Patch 231.3 - Balance Changes & Feedback

[Jatheish]

Hey Survivors,

Just a quick update. We've rolled out an additional patch to the balance values we altered earlier. These new numbers will still help tackle the issue of over-inflated creature stats however will help alleviate some of the concerns that have been brought up over the past two days. 

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* Further Dino Balance Adjustments:
+67% Tamed HP Per Level Increase
+33% Tamed Melee Damage Per Level Increase
+20% Affinity Boost Increase Health/Damage Tamed Dinos
+33% HP increase to Tamed Flyers/Quetz
+Remove Flyer Projectile Damage Multiplier 
-60% Turrets Damage vs Dinos

We're interested in hearing your feedback so please let us know what you think about the new changes and your main concerns regarding the state of balance in ARK. Please make sure that you're playing on an Official Server with the latest version (231.3) or your private-server is running the latest version and has no other customization so that we're able to make full use of your feedback and get a clearer understanding of the state of the game.

Thank you guys!

Previous thread comment:

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Hey guys!

There’s been a lot of discussion regarding the latest major patch surrounding the balance changes that were implemented into the game. This balance change had been planned for a while, though we’ve been reading your feedback and as always will adjust accordingly as we go along. Just because something was changed today, it does not mean it that it cannot change again in the future. We’re open to change, though we also need to see how new systems play out and whether they’re working as we like or not.

Now you’re probably wondering, why did we make this change in the first place?

Earlier on in development we had a misunderstanding between how both player and creature stat scaling was supposed to function and by the time we had realised what went wrong, and how it went wrong - we had to come up with a solution. The misunderstanding was noticed as we started to introducing higher levels and more difficulty into the game, which resulted in higher-stated dinosaurs, basically much stronger creatures to what we had planned and intended.

The stats for tamed creatures and wild creatures became incredibly inflated and due to this, we had to make further adjustments to the newer creatures to ensure that they would fit correctly in ARK’s ecosystem. Hence the Giganotosaurus (it’s job is to function as the apex predator - so it was incredibly scaled up to deal with the already inflated stats).

Our first-step to coming up with a solution to tackle the scaling was to hit dinosaur stats in one go, retroactively. We wanted to scale down tamed creatures vs wild creature interaction so that you’ll no longer have absurd situations where one Raptor is single-handedly destroying 10s of max-level wild Brontos without any trouble. However we also wanted to keep it so that tamed creature vs tamed creature interaction would remain similar to how it is currently.

This change went through with patch 231 and we made some further adjustments in a minor-version to change to help deal with some of the side-effects of this change (for instance, the harvesting rate).

Going forward we’ve still got quite a bit we’d like to do. One of our goals for the future is for creatures and dinos to become a lot more diverse from one another, as well as scale in much more interesting ways. We want them to become more similar to how they’re described in their dossiers and different to what their base-stats are like. So it’ll be possible to have creatures that function in completely different ways, as opposed to everything being so uniform. We want differences between our creatures and we’ll be doing this by tackling their scaling, their harvesting, adding more utility/offensive/defensive moves where possible. This is a large project and will take some time, but it is something that is currently being worked on.

On top of that, we’ll be continuing to read the feedback you guys have regarding the changes made thus far and will adjust where necessary. Some key points have been made and we’ve already made some initial changes and these numbers will continue to be altered til we believe we’re in a good place. ARK is still in development and there is still quite a bit to do, there are times where we’re going to introduce things you aren’t fans of, there are times you’re going to love some of things we’ve been preparing for you, and there are going to be times where you don’t really care. There are clearly some other things that we need to look at and adjust accordingly, however we’ll only be able to know for sure once we see the effects of our current changes. 

However something that you can be sure of always is that we’ll be reading your feedback, responding and taking action where appropriate and we’ll try and be as quick to that as possible. Unfortunately we weren’t able to respond as quickly to the immediate concerns of 231 due to a major-server crash that we had to deal with (which is now resolved, thanks for sending in your save files guys - really appreciate it <3) and we’re sorry about that. 

Please do continue to provide feedback, we’ve got a lot of people checking out our forums, survivetheark.com, we’re still on reddit and we’re still on steam and we want to hear what you guys have to say. No one takes anything personally, be as brutal as you’d like towards us and your thoughts about the game, but respectful of one another and we’ll work together to get the game balanced and the creatures fulfilling their role as intended.

