First time trying PvE MP server

[FlagrantVagrant]

After 900 hours of solo/local host playing I tried an Island server, can't remember which but it had already been established for thousands of days.  Very bizarre experience for me, because I didn't know what to expect.  After about 30 seconds of looking around, I saw the largest metal structure(base), so big it took a couple of minutes for it to even load in.  I would never consider building something this massive in one of my solo games.  I only remember seeing one person in chat.  I didn't chat with anyone though.  I felt massively out of place.  That initial structure wasn't the only one, there were more within the vicinity, they were all huge, and somewhat strange in design.

 

I spent maybe 30 minutes in there and just left, I almost felt like I was intruding in a weird way.  Again, not knowing what to expect.  I suspect there were many super structures all over the place.  

The one question I have, once you have literally everything, once you have a super structure as a base and an entire army of tames and, more than likely, killed the boss, what else is there to do?

Some solo games I killed a boss one time and went on to a new map.  Curious what the driving force is.

[Phetty]

Something you don't get in singleplayer is community. There's entire communities and tribes centered around breeding super dinos, or collecting & mixing colors for personalized dinos. Some people just want to build a castle, and for others to see it. Plenty of reasons besides just killing bosses and building a huge base.

[Zapha]

7 hours ago, FlagrantVagrant said:

I suspect there were many super structures all over the place.

Not really. Those spots with totaly oversized bases are like dead spots on the map, which are avoided if possible. They are on every map, mostly at obelisks or at starter areas. But they are not representative.

[Pipinghot]

11 hours ago, FlagrantVagrant said:

The one question I have, once you have literally everything, once you have a super structure as a base

If you had tamed a flyer and spend some time flying around the map you would have found plenty of places that were sparsely built and had moderate sized bases or none at all. You're feeling a bit overwhelmed because you saw a few bases and left, which doesn't give you a good perspective for what the whole map would look like. It's not like moving to Manhattan where every square foot is build up, you just had a culture shock because you went from a private island in the middle of nowhere to a well populated island with an established population.

What you experienced would be like moving from Pitcairn Island or Macquarie Island to Iceland or Ireland. Moving from nothing to something will always be a shock.

 

Beyond that, there are multiple reasons for bases like this.

1) Tribe size:

What feels big when you've been playing single player is not what feels big when you have 3-10 people playing together all the time. Even for 3 people anything less than 10x10 feels cramped.

In addition, the number of tames owned by a tribe is not linear. Which is to say, that a 2-person tribe usually owns more than twice as many dino's as a 1 person tribe, and a 4-person tribe usually owns more than 4 times as many dino's as a 1 person tribe. And the more dino's a tribe owns the more space they need to keep them.

2) Starting location

Most tribes have a main base that will be their biggest no matter how many servers they've been to and naturally The Island is where a lot of tribes got their start. Even today, when there are many maps to choose from, it's pretty typical for people to visit The Island first (like you did) when entering the Official servers. I've noticed that a lot of people, even when they joined the game later in ARK's lifetime, feel like they're supposed to start on The Island and then do other maps later. Every map will have tribes that build big, but even when tribes later on move their main base to a different map it seems like they build big on The Island first.

3) Breeding

Then you get into advanced breeding (especially if they're breeding for mutations). When a tribe decides to get into breeding they usually start breeding multiple species at once, which requires a lot more space than it seems like it should (especially if you've never done any breeding. It's bad enough when you're breeding stuff like sabers and wolves, but if a tribe is breeding rexes, spino's and other big dinos the space requirements can become insane rather quickly. And since breeding on Official servers takes a lot of time (and I mean a lot) people are hesitant to kill any dino's that are no longer part of their breeding pool. Nowadays that results in a lot of dino's being put in cryopods and a room full of cryofridges, but there are still plenty of people who don't trust cryopods (with good reason, there have been multiple issues with cryopods over the years) so they keep any dino's that the deem "important" outside and would rather keep feeding them to ensure their survival.

