The reality of ATLAS

[boomervoncannon 1,541]

1 hour ago, gnihar said:

I have stated the fact that the number of unofficial SERVERS is far greater than the number of officials. Closer inspection reveals those are either empry or have 1 player on them though. I have ran a quick check again, this time with EU and USA both. From top 20 in population count, 17 of 20 are officials in both regions. Numbers in all other regions speak otherwise, and there are no official servers anywhere else. But all other region player numbers (people who play on servers that are not physically in usa or somwhere in eu) are way lower than in said 2 regions. This again, is not a proof of anything, but it is suggests that the most healthy and populated servers are generally the officials. I dont have the data that proves that the number of official players is greater than unofficials or vice versa, and it does intrigue me. Emptiness of unofficials suggests that even if the unofficial number is bigger, the types that play it play it almost in single player, which is curious. 

We aren't getting the same data output from our searches so I'm trying to figure out how our searches differ. You mention searching EU and USA, but in my search options while I have the US as a country option, there is no option for the EU, just options for each of the individual countries within it. To clarify here is the search I am running:

Going to Ark from the main battlemetrics page, applying no filters whatsoever, and running a search. The results are default returned with rank as the organizing factor. When I run this search, I get results for the top 20 that show ranks 6,9,10,11,14,and 17-20 as being official servers. by my count that is 9 of 20 showing as official. I notice you mention player count, so I'm guessing you might be viewing your results with players as the organizing factor. I prefer rank because it looks at activity over time rather than the snapshot of just who is logged in at the very moment of the search and thus is better at taking peak times for individual servers and smoothing them out, but since this is what you mentioned, I looked at it that way too. As of this writing that method of looking at search results shows only 4 of the top 20 servers as being official, so I'm at a loss as to how you're arriving at 17 out of 20. I believe that's what you're looking at, I'm just not sure how and why we're getting such dramatically different results.

[gnihar 111]

13 minutes ago, boomervoncannon said:

We aren't getting the same data output from our searches so I'm trying to figure out how our searches differ. You mention searching EU and USA, but in my search options while I have the US as a country option, there is no option for the EU, just options for each of the individual countries within it. To clarify here is the search I am running:

Going to Ark from the main battlemetrics page, applying no filters whatsoever, and running a search. The results are default returned with rank as the organizing factor. When I run this search, I get results for the top 20 that show ranks 6,9,10,11,14,and 17-20 as being official servers. by my count that is 9 of 20 showing as official. I notice you mention player count, so I'm guessing you might be viewing your results with players as the organizing factor. I prefer rank because it looks at activity over time rather than the snapshot of just who is logged in at the very moment of the search and thus is better at taking peak times for individual servers and smoothing them out, but since this is what you mentioned, I looked at it that way too. As of this writing that method of looking at search results shows only 4 of the top 20 servers as being official, so I'm at a loss as to how you're arriving at 17 out of 20. I believe that's what you're looking at, I'm just not sure how and why we're getting such dramatically different results.

I am not using battlemetric at all, as it has proven to be unresponsive and incorrect at times.

What I am using is this https://arkbrowser.com/servers?q=country%3AUnited States

This is with a filter included; you can change the server hosting country from there.

Basically it comes down to usa and germany as two biggest server providers, and seems that most people play on servers located in those 2.

As you can see, officials dominate when it comes to number of players on a server in top 20 usa, and you will get the similar result for Germany as well. Other places are way lower in population as it seems (with China nad Canada being the biggest of the rest of them).

Also only the look on top 20 in ANY region that hosts officials shows that officials hold 15-18 of top 20 places when it comes to number of people currently playing.

Edited July 17, 2019 by gnihar

[boomervoncannon 1,541]

1 minute ago, gnihar said:

I am not using battlemetric at all, as it has proven to be unresponsive and incorrect at times.

What I am using is this https://arkbrowser.com/servers?q=country%3AUnited States

This is with a filter included; you can change the server hosting country from there.

Basically it comes down to usa and germany as two biggest server providers, and seems that most people play on servers located in those 2.

As you can see, officials dominate when it comes to number of players on a server in top 20 usa, and you will get the similar result for Germany as well. Other places are way lower in population as it seems (with China nad Canada being the biggest of the rest of them).

Okay, so when I use the site you linked and ran a no filters search, 7 of the top 20 results are officials, so that isn't meaningfully different from what I found on Battlemetrics, and the difference there works against your position, not for it. We are talking about ALL Ark servers, because we are talking about official vs unofficial. When you limit searches to USA and germany, you are applying a filter that skews results and is not germane to the discussion, that's what I meant by cherry picking the data.

Looking at ALL Ark servers, both unofficial and official worldwide, your chosen  search tool returns 13 of 20 of the most active at this moment as being unofficials.

[gnihar 111]

1 hour ago, boomervoncannon said:

Okay, so when I use the site you linked and ran a no filters search, 7 of the top 20 results are officials, so that isn't meaningfully different from what I found on Battlemetrics, and the difference there works against your position, not for it. We are talking about ALL Ark servers, because we are talking about official vs unofficial. When you limit searches to USA and germany, you are applying a filter that skews results and is not germane to the discussion, that's what I meant by cherry picking the data.

Looking at ALL Ark servers, both unofficial and official worldwide, your chosen  search tool returns 13 of 20 of the most active at this moment as being unofficials.

Seems that out of quanitity there comes a quality and indeed, all server top 20 shows that 13 of 20 are unofficial.

But looking at general server population, seems that in average, officials are much better populated than unofficials. 90% of the unofficials are wastelands and do not justify their existence.

2 main reasons why unofficials might be popular at all. Wipes, and structures+ mod. Third reason might be ping availability in regions that do not host officials. Because when i ran a no mod search, only officials appearead on top 20. This in turn suggests that if officials did ie 6 month wipes, and s+ becomes a thing in officials, much more people would play them.

 

[boomervoncannon 1,541]

16 minutes ago, gnihar said:

Seems that out of quanitity there comes a quality and indeed, all server top 20 shows that 13 of 20 are unofficial.

But looking at general server population, seems that in average, officials are much better populated than unofficials. 90% of the unofficials are wastelands and do not justify their existence.

2 main reasons why unofficials might be popular at all. Wipes, and structures+ mod. Third reason might be ping availability in regions that do not host officials. Because when i ran a no mod search, only officials appearead on top 20. This in turn suggests that if officials did ie 6 month wipes, and s+ becomes a thing in officials, much more people would play them.

 

When I owned a 4 server cluster for over a year I whitelisted it and required a personal interview to be added to the whitelist. I’d estimate I probably spoke to several hundred people during this process and part of conversation was about what they were looking for. What I consistently heard was an escape from asshattery, better rates than the grind of officials, and the desire for certain mods or player created maps, of which splus was def top of the list.

You are absolutely right that on average officials are more active. It is a lot easier to find an active official than an active unofficial. One reason is that many people who pay for unofficials are seeking to build their own little kingdom.where they can be lord over all. You can imagine how well this goes over, so they wind up running ghost towns. This is one of the stated reasons many players who prefer officials won’t do unofficials, fear of impermanence and less than fair administration.

Finding a stable, well run active unofficial can take more work then just hopping onto on official, but they are out there. At the end of the day both have their pluses and minuses, it just boils down to preference. It’s just easier for active unofficials to get lost in the haystack of deadwood.

[user1 83]

@boomervoncannon It means pick your poison: On one hand, you have a server operator who can and probably will enforce the most ridiculous rule changes and modifications at their own discretion, and on the other hand you have a handful of people running an unofficial server.