Community Crunch 134: Small Tribes Servers, Upcoming Structure Changes, & More!

My two cents as PVE player: I agree that pictures like the one in this crunch are an bad example of pillar abuse. Land grabbing with long term plans(months of no activity) or to claim large sections of the map aren't ok.

But some pillaring is appropriate:

- Resource protection (stone/metal/obsidian/creature spawns) is a common reason that pillaring is used and new players build without knowing what they are blocking.

- Laying out your claim to land when starting out  if you don't want someone building right next to you preventing you from finishing planned layout. A structure you can build in your first few weeks will differ greatly in size from a long term setup. 

- Foundations/Pillar and ceiling  to prevent wild spawns in the confines of base walls.

 

Large tribes that tend to pillar huge sections of the map are likely to just build bigger spawn blocking structures causing more frustration for servers that for the most part have bigger issues with server tame caps. 

@Jatheish

What time will the fresh servers be launching?

Pillars are used also to protect base turf.  I've played this game since the beginning of legacy.   I've seen people build RIGHT UP AGAINST somebody elses's  base to keep them from expanding.  Who's going to police that?  On PVP,  if that happens, you wipe their base (or you get wiped if somebody stronger decides they like your spot).  On PVE? You're screwed and it becomes a he-said-she-said argument on griefing.

Pillaring  for base-space protecting and pillaring for resource protecting is the culture of PVE and has been literally since the game mode came out.  If you were going to change it (and I know you've been back-and-forth on it for years), you should have changed it in legacy.

Over pillaring should be treated on a case-by-case basis as it currently is, because all this is going to do is force me to behemoth gate off everything I care about.  My base,  my prime farming node (which harms the community forges and crafting area I put up), my meat farming area.  My charge nodes, which should ALWAYS be open to the community, will have to be protected with spawn boxes to keep other tribes from literally paving over them.  All it takes is one jerk to kill it for the whole server.  Don't think it won't happen?  It will, and already has.  On the aberration server I left, one tribe had boxed half of them in, and GM Blitz gave us a token response and did nothing.

People are going to put up 1x1 spawn boxes everywhere.  Little structures (pillars & ladders) that are less harmful to server resources will become big structures (behemoth gates, box systems, etc).  And griefing will be elevated to a whole new level, with the small GM crew you have unable to keep up.

Yes, you have a Tragedy of the Commons problem, but you're actually going to make it worse.  My base has 500 dinos in it.  If somebody puts another base next within render distance with 500 dinos, it's going to slaughter the server.  Now add a third person, and every area near obelisk will become either behemoth compounds of one tribe building MASSIVE base structures, (looking at you EU 42 Green Obelisk), or seas of tiny bases equally impassable.

The honest truth is that your servers CANNOT support 70/70 players on PVE.  Hell, the Aberration servers can barely support 20/70 without grinding to a halt.

Drop the server count, put up more servers, solve the problem.  Foster server-to-server communities so people don't feel the need to bloat some servers.  Solve the zoo problems where people use servers to hold unloved dinos and only log on once a week to feed it.

Pillars are the symptom of the core problem of the game, in which PVE was an afterthought to PVP.

I would have GLADLY paid a subscription for better official servers.  Gladly.

 

EDIT:

Pillaring also preserves walkways in Aberration. I have also witnessed, on SEPARATE servers, people blocking off access to paths--down to the drake pit, from green to blue, the main river way on aberration, and have watched the GM's do NOTHING.  Pillars are the only thing that keeps my aberration server somewhat passable.  If my pillars fall, aberration is screwed for walkways.  Will I care?  No. I have drakes and transmitters.  But without a flier, and without pillars, this will kill Aberration.

Edited June 5, 2018 by Caerbannog

So for the specialized servers that open tomorrow, I read that they will be fresh, which is understandable. However, I was wondering what time and in which time zone they open tomorrow as well as which maps they will be available on.

32 minutes ago, TyphoidBeaver said:

My server is at constant tame cap almost every single day, one of the only things keeping the flood of constant new people from keeping us at game cap ALL THE TIME! Is the pillars stopping them from building in the first place. So basicly WC just wants the money for people buying the game without anyone being able to actually play the game. If y'all want noobs to have more places to go maybe you should open new servers or increase the quality of the ones you have so they can actually handle having more people on them instead of crashing all the time

You realize that people are tame capping the server on purpose right? For the same reason you cancer spam pillars. To prevent new players from joining the server. 