4) Building is fun (for some people)

And some people just build for the fun of it. I had a tribe mate on Aberration one time who had studied architecture at one point, and he ended up building what I can only describe as a baroque mansion that was at least 20x20 by 16 tiles high... for a 3-person tribe, almost as big as the pen we used to hold our dinos. It was beautiful, complete with individual apartment areas, complicated gable roofs, interesting windows and and was great to look at from outside. Sometimes people came buy just to look because they had heard about our building. Personally, I just build square buildings based entirely on function that would fit in perfectly with a book on 1950's Soviet industrial architecture, but lots of people like to build for looks and many of them have building goals that lead to big buildings.

11 hours ago, FlagrantVagrant said:

and, more than likely, killed the boss, what else is there to do?

But that doesn't mean they've killed all the bosses.

As discussed above, most tribes have a primary base on one map, then when they move out to explore other maps they build secondary bases on those other maps. Sometimes they bring back tames to their primary base after they've completed the other maps, or even if they keep all of those tames on the other map until they've beaten the bosses on the other map they will end up bringing a lot of dinos back to their primary base after they've beaten the other map.

 Think about the fact that Gen2 was just recently released. There were a bunch of tribes on every map who jumped into the Gen2 map with both feet, but they're all visiting their primary base at least a couple of times per week just to keep their animals fed and to make sure that their structures don't decay. So what looks to you like a semi-abandoned monster base that exists for no reason is in reality the primary base for a tribe that's spending most of their time experiencing the content on Gen2.

Every server other than Gen2 currently has fewer people playing per day, because bunches of those active players are off exploring the new map, but that doesn't mean they're willing to let their primary base decay and disappear. They put a lot of time into those bases and those animals, they're not going to let them go.

11 hours ago, FlagrantVagrant said:

Some solo games I killed a boss one time and went on to a new map.

When you move on to a new map in single player you don't lose anything. If you've never experience the decay timer and how it will relentlessly destroy things then it's hard to imagine the affect it can have on how people play the game. Any time you want to you can go back an revisit those maps, see your old bases, bring any materials & dino's you want to grab back to the map you're playing now. But that's not true on Official servers. Decay timers are brutal and people must maintain at least a minimal presence on old maps just to keep their stuff from disappearing.

Here's a scenario for you to consider:

A tribe of 6-8 has their primary base on The Island, they've beat the Island bosses, the Center bosses and the Scorched Earth bosses, the Ragnarok bosses. After beating those early maps they abandoned those bases and brought all of their tames back to The Island (which of course required them to expand their Island base, a lot).

They also have a secondary base on Aberration because they got lucky and had a good location on Aberration. They don't want to let go of that base or let the tames die because they're attached to that base or they feel like they might go back and play Aberration some more in the future and it's hard to get established on Aberration. So, they make a second character that they add to their tribe on Aberration just so they can log in once or twice a week just to refresh the decay timers and to either feed their tames or at least prepare more fuel to keep their generators going so their cryofridges full of cryopods always have power.

 Since that time, have since also beaten the bosses on Extinction, Crystal Isle, Valguerro and Gen 1. That means they either brought a bunch of tames from those other maps back to The Island or they have another secondary base on one of those maps. And if they have another secondary base then they also have another secondary character to feed and maintain that base.

Now their primary characters are on Gen2 experiencing the new content but they're still maintaining bases & animals on other maps. And after all this time The Island is still their primary base, it still has the most animals and it's grown quite large over time.

Now, that's just one scenario. In one sense it's imaginary because I don't know anyone who definitely fits that description, but I spent enough time on Officials servers in tribes of varying size (including an Alpha tribe on one cluster) that I can tell you it's a pretty realistic scenario.

11 hours ago, FlagrantVagrant said:

Curious what the driving force is.

As you can see by now there are multiple driving forces.

Also, hopefully you can see that multi-player is just a different experience than single-player. No matter what you've done or how you've played it's going to feel shocking to enter a multi-player environment. That doesn't mean multi-player is worse, in fact I believe it's better. Personally, I prefer multi-player on a private server with a bunch of my friends but I've spend a good amount of time on Official servers, including being in a 1-person tribe on an Official server for a while. Even being in a 1-person tribe on Official is much more socially engaging than playing single-player, it feels like a completely different (and I think more enjoyable) game to have other people on the map with you.

When you consider that you can't lose anything in your single player game, it will all be there any time you want it, you should think about spending some time on multi-player servers (either Official or Unofficial) to see if you end up enjoying it more.

