To this opinion, I differ. I have yet to encounter a private server admin who does not compare their server to an official’s at some point, just to make a point about their own choice of settings when the topic comes up in a discussion with the players, and specially to curb the enthusiam of regulars who want their own say in the server settings after a while.
So are the official servers important? Even if the players of private servers say “no”, the answer truly is “yes”.
I’ve never referred to the official server settings when setting up a server or in reference to changing settings on an already established server. There’s quite a few survival games where the devs do not host their own servers and the players have to figure it out on their own.
We’re quite resourceful.
Ironically, when Funcom does decide to make server settings, more often than not, they do ask the community of private server owners what they believe they should make the setting. For example the follower damage to players is one such event.
So as far as servers needing a bit of an example or inspiration, you’ve got it a bit backwards. 
Official servers must be important because if they weren’t, we’d probably have seen more server merges, but we havent. So they must be “successful” enough to warrant their continued support. I personally dont like public playpens of any kind, but many people do. Apparently enough do.
I don’t have it backwards at all. I never said the private servers were looking after the official ones for inspiration. Quite the opposite. I only said the official servers matter even if they say they do not. They justify their settings (mods included) by pointing at the flaws of the officials. Why the settings? Because that’s what is the most recurent when it comes to talks about servers in private servers. You can’t possibly be in a private server regurlarly without having that talk at least once. As for the team? My opinion is that you get more help if you’re playing on an official rather than on a private. Of course, because of the mods and all that stuff. So the team will give you an answer to help you no matter where you play, but most often, the player is left with directions to check their mods, refer to their own admin. The private servers are such a private business afterall 
Does the team care about the official servers? Well… The day they don’t, they will just close them I believe.
I can honestly say I’ve never had the talk about settings on those servers. I don’t even know what they are outside of the posts about harvesting changes from season to season or posts from what. When you create a server there is a set of settings that are automatically created with default settings. Those are the baseline we typically use.
If that’s what FC servers use, then sure by proxy we discuss those settings. But those settings are going to exist on whether or not FC servers are up or not, and would exist even if those servers never did.
As for what works and what doesn’t. That’s going to differ from server to server. That always entails some trial and error. For example Roleplay servers which are some of the highest populated servers. Their settings to facilitate RP are different than PVE or PVP. Even if the server is a RP-PVP (which many are) their settings cannot be derived from Funcom servers. There is no Funcom ran RP servers. There is no basis to run off of.
Really? Never? Yet you chime in on every topic about DbD and raid settings.
And you compared how to fix the new stam regen by…comparing it to the official setting. So you actually proved @E.y correct as far as referencing to “show” how your private fixed an issue peoplenjave with the official setting.
Again, default settings. They exist even in Singleplayer.
What @E.y was suggesting is that server admins can use Funcom servers as a baseline for coming up with server settings. Keeping the ones that work and discarding the ones that don’t. I was pointing out that I don’t even know what the settings were and that you don’t really need Funcom servers for that purpose. I assume they use mostly default settings outside of the one’s discussed on the forums.
As for what I said about stamina settings, usually how that goes is when someone complains about the new stamina system and I suggest they change their settings. They’ll explain they can’t because of playing on one of FC’s public servers. In which case I tell them their kinda screwed and their only recourse is to visit Zendesk and make a suggestion.
My comments on DBD, Raid settings, and stamina settings wouldn’t have changed if FC servers didn’t exist. I’ve suggested they use settings on their servers. I’ve had talks directly with a few FC peeps on what settings they should use. But its never been the other way around.
The only exception to any of this was asking how they banned entire clans without anyone of them being online. Being as I normally use mods, I was curious how they pulled this off without, whether they had a dev login to do it or just use another method. The means they do so was pretty mundane, and I was a bit disappointed lol.
What evs…lol
As we’ve discussed in the past, this is less to you so please don’t think I’m patronizing, but many of us play on Official Servers and have done from the beginning of the Exiled Epoch of The Hyborian Age because we perceive it is the way the Game Maker intended.
I did kind of cover that already about 2 months ago in this thread 
The gist of it was, yeah if you play there… its the most important thing to you (why wouldn’t it be?). And if you don’t, well then its the furthest thing in your mind.
The issue is the focus Funcom puts on them. Which never really aligns with one way or another. Which causes anxiety of course. Even if they said, “Nope, we don’t design anything around these servers and they’re just there to get people started, if they work they work, if they don’t, people have options.” Then that would give people a bit of closure and they’d know where they stand.
They came close to giving an opinion along those lines, but immediately walked it back. So yay… these players get to play in limbo… how fun. But in all seriousness the biggest problem isn’t really the opinions of the players being different. That’s more or less irrelevant. Its the opinions of people inside of Funcom that are different from another that causes the rub.
You can see this in the updates. New purge system, run a dozen of these on any server but a FC one. Runs fine. Run a couple on these servers and they slog. This was a known issue in public beta. Did the ones working on the feature decide to put a limit on it? Nope. They’re like whatever… moving on to the next thing. Those players have options. They don’t need to say it, their actions and inactions say it for them. And the ones that do care get told that optimizations are being worked on.
And that last statement is technically true. But wow, like I said, it puts things in limbo.
You are putting words in my mouth. I am not suggesting that they can do something. I am merely reporting about what they told me they did.
The curbing of players, with a “I put exp x2 and added Pippi mod because on the official it’s like this and that bla bla~” kind of conversation, you know? 
Either way, I’m getting more and more tired of reading the answers. Maybe because I don’t speak English well enough, it feels like everything I say ends up distorted. I will stop answering that thread, good luck everybody 
The problem isn’t you 
I enjoy your contributions in general and appreciate your point of view on this topic.
It can get contentious though as there are so many varying experiences and opinions.
Not all opinions are worth anything though.
I’m not putting words in your mouth at all. I’m sure that conversations you’ve had with server admins coming up with settings DID talk about server settings on FC servers. I’m not going to suggest that
didn’t happen.
When I said CAN, it was because in my experience not every admin I’ve interacted with has done as you said. This means in the whole pool of server admins not everyone DID refer to FC server settings. Only that SOME did, and it means you can do so or not do so. It is not a requirement.
And the position I have taken is that if there was no FC servers or if they suddenly were closed, that private servers wouldn’t be affected by it. Like I said before, even if a new server owner doesn’t have a clue to what server settings they want to use, they would still have default settings created. And I would pose that it is these default settings that most actually work off of.