Planning on making a server.

[Noglintribe]

I wanna make a server that’s not “peaceful” but isn’t a slaughter house. Like there’s alliances between tribes and rebellions and “war” between tribes but not to the point where everyone is heart broken over their Dino’s dieing ( idk how to spell it T^T) or people mad because its to much. I have some questions, 1. Does it cost money? 2. Would people join? 3.is that possible and 4. How would i do it?

[Yggdrassil]

1) Yes it ill cost money (unless you have the machine and internet to host it yourself), you have a lot of options here and with a little searching you may find some deals and offers, have a look into some of these hosts;

Spoiler

ScalaCube

Shockbyte

ChicagoServers

Citadel Servers

HostHavoc

Nitrous Networks

PingPerfect

GameServers

DatHost

ServerBlend

Survival Servers

Nitrado

Nodecraft

Rule The ARK

Low.MS

 

2) If people will join is a tough one because there is a lot of choice and hundreds on dead servers, personally i would really have to think about a few things such as if you can afford to maintain the server? what about admins (for player issues and cheaters)? how will you advertise it? do you have the time to commit to it?

3) Yes you can run mods on your server and set it up however you like, custom rates, events a lot of unofficial servers also sell VIP perks which usually give in game advantage. 

[Pipinghot]

7 hours ago, Noglintribe said:

3.is that possible and 4. How would i do it?

It's possible but it would take a lot of work, and boy do I mean a lot.

ARK is designed for PvP to be fully destructive, to completely wreck your opponents, destroy their buildings, kill their dinos. If you don't want that then everyone will have to agree to your rules, and then play by your rules. The problems is that it's human nature for people to interpret rules in a way that is better for them and worse for their opponents. You would have to constantly use admin mode to spy on people to make sure they're following the rules, and you would constantly receive complaints from players claiming that other people are breaking your rules and should be punished. This means you'll either be punishing people on a regular basis (which will make them mad, even if the punishment is fair) or you'll be spawning in replacements for stuff and animals that people lose, or some combination of those two things.

Keep in mind that on the Official servers, where the game automatically enforces most of the rules, WildCard has to employ full time support staff who do nothing but respond to player tickets. Even if you're only running a single map you'll have people complaining about each other all the time, and if you run multiple maps it will be much worse.

You can use ORP (offline raid protection) but that still won't solve the problem that ARK is fully destructive, the game automatically allows people to destroy anything they can. If you want people to agree to a set of rules that are less brutal than the built-in game mechanics you will constantly be involved in resolving disputes and argument about what's fair.

And so far we're only talking about people with good intentions, people who are actually trying to follow your rules. In addition to these problems you're going to have (some) people join who fully intend to vandalize your server. They'll get powerful enough to do some raiding and then try to destroy everything they can before you kick/ban them. For some people, they find it much more fun to ruin other people's fun than to simply play by the rules you want to have on your server.

What you want to do is technically possible, but it would stop being fun for you within a couple of weeks.

[CosmicSkeleton]

16 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

What you want to do is technically possible, but it would stop being fun for you within a couple of weeks.

If he admins solo it'll be days before burn out if the server is full. Getting even a single server to fully cooperate is a Sisyphean task if you try doing it alone. Getting a team of admins would help, however it comes with its own risks. Power has this nasty tendency to go to people's heads after all. Pick the wrong player to help and suddenly people are coming to you about admin abuse because the person you thought could be trusted gm flew into their base with a blink rifle, shot them, shot half their tames, and claimed the other tames before wiping the base.

[Noglintribe]

I'm a girl btw but that's not very important, thank u guys it really helped me.

[DaddyMike72]

My humble opinion: 

It is possible if you can find enough like-minded people.  The issues I see is if you leave the server open to the public, on any given day you could have someone or even a group of someones who say, "To H E Double Hockeysticks with your 'rules', you don't own me (us)" before going to town and griefing everybody on the server.  As server admin you will be able to take care of them to some degree, but after enough times the server might not be fun to you or the other people that joined you.

If you lock down the server, you are going to need to find enough people to join you that share your interests.

I guess an approach would be to start a post, listing out your expectations/rules and see how many bites you get.  And be willing to bend a little on those rules/expectations.

As an old school Everquest/early WoW PvP player who was more about a fair(ish) challenge than griefing and completely destroying others, I gave up PvP a long time ago when it became "If you aren't griefing/cheating/using exploits, you aren't PvPing."  But maybe there's enough people in the Ark community who would be fine with being more focused on PvP for territory/resource disputes and less inclined on trying to completely erradicate each other's bases.

[wizard03]

On 3/18/2023 at 2:51 PM, Noglintribe said:

I wanna make a server that’s not “peaceful” but isn’t a slaughter house. Like there’s alliances between tribes and rebellions and “war” between tribes but not to the point where everyone is heart broken over their Dino’s dieing ( idk how to spell it T^T) or people mad because its to much. I have some questions, 1. Does it cost money? 2. Would people join? 3.is that possible and 4. How would i do it?

1 maybe, if you have a computer or spare xbox/playstation, then no. But if not, then yes. You will either need to rent orbuild a server
2 Depends on your friends, if you advertise it, or if word of mouth spreads it around. Also if you leave it open, then people might just "try it out" randomly. 
3 Yes
4 Rent a server, set it up for weekend only PvP, and toggle the ability setting to run at 12 am friday-12 am monday......Might add some extras as well such as trophies or gold coins that can be used for special in game rewards. This way people who want to PvP has a goal, and those who don't want to be a part of that mess can just do their own thing.