[FlagrantVagrant]

This was certainly an education in ARK I was not expecting.  Thank you for the time you invested in typing all that out.  I hadn't considered the transferring of dinos from one map to the next and back again, since every single player game I've done I started from scratch.  But the upkeep and maintenance of dinos definitely makes sense.  I get it now.

Would it matter going into a server with a low amount of days established or higher, or does it even really matter in the first place since I'm going in a starting level?

[Pipinghot]

6 hours ago, FlagrantVagrant said:

This was certainly an education in ARK I was not expecting.  Thank you for the time you invested in typing all that out.

You're welcome, glad to help.

6 hours ago, FlagrantVagrant said:

Would it matter going into a server with a low amount of days established or higher, or does it even really matter in the first place since I'm going in a starting level?

I'd go for a server with a higher number of days, that's where you're more likely to find areas that have been abandoned by tribes that have stopped playing the game, or at least stopped playing on that map.

Whenever a new server opens up they get instantly colonized by established players & tribes trying to get the "best" spots to build their bases, every new server is like seeing recreation of an historical Gold Rush, with people scrambling over each other to claim everything they can get their hands on. Even on PvE servers the early phase of a new server is a pretty un-cooperative time.

 

Something that will help you is to forget about the idea of "the best spots" to build your base,  every map has lots of good places to build bases. Since you've come from single player you probably have a few spots that you're thinking of in advance, depending on how much time you've spent on a map you probably have somewhere from 1-to-6 locations that you're hoping to build on. You might get one of those spots, you might not, but even if they're all occupied don't let that get you down. What you will find, if you have a little patience, is that one of the cool challenges in PvE is finding a location that has been ignored or overlooked that you will be able to build a cool base on.

I've already mentioned to you that I don't play on Official servers anymore, but that's only 98% true. What I like to do, about once a year, is pick a map I haven't been on for a long time, make a new character on a new server, and then proceed to play, explore & level up until I find a location that's unclaimed, build myself a good starter base and get some tames. As soon as I get established, I'm done. I stop playing that character/map, let everything decay and disappear, and go back to playing exclusively on my private server with my friends.

The last time I did this was about 4 months ago on Aberration. As expected the map was thoroughly built up in all of the best (and easy to get to) locations, but after about two days of exploring (and leveling) I found a location I liked that was completely unclaimed. There are so many people who refuse to look for less obvious locations that the established tribes don't even bother to use pillars to claim land in those locations. Even though I like to build simple, rudimentary bases it's still interesting and fun to see how the terrain will force me to do a little creative building in order to build a decent base in that location. If you push yourself a little bit, you'll be amazed at how effective pillars are for creating a good base in a "bad" location. By the end of one week I had expanded from a 3x4 tiny building with all of the crafting stations crammed together into a 10x30 platform build on pillars & ceiling tiles with about a dozen good tames including stone, wood & thatch harvesters, plus a few dire bears for protection.  ...and then I quit. Because I wasn't there to start playing Official, I was just there for the fun challenge of building a base where other people didn't want to, but which was still in a good location with good access to get to & from the major resources on the map.

So, enough about me, that's not really what this is about. The goal here is to help you see that you can easily get started on an established PvE server as long as you're willing to begin with a tiny hut with a bed, and then explore until you find somewhere that you can envision a good base for yourself.

 

Beyond this, one of the ongoing aspects of Official servers if that people come and go. People and tribes are constantly quitting the game, or at least quitting that specific server, which means there will be opportunities for claiming land in better locations or, more likely, being able to expand your existing base whenever your neighbors move on to other things. Something to keep in mind is that you can keep your tames on land that other people have pillared, you just can't build on it. Let's say you find a spot that's big enough to build a 6x10 building. That's plenty big enough for one person, and even if you can't build a bigger building you can still park your animals outside.  Just tame something like a turtle, put is on Passive, then tame some good fighters (bears, theri's, megatheria, whatever is good at fighting on the map you're on), put them on Neutral and whistle them to follow the turtle. The fighters will protect your front yard from anything unpleasant that wanders in and the turtle will make sure that they don't go running across the map chasing things.