 

 

[Lionheart]

Dear Jat, 

We appreciate the work being done to rebalance the game, especially for flyers and dinos vs turrets. These last changes seem great and address most of our concerns. If only the ptera's attack wasn't so weak. I believe all flyers should have been excluded from the nerf of 231.0, but that's just my opinion. 

However, the gathering rate is still depressing. A kibble tamed Anky level 222 that's been leveled in nothing but dmg only gets as much as a pickaxe (25-30 metal per pure rock). That is extremely disappointing. I don't know why you would make the game more of a grind. No matter what your reasoning is, it made the game boring, long and tedious, but not in the good way, and that alone should counter all your reasoning for making the gathering and progression even slower. It wasn't easy before, in fact it was spot on, but now it's just ridiculous.   

We've been enjoying the game so much up until now, please don't ruin it. 

[SimpleSiren]

I have never seen a game community that is this bad. They have Divided the community like I have never seen before, Good luck restoring it, Me the patch made my base invincible. So doesn't bother me. I can have as many gigas as I need. But the gathering is a debacle. 

I made a post When I first read Dino Balance and asked the devs to share what changes they were thinking about doing, Get the community involved but they ignored it. I said this was going to happen last week. Its Simshiity all over again.

[Darckray]

25 minutes ago, Lionheart said:

Dear Jat, 

We appreciate the work being done to rebalance the game, especially for flyers and dinos vs turrets. These last changes seem great and address most of our concerns. If only the ptera's attack wasn't so weak. I believe all flyers should have been excluded from the nerf of 231.0, but that's just my opinion. 

However, the gathering rate is still depressing. A kibble tamed Anky level 222 that's been leveled in nothing but dmg only gets as much as a pickaxe (25-30 metal per pure rock). That is extremely disappointing. I don't know why you would make the game more of a grind. No matter what your reasoning is, it made the game boring, long and tedious, but not in the good way, and that alone should counter all your reasoning for making the gathering and progression even slower. It wasn't easy before, in fact it was spot on, but now it's just ridiculous.   

We've been enjoying the game so much up until now, please don't ruin it. 

I'm sure they'll nerf structure costs as well, it'd solve the weight issue (not being able to carry all the mats needed to hand-craft something)

[sAd]

All the % changes make it hard to be not confused

When I read "+67% tamed HP per level increase" I was at first like "DILO, thats more than before"..logged in and saw just a bit more HP on my rex xD, same for dmg.

Would be nice if you could post the actual gain per level, like "instead of 4% you get now 6% per level point spent" or so

But regardless this, would like to see individual adjustments in future =3

[Scooby_Dooby_Doo]

the rebalance that was done ( brought lvls back up) was lovely, I don't Mind having to fight a bit more to kill something. I do have a general question about the Alphas though they didn't seem to be effected by the rebalance and with their incredible speed and new implemented flee when injured. I had a 30 minute fight to injure one enough to get it to flee with no chance of keeping up, after it still took big chunks of HP per bite. Where the Alphas rebalanced and I'm just missing it or did they get missed by it as they aren't regular dinos?

[Kaedan]

Last night one of our 220 Pteras had just over 1000 health. I have just had a friend check for me while I'm at work its now 1500.

Is the barrel roll also going to be looked at?

* Reduced Ptero Barrel Roll damage by 33% and increased its stamina cost by 90%

(-in patch 213.1)

The shot gun was also patched awhile back, is that buff now in line with the overall changes you are making?

* Shotgun damage increased by 40% for Primitive Shotgun, 30% for Machined Shotgun

(v219.0 )

The shotgun also had 

v218.7
* Shotgun base damage increased by approximately 30%

[panteni87]

It would be nice to get this information while the 3 updates in one day are deployed... that's my only criticism. I stopped playing the day before yesterday, and i started playing over yesterday because i couldn't really handle all the changes at once... i didn't dare do anything with my tames anymore. If i had known what the changes where i probably wouldn't have started over... but then again, now i'm playing with friends. And i don't need to adjust to the new rates. 

