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Post by testefy on May 16, 2017 19:21:35 GMT -5
I am not trying to single any certain person or persons out, but I have noticed in the AAH chat, several people complaining about how they are bored with nothing to do, because the server doesn't have mods they like and "The Island" map sucks. I wouldn't put this thread out there if it was just 1 day I noticed this toxic chat going on.
I have run several gaming clans for different MMO's and FPS games. The worst thing someone can do to a player rented server is complain about how bad the server is since it doesn't have certain mods or map. In the past 3 days, I have seen several people in chat tearing down ARK and the setup for AAH.
As a semi new player to ARK, I am not sure how you can get so bored in this game. I suggest to anyone who thinks playing this game is ruining there life should probably stop playing or find others to play with. I am more of a FPS game player than MMO/Sandbox type game, but ARK is beautiful. It has taken me away from Battlefield which surprised the hell out of me. This server has good admins also. They seem to be on almost everyday and help players out all the time which a lot of servers don't have this. Those are the servers people leave quickly.
The point I am trying to make in this thread is don't tear down the game/server in chat. It turns a lot of people off and ruins others game play. A active chat helps a server out immensely. A toxic chat makes servers go away. Anyone who wants some good people to play with who are adults and have sense of humors, please add me to your friends list and hop in my wife and I's teamspeak. Playing with others in voice changes the game big time.
*sorry end of rant*
TESTEFY-HD (now TESTEFY-4K since I was told last night HD is obsolete)
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Post by Dino Dave on May 16, 2017 20:22:23 GMT -5
(This is just me talking, Nails/Nash, the owners, have veto. Yeah I'm an admin, but just like an assistant lol)
Ark is boring after xxxx hours.
You can get bored in ark. End of story lol. You can make crap up to do yourself, or move on, like any game. Even the end-game has always made you ask yourself "Do I actually want this stuff? I don't need it in PvE really, it's just neat." This is true now as much as ever. Tek boots that cost a fortune to repair and operate? Being able to live with eels? More expensive metal structures? Laser shark for no reason? lol, 15 more levels to grind wut? You pretty much have to enjoy occasional interaction with friends in game and especially hanging out with dinosaurs and roaming primeval wild lands all day. That's 95% of ARK.
Toxic toxicity is toxic.
Moving on, there are many, many definitions of "toxic" in a game community. Toxic can mean harmful to the game, harmful to people, harmful to fun, harmful to the coherence of the community or any other meaning that's negative when talking about behavior. I think the original and most meaningful... meaning... is people taking games too seriously to allow for others to have fun(through game mechanics or social interaction), extreme elitism, and harassment. While the less hardcore meanings of toxic are not pleasant, like blowing nitpicks out of proportion and thus demoralizing people around you, I'm not sure we're ready to just tell people to stop the QQ. That would be like trying to get groceries with a flame thrower. It doesn't work, and it makes a mess.
Solutions?
Ordinarily I would say take it upon yourself to turn such talk around to a positive when you see it. There's one individual on the server, however, who shall remain nameless, who's name is mag, who I don't think could ever be satisfied, or at least would never stop voicing in chat the same crabbiness we all feel sometimes >.< She needs a sticky note w/ the "If you can't say something nice..." quote on her monitor lol. I'm interested to know other examples though.
Some AAH trivia, so you can chat about it with an informed viewpoint:
1. We are vanilla, but friendlier to people with limited time, and who prefer to play solo. That's why we have sped up timers, and basically unlimited engram points once you get over lvl 75. We only use mods that can obviously be classed as "bug fixes" pretty much. Structures plus took us months and months and months, possibly over a year, to talk them into adding lol. We got burned hard several times with a couple cosmetic mods, cute hair and eco trees, both in load time and server crashes, so fluff mods are pretty much out of the question I think. (RIP base forests, pirate bandana)
2. We're on the island for the earliest access to new features, and the most fleshed out cave/boss system. We were island, then center(no less QQ'ing there, whatever you hear elsewhere lol), then island again.
"Good people to play with who are adults and have sense of humor"
There are more definitions of this in online games than stars in the southern sky, but I wont go into that lol.
AAH also has a discord linked around here somewhere, thanks for the invite though! It's kind of a sub discord that someone else uses mostly though, usually deserted, possibly because cramped lol.
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Post by andarielhalo on May 16, 2017 22:19:01 GMT -5
I know you're talking about me, just say my name
oh, dino dave already did.
for posterity and my own defense, I've never said anything bad about the server or its settings. it's the fact that this is such a great server that has made me frustrated and vocal about not wanting to leave. the problem is entirely mine alone and i'm sorry for venting excessively in global chat.
