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We are excited for ARK 2 and have high hopes for it, but many wait with bated breath. Please read this for consideration and debate: I played ARK since release, after a few months my wife of 20+years who had always refused to play games was enticed by watching me play ARK, especially the taming and breeding. I turned her into a gamer using ARK as a steppingstone. She has played many different games now but still only has LOVE for ARK and we would grow old playing it... IF NOT FOR THIS: HEAR OUR PAIN.... As a husband-and-wife duo we have been daily marathon players for years straight and then casual players after returning from frustration quits. We finally quit for good, we still frequently get the urge, no the calling to come back, but knowing that nothing is different we don't even log on. It is utterly deflating to deal continually get wiped, eventually. Defending against big tribes, alpha tribes or even a motivated small tribe eventually it always ends in tragedy, especially when for whatever reason you're on someone's radar or hitlist; they will make it their goal in life to seek and eradicate you anywhere on the cluster. It is also deflating dealing with players/tribes/alphas who control artifacts or try to prevent "unauthorized" boss fights if you manage to fight your way to an artifact or find people to give access or trade artifacts. These game Nazis make it impossible for game progression even if your tribe survives. We are no strangers to the tricks of the trade, and we have tried many things: big tribes, small tribes, mature tribes, mods, offline raid protection, hiding like a rat, secret hidden start over stashes and even alphas over the years; we've been in long term tribes full of great people; but at some point, immaturity, defections, insiders, internal politics, toxicity and even real-life intra-tribe dating burns it to the ground and ends in soul-crushing tragedy with us standing on the beach naked with no possessions, not even the clothes on our backs. We got tired of spending months/years building bases, gear, dino breed lines etc. just to start over or to find a new cluster and start over. PVE gets boring quickly, PVP is lots of fun but not when it costs you everything, months of grinding and your sanity. So, we stopped playing, our kids loved it also but lost interest for the same reasons. We know many other people including other couples we talked into playing that feel the same way; others quit because they can't always log on due to work, vacations, families and life in general and continually lose everything due to decay. Obviously, lots of people love it how it is and that's great but include a game mode for those that find PVE boring and sick of PVP that becomes unplayable. PVP hard core players love to shut down the idea of a middle-ground game mode/type, citing things like the PVP player base will be diluted by adding another PVP game type. Legions of people quitting all together is way more devastating to the player base, especially considering the masses of casual PVP players that get ravaged and will never hang around long enough to gain experience, knowledge and skills. Surely the tracking numbers show the rate of attrition for PVP and the majority bailing on PVE after a moderate time period. Maybe it's a lot of whining and griping but these are realistic reasons the player base has shrunk and doesn't replenish. Servers are largely ghost towns, a timebomb to getting erased or toxic hell holes where even beach bobs get tormented. THIS POST MIGHT NOT GET MUCH AGREEMENT, BUT THATS BECAUSE THE LEGIONS THAT QUIT DON'T LOOK AT THE FORUMS ANYMORE We want to love ARK again! Give us the tools to love ARK 2! HIGH HOPES FOR ARK 2 HEAR OUR PLEA !!! A SIMPLE ADDITION Below are some suggestions that attempt to solve the problem of getting utterly wiped out due to the myriad of reasons listed, including unreasonable decay timers. Obviously decay timers are vital to unclutter the servers and other reasons but the repeated decay of possessions also causes casual players to quit. Some people just can't feasibly get on regularly enough due to work, family, vacation or the multitude of demands of life resulting in decay wipe of prized possessions. Losing structures is one thing but the valuable rarities and possessions is too time consuming to keep grinding and repeating. A SIMPLE ADDITION OF ONE OR A COMBINATION OF THE FOLLOWING: * Our favorite; a community town where you could own an apartment or build a small personal house/property with limited crafting and storage. * A game mode similar to 'PVE conflict' in Conan Exiles. A base that can't be damaged. Or has very limited things or scenarios that damage. * One main base on one map in the cluster that can't be damaged, and all other structures are fair game. * A small safe area somewhere in your base that's un-wipeable * A bank for limited items that lasts a very long time (no decay) * A no fight/no grief zone where you could store a few of everything

We cannot report them cannot see their ID. They pull a wyvern down on us. How report someone when you get killed and your base and pets are being destroyed. I was just putting in the water system to feed plant x but they are pulling high level wyverns to my base. Can you disable the wyvern's agro'ing for three months so we can build in peace on pve? FJORDUR MAP

TL:DR; Massive amounts of pillaring / gate fences / mega bases near every spawn on 90% of servers with a heartbeat(active players), completely discouraging new players from making a home on servers that are barely alive to begin with. So I recently started Ark, and ngl, it was ROUGH. Thought about quitting many times in the last week since I started but decided to just power through in an attempt to see the full potential of this game. People obviously play it, A LOT. I was sure there was a good reason and wanted to discover it for myself. Well I'm more or less there now. Started on a beginner PvE server and things were ok. Not great, but ok enough to keep me engaged and entertained. Love the taming aspect of the game. Encountered some butt-hat claiming the ENTIRE beach near our humble little base on the lower right hand side of the map. Reported him, he seems to have poofed but his buildings still there sadly(banned/suspended?) bit I digress... I recently discovered that beginner servers are routinely wiped every now and again. To keep things "true" to the beginner experience. I get it. Kind of a downer that we have to move elsewhere but I was happy to read about transferring characters and ready to travel to a more permanent home on Ark. I began the arduous task of searching for a new The Island Ark to call home... First server: Massive bases at almost every spawn or within spitting distance of said spawns. Toxic amounts of pillaring along all shore lines/spawns. Oh well, on to the next. Second server: Massive bases at almost every spawn...ok. Third Server: Toxic amounts of pillaring along all shore lines.... *sigh* Fourth server: Massive bases/gates/pillaring at almost every spawn... Fifth Server: ............................................................................ Sixth server: 2 people online... Some very minor pillaring... But will probably try to make it work because I refuse to let these kinds of people run me off a game I was starting to enjoy. I feel like asking why people do this, but I already know the answer. Because they can and because WildCard lets it happen and continue to happen. In other games, if you spam land claims like this, they(admins/devs) jump on the server within a week or so of a report, see the evidence and immediately delete ALL of the offending clan's structures. All of them. Everywhere on the map. They then hand out a 2 week suspension or for more egregious/repeat offenders: Perma-bans on ALL official servers. So as per my tag on this post: Why is this a thing?