ARK circular motivation

[HoboNation]

ARK circular motivation

So I am not sure what to call it but recently I have been finding that I think about playing ark a decent amount, infact through out the work day I consider what I want to do in ark and what would allow for a good start on a server, I get excited by the prospect of getting home after a long days work logging in and getting lost in a server, but when the time comes and I get to sit down at my pc, I start to lose motivation and drive to play, I log in to ark and end up playing a small amount before I start to lose interest and then start up another game instead, or get convinced by others to play what they are playing. Yet without fail the next day I regret not playing and once again want to play, I again think about what I wanted to accomplish and yet come the time when I have the time to play, the interest starts to fade again.

So my question is do others also experience this? I have considered what could be holding me back and I have a feeling that because recently my friends that I used to play with are all off playing other games and havent played ark in a little while, leaving me to play solo, is a big part of the issue. I think the biggest part of ARK I enjoyed was the cooperation and sharing the experience with someone else. Sure you can recruit a few rando's and start a tribe but I don't trust very easily when it comes to ark, which is why I often don't stay long in a tribe that I don't know the other players in very well. So I have chalked this loss of motivation to play, as my subconscious knowing the amount of effort that solo start up entails and that this amount of work is daunting enough to kill my motivation , but then I still crave playing the game so much. 

So I am both curios if others experience this kind of burn out/ motivation loss, and also if anyone has any methods they use to overcome this when playing solo, I would love to hook up with a tribe but like I said before it takes some time before I trust a group of people in the game. Something I have done before to overcome this is to recruit a bunch of new players and rather then having a serious play through I have a relaxed learning experience where I teach them what I can and let them learn in a tribe where there isn't pressure to succeed or too much stress of losing tames etc, I try to teach them this is part of the game. That can be fun for awhile, but it gets to a point where many of the "newbies" will just stop playing, also it forces me to not have a serious play through which means no real progress gets made. So pretty much it's fun for awhile but that eventually dies out. 

I have considered maybe trying community servers as I mainly play official PvP, I recently read about MTS servers which look interesting, I am just worried about population levels as I enjoy active servers with fairly active populations, this is why I enjoy official. Perhaps the boosted rates of community servers will help reduce the effort of a solo start, but I havent gotten myself to join one yet and try it out.

Any ideas? please feel free to share them.

[DirkInSA]

For my part I wish they would release a 1 man tribe equivalent to small tribes servers: Then it might be worth the effort for 1 guy to play offical without having to recruit , and if the rates are adjusted apporiately, to have chance at play through.

I some while ago ran cluster servers at home, and  it was quite fun for a while being the "admin"

[Pip20103]

If you're solo try playing to build new friends with similar interests that are long term ark players rather than to build up with a tribe of randos. I used to be in a two man tribe with my wife because we couldn't trust anyone else but we started trading with people over time who eventually became allies. Then we got to running caves and boss fights with them. We figured out they were people we could trust and we eventually became friends. We quit ark for about three months but decided to come back and we had friends to tribe up with. We even play other games with them sometimes like GTA.

[Darkholis]

I've been through the same feelings at some point in the game.

Thing is I have a a solid group of friends/familly members playing the game with me but none of them are as hardcore as I am (in terms of hours spent), thus I always end up frustrated because I do 90% of the work on my own and/or we get wiped from the server we seized control.

In my case, I did managed one of the top raid guild on my server in Everquest 2 for about 8+ years, so I am kinda spoiled in regards of time spent. Since I can't really PvP the way I want on official (due to previous issues), I usually play on unofficial and/or my own servers and do some stupid challenges to keep myself entertained, such as doing full ascension solo on official settings.

You could also look into the Ark dev kit and the modding community. You are only limited by your creativity really.

As for MTS servers, I don't want to bad mouth them as I don't play there (nor plan too) but I've seen multiple reports of the same guy having "admin rights" and abusing them for nefarious activities such as insiding other tribes...