With out a steady stream of new players the game will die out. Ark has constant bad reviews and refund requests because new players cant even play the game. They log in try to find somewhere to build for an hour and turn off the game and return it. All because people want to be entitled little children, "This is my server, I dont want noobs on it. Im protecting it" What a load of bull, youre killing the game. Even the fresh servers are getting people grinding out pillars so they can take over as much of the map as possible when transfers get turned on in 60 days. So what is just adding new servers going to do other than add more servers with tons of open slots but no where to build?

Why do you think theres 1800 unofficial PVE servers compared to the 300 official? Because official are a waste of time with the pillar spam.

A few workarounds to combat the players with the argument of resource protection (pillars) could be one of the following:
1. Lower the Suppress Replenish Radius structures value down by 80% - Thus allowing people to build next to unprotected nodes.
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or 2. This can be further changed by making metal/crystal/obsidian not effected at all by structures...
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3. Beaver dams, that picture you have above is a beaver protection setup, Add more beaver spawns to the rivers and swamps around the map, randomize them, disperse them, and while your at it, changing the way the dams work too as it would be great since people never clean their messes of paste free dams... Changing the way beavers spawn can help too, make it so if theirs enough water for a beaver to fit that it can spawn instead of being affected by structures.
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4. Pillars are also used for player pathing (players pillar beaches so others dont block travel access), This could be offset by Adding more trails into the beach cliffs or making a 5 wide no build zone right next to the water shores on pve (so players can travel with tames that are giga/bronto size)
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5 . After a structure gets so large, say anything past 16x16x16, quadruple its build protection radius (if nothings in range), once a tribe has something this big they don't want neighbors as they cant expand.

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PS: I hate pillars that are "not" used for what I've mentioned above, Ive seen people sell/buy land in the past on official servers for real life money back in my legacy days, not so much anymore but you still hear about it sometimes. (Its the worst when new maps are released). I've seen pillars used to make people leave areas or servers (it happened to me twice, though I was a bit more stubborn and held out for a month on my home server, couldn't combat it when the center was new though, never was able to play there)

I seriously just spent the past hour typing this?... right... time to go...

Edit: Color code our structures or something that your going to make decay, lots of people are going to be clueless without a visual indicator, will also allow us to find possible flaws in the code that's used to do this. (major example: structures that shouldn't demolish)

Edited June 5, 2018 by Cataclisto

6 minutes ago, Cataclisto said:

A few workarounds to combat the players with the argument of resource protection (pillars) could be one of the following:
1. Lower the Suppress Replenish Radius structures value down by 80% - Thus allowing people to build next to unprotected nodes.
 

 

I see nothing wrong with making it like this...    There should be better programming logic placed on foundational structures...   I hate seeing mass deforestation(de-spawning) happen by just placing down even one square tile. It also makes it impossible for a small tribe to hide in the woods.  

As an example of better re-spawn programming logic...   If you have a walled perimeter, make anything inside that perimeter not spawn back, while outside the wall you have a shorter distance so things are able to spawn back much closer to your base. Also, not to make this outside spawn distance the same distance that another tribe can build.

 

Another idea, though somewhat drastic and would not be liked very much... Make it so that you cannot place foundations "X" meters further than your main cluster of foundations. As in , if you have a base that would be considered your main cluster of foundations thus limiting the distance that you can build away from there. Meaning no ability to make outposts, nor spam pillars everywhere. But the first suggestion needs to be in place in order for this to happen.

 

If we were giving two or three tribal tokens (say a custom paintable flag)  which could enable us to build 1 large base and only a couple of smaller outposts elsewhere. While massively reducing foundation spawn blocking abilities;  Would this be better than what we have now? 

 

Quote

 

I just wish we could get the chance to try playing without people feeling like they need to protect us or protect the map.  Maybe Wildcard would just have some areas that they put building restrictions on to protect just enough of resource areas so this is not a problem. 

We play this game to survive. Surely we could survive a little bit of annoyance sometimes. 

I remember way back in the beginning of the game before people knew about "protecting" everything. Someone might put something where you didn't like it but after a while, it despawned.  We might have a bit of annoyance for awhile but at least we didn't see pillars all over the map and just have to live like that forever. 

