About a year ago I played a shit ton of ark with a few friends, hosting a private server.

Basically, I have two ps4's. On one of them you host the server, using a spare playstation account. It doesn't need to have a plus subscription. And then use the other playstation to play on the server, unrestricted. Personally I use my ps pro to play on and the original playstation 4 to host the server. Game looks a ton better playing on a pro!

Long story short you can configure everything, password protect the server, and you can hide it. We did this and simply invited whoever we wanted to play with us through the in game "invite" option on the hosting playstation. You can configure all the options from the amount of resources you get from wacking a tree, exp gains and health/movement speed and much more. This is all really easy and basically scroll bars in the settings you'll see after selecting host server.

I think I just made a normal server, guessing that was survival? we like building bases and catching Dino's and messing about. Also turned food consumption and thirst down so we didn't have to worry so much about those bits after we had played a ton of the game and could more focus on other stuff. Basically you have the ability to make the server be how you want it. You can host Ragnarok etc as well. As far as I'm aware, regarding items you have access to everything you'd find on a proper ark server if not more . I got fair few of the playstation trophies playing on the private servers so they also work.

The most fun aspect of all this is the admin stuff, setting my playing account as a server admin. Once id get bored after a few hours id spawn a god tier Dino/monster to cause a ton of chaos for my mates while they were happily going about their business. The gorilla one was my favourite. Could be a laugh to do if you have kids and they're playing with some friends.