Originally posted by Phokxx in The Friendly Server’s Discord.
We have the most amazing community in gaming – without question. You folks, are incredible. I have never seen any other server with a community as incredible as what we have here. The Friendly Server is special – it’s worth fighting for. It’s worth taking risks for.
But…. despite that, we are in consistent decline.
We’re dropping in playerbase, we’re unable to retain new players that join, the atmosphere is starting to turn more competitive and cliquey, and the patronage is falling far short of what’s needed to pay the servers.
If we carry on the way we are, we’ll be lucky to see another Christmas Party. We won’t get to play Lost Island together and certainly won’t play ARK 2 together.. .because The Friendly Server will be dead and gone.
We’ve got a server with bored and frustrated maxed players with maxed dinos, maxed breedlines, maxed armours, maxed weapons, maxed saddles, maxed blueprints, big builds and millions of resources.. needing more and more silly strict regulation to stop excesses and boredom breaking things even further.
Then we’ve got new players joining and seeing maxed everythings everywhere. New players hardly get any interaction with members anymore. Faceless anonymous freebie boxes and public crafting stations replace players helping players… so they just open a box and get ascendant gear and high level dinos which removes all the early game effort and squeeky bum. Then they get sat on a donkey or turn up to a boss fight and given their engrams and ascensions without any effort. They’ve got no gameplay left to do, have no real interaction with people, don’t become part of the community, and quit quickly.
Even a brand new DLC didn’t gain us new members past the first few days.
If we don’t do something very soon, before the winter lull in players kicks in… we won’t survive as a server. The Friendly Server will die.
I’ve talked before about maybe being able to migration to a new cluster.. .keeping the old cluster open for existing players, with new and returning players starting on a new cluster, and encouraging existing players to migrate. Well no matter how I think it through… I can’t see how that will work. It’s my idealist dream… keeps the no-wipe promise while fixing the problems. But it won’t work… we’ll end up with two clusters that we can’t run. We’re still dead.
So I moved to changing the configs and rules on the existing cluster.. slowing down progression. But again, no matter how I work it through – it will fail. We’ll still be maxed everything. The problems we have are borne out of three years of collection, updates, new features not fully understood when they came in, etc etc that’s made it easier and easier and easier.
I’ve thought about knocking back just builds/resources and keeping players characters etc.. but look at Genesis: Part 2…. with all engrams open it only took a couple of days for people to hit that mark again.
We’re left with no options. If we want the Friendly Server to survive more than a few short months longer…. we need a fresh start.
So that’s what we’re going to have to do. It’s a huge risk, and it’s breaking my heart in many ways. This will, I hope, be the only wipe to ever happen on the Friendly Server.
On Friday 9th June at 4pm UK time – the current cluster will close and be wiped. 2 hours later, at 6pm UK time, our fresh new cluster will open.
I hope, with every nerve in my body, that you will stay with us. You are what makes the Friendly Server so special.
Key changes on the new cluster
We will take advantage of what we’ve learned over the last 3 years of running servers, and there will be some changes. Mods Removed: Platforms Plus LTS, Minor Stacks, Wardrobe Skins, Auction House Mods Changed: Rare Sightings – replaced with Shiny Dinos! Mods Added: Marni’s Hairstyles and Classic Armour Skins Max Wild Dino level : 150 XP & Harvesting Multipliers: 3x Taming & Breeding: unchanged (6x) Max tamed dino’s per tribe per map: 100 Sheilds, teleporters & transmitters disabled on platform saddles Grinder: reduced size DinoScanner removed from omnitool Injured dino’s won’t passive-heal inside soul balls Dropped dino-inventory from soul-balling now lasts 1 hour (increased from 30mins) Tribes who’ve been offline for a whole week, will have mating turned off (prevent overflow) All hair and emotes will be automatically unlocked for all Blueprints have a max of 20 crafts (including tek) KBD saddles will now be in cave loot and alpha/boss loot only – not in supply drops (leaves supply drops unedited) Dino ally looking is off by default There will be a new Market Place map (still to be built) – to follow Admin Boss Fights will have a minimum entry and engram spectator level of 107. Invisible Spectator Mode will be available for lower level players and players not wishing to gain engrams .(edited)
Rules
There are also considerable changes to the server rules. Building rules are relaxed, while there are new rules against taking away new member gameplay Please check the updated #rules-and-roles , #ark-rules , #admin-guide
Patrons
I’m so sorry that we had to do this wipe… but I seriously hope you choose to stay with us!
- All your points will be kept
- Any points spent in the last 3 months will be refunded
- Any points you’ve bought in the last two months will be doubled
If you decide that the wiped server isn’t for you and you wish to leave, then I will refund this month’s patron. Please PM me.
Bless you for being our rock and support for so long! Thankyou so much.