People... don't get too attached to your 1's and 0's... start over every once in a while... especially since it's alpha. I've started over multiple times and brings back the magic of the game. Don't worry, you'll forget your base/dino's in no time... at most 3 days of playing a new game. 

[Calderon83]

4 hours ago, Jat said:

Hey Survivors,

Just a quick update. We've rolled out an additional patch to the balance values we altered earlier. These new numbers will still help tackle the issue of over-inflated creature stats however will help alleviate some of the concerns that have been brought up over the past two days. 

We're interested in hearing your feedback so please let us know what you think about the new changes and your main concerns regarding the state of balance in ARK. Please make sure that you're playing on an Official Server with the latest version (231.3) or your private-server is running the latest version and has no other customization so that we're able to make full use of your feedback and get a clearer understanding of the state of the game.

Thank you guys!

Previous thread comment:

 

I think it's awesome with that patch. But can we get this to the right people to fix this problem. I waited about an hour to tame me a wolf in the game. Once I tamed the wolf I put it on my raft, which had foundation on it so it was away from the water, I was heading back to my base and a Sarco was attacking my raft, not killing me but hitting my wolf, which again was no where near the water, and snatches the wolf from off the raft. So I wasted an hour basic trying to tame this wolf to have it be killed by something that could not reach it. Please adjust the game before it releases. But the game is awesome just need some adjustments.

[FireStormRising]

I went hunting with my Saber last night, before this very last adjustment.  Instead of jumping into a pile of raptors and sabers and mauling everything in seconds, I was more cautious. I picked off stragglers and worked up to groups of 2 and 3, while watching my surroundings to not get overwhelmed.  Instead of killing things with 1 or 2 bites, it took 3-7 bites, depending on the level, so I had to watch my positioning, limit what I pulled, watch my sabers health and have an escape route.......it was great!!!   I was nervous and cautious.  It made sense. 

it took a little longer to feed everyone....,needed 3-4 Bronto tail swings to get everything I needed, instead of just one. I think I'll recover.

Honestly, traveling with my Rex or my Saber and some Dimos, I was unstoppable, except for the Giga.....and we learned to kill those with a Quetzel platform and 14 Plant Species X and minimal risk.....so this was needed.  

I think the first round was too extreme, but you've been tweaking it over the past few days as I though you would and I appreciate it. Losing the massive melee and health I bred into my super Dimos was a bit disheartening.  I was pretty bummed about it, now that they are mostly leveled, but I understand the need for what you did and I think it will be good long term. 

I'm hoping you will continue to up the gathering rates and maybe lower some of the building costs and weights a bit...... Pretty plz.

[bobark]

My 12 plant turrets only managed to kill a lvl 100 titanboa after he killed 3 of my dinos. I suspect this maybe perhaps could have something to do with the -60% turret dmg to dinos. Working as intended? lmao

[mslbrll]

Before patch i was able to get whit my ankylo about 2000 metal in a full clear of the volcano, now im getting 1400-1500... maybe this can help on tweek a bit the numbers.

Other thing is i got a lvl 95 wolf u can was able to do a cave, now it got 1000 hp and cant face even a scopion...... just saying that some dinos get so broken till the point u cant use them anymore....

[vilkacis]

Quick Feedback:

The re-balance seems to be working well. Our dino's aren't as strong as they used to be, but IMHO they did need to be brought down a bit to be more reasonable. The initial drop was too much, this feels much more "just right". Tamed and leveled dino's should be powerful, but not invincible. Thank you for the adjustment.

The only exception to this is the TAMED Giga continues to be OP. I know the goal is to have it be an apex predator, but from a game play mechanic standpoint, it throws everything out of balance. Absolutely no dino, or even a pack of dino's can stand against it. You can take 3-4 level 200+ Rex's being ridden with Journeyman Saddles, and they will still get slaughtered. That is just too powerful. The mechanic is fine for wild Giga's, they should be feared and scary. When players controls that much power it is a massacre, and breeds server tyrants. On any mature server there is never just one tamed Giga per tribe. On the server I play on (official), there are several tribes with whole stables full of them. With the short tame time, it's not unexpected, but it is devastating for anyone who doesn't have a one (we have some we never use just to keep up the 'arms race'). There should be a way that players in groups can get creative, and stand a chance. Right now, there is no balance to this at all.