And, as time goes by, you'll get to know the other people on the server, you'll get hooked in to the gossip and information about what's going on with other tribes, and soon enough you'll find that you can arrange to either expand in place by negotiating with your neighbors or you can claim a different spot to relocate to when people leave the server. Heck, you might even make some friends and merge tribes, which will take your game to a new level.

 

Playing PvE is super different from single-player, no question about it, but my opinion is that the game is almost always more fun with other people than alone. Single-player is perfect, in one sense, that you have complete ownership and total control over your map, your difficulty level, your ability to use admin commands to fix glitches & problems caused by the game. But even the best single player experience lacks the dynamic that being around other players brings, even if your in a 1-person tribe my take on the game is that I've always found it more fun when there are other people around. You might even find yourself thinking about making buildings that are more aesthetic for other people to admire, who knows what can happen?

 

[wizard03]

On 6/12/2021 at 5:39 PM, FlagrantVagrant said:

After 900 hours of solo/local host playing I tried an Island server, can't remember which but it had already been established for thousands of days.  Very bizarre experience for me, because I didn't know what to expect.  After about 30 seconds of looking around, I saw the largest metal structure(base), so big it took a couple of minutes for it to even load in.  I would never consider building something this massive in one of my solo games.  I only remember seeing one person in chat.  I didn't chat with anyone though.  I felt massively out of place.  That initial structure wasn't the only one, there were more within the vicinity, they were all huge, and somewhat strange in design. I spent maybe 30 minutes in there and just left, I almost felt like I was intruding in a weird way.  Again, not knowing what to expect.  I suspect there were many super structures all over the place.  The one question I have, once you have literally everything, once you have a super structure as a base and an entire army of tames and, more than likely, killed the boss, what else is there to do? Some solo games I killed a boss one time and went on to a new map.  Curious what the driving force is.

Dude I felt the same way my first time, it was like "this is someone else's server, I hope they don't just kick me out or something."

Took me a minute to find a place away from it all, but when I did, I started fitting in a bit better. Things was going along smoothly, built a wood base, then stone, then metal. {still not sure why other than I had all the metal to the north to myself and just got into the habit of smelting a flock of argies worth of every morning} 
One day someone announced two gigas was spotted, offered em up to anyone, I took the low level one {still not sure why} and heck he helped me tame it up. Brough narco, checked out my weirdo trap handiwork, prolly had a giggle, and was on his way to whatever was his mission for the day

Might be a bit intimidateing at first, and yeah you gotta find the "right" server for you. But you might have to give it a secound try man. PvE can be fun.

[wizard03]

22 hours ago, FlagrantVagrant said:

This was certainly an education in ARK I was not expecting.  Thank you for the time you invested in typing all that out.  I hadn't considered the transferring of dinos from one map to the next and back again, since every single player game I've done I started from scratch.  But the upkeep and maintenance of dinos definitely makes sense.  I get it now.

Would it matter going into a server with a low amount of days established or higher, or does it even really matter in the first place since I'm going in a starting level?

the one I started was 50k days old XD

[Penguin73]

Since most beach space on the southern side of the island will either be built upon or pillared, a strategy that I like to use is to build a raft.  Bob on the beach to earn a few levels and as soon as you can build one... do it.  Don't worry too much about taming at first.  Get yourself a little houseboat and maybe a ptera.  You will find that mobility and safety aboard a boat is something to value early.   Also, just the act of building a boat will get you many levels in the process.  Consider putting points into fortitude so you can travel north.  Quite often there are many good areas to build as you get closer to the colder regions.  From your boat you can gather resources and fill storage closets full of stone foundations/ wall/ ceilings/ etc... and be ready to build once you find the perfect spot.  Use the ptera to scout inland if you don't see what you want on the beach.  Play smart and you will make it.  Good luck.

[FlagrantVagrant]

On 6/14/2021 at 6:09 AM, Pipinghot said:

don't even bother to use pillars to claim land in those locations.

 

Interesting you mentioned this.  When I first got into that server, i saw pillars in what appeared to be arbitrary locations surrounding the first huge base I came across and didn't understand what it was all about.  some were one-wall high pillars, others were metal foundations with one pillar in the center.

I guess that is how ppl claim space?

