is it worth playing in 2025??

[千尺⌀丂ㄒㄚジ]

is it worth playing over Ark survival ascended??

[retsam1]

That depends on you. Game has remained relatively the same since devs switched over to Ascended (not recommended) and more play consistently on here than Ascended. All of the 1400ish official servers for Evolved were shut down in 2023 but there are over 35,000+ unofficial servers for Evolved that folks still play on.

But due to the subjectivity on worth in your eyes, we cannot make a determination for you as to whether its right for you to return to it or not from your previous 500 hours of play.

[Païtiti]

Yes, as Ascended is a buggy scam more ppl play Evolved.

[Insane Roy]

No it's not! I reinstalled the game after a few years away. Join a server and get the old Connection Time Out, over and over. Simple fix was to uninstall the screwy game.

[retsam1]

Originally posted by «Nukem Man»:

No it's not! I reinstalled the game after a few years away. Join a server and get the old Connection Time Out, over and over. Simple fix was to uninstall the screwy game.

Connection time out is a symptom and the causes tend to be:

1. Server is down or restarting
2. Server with bad mod management by the owner where it shows to be running but the mods crashed it.

3. (Most common): You're attempting to join a server using mods you've not previously downloaded. Server triggers you to download the first mod in its list from the steam workshop and why you download it causes you to time out(because you dont meet the connectivity requirements). Once downloaded if you attempt to join again it'll have you trigger the next mod in the list. This will have to then be done over and over until all mods have been properly downloaded by you. So a server with 10+ mods will take you a while. Once all downloaded(and no issues with other points mentioned) you can then load into the map.

4. You're attempting to join a server with a region restriction set by the owner.
5. You're attempting to join a server with a white/green list (ie servers that only give permission to specific players to join.
6. You have ISP or firewall and or virus checker restrictions in place.


So point all being its not a game issue but either a user or server owner end specific issue.

But you should've known all that given your almost 2k hours previously played with the game.

[Insane Roy]

Originally posted by retsam1:

Originally posted by «Nukem Man»:

No it's not! I reinstalled the game after a few years away. Join a server and get the old Connection Time Out, over and over. Simple fix was to uninstall the screwy game.

Connection time out is a symptom and the causes tend to be:

1. Server is down or restarting
2. Server with bad mod management by the owner where it shows to be running but the mods crashed it.

3. (Most common): You're attempting to join a server using mods you've not previously downloaded. Server triggers you to download the first mod in its list from the steam workshop and why you download it causes you to time out(because you dont meet the connectivity requirements). Once downloaded if you attempt to join again it'll have you trigger the next mod in the list. This will have to then be done over and over until all mods have been properly downloaded by you. So a server with 10+ mods will take you a while. Once all downloaded(and no issues with other points mentioned) you can then load into the map.

4. You're attempting to join a server with a region restriction set by the owner.
5. You're attempting to join a server with a white/green list (ie servers that only give permission to specific players to join.
6. You have ISP or firewall and or virus checker restrictions in place.


So point all being its not a game issue but either a user or server owner end specific issue.

But you should've known all that given your almost 2k hours previously played with the game.

Just maybe the devs should have took the time to come up with a solution to these issues.

[Lori37]

Originally posted by «Nukem Man»:

Just maybe the devs should have took the time to come up with a solution to these issues.

you clearly suffer from PEBCAK, and you don't even realise it....

[william_es]

ASE versus ASA?

I would say firstoff, it boils down to your hardware. A lot of people have older systems that have worked fine for ASE and other games, but really struggle with ASA and unreal engine 5 (like ALL unreal 5 games).

Some people reported trying ASA and then very quickly going back to the older game, for various technical reasons.

ASA also doesn't have all the expansions out yet. I'm playing on mainly genesis 2 right now, which... doesn't exit yet on ASA. No I personally have zero interest in switching.

ASE has all the history attached. I'd rather "finish" ark survival evolved before moving on. There are a bunch of things I've never done in ark... like finish the aberration map. I've just never finished it in all these years. If I make another serious attempt I plan to start from completely square one. NOTHING imported from another map. And I will probably make that the ONLY game I play, continuously, until it's done. Which for me, is a significant commitment.