The nerf on turrets is to much IMHO. I know people complain about birds getting shot down over bases, but it's easy enough to fly high enough, or outside of range. There are other ways of taking out a turret that doesn't involve dino power, just the player to think and be smart about it. In the reality where many tribes and griefers turn to off-line raiding, between sleep and jobs, turrets are the only defense to make sure our days, weeks, and months of work is still there when we get back online. The advantage should always be to the defender because of the in game reality that you will not always be home to defend your base. Given the time, C4, grenades, and other explosives are easy enough to make and cause damage with at end game, to really be a factor to prevent raiding. The requirements for these items shouldn't be increased, but it is the reality we live / play in.

Finally, decreasing breeding time, or increasing the stat boost for doing such, needs to be addressed. I feel you are probably looking into this already. Our tribe hasn't done much breed, so this doesn't impact us as much as others, but we have allies on the server who have all but given up on the game because of this. Bred dino's should never been where they were, but to the folks spent weeks on this, it is an entirely different game to them, they just feel betrayed, devastated, and crushed. Helping the  "effort - to - reward" ratio on this would help encourage breeding again, right now most of the hardcore breeders have just given up. It's just to much time for too little gains.

All in all a change for the better, keep up the good work. Over 1200 hours strong, and look forward to still playing.

[NoNamesLeftJoe]

Hope you rethink the turret damage reduction.  The reported goal of the recent patch was to make dinos more vulnerable to attack since some can become almost invincible.  We all pretty much agree the game has become a race of dino taming...he/she/tribe with the biggest and baddest dinos wins.  Nerfing tamed dinos so they are easier to kill was great (and way overdue) for the game and helps return general game play to require some strategy - not just roll around with Giga's and Quetz's flattening everyone in your path because you are almost god like.  This new patch just nerfed one of the weapons used to kill these OP dinos.  Nerfing turrets just made the OP dinos even more invincible.  The entire gaming community is clearly confused about what you are trying to do.  If anything you should double or triple turret damage to dinos.  We applauded the effort to make tamed dinos more reasonable to fight against and then you do this...confused confused confused. 

The bottom line is that tame dinos (especially the Giga and Quetz) need to be far more "killable" so players and tribes don't run around flattening everything in the path because they are almost invincible.  Players/tribes need to know that if they attack a base (turrets or not), that there is a real threat of losing your dinos in battle...any and all of them. 

We love the game and hope you reconsider some of your changes as we lost about half of our population in the past two days due to your changes.  They didn't leave just our servers...they quit playing the game entirely once you nerfed turrets.  That's the feedback I got (from veteran players with over 1000 hours) so I am passing it on to you.

Just the opinion of a popular veteran gaming community currently hosting 4 ARK servers. 

[NoNamesLeftJoe]

Posting a second issue from your recent patch.  The nerfing/tweaks of tamed dino stats did not apply properly across our servers.  Some tamed dinos of a specific species got the nerf/reduction and some did not.  Based on your posted changes regarding what stats are possible, some players now have dinos in game that should not exist (health/stat wise).  One of the other patches made secondary changes to tamed dino stats and now some player's tamed dinos now have double the health/melee stats that they had before the patch.  We may now have to wipe all our servers because of your recent tweaks for obvious reasons.  Please QC your math algorithms.

Clearly we are supporters of the game and want it to remain successful.  Our community parrots many of the technical findings reported here - yes we have done the math on stats and dinos great detail.  Also the recent changes regarding turrets seem counter productive.

[LUST]

Applied Torpor Scaling on Beelzebufo and Pulmonoscorpius.

The Melee Damage changes makes them no longer fun/efficient to knock out players or wild dinos as it once did (if going straight melee).

Plus, this leads to the idea that there should be an approach to balance dinos individually rather than classifying say TRexes with Compys/Dimos (which are huge jokes right now...no longer is having a swarm of Dimos/Compys scary).