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Post by don on May 17, 2017 12:22:22 GMT -5
4k is obsolete, now 8k : )
ServerPVE=false so i can kill with my future laser shark : )
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Post by Dino Dave on May 17, 2017 13:15:17 GMT -5
Why u scared of our unholy genetic rex experiment hulking monsters Mag? Game mechanics call us to be ridiculous, we answer the call with rexes that can brawl in small groups with wild giga mwahahaha. Join us, join us. lol.
It's true, the thing I hear in chat usually, from anyone, is "I wish we would switch to <insert cool new buggy ass map here> and maybe add <insert buggy ass, huge, gamebreaking mod here.>" Never that individuals should leave and join another server because this one sucks. If anyone hears that, we'd like to know specifics and who it was. There's nothing wrong with "If anyone wants to try crazy isles map, I'm playing on blah blah server." That's natural. Some deceitful, targeted poaching attempt, however, is no fun for anyone.
In my experience, being a regular character with some flavor trumps falling perfectly in line every time. In getting bored, I feel the same way about WoW. A few tweaked features and I'd have so much fun, but I'm damn sure not leaving my guild or quitting raiding with my raid team, they're awesome. Hence the delima >.< lol
If there are specific examples of deceitful poaching, again, we'd like to know details, thanks. We know from experience that AAH is vanilla, nearly modless, and many members are extremely chill, playing the long game and not necessarily announcing when they're doing exciting stuff, or asking for people to join them. Solo-friendly means some people play solo, and we're friendly PvE, so the fear factor is much reduced and interaction is friendly... this is flat out boring to many gamers, se la ARK. We also know from many sources, that we've got a good thing going here so any claims that AAH sucks could be called subjectively false. Mash all that together, and someone saying "AAH sucks, you should play on this other server." is lying to our friends.
We don't like people lying to our friends.
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Post by Nails on May 17, 2017 14:01:32 GMT -5
So after a 15 months of running this server I've made multiple posts defending our choices for mods/settings/maps...etc. Since Dave already discussed this I won't go to in depth, except to say that I realize not everyone LOVES our settings, but most people love our community. That said, several people join this server because they like the settings and stayed for the people. While I would not consider running 7 mods, "lite mods" anymore, that's besides the point. Aspects of S+ are OP but they still enhance the overall ARK experience, allowing people time to focus on end-game, if they so choose. For my own part I'm a gamer in every sense of the word. So when I play poker I don't bitch when I'm bluffed off a hand, I learn from my mistakes, I learn the person's habits and move on. So in ARK or any video game, I don't care what the Devs change, it's their game to fix or fuck up. Need I mention this is still in Alpha? Seems we all need that constant reminder. After an update I will always do one of two things: 1) Adapt to the changes. 2) Quit. Honestly, most of my Tribe of Enron doesn't play because the game is to buggy for them and they're waiting for full release. While there will always be aspects that I would prefer they didn't change or visa versa stressing myself out by complaining in general chat gets me nowhere. If I have a complaint I'll voice it on www.survivetheark.com --the proper venue to voice such issues. When people complain about our AAH server directly, it's difficult for me not to take it personally. Since most decisions come down to the admins. While I will challenge complaints in chat directly (or in-directly). Keeping the balance of a server like this has never been a simple task. Despite how I may appear in gen chat, I'm a very thoughtful person. I don't make any decisions lightly and I rarely make them alone. I can promise you all this--at the end of the day I will ALWAYS do my best to do the RIGHT thing, not the easy one or even the fair one. Trust me, the right thing to do is rarely the easiest. More often then not--it's the hardest.
Regarding Mag's seemingly constant complaints about the Devs, ARK and this server. I'm not going to defend her, nor do I need to. However, it's not something I ignore either. She's well aware of the fact that she doesn't have to play here so I think her apology above is more then sufficient. I will say this--she's almost never violates any server rules regarding chat, she doesn't directly insult people and rarely swears. She's perfectly entitled to her opinion, as we are entitled to disagree with those options (which I often do). This does sometimes bring a negative energy to a game where I come to get away from the negativity in my life. But like most negative things in my life I do my best to acknowledge it, address it, brush it off and try not take it personally. Not always easy. At the end of the day we're all here to game, have fun and hopefully kill that fucking dragon. Which I truly believe that we'll eventually be able to do. Over the long term the Wildcard Devs add things to the game to address old "impossible" tasks...be patient. While it might take a server effort but we'll get there! ~Nails. Out!
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Post by Nails on May 17, 2017 14:26:04 GMT -5
I can never make a short post can I?
I just picture everyone rolling their eyes..."great another wall of text from Nails!".
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Post by Nashiq on May 17, 2017 15:06:06 GMT -5
if money wasn't an issue we'd be running 2 or 3 servers to be honest. one vanilla-ish as the main, extinction event one because that actually sounds hard and fun (frankly if i was going to play again I'd probably do that)
and maybe one that rotates whatever flavor of the month map is out that is fun at first then you realize it has zero content other than it looks different.
how many people are running the ice and poison caves? the content is there, but most don't even do it to have fun.
