u/Cobra_the_Snek

This is the 5th wipe in a row they've conveniently released an update right before wipe, which screws over people who don't have esports level ethernet or people who keep the game running.

Furthermore, Arkpocalypse is quite literally the only set of official servers that gets higher playercounts (aside from conquest, which has its own team managing it). And yet, the ping on arkpoc is absolutely horrendous (can be 200-300 fairly commonly).

Yet even with all this, arkpocalypse is the only official server that gets any pop. Why? Because it's the most friendly towards beginners and more casual. 1x PvP and PvE are maps that are entirely spammed off since you just have massive tribes using the servers for selling tames. Smalltribes is just full of hackers since there's no moderation and it's the only way to compete.

Arkpocalypse wipes monthly, meaning there's no point for massive tribes to build up and control servers. As a result, you get quite a lot of beach bobs and mid-tier people in primitive flak and stone bases, maybe a few small tribes here and there who get a metal base and turrets. The few large tribes who do progress to tek just do so for the fun of the game and to fight other tribes their size. You still get a few bums here and there with pyromanes fighting random nakeds on the beach, but it's not nearly as big of an issue compared to how 1x is.

And in ASE, there were many other servers that encouraged similar things. Beginners wiped every few months, had a level cap at 44 which led to a pretty interesting meta. You also had crossarks and LDLs which were also pretty fun. But for whatever reason, Wildcard excluded them all upon ASA's launch. And I wish more players were vocal about this.

You can also notice from the way they run the game, there isn't any well-balanced earlygame pvp content. You just get things like aureliax which only big tribes can tame, and just serve to be the new best tame in tribe wars that you need to fork over 30 bucks for. Either that, or just stuff for PvE or Singleplayer.

The original sight of PvP has been lost, and for whatever reason it seems to be a taboo subject on this subreddit. When problems are brought up people usually just blame it on "elitists" like every fandom does, or just say "don't play pvp". But I feel like the inherent management is to blame, cuz a badly managed game leads to most of the good players leaving and just leaving behind the few who thrive in the crappy conditions.

This fandom has had its moments where it was vocal for change, but the current state of this playerbase is just sad. Barely anybody calls for change anymore, and when people do its usually dismissed or people just see it as pointless whining.