[Mad Max]

57 minutes ago, NoNamesLeftJoe said:

Hope you rethink the turret damage reduction.  The reported goal of the recent patch was to make dinos more vulnerable to attack since some can become almost invincible.  We all pretty much agree the game has become a race of dino taming...he/she/tribe with the biggest and baddest dinos wins.  Nerfing tamed dinos so they are easier to kill was great (and way overdue) for the game and helps return general game play to require some strategy - not just roll around with Giga's and Quetz's flattening everyone in your path because you are almost god like.  This new patch just nerfed one of the weapons used to kill these OP dinos.  Nerfing turrets just made the OP dinos even more invincible.  The entire gaming community is clearly confused about what you are trying to do.  If anything you should double or triple turret damage to dinos.  We applauded the effort to make tamed dinos more reasonable to fight against and then you do this...confused confused confused. 

The bottom line is that tame dinos (especially the Giga and Quetz) need to be far more "killable" so players and tribes don't run around flattening everything in the path because they are almost invincible.  Players/tribes need to know that if they attack a base (turrets or not), that there is a real threat of losing your dinos in battle...any and all of them. 

We love the game and hope you reconsider some of your changes as we lost about half of our population in the past two days due to your changes.  They didn't leave just our servers...they quit playing the game entirely once you nerfed turrets.  That's the feedback I got (from veteran players with over 1000 hours) so I am passing it on to you.

Just the opinion of a popular veteran gaming community currently hosting 4 ARK servers. 

Seconding the fact that turrets needed to be left alone because they scaled into a normal attack finally.

[phantom555555]

7 hours ago, sAd said:

All the % changes make it hard to be not confused

When I read "+67% tamed HP per level increase" I was at first like "DILO, thats more than before"..logged in and saw just a bit more HP on my rex xD, same for dmg.

Would be nice if you could post the actual gain per level, like "instead of 4% you get now 6% per level point spent" or so

But regardless this, would like to see individual adjustments in future =3

i belive the nerf was 83% if that helps

[Anithera]

The best thing I think that could happen would be a small bump in melee damage and gathering rates, or possibly making them independent of one another, and a decrease in tame timers. 

To elaborate:

At present, Our tribe's 490% Melee Anky is yielding ~30 metal from a gold ore spawn. With my Apprentice Metal Pick I am getting upwards of 60. This doesn't add up. 

On top of this..tame timers/requirements seem too big as is, but with the stat nerf the gap of time vs rewards is even greater. Who is going to gather up 55 Dilo Kibble (thats a lot of eggs!) and over 200 narcotics AND wait 2 hours to tame a 120 Anky that when specced for melee damage is still yielding less metal than an Apprentice Pick? Nobody. 

The solution I propose is as follows:

Present us with a full tamed dino respec with the addition of a gathering rate stat (independent of melee damage). This will allow us to spec the now nerfed dinos appropriately as well as will tackle the gathering issue.

Lower tame timers by 30-40%. This will automatically lower resource cost on taming so that tackles two things.

[Cristari]

Until now most people have had little to complain about the game was loved by a lot of people it still is but with this change you have seriously dented the respect the community has for you. Listening to people whine all day about the amount of damage some of the top tier Dino's do and then nerfing all Dino's to the point they are useless then trying to claw back at the mistake with another half hearted patch isn't helping at all.

So many suggestions exist and this was the best you could come up with?

Looking at the individual Dino's that people complain about the most was probably the best option to be honest and we all know which one that is (Giga) a blanket nerf on all tamed dino's is a little too much to be honest.

What I think most people are forgetting here is that with the normal server rules it is a grind and a half to level up without attacking/killing Alpha's and by nerfing the damage and HP on all Dino's has basically made the game as hard as hell to get to max level. Wasting time and materials on taming a dino just for it to fall against a low level Alpha isn't anything anyone wants to have.

Gathering atm is also based upon the damage that the Dino's do so nerfing the damage means that you can't gather as much making everything you do in Ark a slog. This game went from being enjoyable to tedious in the space of 1 week.and 2 simple patches. I have a suggestion for you revert the changes back to what it was before you changed it and then look exactly at what people were complaining about and tackle that in a sensible way instead of a blanket nerf.

There is also the other end of the stick and you could concentrate on the performance issues and let the additional content rest for a while until you have resolved the latency, lag and over all performance of the game I appreciate that this is something that has to be done all the way up to the game goes gold and beyond but to be honest the game needs it.

