It's mostly because I get into a single game at a time, and A:SE/A:SA are complex as fuck. There's a million tiny little tricks, there's a ton of knowledge that you've gotta learn, and I have a homelab -- so running your own server and being able to tweak game values to something that makes sense for 1, or 2, or 10 people to have the most amount of fun is something I enjoy. Part of it is the game, part of it is the server administration.

Currently I'm running a community A:SA server for a couple of twitch streamers that stream ARK almost exclusively. Problem is, we're doing a playthrough of maps - and I've essentially been stuck on The Island for the past 2 1/2 years it feels like...

While waiting on clustering to be enabled and a new map though - I've picked up and finished Palworld, Enshrouded. Prior to A:SE - I was no-lifing Warframe, and I ended up getting to Legendary 2 rank without spending a dime. Basically completed the whole ass game. Took a year and a half. Amazingly well made for a F2P. I spent like $300 on cosmetics after finishing it. Dunno -- I just like grindy games. A:SE had a bunch of cool mechanics for breeding and dealing with getting the right colorations, I even played some total-conversion mods like primal fear, supreme, and omega for a while. But I really wish I had just gotten into ASA only.

Despite the very glaring flaws the game itself was really fun for myself and some friends. We had hundreds of hours in it and this was closer to when it came out when it was an even hotter mess than it is now lol. I dunno. The wonkyness was just kind of part of the experience. It's hard to explain but I don't regret that one at all