I've noticed quite a bit during my time on this server since the last wipe, the 3 main things I think are worth pointing have been highlighted, being:
- Current Rules
- Offline Raiding
- Fluctuation of Player Numbers
Regarding point 1. (Current Rules), some of these rules really set this server apart from other servers in a positive way, rules such as not completely wiping a tribe's structures out and causing pointless damage (as a sort of "fuck you") are a large part of the reason that new players enjoy this server over many other servers. Similarly, making passive dinos off limits means those harder to tame dinos that people invested a lot of time and energy in are safe from just being pointlessly killed out of spite, or sad and pointless displays of power from alpha tribes. These sorts of rules prevent an alpha tribe from bullying/scaring and wiping someone off the server, and keeps newer players around for longer. I've been on plenty of servers where as soon as I joined the server, the dominant alpha tribe with 10+ constantly active members were immediately demanding cementing paste on a regular basis or they wiped you off the server. Becoming a slave is not fun, and preventing this kind of bullying will keep a server active, which I think these particular rules mentioned really helps set this server apart from the rest in a good way.
There are some rules, however, which people continually try and find a way around, or bend, such as attacking without declaring something in chat. Too often I see a fight in chat about "No you didn't engage me with conversation, blah blah" and two different people try and interpret the rules differently. Instead of dealing with that rule, many people clearly just find it easier to offline raid where there is no one around to supervise if you follow the rules perfectly. Regardless of how black and white one person sees the rules, way too many people will interpret them differently either through their own fault/misunderstanding, or some rules which are sort of vague. I know this must be especially challenging for Munki, who has to continually update/change rules to stop people from finding loopholes or exploiting the fact that some rules appear to have some flexibility.
The issue of point 2. (Offline Raiding) is always going to be an issue, regardless of the rules, however it's clear that the current rules make players find it easier to just offline raid people, instead of dealing with the abundance of rules. One example of this is having to declare to someone/a tribe that you're about to raid them, giving them a window to make the first move on you, completely losing any element of surprise. I watch the same people stay up until early hours of Saturday morning (when everyone else goes to sleep) then offline raid tribes, I have even seen the most dominant alpha tribes on this server do this.
Rules such as "You have to have a sleeping bag to re-spawn and can not go back to base for supplies/more stuff" are just non existent when no one is around at 3am to supervise, so of course people are going to choose to offline raid instead of dealing with that. Same with "You can not hit the same tribe twice in 2 weeks, to allow them to recover", this rule would work great if it was followed, but I have seen the same tribe hit people offline every weekend, because no one is around to see them (except when I'm lucky enough to be on a ptera in the sky above them while hunting red drops
)
The point I'm trying to make here is that some of the current rules just force people to offline raid, and thus PvP doesn't exist.
As for Point 3. (fluctuating player base), this is always going to be an issue, particularly with the way ARK is being developed at the moment. As it stands people want to join a fresh server when they start (like this one when it was wiped back in Feb) because they will be on an equal footing with everyone else. This is always going to have a huge initial boost in numbers, just like it did after the last wipe, but then two things happen, either:
People get bored over time and you lose a large percentage of that number no matter how good your server is, because it's the game itself that gets boring for many people. This is something you can't really do anything about.
OR
The people who play heavily get ahead of the casual players and start dominating. This is normal and the people who put in more time deserve to be ahead, but again I think with current rules many of the casual players expect things to work out better for them than they do. I've seen plenty of casual players leave because they spend most of their short time they have to play ARK, repairing their continually raided crappy base, because the same tribe keeps offline raiding them every week. They complain that they have nothing of value to steal and state that they wish people would stop raiding their stone base every week, so those offline raiders (who are highly progressed compared to most of the server) are not following the "You may only raid a base if you have sufficient reason to do so, this includes grudges, knowledge of high end gear to steal, tribe rivalry and such." rule, and that is why they choose to offline raid, because no one is there to enforce these rules. It's a tough situation to work out, with no quick and easy solution, I'm interested to see how you decide to move forward. I'm happy to give input and suggestions I think will help the server, I am still deciding if I will play if you decide on a wipe but until then I'm happy to help out.
