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Just me or is the meta really stagnant?


MrDynamicMan

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13 hours ago, Cullis said:

Why should I? You can verify what works and what doesn't with some two dozen console commands on local game and ten minutes of gameplay. You won't. People are lazy, and stupid. Those who aren't can find out. Why should I help those who don't really care?

Because this is a forum.  If you don't present ideas for debate then you aren't contributing by definition.  Besides, what can be asserted without evidence should be refuted without evidence. 

The way you actually win the argument and make me look bad and yourself good is to present said obvious strategy and throw it in my face.  The fact that you won't is almost a sure sign that you're all talk.

13 hours ago, Cullis said:

FYI, people have won  fights of 1 breeded rex vs 2 (unridden) neutral gigas. 

I hope you've got better than this because this doesn't prove anything.  I'm sure I've had raptors that could take down multiple low level rexes, doesn't mean that rexes are weaker than or balanced with raptors.

12 hours ago, Grounded said:

I think a large problem is there are 20+ thousand unofficial servers and I suspect most of them are started by someone who has just got the game, and then gets bored or has no clue about how to run it so they ignore it.  And most people joining a server want it easy, too many 100X rates servers so that game gets boring in 2 days.

But before we went no fly we had a regular user base of over 50-60 players and peaks of 30+ in the evenings online, now we have a peak of 5 with an average of less than 1 person online, Here on battle metrics with the 3m view of players online you can see the drop off, we went no-fly in early September and never really got past 10 players.  But the server is a hard server and that is also a problem for most players.  There is an advert for it in the server advertising section on this forums here.

You nailed it.  The ability to just bail off an unofficial server to another is the main problem.  Most players don't seem to realise that everyone on a server with quetzals can do the exploit farming, so there's no real advantage to it other than ruining the meta and destroying med-tier gameplay.

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8 hours ago, Smash said:

Because this is a forum.  If you don't present ideas for debate then you aren't contributing by definition.  Besides, what can be asserted without evidence should be refuted without evidence. 

The way you actually win the argument and make me look bad and yourself good is to present said obvious strategy and throw it in my face.  The fact that you won't is almost a sure sign that you're all talk.

I hope you've got better than this because this doesn't prove anything.  I'm sure I've had raptors that could take down multiple low level rexes, doesn't mean that rexes are weaker than or balanced with raptors.

You nailed it.  The ability to just bail off an unofficial server to another is the main problem.  Most players don't seem to realise that everyone on a server with quetzals can do the exploit farming, so there's no real advantage to it other than ruining the meta and destroying med-tier gameplay.

This is one of the biggest and worst things about this game. Pvp tends to be low level vs low level, high level vs low level, or high level vs high level. And in a high v low it's just an offline base wipe. (Well actually most are) but the lack of any mid tier action really kills the game. Long neck vs long neck, riding raptors and carnos with the occasional Rex, no rockets, no quetz, no giga. That's the most fun in the game (obviously just an opinion) and yet 90% of players will never experience it.

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1 hour ago, TheRealTFreezy said:

That's the most fun in the game (obviously just an opinion) and yet 90% of players will never experience it.

Ive been watching live streams of people playing ark for the first time on PS4. Looks like a lot of fun. I might have to try out extinction servers, maybe thats the closest we can come to that feel again.

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Just now, Dustrider said:

Ive been watching live streams of people playing ark for the first time on PS4. Looks like a lot of fun. I might have to try out extinction servers, maybe thats the closest we can come to that feel again.

That's what I'm doing. I hated the idea of extinction servers at first but if I were honest with myself, I restart more than once a month either from getting wiped, changing servers, or a player dedicated server wipe. So now I'm going to play season on extinction and see if we can get some good pvp going.

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On 12/11/2016 at 8:29 PM, TheRealTFreezy said:

You can leave now troll. Not only are you not contributing to anything by acting like you have some inside knowledge we all know you don't have but you are annoying too. 

 

There used to be I dunno, 6x or some insane multiplier on projectile weapons against fliers. You could kill the wild ones incredibly easily.

Crap that was in the patchnotes is not 'inside knowledge'!

 That multiplier was removed probably a year back I believe, or even more, and the only multipliers left are body part ones (which quetzals, argents and pteras definitely have).

