Thanks for the time and effort to keep the community alive Maille. It's been a fun ride and I'm glad to have known all of you. Don't really have much to add, but if anybody wants to contact me my skype is Dusty Bunny (or dusteon, skype is weird ) and my steam is lorddustbunny. Thanks for everything <3

That's sad... But I get it.

I've been busy and when I do play a game it hasn't been minecraft. I do miss playing with you guys though.

I'm on steam as well. My username Althing.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/Althing

Profile is private to nonfriends.
But feel free to add me to your list.

I'll try and visit here more frequently as well, for the company

Oh and Does anyone here play Ark?

Lorddustbunny...
I can't find that name in steam.
Do you have a profile link?

I just started playing Ark on a private server with my girlfriend and her family.

Sounds like fun

Got busy again, haven't played any games for about a month... (poor me)
Is it a 24/7 server?, and did you move the settings up a bit to improve the overly tedious taming process? (some dinos can take 8 hours of hands on time to tame on default)

I lost my Ark group to another game, so I'll be closing up the server I've been renting.
(Before my absence from games for a month) But I did find a way to increase the time before things spoil.
It was the best way I could find that would keep you from having to login every night just to feed your Dinos, despite other events in your life making that difficult. (Tamagotchi anyone?).
Basically you could collect a ton of food in one gaming session and it wouldn't rot out of the feeding trough or dino inv for a week.

I've quit playing Ark. I got to a point where there was no point in progressing any further until the bugs get fixed and the game is better balanced. Can't build large things of different levels and have things line up, some things can't be placed in certain areas for no reason, can't place dinos on floors without them falling through, can't even place dinos on foundations without them falling out of the world, falling through the ground when I die costs me hours worth of materials gathering, dinos get stuck in caves, wearing armor is caves is pointless with arthropleura so op against it (even full riot gear melts in seconds), dinos are wildly unbalanced per size (my level 91 spino got taken out from full health by a pair of level 8 direbears in seconds), and even with the grinding turned way way down it's still far too much grinding. It has loads of potential, but right now it's just a broken mess. They need to quit throwing more broken junk into the mix and just fix what's there.

(first, an apology. Forgot how Steam handled usernames and incorrectly listed "lorddustbunny" when it seems Steam counts it as Dusteon. so there is that)

On topic of Ark, did play it for a bit but Maille summed it up well. Dino balance is completely crazy (Direbears are almost on par or better then Rexes with most stats), problems with the building (spent quite a lot of time lining up greenhouse wall corner pieces to have them fail since I had made a roof), and the incredibly painful level requirements, engram points drops, and dino tame times.

Also the dossier outright lying constantly. I want Titanosaurs to be true mobile bases for nomads, not weaker year long Dodorex's for the highest level player

Yeah balance is messed up. From a realism perspective it's ridiculous. The only way it makes any kind of sense is that mammals were not installed in the game for the benefit of new players. Their sole purpose is for Veteran players with existing high level characters to tame and fight. Basically they added them to keep those players, which admittedly make up a large portion of their player base, playing. Constantly keeping that in mind was the only way I could play. That and the game never advertised realism, it's intended as a more arcade style game.
Also it helps that most of this OP creatures live in an already environmentally hostile region.

Building. Yeah pros an cons there to be sure. I strongly dislike the inability to properly move a building element after it's placed. (Only half the resources back on deletion? Really?) But it makes some game balancing sense.
Also placement of objects is annoyingly too open or restrictive at times. Thankfully the game has a ton of mods and a lot of the building problems can be fixed.
(not that I used many mods, I tried to keep the server uncluttered)

Caving, yeah I never went far enough into a cave to actually meet any hostile creatures.
But I heard it is rough. There are lists online of the recommended Dinos for caving, what dinos is more likely to get stuck etc.. and armor is supposed to be close to useless. I think your supposed to rely on dinos tanking for you. Basically most Caves are a more high level challenge and largely unnecessary unless you plan on summon a boss.

Material gathering. I like Minecraft, it resource collection could feel slow at times, especially hunting for diamonds for large projects... but Ark wins in tediousness hands down. The only way I could play Ark was to drastically increase taming and gathering rates.
My taming times got became around 2 minutes for a Dilo, and about 15-20 for a Trike. I was shooting on getting everything down to around a point where I could tame it in one gaming session.
Plus I found a beautiful little script that changed the way you received engram points.
It created a non over powered and clean way to give you enough engram points at regularly intervals to build everything you need.
I:E when you reach max level, you can build everything.
I absolutely hated the way Ark Devs push the need for people to join large Tribes. Especially when you have a very small group and more than one player wants to build.
This script helps to fix that.

As for failing through the world. I had it happen only twice while I was online to my character. Both times when I fell from a couple hundred feet up.
It was.. disappointing. Mostly for the lost gear. Increased resource gathering times made that hurt less, but it still hurt.
As for Dinos falling through, well anything. The only problem I ever had with Dinos and that were related to rafts, but not even then that serious. I parked Pteranodons a couple stories up on my rafts  for weeks on end without issues. But I think I saw some references to that kind of problem online, I think there are some server side tweaks that can help reduce those problems, and I had implemented those fairly early into the servers life.

So while I will admit that Ark has problems, it does have some good moments. Multiplayer with good people is awesome, there is some satisfaction in snagging that Dino you always wanted, or being able to grab that beacon under the nose of 2 T-Rex. Building despite the quirks can produce something you can't wait to show your fellow players. And when the grinding is toned down to reasonable levels the adventure of it all can drive you forward. Plus building on the Redwood tree platforms is a blast.

Oh and I increased the build limit on rafts via the config files. With small groups of people its not a lag issue. It makes building that home away from home a lot easier. All my stuff was on water, including my best dines.

One of the mods I did play with was the Play as a Dino mod. It let players blow steam by playing of in the jungle as a raptor etc..
A well done mod, easily used without messing with the normal players. Plus having a smart dino is a great challenge.

At close to 300 hours on Ark I've had some cool moments. (on reflection more screenshots would have been good, but I don't take many photos in RL either..)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=703618379
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=713130320
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=696886242
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=710638059

I think it's time to breathe some new life back into this challenge.