ARK: Survival Evolved (worth it?)

Old Man · 27 Feb 2020 at 12:24

ARK: Survival Evolved on sale for 8.99, which is a good low price, but before spending anything I wanted to hear any pros/con for the game "without" any dlc's? (friend of mine told me about the sale as he too is wondering if it's worth buying).

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Bug One · 27 Feb 2020 at 12:31

Thanks for the heads up - just purchased it.

PieEater · 27 Feb 2020 at 13:51

Haven't played it for a long while I got really fed up with the devs adding more content to the game whilst ignoring the game braking bugs (getting stuck in trees / rocks) and terrible performance issues. It just seemed like they were trying to monetize the heck out of it by enticing new players to buy the game and then ignoring them. I was expecting it to have long since died the death of the dinosaurs but maybe they did get round to making it playable, so also interested in people's opinions on the recent state of the game.

SixTwoSix · 27 Feb 2020 at 14:20

Seems to still constantly be in the top 10 games played on Steam so always going to be a solid player base and server choice.

At £8.99 it's a steal and it's lots of fun, game breaking bugs aside as mentioned above.

Ewanb75 · 27 Feb 2020 at 14:22

One of my most played games on steam, I have the occasional problem with it (New DLC yesterday caused some weirdness to the base game, but its all fixed now and running without crashes Yay). If you are going to play try unofficial servers first as the official take forever to do anything on, I'm playing on a nice cluster with all the maps.

I've not had any of the major game-breaking bugs and still find it a fun playable game.

cwhitehead · 27 Feb 2020 at 14:30

Great game once you get into it and learn.
One thing mentioned already is stay away from official servers, laggy and some of the most toxic player base you will ever come across.

Gather / taming rates are personal preference, if you like a grind then lower is better but sitting looking after a baby for 7 days with 4 hour intervals will take it out of you lol.

Lots of mods to make the game more enjoyable too.

bigmike20vt · 27 Feb 2020 at 14:30

I too am interested but not sure it is a good fit....... I have zero interest in competetive gaming and am pure coop PvE.

i would be wanting to play on a private server with a handful of real life friends. I was hoping to set my machine up as a private server for when i play.

what i dont want is a game i feel compelled to log into all the time or risk losing my stuff, or a game where we could get wiped out and all of our stuff wrecked by a bunch of murder hobos looking for lols.

(sorry if i come accross as a toxic anti PvPer, I am just tired of my group getting smashed in a lot of games by clearly better specced, better organised and better skilled players so am really trying to choose my games carefully. )

thnaks

cwhitehead · 27 Feb 2020 at 15:20

Plenty of PVE servers around to go at.
Lots of them do community events etc to join in too...

Old Man · 27 Feb 2020 at 15:25

bigmike20vt said:
I too am interested but not sure it is a good fit....... I have zero interest in competetive gaming and am pure coop PvE.

i would be wanting to play on a private server with a handful of real life friends. I was hoping to set my machine up as a private server for when i play.

what i dont want is a game i feel compelled to log into all the time or risk losing my stuff, or a game where we could get wiped out and all of our stuff wrecked by a bunch of murder hobos looking for lols.

(sorry if i come accross as a toxic anti PvPer, I am just tired of my group getting smashed in a lot of games by clearly better specced, better organised and better skilled players so am really trying to choose my games carefully. )

thnaks

Man, I totally agree (and so do my gaming buddies)...

swillsy · 27 Feb 2020 at 15:43

try conan

The lag on Ark killed it for me - just stuttery all the time and I tried a load of servers so the dinosaurs don't look great. Conan has decent performance and the building is amazing!

Richeh · 27 Feb 2020 at 16:07

It's well worth it. Currently my highest hours spent on Steam are in Ark. If you're not into PvP and wanna play with your buddies then it is a perfect game, just host or rent your own server, set the server rules as you, install any mods you fancy and off you go. For under £10 I doubt you will get less than 10 hours per pound even if you don't love the game.

Mynight · 27 Feb 2020 at 17:20

Well worth it at that price. Easily my longest played game.