When the dumbass tribe I was in was getting wiped by alpha tribe, the projectile damage multiplier definitely wasn't in, as we had to shoot one of their passive pteras for about a minute before it went down. 

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On 12/12/2016 at 9:26 AM, Smash said:

I hope you've got better than this because this doesn't prove anything.  I'm sure I've had raptors that could take down multiple low level rexes, doesn't mean that rexes are weaker than or balanced with raptors.

On 12/11/2016 at 8:23 PM, Grounded said:

220+ gigas, not some random trash. 

 

On 12/12/2016 at 9:26 AM, Smash said:

The way you actually win the argument and make me look bad and yourself good is to present said obvious strategy and throw it in my face.  The fact that you won't is almost a sure sign that you're all talk.

On 12/11/2016 at 8:04 PM, Cullis said:

The fact that you don't know what I speak of says volumes. It's all in the bloody wiki. Every single relevant data point! Well, almost every.

 

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On 12/12/2016 at 5:58 PM, TheRealTFreezy said:

This is one of the biggest and worst things about this game. Pvp tends to be low level vs low level, high level vs low level, or high level vs high level. And in a high v low it's just an offline base wipe. (Well actually most are) but the lack of any mid tier action really kills the game. Long neck vs long neck, riding raptors and carnos with the occasional Rex, no rockets, no quetz, no giga. That's the most fun in the game (obviously just an opinion) and yet 90% of players will never experience it.


The issue is that ofc high tier (rex, bear, quetzal etc) is way stronger than mid tier( carno) or trash tier(raptor). And that you can get to high tier within a few dozen hours of gameplay. I think it took us less than 72 hours on a fresh SE server to kibble tame a max level rex when SE came out, and we were kinda slacking and rife with noobishness. A well organized team could've had kibble for that inside 24 hours. 

So why should people risk getting wiped out by pvp-ing while at mid-tier instead of building up?

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On 12/12/2016 at 9:26 AM, Smash said:

 

On 12/12/2016 at 5:58 PM, TheRealTFreezy said:

  Most players don't seem to realise that everyone on a server with quetzals can do the exploit farming, so there's no real advantage to it other than ruining the meta and destroying med-tier gameplay.


1) There isn't much 'exploit' farming anymore. Even a really good quetzal with 4-5k weight doesn't really compare to the way it used to be. 
2) you can platform farm with a paracer. It's pretty strong actually, if you set up near mineral nodes, and you can do so at lvl.. 45? 

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On Saturday, December 10, 2016 at 2:12 PM, TimeSpiral said:

I favor buffs over nerfs, as a general rule. So keep that in mind while I address a few things.