[Ganelon]

9 minutes ago, FlagrantVagrant said:

Interesting you mentioned this.  When I first got into that server, i saw pillars in what appeared to be arbitrary locations surrounding the first huge base I came across and didn't understand what it was all about.  some were one-wall high pillars, others were metal foundations with one pillar in the center.

I guess that is how ppl claim space?

Yeah.... pillaring is a topic. It giveth... it taketh away.

Most tribes pillar to widen the boundary around their base. That keeps away the sprawl. Generally, everyone is cool with that (within reason).

Others do it to protect a prime resource spot. Most are cool with that as well.

Still others do it to 'sell' that spot to someone that wants to build there and waits to that someone reaches out. That's sausageery.

 

And finally... some people do it just to be control freaks. "Hey, that's a good spot. I already have a good spot base, but I MAY want to build there". That's sausageery, too.

[Piffguru]

On 6/13/2021 at 10:58 PM, FlagrantVagrant said:

Would it matter going into a server with a low amount of days established or higher, or does it even really matter in the first place since I'm going in a starting level?

To me there's nothing like being on a server early even for PVE. Every new map that comes out with fresh servers, the first couple months is so active, lots of talking, trading, helping each other, sharing new information, etc. After a few months it dies down hard and turns into a bit of a ghost town with a few day 1's still there basically only interacting with themselves. Unfortunately they do not routinely release new servers for old maps so to get that experience you gotta be on the newest of the maps which of course right now is Gen2.

Its true on really old servers you can find spots that have been abandoned but its not really a communal experience. For the last week basically everyday like clockwork we have a tribe getting high level reapers in a safe public trap on gen2 and like 20+ people come and get pregnant together. Everyone is going around breeding with each others gigas, trading clones, competing for supply drops, teaming up to do harder missions together. Its great and you wont really get that kinda stuff on old servers.

There will always be a few people that are aggressive and messing up tames, being jerks on the chat or whatever but thats not the majority IMO.

[FlagrantVagrant]

Based on a previous thread I made on my initial 30 minute experience, I took people's advice to heart and considered their recommendations, and I don't think it's for me.

1. Server lag:  about every 15-20 minutes, my character freezes in place from 15-30 seconds.  I have a gigabit fiber optic connection and the server ping is typically less than 25ms.  That's patently insane that this happens and has the potential of happening at a really bad time.

2. Pillaring:  Or what I prefer to call "Littering".  I guess I can understand to some degree why it is done, however, it's obnoxious and makes the map look like trash.  There is also an additional issue this causes that everyone is aware of but, apparently, no one cares.  Screws up resources for any new players to the server.  The sole safe place for my starter building on the SE area of The Island, had little to no resources.  There weren't even any fish.  The amount of running around I had to do for resources, didn't warrant the end result, add this to the fact that building in this game blows do to lazy design, and this adds up to a tremendous amount of frustration which makes it unfun.

I managed to tame a 145 Ptera so I could fly around the map and check things out.  While there are fascinating base builds, the sheer amount of them, for me, seriously detracts from even being there.   I'll go back in to fly around and check out more of the map and get ideas for future base builds, but otherwise, I think I'll stick to single player.

If I was on a private server with a handful of people then I could see this as viable, but as it stands, I think I prefer solo/local host playing.

I have no server lag, the map is in its intended form and there are options to contend with the god awful building process.

Good Job to  those that have put forth the immense amount of time and effort to accomplish what they have done, it shows.

[Piffguru]

6 hours ago, FlagrantVagrant said:

2. Pillaring:  Or what I prefer to call "Littering".  I guess I can understand to some degree why it is done, however, it's obnoxious and makes the map look like trash.  There is also an additional issue this causes that everyone is aware of but, apparently, no one cares.  Screws up resources for any new players to the server.  The sole safe place for my starter building on the SE area of The Island, had little to no resources.  There weren't even any fish.  The amount of running around I had to do for resources, didn't warrant the end result, add this to the fact that building in this game blows do to lazy design, and this adds up to a tremendous amount of frustration which makes it unfun.

Well do whats best for you, but I would just like to say, pillars do not effect resources what so ever. All pillars do is stop anyone else from building in that area. Its foundations that stop resources, so if someone has a bunch of foundations littered around then what you are saying here could be true.