The problem with allowing people to "protect" everyone and everything is that people tend to over do it.  We should have the game developers decide where we can build, not the people who land on a map.  It just does not work. If there is a path that needs protected then the map needs to protect the path, not people who want to have us play the way they think we should.

On The Island, there is metal all over the map but people just go up to where the most metal spawns because it is easier to do that. There is metal that spawns everywhere but no one bothers to harvest it because they don't need to. We just load up our dinos and go where it is easy and we are done. 

I would like to actually see how it would be to have a map that does not have pillars all over it. I would like to play on a map that does not have a few people tell us where we can build and where we can harvest.  I would guess that this is the reason most people don't play on official and I sure do understand why they would not want to.

Why is it that we can play on an unofficial server where we have rules about pillaring but not on official.  If it can work on unofficial, it should work on official, too.

I know it's been previously stated but I am quite concerned that people will start building bases along side mine. Hope this is not the case

You guys could potentially kill your own game if you mess the structure changes up.

Pillars are a necessary evil in Ark.

They protect access from and to bases.  They protect meat run areas and resource areas.

They also help with lag.

Please completely consult with the player base before you activate this change.

@Jatheish@lilpanda

Will there be OC servers released with the new tribe limited servers?

Could we get a time frame when the servers will go live?

Edited June 5, 2018 by OfficialDMT

Again, pillars are a necessary evil. I don’t want people building too close to me, and I don’t want resource/Dino spawns to be blocked. Pillars are fine as they are; of course some folks abuse the system and pillar a large portion of the map for themselves but for the vast majority of players pillars are necessary so no one builds too close and resources/dinos continue to spawn. 

Im just wondering what the small tribe servers will be named so i can find them easily tomorrow

Why is everyone that's wondering when the small tribe servers go live being ignored completely?

 

Arks dead and over now. This will kill the game. You devs know nothing. Were just gonna gate off everything now. Your Noobs will never get on And your money grab will not happen. We will continue to kite them. You will not catch us were to good. 

When will we have news on S+ coming to the core game?

we will not be able to stack dinos?
then where shoud we ceap all of them? We dont have enought space

same will happen every time they revert this change and all resources will be griefed into oblivion by small huts, gg 

Add the Structures plus to offical servers PC

9 minutes ago, Sleiva said:

Add the Structures plus to offical servers PC

When I saw upcoming structure changes in the title I got so excited I thought it was S+ news

This doesn’t have anything to do with the post but is the best place where it can be seen by you.

 

you should include in the next tlc the humagns, you should make an option to not make them so muscular and alter the face.

 

By the way you should put the mammoth, monkey, plesiosaur and megalodon in the next tlc too.

 

keep up the good work

 

Edited June 5, 2018 by Grerook

2 hours ago, Taullarcis said:

So for the specialized servers that open tomorrow, I read that they will be fresh, which is understandable. However, I was wondering what time and in which time zone they open tomorrow as well as which maps they will be available on.

This will help answer your question as to which maps the new servers will have.

 

Personally think 3x is a bit much.. But the concept of this is a great idea! Maybe 2x would be great like call them Evolution Servers or something along them lines.. I will defo be trying them out  I am glad you are testing something like this! I really do think its a good idea.. 

 

About the pillaring though, I have mixed feelings about this at one point i'm like yay! they now can't pillar large numbers of places and sell them off... Or people cant block us in from building anymore! But then I'm like, people can build right next door to us and when we are half way through a building we cant finish it off because someone has half built their building and a war breaks out because no one wants to move. You stop the ignorance of certain people, but it hurts the genuine people.

 

I think spawn points should be blocked from building on... So many times I have re-spawned and been stuck in buildings ! Not been able to get out.. 

 

This will effect the spawns for resources and animals unless you have turned it off where no one can build at main resources.. Or your reports will have to include any main resources blocked will need to move, which makes 10x more work for you guys.. 

 

As much as I would loooove for you to take away the pillaring situation, I think it will effect us more than them  

Thx for the addition of small tribe servers I am more then surprised at both the speed what this has been implemented and also the effect. I was expecting Wild Card to play a more cautious card and aim for 10 players but instead we got 6 which is even more fantastic. Thx for listening to your players.

people have already reponded to this post by creating a 3x ladder, 3x pillar over a fence founndation structure to protect resource spawns, unless you remove structuresup to and including the basic survivor 1x1 hut this has already made the change irrelevent and simply another annoyance for players.

Edited June 5, 2018 by Azmeaiel