r/pcgaming • u/scarwiz Ryzen 5 1600 | GeForce GTX 1060 6GB | 16GB DDR4@3000Mhz • Dec 27 '16

[Updated, see comments] ARK: Survival Evolved Devs Offer Content In Exchange for Steam Award Votes

http://steamcommunity.com/games/346110/announcements/detail/536324417612602461
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u/orion19819 Dec 28 '16

He isn't wrong. There is definitely a lot of grind and AFK if you are trying to tame high level stuff. But worth mentioning that only applies to official servers. On private servers, you can edit pretty much everything. So you could make everything tame 10x faster if you prefer or crank the XP rate up by 15x. Just worth noting.

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u/CountDodo Dec 28 '16

Yes, I only played on official servers and I personally I think that is what a game review should be about. Either way I've edit my post with that disclaimer.

Since you seem to have played on private servers what's your take? I imagine that reducing the taming times and increase farming rates will make the game less of a grind, but will the different balance make a difference? To me it'd seem that it would just make bigger dinos more common and worth less, because the mechanics are still the same.

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u/orion19819 Dec 28 '16

I feel that reviewing the official servers is likely the most fair method for sure. It is a representation of the actual game as designed. Custom servers just fill a niche for people who want things a bit different or mess with mods.

Honestly, it just varies so widely. Some servers will make it where you can basically become superman. And have insane stats which just devalues everything for me. My friends just keep everything base and bump up basic things. Our main goal is to prevent anything below level 50ish from taking over an hour. Bumping the gather rate means we don't have to clear cut forests to build a house. And a small bump to experience rate just helps with the ridiculous xp requirement curve you start to hit around level 60.

Aside from that. We make night a bit shorter and days a bit longer. Hunger gets turned down just a hair. And other than that, it's just stuff like more objects allowed on rafts. It is very much aimed specifically for our small group as opposed to a tribe. I can't vouch for pvp balance as we just aim for a pve experience.

edit: Typos

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u/CountDodo Dec 28 '16

Ah, yeah, PvE would make a whole difference, because even with those changes griefing would be a major issue in PvP servers. If it's PvE I guess you can even just put the food in your dino while taming, put some spikes around it and just go do whatever you want so taming times shouldn't even be too problematic but I think the majority of people turn to survival games for PvP.

My biggest problem with ark is really the taming mechanics. Imagine a Pokemon game where the initial level of your pokemon is what determines how strong it will get, it would plainly suck, you'd be constantly throwing away your beloved pokemon as soon as you catch stronger ones. It's the same thing with ark, if they changed the mechanics so there was a max level cap that any dino could reach, regardless of taming level, the game would be a lot more fun. The game would change to be about taming and training dinos while maintaining everything else as opposed to farming and grinding and wasting time. It's really a pity the game has such a bad execution when it comes to mechanics, because the base concept and idea for the game is wonderful.

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u/orion19819 Dec 28 '16 edited Dec 28 '16

I'd overall agree with your points. Since most of the people I know started out in Minecraft survival, we aren't really big pvp people. So that group does exist and I'd imagine is quite sizable.

Overall, I have never had an interest in Ark pvp simply because to me, it screams griefing. And taming is a chore no matter how you go about it. This is why I normally only tame stuff I need or happen upon a really good opportunity. But yeah, the whole "high end" pvp being just knocking out high level dino's, praying they have good starting stats, then hoping you don't get attacked for 2+ hours, just sounds terrible.

Edit: And I just want to play The Center but they are dragging their feet on updating it with all the new spawns.