When comparing Town of Salem vs ARK: Survival Evolved, the Slant community recommends Town of Salem for most people. In the question“What are the best multiplayer games on Steam?” Town of Salem is ranked 34th while ARK: Survival Evolved is ranked 39th. The most important reason people chose Town of Salem is:
The main aspect of the game is that you never know if anyone is lying to you at any particular time. This also goes for the player as well, as you can lie to anyone anytime. Which makes for quite the guessing game that asks of the player to use their deduction skills. When doing this with large groups and especially groups of friends this can make for a fun time trying to figure out who is doing what in the game.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Fun bluffing based gameplay
The main aspect of the game is that you never know if anyone is lying to you at any particular time. This also goes for the player as well, as you can lie to anyone anytime. Which makes for quite the guessing game that asks of the player to use their deduction skills. When doing this with large groups and especially groups of friends this can make for a fun time trying to figure out who is doing what in the game.
Pro The game keeps you playing, it's actually original
You can't find a game where you are this involved with other players anywhere else on the internet.
Pro Dedicated player base
Tons of people are playing Town of Salem and its different game modes, so you won't have a problem finding people to play with.
Pro Diverse gameplay
There are so many different game modes and roles to add.
Pro Increased customization thanks to player-created servers
Ark has hundreds, if not thousands, of great custom servers. You can control things such as PvP, experience, gathering, and taming rates, set things up so there's no griefing (constantly bullying a player or group of players), and the difficulty of the creatures.
Pro You can share materials, dinosaurs, and structures by forming (or joining!) a tribe with your friends
Users can form a tribe with other online users to for a community. This community can now band together in order to build and grow as well as team up against other tribes. This makes for a fun experience with friends and other players as it requires teamwork in order to be successful.
Pro You can tame and mount nearly every creature in the game
From the small, quick raptor to the massive, vicious giganotosaurus, you can mount nearly any dinosaur in the game. There's huge, flying dinosaurs, aquatic dinosaurs, some that are like walking fortresses, and others that can take those down.
Pro The game makes you want to explore, craft, and fight to make the most of its progressive crafting system
Ark is unlike many survival games in that you attain levels as you progress. As you level higher and higher, you gain access to more craftable items. Some are just more powerful versions of lower-tier items (such as leather armor vs. cloth armor), but most are brand new (such as firearms, scuba gear, and saddles for more powerful dinosaurs). This really drives you to explore more areas to find rarer resources and fight stronger dinosaurs.
Pro An absolutely fantastic community
The community for Ark is simply great. Whether you're talking about custom servers, the modding community, or just the playerbase in general, there's always people around to help out with any questions you might have.
Pro Stunningly beautiful
The landscape, creatures, structures, even other players are all gorgeous. The textures are seamless, and the character/dinosaur models are just great. The environment ranges from lush green forests, to snowcapped mountains, to incredible coastal views. When you combine all of these things, it adds up to being simply breathtaking.
Pro Good character creation
When starting a new game the player is allowed to choose between a man or woman, from there is a plethora of options for making a character with a personalized look.
Cons
Con A lot of renegades
There are players that like going on their own and killing innocent people without any clue or strategy.
Con Gamethrowing
Sometimes, players act against their goals to win. For example, a member of the Mafia may end up purposefully revealing the whole Mafia. At that point the game is practically over. Luckily, you can report people who are gamethrowing within the game itself.
Con Uses Adobe Flash
Most browsers are starting to deprecate Flash as a plugin, (unless you have a browser like Google Chrome, which uses its own fork of Flash) you won't be able to play this game without having to purchase it on Steam.
Con High learning curve
It may be best to read up on this game and familiarize oneself to the rules and mechanics as well as common abbreviations. One particular aspect to learn about would be the 29 different roles found in the game, as you may be any one of them at the beginning of a game.
Con Anti-cheat issues
ARk has started using an anti-cheat tool called Battleye, this has so far broken Linux and Mac support for using official servers. Battleye has also had some issues with banning legit users and does not have a very good reputation. These issues add up to many angry players who paid for the game but now can not play it.
Con No more Early access, still buggy
Ark has been fully released on August 2017, but bugs are still easily found and many areas of the game lack polish.
Con The game can become a grind
At the higher levels, it begins to take a very, very long time to level up (unless you're playing on a custom server). This can make the game tedious to play for some people.
Con Hard for some PCs to run
Ark is kind of a resource hog - it's not very well optimized and that can cause many players to experience slow graphics.