[FlagrantVagrant]

The other issue, is if I had the ability to use the green obelisk, I couldn't because some genius thought it would be a good idea to park all his dino's on it.  Same with "littering", too much selfishness.

Quote

Its foundations that stop resources, so if someone has a bunch of foundations littered around then what you are saying here could be true.

But's that's what it was, a foundation with a pillar in the center, or a foundation with a wall, it's still "littering", it still makes the map look like garbage and still screws up resources.  I guess not needing resources is good for those that are already max level and have every engram in the game.  But for anyone wanting to start a new character, it completely screws them.  I can't toss the monkey off my shoulder without hitting someone else's reserved land.

[Piffguru]

2 hours ago, FlagrantVagrant said:

But's that's what it was, a foundation with a pillar in the center, or a foundation with a wall, it's still "littering", it still makes the map look like garbage and still screws up resources.  I guess not needing resources is good for those that are already max level and have every engram in the game.  But for anyone wanting to start a new character, it completely screws them.  I can't toss the monkey off my shoulder without hitting someone else's reserved land.

Ok thats different then, a foundation with a pillar in the center will kill spawns. Most people dont do that unless its like inside their base to stop creature spawns within their gates. Outside in resource areas people should only do a pillar+ladder to stop others from foundation off that area and killing spawns as you mentioned.

[Pipinghot]

15 hours ago, FlagrantVagrant said:

Based on a previous thread I made on my initial 30 minute experience, I took people's advice to heart and considered their recommendations, and I don't think it's for me.

Understood, you have to enjoy a game on your own terms. Games are supposed to be for fun, so you should do whatever is fun for you.

[FlagrantVagrant]

It's all moot now anyway.  I went back in to unclaim my 6 dilo SEAL team and my Ptera Holy Hellena when a lvl 100 Alpha Raptor strolled past all the bases in the starting area and killed me and everything else off. 

[theopheus]

On 6/12/2021 at 5:39 PM, FlagrantVagrant said:

Some solo games I killed a boss one time and went on to a new map.  Curious what the driving force is.

It's not necessarily practical, fun, or easy to move all of your dinosaurs, and resources to another server and not everyone wants to start over.    We are up to 10 maps now.   Lots of people use their original server as their base and setup smaller bases on the maps they're playing currently.   One of the complaints about Genesis 1 was that it had poor amounts of areas to build in and some people said it was a simulation not a full ark so you weren't meant to build there, which is kinda of dumb if you ask me.   Without a base on a server everything becomes 10x more difficult.    Little things like repairing equipment or storing dinosaurs over night becomes a pain.   The transferring and logging off process for me usually took minimum 30 mins since it's a bad idea to log off with stuff in your inventory.

Also, a lot of the people online are literally not even playing the game.   The "breeders" are just checking their timers and stuffing meat in dinos inventories while going afk watching youtube.   And some of these people have even paid for this game twice so they could make the process easier.

I've never been able to wrap my head around people who embrace the grind and enjoy it.   If it were up to me, a lot of the RND stuff that contributes to grinding would be cut out and this game wouldn't still be going at 6 years.  It's not a good business model to keep servers full all the time while your only source of income is your trickling new player flow and whatever DLC they can literally throw together every year.  I have no doubt that's why they ultimately added Epic games.

As far as the pillar issue, most of the time its reasonable.   There are some tribes who abuse it, but often if you report them, WC is too heavy handed and will just wipe them, which isn't fair either in some cases.

Most of the people who complain about pillars everywhere are Bobs who think that the word "easy" next to a spawn area means something and they won't get off the beach.

It always baffled me since if those pillars weren't there, someone would have built a base there, and then they would have spawned right in someone's base.

[sjskdjkfa]

1 hour ago, theopheus said:

and some people said it was a simulation not a full ark so you weren't meant to build there

When people started saying that, I thought, try and stop me... then I went and built a base near the volcano and rock slides wiped it away, then I went and build in the snow and snow wiped it away, then I went and built in the ocean ona raft and a leed wiped it away, then lunar, and tek rex stuck his fat head through my wall and ate half my base, LOL finally I started getting a permanent setup with the top of a ocean spire, and a ocean platform, and the remnants of my lunar base, but by then my tribe mates had quit. That map sucked for building regardless if that was the intention of wc.