[retsam1]

Originally posted by «Nukem Man»:

Just maybe the devs should have took the time to come up with a solution to these issues.

Clearly you're still not understanding that this is a user end issue.

1. Choosing to try to play on a server that uses mods.
2. Choosing to try to play on a server the owner is restarting the server
3. Choosing to try to play on a server that has crashed but the owner hasnt realized it.
4. Choosing to try to play on a server that doesnt want players from another region to play for what ever personal reasons.
5. Choosing to try to play on a server that the owner only wants friends/specific people to play.
6. Choosing to try to play on a server when your ISP, virus checker, firewall are preventing you.


1-6 all involve a word going before the word choosing: -you-.

People have been playing this game for over 9 years now going on 10 come this summer and understand how to play.

You've almost 2,000 hours in experience with this game yet still do not understand these fundamentals.

So again, this is a user end issue. To put this in a World of Warcraft perspective: you're blaming the game because the healer was unable to keep you alive because you were standing in fire.

All in all, you're being pretty silly.

[CrEaToXx]

The Zen, in his unrivaled wisdom, has let himself down from the heavens, to let you, yes you! know, there can be no better Ark than his Ark. All bow your head to the righteous Zen!

[ServerMonkey]

I played long enough to make a nice little cave base and then get irrevocably clipped into the cave wall with no means to get free.

[CaveDweller]

I chose to take a chance and reinstall because I missed riding around the island on an equus.

[Joe Cool]

Are all these players playing on the DLC maps or something?

I only have access to the island, and when I hopped on to play I saw a grand whopping total of 3 people online.

Is there one specific DLC map where most of the community plays?

[🦊 Hermit]

@Joe Cool - are you checking servers in the in-game server browser? That is known to have a lot of issues, and doesn't display many servers reliably. It's often recommended to check third party listing sites like Battlemetrics to get a more full picture of servers and game population.

That being said, yes a lot of people do play DLC maps, as many have completed The Island multiple times now so it doesn't hold as much interest to them. A lot also play free DLC maps like Lost Island and Fjordur, because those maps have creatures from pretty much all story maps in one place, so they can tame anything they like without hopping from one map to another. That seems to be quite a popular feature among the community.

Another thing to bear in mind about servers is that they can be clustered together. A community can run multiple different maps on multiple servers, then link them so that travelling between them is much easier. But each of those servers show up as individual in server listings. So on a listing site you might see several servers all with just a handful of people on them, but in reality all those maps/people belong to the same community chatting in Discord, so they are playing together and working together - they're just on different maps at the moment so it looks like they're splintered off on their own.

[retsam1]

Originally posted by Joe Cool:

Are all these players playing on the DLC maps or something?

I only have access to the island, and when I hopped on to play I saw a grand whopping total of 3 people online.

Is there one specific DLC map where most of the community plays?

Many people these days use the battlemetrics website as its the only place that can comprehensively list all 30k+ servers available. As hermit pointed out, the in game server search feature has been a broken mess for many many years and it is incapable of showing all servers available.

I took the liberty of filtering for the island map and with server population ranking for you:

https://www.battlemetrics.com/servers/ark?features%5B2e0790dc-d6f7-11e7-8461-b3f086e6eb8c%5D%5Bor%5D%5B0%5D=332a4834-d6f7-11e7-8461-27f523657d7e&sort=-players

Of course not all of those are The Island map however The Island is one of the more common maps for servers. As for your stating you do not have access to DLC maps. 7 of the 12 DLC's for the game are free dlc's(right click ark in your steam library and navigate to the dlc section and you can tick the respective boxes for those dlcs to download).


But also keep in mind that the core flaw of the game is Ecocide. Players tend to gravitate to small-medium population servers/server cluster communities because they prefer to be ducking and weaving between rocks and trees to avoid predators instead of ducking and weaving between mall sized bases and dino parking lots just to find a green spot for a camprire. That's not to say there are high pop ones, there are but to keep in mind what sort of game play considerations best match your interests in population regards.

Best of luck.

[千尺⌀丂ㄒㄚジ]

Wow guys