PVE will inherently be boring because you build and you're done. you never lose anything (outside of game bugs).
We could move to pvp with a 100% tough shit if you lost your stuff rule but I'm sure that'd kill the population even faster.
It takes a special kind of player to play 1,2,3000+ hours in a game and not get bored outside of MMO's which add 100's of times the content ark does to keep people interested.
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Post by testefy on May 18, 2017 6:39:16 GMT -5
I was a huge MMO player back in the day, and this is the first game that reminds me of what Everquest/Star Wars Galaxies was like in many ways. I am baffled people can get bored with so many things to do in this game. I have no complaints about the server setup/admins. Active admins keep servers going and alive. When you play on a server with no admins, is when you should be bored.
Lets all have some fun!
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Post by Dino Dave on May 18, 2017 9:25:21 GMT -5
if money wasn't an issue we'd be running 2 or 3 servers to be honest. one vanilla-ish as the main, extinction event one because that actually sounds hard and fun (frankly if i was going to play again I'd probably do that) and maybe one that rotates whatever flavor of the month map is out that is fun at first then you realize it has zero content other than it looks different. how many people are running the ice and poison caves? the content is there, but most don't even do it to have fun. PVE will inherently be boring because you build and you're done. you never lose anything (outside of game bugs). We could move to pvp with a 100% tough shit if you lost your stuff rule but I'm sure that'd kill the population even faster. It takes a special kind of player to play 1,2,3000+ hours in a game and not get bored outside of MMO's which add 100's of times the content ark does to keep people interested. Are you talking about servers that could be transferred between? I think we found out w/ Zardya's SE experiment, that if they're not clustered, nobody is interested. Obviously mod dinos can't be transferred to a server w/o the mod. Re: poison cave at least, you can take a saber in now, so it's run sometimes, but 9/10 runs yield crap loot, like, hilariously crap loot, so it's not worth the effort for most. Snow cave... I've still never even been in, despite having worthy dimorph armies several times... a little scared of going all the way through for 2 metal door blueprints and a rocket launcher blueprint... lol. |
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Post by islander1 on May 18, 2017 11:22:27 GMT -5
I can never make a short post can I? I just picture everyone rolling their eyes..."great another wall of text from Nails!". Yeah....kinda |
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Post by Nails on May 18, 2017 11:30:27 GMT -5
I can never make a short post can I? I just picture everyone rolling their eyes..."great another wall of text from Nails!". Yeah....kinda Hey! At least I'm self-aware.  |
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Post by Dino Dave on May 19, 2017 10:05:21 GMT -5
Hey! At least I'm self-aware. First ya make a first version, has everything you want to say at length. Second, you re-read it, condensing some points, organizing others. Third, often a "second draft" emerges where everything flows, everything makes sense, but it's still way too damn long... Next you would distill out the point you want to make, and ideally turn it into one or two lines, the perfect Tweet. Unfortunately the "second draft" is about where I get bored and say f'k it it's just a forum post lol. There's a reason soundbites are so valuable  I thought Lincoln had a quote like this but I forget where, but Benjamin Franklin definitely did after his first meddlings in electricity he wanted to show off to the royal society in England: "I have already made this paper too long, for which I must crave pardon, not having now time to make it shorter." My own post up there might have ended up something like this: AAH is a sweet-smelling comb of honey to some, a hopeless, grasping mire to others, much as the honey itself is to the bear and to the the housefly. Some like the honey raw, some in cream, others like over drizzled toast spread thin with butter. The bee-keeper isn't in charge of how you take your breakfast or with whom you spend the time. He doesn't handle the guest list or the topic of conversation at all. Believe it or not, you do. |
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Post by Nashiq on May 19, 2017 10:24:43 GMT -5
Are you talking about servers that could be transferred between? I think we found out w/ Zardya's SE experiment, that if they're not clustered, nobody is interested. Obviously mod dinos can't be transferred to a server w/o the mod. Re: poison cave at least, you can take a saber in now, so it's run sometimes, but 9/10 runs yield crap loot, like, hilariously crap loot, so it's not worth the effort for most. Snow cave... I've still never even been in, despite having worthy dimorph armies several times... a little scared of going all the way through for 2 metal door blueprints and a rocket launcher blueprint... lol. yes we'd cluster em, but probably not allow transfers to the extinction server... that wouldn't be fair. It's all a pipe dream anyway. I'm not willing to pay for that lol. As for the snow cave, I loved it. it was crazy hard but i found some really good loot there. |
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Post by islander1 on May 23, 2017 12:55:48 GMT -5
I just think the server is pretty great.
If I ran my own server, I'd likely change a small handful of settings, but I mean it's been two months now for me on this server, and I'm still really happy here.
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I left my 80-something Survivor on Ragnarok, can we transfer our toons to AB or just start afresh? Very Happy to be Baaack!