Playing ARK offline/single-player.

[THM]

Little late to the party, I know, but...is ARK: Survival Evolved worth playing offline, or is most of its value in playing online (as part of a tribe, etc.)? At the moment, I don't have a PS Plus account, and apparently I can't play with others online until I get one. And is it worth getting PS Plus for?

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Playing on the PC, the main upside of playing offline that I found was that you could tune most of the settings. So I could tune experience, gathering etc. way up and save myself a lot of time on getting to the fun part. Then again, I mostly play ARK these days so that my son can watch virtual dinosaurs.

Is it worth it? If you just want to dip into ARK it can certainly be. You will be locked out from some of the more grindy late game stuff, but to be honest so were I and my friends anyway when we played online. If all you want to do is experience a decent survival game with dinosaurs, go for it. You'll get that experience in single player no doubt.

 

[sXeth]

Good god no. Maybe there's a fractional chance on PC you could mod something in.

But essentially, any actual challenge will be out the window within hours and you'll just have annoying grind that goes nowhere. The story's an excuse at best and delivered entirely in text logs (and you need a wiki to read some of them because they don't translate them all to your language).

(I should perhaps clarify that multiplayer doesn't really improve much. The official servers are complete trash full of toxic ***hats. Private servers with friends can be amusing for a time, but as mentioned, there's not a whole lot to do PvE wise. And the PvP is so laughably imbalanced in dozens of areas with basic combat mechanics that struggle to be mediocre)

 

[Ryotknife]

coming from someone who played almost exclusively offline/single player, yes it is worth it. It is more challenging by yourself as it makes everything more high risk. Even playing with just one other person makes the game incredibly easy as you have someone to back you up. Just think of taming a dino, two people means it goes down twice as fast, not to mention while the dino is chasing one player the other player can attack the dino. It is a lot different when you only have one player.

Meanwhile in online mode, everything i gathered, tamed, or crafted was stolen or destroyed literally every single day. Everything you do is utterly pointless unless you are in a large tribe, which good luck at getting into those.

For me, the game was only playable in offline mode. I know a half a dozen people who play the game, none of them play in online mode because the community is cancer.

 

[Saelune]

Yes. If you arent playing with people you can trust, then playing online is overrated. I had alot of fun playing single-player. Things are far more manageable. No, I dont need to constantly run into level 100+ Rex's in the starting areas.

Worrying about people ruining your stuff all the time isnt fun.

Edit: Plus if you play single-player, you have ultimate control of the difficulty, since you can adjust virtually everything, from resource gathering rates, to general dino level, to whether hunger even kills you.