the game, our tribe motto was that we don't tame anything without kibble. I totally understand not wanting to spend hours taming a level two Rex, it makes no sense, especially because it will be killed INCREDIBLY EASILY. Instead, you get about 98 Scorpion kibble, which you can have within a few days of starting fresh, and kibble tame a level 120 Rex and spend only two and a half hours to have it tame at level 170. All of a sudden, boom, you have a combat dinosaur to help fend off an attack from another tribe, as well as a super efficient meat gatherer, alpha hunter, etc.

 

Regarding being attacked by an Alpha Tribe, you may be pleased to find that not every server's biggest tribe are jerks. We are the "Alpha Tribe" in our Xbox PVP server, and we don't attack anyone unless provoked, and would happily stick up for "the little guy." I suggest trying it one day! I find that the politicking you must do with other tribes to maintain your own safety as you build up is amazingly fun, and I've never played a game that has that element of military and government to it like this one has.

[TylerTheDoctor]

I don't go on player dedicated servers often because I don't have a good ISP, so finding the right ping is difficult. Although, I much rather prefer them, due the adminis having their own rules and they're more civilized and friendly.

[Honest]

On PC, only played SP. Then switched to xbox and started out with a couple of hours in single player. Tried non-dedi with a friend but the tether was terrible. So we jumped into an official server. It was nice, but the foundation spamming started near our base and it annoyed me having my view spoiled and arguing about having them removed by the placer.

So found a player dedicated server, with increased rates, and i love it! Can't ever imagine playing anything other than player dedi again!

[Avios]

I personally prefer to go onto Dedicated servers, with active admins and a fair amount of people (No mods!). I love the vanilla game quite a bit as well, but hate the grind!

[Jerryn]

I prefer private servers, tuned for how I like to play and that have good admins.

My first private server was vanilla with no mods, so I know the grind.  Later moved to a server with decent rates, special weekend rates(voted on by the players) and a few mods; liked the admin but he wanted to make everyone happy and eventually no one was.   Tried a few others, found one I stayed on for a while, but then we had a couple of wipes in a row, which were questionable to me, and I decided to move on.  Tried a few more and then joined a server being run by someone I knew from a previous server, and been there ever since.

[DonThommo]

15 hours ago, JuanGoTeM said:

I play on an Official PVP server, and I love it. I've never played on a Player Dedicated Server, so I'm used to normal game mechanics.

 

From the start of the game, our tribe motto was that we don't tame anything without kibble. I totally understand not wanting to spend hours taming a level two Rex, it makes no sense, especially because it will be killed INCREDIBLY EASILY. Instead, you get about 98 Scorpion kibble, which you can have within a few days of starting fresh, and kibble tame a level 120 Rex and spend only two and a half hours to have it tame at level 170. All of a sudden, boom, you have a combat dinosaur to help fend off an attack from another tribe, as well as a super efficient meat gatherer, alpha hunter, etc.

 

Regarding being attacked by an Alpha Tribe, you may be pleased to find that not every server's biggest tribe are jerks. We are the "Alpha Tribe" in our Xbox PVP server, and we don't attack anyone unless provoked, and would happily stick up for "the little guy." I suggest trying it one day! I find that the politicking you must do with other tribes to maintain your own safety as you build up is amazingly fun, and I've never played a game that has that element of military and government to it like this one has.

This.

Personally I hate increased taming speed for anything other than my "creative mode" single player game. Use kibble for everything and only the very hardest dinos will take over 2.5 hrs. If it's easy to get high level dinos then what's the point? Just feels like easy mode to me.

At most I'd consider maybe knocking a quarter off the taming timer, and only if it scaled the hunger so that it still used the same amount of food. Because 6x taming speed also means 1/6 the amount of kibble/food required. Wanna get any easier? Might as well just have a cheat code that spawns in dinos and skip the whole process...

 

On topic: I recently started playing on my own dedicated server (Xbox) with some friends and it's amazing fun. So nice having a low population server with no lag, and where everyone is friendly and accountable.

 

[VicRattlehed]

Huh, i must be in the minority. I vastly prefer official servers. Theres a couple tribes that do the pillar spam thing, but its not horrible. Private servers made things way to easy and lost any sense of accomplishment for me.

[Jerryn]

27 minutes ago, VicRattlehed said:

Huh, i must be in the minority. I vastly prefer official servers. Theres a couple tribes that do the pillar spam thing, but its not horrible. Private servers made things way to easy and lost any sense of accomplishment for me.