[FireStormRising]

2 hours ago, Anithera said:

The best thing I think that could happen would be a small bump in melee damage and gathering rates, or possibly making them independent of one another, and a decrease in tame timers. 

To elaborate:

At present, Our tribe's 490% Melee Anky is yielding ~30 metal from a gold ore spawn. With my Apprentice Metal Pick I am getting upwards of 60. This doesn't add up. 

On top of this..tame timers/requirements seem too big as is, but with the stat nerf the gap of time vs rewards is even greater. Who is going to gather up 55 Dilo Kibble (thats a lot of eggs!) and over 200 narcotics AND wait 2 hours to tame a 120 Anky that when specced for melee damage is still yielding less metal than an Apprentice Pick? Nobody. 

The solution I propose is as follows:

Present us with a full tamed dino respec with the addition of a gathering rate stat (independent of melee damage). This will allow us to spec the now nerfed dinos appropriately as well as will tackle the gathering issue.

Lower tame timers by 30-40%. This will automatically lower resource cost on taming so that tackles two things.

I've been thinking about this a bit today and I have another option to consider.  They could just make gathering 2-3x melee without adding another stat to put our precious points into. Unless, I'm missing something.  

[Jerryn]

I know you want feedback from those that are using your settings...however.

231.3 was loaded to our server sometime after late last night.

I just got on, and notice that my bird had damage while I was flying it.  Returned to base, and I can see damage on other birds.  This is because they all appear to have received about 30% boost in HP, at least on the Argents and Quetzals.  I cannot tell on the dimos or pteras, because I only have them for eggs and just don't bother to level them up.

As far as I can tell, this is only on the birds.

[Jerryn]

And, I did check the game.ini file to make sure there were no changes made for the HP stats.  Last time it was updated was on the 5th and that was to set everything to 0.

[Mithyk]

Fully support the balance changes.  God-Mode is dying, may it continue its death.

By level 20-25 the game had lost all challenge.  I loved my sandbox - I constructed massive bases, I built an egg farm, I tamed max l,evel dinos and dominated the island without fear.  I really, really missed having the sense of survival and danger the game started and drew me in with, and laughed at the rediculous difference between a wild 120 and a tamed 120.  With a level 40 dino I could destroy anything short of an alpha rex.  The most dangerous thing in the game was cold weather and glitches that could kill me if they caught me in flight or in the water.

With these changes my high level dinos don't have any problem killing a dilo - the changes mean my rex has to bite a bronto 8 times instead of 3 to kill it.  All my dinos perform better than an equivalent level wild dino, and my 120+ dinos still wipe the floor with most enemies. 

I still don't take much damage from most fights, unless I engage something significantly larger and higher level or large packs of enemies.  My rapters and cats now end up taking half-health when they solo a high level mammoth or bronto.  There's even been a couple time when wild dinos with lucky level allocation have made me retreat to safety - that's not a bad thing, it has me considering before I charge into a mass of 10 battling dinos, it has me considering using a mated pair again when travelling.  These are all good things.

I'm glad gathering was improved, but the hysterics of the post patch forum were rediculous.  Even when it first hit and people were complaining about gathering rates I never saw the "eats more than it gathers" silliness being claimed on the forums.  I circled my base and came back with six stacks of meat to feed my dinos, not the 12 to 20 stacks of old.  I'm glad gathering rates were imrpoved - would have hated to keep working on my glacier base with wood/stone/metal gathering in that state.

The changes do mean my pteranodon has to invest about as much time killing an Alpha Carno as it used to invest killing an Alpha Rex (tested).  They mean that when I see an alpha rex I no longer charge in to casually harvest the prime and have my tribemate bring by a low level tame nearby to insta +8 level it - I lure it into my base's plant-x or have a tribemate bring a real combat mount to assist, before engaging it myself.  

The changes have me actually considering switching from primitive fur  back to purple flak, as dinos may actually be becoming more dangerous than cold weather now...

I'm loving the direction the game is taking...

PS - Wait till they take the promised second pass on survival features and people and their tamed dinos start suffering from illnesses...

[Darckray]

The balance's fine (Gigas still need to be nerfed though), only thing left to do to restore  skill and the 'Danger' feeling in ark is a combat overhaul (Dino blocking, dino armor, dino attacks, dodging mechanics... etc)