Plenty of PVE options to play. Official servers are brutal and should be avoided unless you can play 23 hours a day

.

AHarvey · 27 Feb 2020 at 17:41

Think I got this when it first came out, tried it a few times, built some huts, tried taming a few dino's but never really got into it. Might have to find out where I have it and how to access it and try it again now me son is into dino's

Old Man · 27 Feb 2020 at 21:40

Just found out that the game is 160gb, so just a heads up.

unwashed potato! · 28 Feb 2020 at 02:40

100 percent worth it. I played with 2 friends and we ended up renting a server for about £7 per month and split the cost. We just turned off the server when we weren't playing so that our dinos had no risk of death. Really great game I with my friends would get back into it.

Ewanb75 · 28 Feb 2020 at 07:37

Old Man said:
Just found out that the game is 160gb, so just a heads up.

My Ark folder is just shy of 400gb, but i do have a lot of mods/maps installed for different servers and all the dlc except the new one. Its sometimes painful to load with 15+ mods even on an sshd so an ssd would benefit. The group I play with have 11 mods and loads in a minute or 2. I ran a server a few years ago and its fun being the boss, was quite busy for a while but having to keep an eye on updates was a pain eventually.

Raz · 28 Feb 2020 at 09:51

Ark is free for the weekend on Steam so could always give it a try? I think it's usually around 3.99 on CDKeys but currently out of stock.

StrongSad · 28 Feb 2020 at 10:51

Great game. I have 300 odd hours without ever going online.
My biggest gripe about the game is the size and its constant updates and hotfixes on steam. When I had a 256GB SSD It was well over 100 GB installed and when you update it, steam reserves and additional chuck of space to do so and you end up with running out of space. It then became quicker to delete from steam and reinstall it from scratch.
Just bear that in mind.
Otherwise well worth the money.

Marsman · 28 Feb 2020 at 11:51

PieEater said:
Haven't played it for a long while I got really fed up with the devs adding more content to the game whilst ignoring the game braking bugs (getting stuck in trees / rocks) and terrible performance issues. It just seemed like they were trying to monetize the heck out of it by enticing new players to buy the game and then ignoring them.

This comment reminds me of Conan Exiles somewhat. Funcom releasing DLC after DLC, but I see complaints of bugs not getting fixed that have been in the game for a long time.

Can't say I've encountered any bugs that would make me want to stop playing Conan Exiles, mostly just minor annoying ones.

swillsy said:
try conan

The lag on Ark killed it for me - just stuttery all the time and I tried a load of servers so the dinosaurs don't look great. Conan has decent performance and the building is amazing!

I really like Conan Exiles as well. There are some really amazing bases people have created, looking on the 'show your base' thread on the Funcom forum. I probably spend too much time mucking about with the building side of it and not enough doing other stuff.

Never played ARK though, so I have no comment about the comparisons.

Conan Exiles can be had from CD Keys for about £12. Certainly well worth a try for that price.

bigmike20vt said:
I too am interested but not sure it is a good fit....... I have zero interest in competetive gaming and am pure coop PvE.

i would be wanting to play on a private server with a handful of real life friends. I was hoping to set my machine up as a private server for when i play.

what i dont want is a game i feel compelled to log into all the time or risk losing my stuff, or a game where we could get wiped out and all of our stuff wrecked by a bunch of murder hobos looking for lols.

(sorry if i come accross as a toxic anti PvPer, I am just tired of my group getting smashed in a lot of games by clearly better specced, better organised and better skilled players so am really trying to choose my games carefully. )

thnaks

I also have no interest in PvP. In Conan Exiles, I just play either single player or on a private PvE server. Tried a few of the official PvE servers, but most seemed to be base spam fests.

I did want to create a server to play on with a couple of friends, but they have no interest in Conan Exiles it seems. Single player and private PvE it is then.

I imagine in ARK, just as in Conan Exiles, there are some good private PvE servers with a good community.

Old Man · 28 Feb 2020 at 15:46

Bought it and now downloading

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*** The free maps you can dl as well have a lot of negative reviews, so what's up with that?