Actually, one of the hardest servers I ever played on was a private server, where the dinos(including dilo and trikes) were actually dangerous; and not all slow pokes.  The hard part was not the sitting around for hours and hours on a tame listening to it chew food, it was getting it knocked out and keeping it knocked out.  After getting killed by the same trike twice, I finally realized I needed to change tactics.

Generalizing all privates as easy is just as bad as generalizing all officials as being full of the scum of society(as some people like to do).

And, what is easy for one, is just perfect for someone else; this is one of the most brilliant parts of the game and certainly not a negative.

[Smokes]

i made my own private server for me, the g/f and my 2 nephews to play on - increased taming/breeding/xp/gathering, longer days, less food/water drain and a couple of mods; improved beacons and joans death helper.

i don't think i could play official, i'd get frustrated with offline raids and the amount of grind necessary to accomplish things. i don't have all the time in the world to play games like i did in my twenties, i have RL stuff to deal with which means i can't spend 4 hours watching a taming bar go up.

 

once the full release version of ARK is out, i'll probably do a server reset and get a few more people i know to come to join me - otherwise i'll be looking for another private server setup similar to mine. 

[JustAnotherGamer]

I play solely on unofficial servers. As a solo player that can't dedicate tons of time to this game, playing on official servers would be idiotic of me. I don't mind having low gather rates, but I gotta have fast tame times. With only a few hours at night to play, I don't really want to spend all that time taming one dino that will probably be dead when I log in the next day.

 

[SebastianB]

I love exploring new worlds, so unofficial custom maps all the way. Helps that they run a bit smoother aswell.

[BaMxBooZeLLed]

I have a PvP server I play solo in(Have a few alliances) but as of lately I have been enjoying playing on my own dedicated server with just me and my buddy who jumps online every once in a while. Its still challenging solo and fun exploring around as I to don't have a ton of time to play and commit so being able to adjust some sliders to help things along and not having to worry about building for fortification and more for style. 

The gaming forum Im on just opened its own dedicated server for members that Im gonna check into this weekend and that should be pretty sweet. 

 

I do want to try out a PvE server and meet up with some folks that I can bounce ideas off.

[DmpTrkDrvr]

I play on Official pve Because I want my achievement to never be undermined by the "You play on a boosted server, or you probably just turned player damage off"  I like it to be hard..  If we could I would run a server with .5 rss and double dino damage but I'm sure I'd be alone in that idea..  I also play solo without a tribe.  Though I do have alliances I have never received a single point of tribe shared XP..  last night I hit level 77 so I think I'm ok with the way I ARK.  hope that help you understand why I play pve (official)

[BigheadJoshy]

I learned the game on official PVE, and I think that really helped me out.  You get to learn what mechanics you may change and may leave alone if you do start a dedicated server.  I think ultimately preference will come down to how many friends you play with, and how many new friends you are wanting to make.  I am in a rather large gaming clan that plays a lot of titles, and there are about 12 of us that are complete Ark addicts- so naturally the 12 of us in a tribe hit our tame limit rather quickly.  Recently we started our own dedicated, and are enjoying it to the fullest.  Difficulty and resistances are the same as an official, but we put taming at 2, and plan to boost the breeding a little bit (just to help with brontos, rexes.. the long ones).  And of course with just the 12 of us and a few guests, we made our dedicated a PVP Ark, and we have a blast messing with each other, without any all out wars and loss of bases, high end dinos, etc.  

[SallyAnn]

I started with a big tribe on an Unofficial PvE server with standard rates, then when they left I jumped into Official PvP for the first go round and realised I didn't know anything and I'd been carried hardcore, levelled super fast, given top end armour and high level dinos.  So after a very short time I jumped back into single player for a couple of weeks to actually learn the game mechanics, practised taming different things, practised building, read wikis and guides, watched wild dinos a lot to understand how they aggro'd and fought.

I now personally prefer PvPvE Unofficials with very active admins and slightly increased rates but not too high x2 or x3 is a pretty nice balance without having to detract from real life responsibilities.  I like the regular wipes as it keeps server performance up and means less bugs. The main lessons I learnt along the way was starting over is not the end of the world and actually the levelling and setting up is a lot of fun - and to never get too attached to anything because you will lose it one way or another.

But like all video games it's about the people you share the game with more than anything, enemies and tribe mates alike.  A few bad apples can make any type of server feel worse than it really is.

A healthy dosage of respect for others, whichever server you are on, goes a long way to creating a fun environment.

[RadioActiveMan]

Official PVE

The tame/breed times are a bummer at times, but we have a vibrant community of folks and do not have to worry about random server wipes or bad admins.  Every Unofficial I have checked into that has more the a few players, does wipes on a regular basis.