  1. As a concept, we need more counter play. Right now you tech up to giga, and now you have the best land dino. Simple as that. Unless somebody truly spams you with a dozen 150+ rexes, you're not losing your imprinted giga with a red saddle. You're just not losing that thing. Instead I would like a scenario where if you see someone with a giga build, you should be able to select a different build that the giga build is weak against. Now, technically, the giga cannot attack up, so teching to fliers is a counter play, but it's really the only counter play. 
  2. Counters could be accomplished with damage types. We already have some damage types, but they aren't really creating effective counter play. What if the giga did bonus damage to large and behemoth sized dinos, but suffered a massive debuff vs. medium and small dinos? Now, instead of a pack of raptors getting one-shotted and doing nothing, they might be able to get some work done. Give some of the small dinos a slashing damage type, or armor piercing damage type that doesn't work well vs. other small dinos, but wrecks large and behemoth dinos. You know, more ideas like this would be awesome ... you'd actually have to scout your opponents and plan your defenses (though cross ark makes scouting opponents actually impossible sometimes). 
  3. Humans are far too weak. You cannot fight dinos as a human. Again, let's work on damage types to create counter play. Let's make all guns (bullets) do bonus damage vs. fliers. If you could pull out an assault rifle and do meaningful damage to a dragon, quetzal, or ptera, then people would do it, but right now, at 1 ingot per shot, it's just not worth it. (1 ingot per shot is outrageously expensive for how weak the guns are)
  4. Give x-plants more versatility. Maybe by fertilizing plants with black pearls (or something, you get the idea) they can shoot corrosive blast damage (as a damage setting). This will specifically damage structures, including metal. However, the corrosive blast would not blind, slow, or damage players or dinos.
  5. Stealth. There aren't enough stealth options in the game. If someone has turrets you actually have no choice but to shield or drain. Radar jamming or stealth would be an interesting mechanic. Now you might have to worry about a stealth tech running up to your building and c4-ing it. You'd have to take other measures, like building detection devices (or tames), or other types of barriers. 
  6. Saddles should break. Simple as that. Hope you brought supplies to repair your saddle. All saddles should be able to be repaired on the dino they fit. A broken saddle debuffs movement, armor, and attack. Introduce more attacks that specifically damage armor.
  7. Fliers being strong is fine, imo, even though I know that is a controversial thing to say. Air superiority is always a good thing to have. But instead of nerfing it, let's consider adding buffs to the ground game and defenses to create counter play.
  8. Cut all costs and taming times in half. In other words; make the evolution event permanent. And for those saying the double xp is too much, fine. (But power leveling makes that moot anyway)
  9. Friend vs foe. This isn't really related to buffs vs nerfs, but it's a serious problem in large-scale conflict. It is almost impossible to tell friend from foe. There should be a battle-mode toggle that has a clear visual indicator for friendlies. 
  10. Another pet peave ... cut the spyglass draw time to near-zero. For real. Combine the insanely-slow draw time with the lag, and the silly-small field of view, and you have a truly broken device (that is also one of the most important items in the game)
  11. Allow all behemoth dinos to "knock over" vaults. Vault walls are just stupid. This wouldn't break them, or damage the item contained within, but the fact that a giga or bronto cannot just walk over or past a vault wall is insanely stupid. You want to delay an attack? Build a real wall.  

This guy knows what he is talking about.^^^^

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2 hours ago, TimeSpiral said:

: D

I wish that list would have received more attention. I genuinely believe those ideas could create much more dynamic gameplay and strategic diversity. 

I'll give it some attention. Many things get drowned in a sea of posts and I know the feeling when you think hard about something and get little to no feedback. 

1. Absolutely. We need a Rock Paper Scissors style strategy making many more tames useful. Why fight a giga with anything short of a giga at this point. But what if the best counter to a giga was a raptor back with the ability to cling onto large Dino's and cause bleed damage (the tlc change I'd like to see for raptors) but the best counter for raptors in players on foot with rifles and bolas but the best counter for players on foot are pteras and so on. Imagine to battles in that world. 

2. Agreed. 

3. I disagree. Humans strength is in their strategy. You make it so I can pump movement and run with an assault rifle to be more powerful than raptors you now make raptors basically useless in anything other than early game (as it is now). However I do think ammo should be half as cheap with the exception of turrets. They should use their own specific ammo and it should stay about the same price as now so bases with 100s of full turrets aren't even more prevalent. But would make using assault rifles or shotguns more cost effective. 

4. I think this is a good idea however would not change the game to the extent to constitute the effort put in the change the way they work now. I think the best way to do it is rework plant y to not suck and add things like you describe as plant z or w or something.

5. Absolutely. Imagine the tech siut haveing an ability to once charged give you stealth so no wild dino or turrets can see you. You spend your day grind a resource (black pearls?) to gain this stealth that will last two minutes, parachute into someone's base, land at their front door and now you pick the lock. At this point you have 1 minute before your stealth wares off and every turret in this place lights you up like a Christmas tree. Imagine the adrenaline rush. Just a little though about how stealth could work. I would also like some low tier stuff to help in early game with stealth like maybe a bug spray for avoiding plant x or some other things. 

6. Absolutely. Making it so a broken saddle can always be fixed in your inventory no matter where it's made would be an easy balance. Though the last time I suggested this people cried about losing their quetz platform base because of the saddle breaking. To that I say good, maybe now you have to be more careful with your precious war quetz.

7. This is where we disagree. There is not a way to balance air and ground just by buffing ground. You would OP every land based mount. I personally would like many flier nerfs but with the additions of other ideas you have as well as other have said about buffing ground based combat these are the two nerfs that need to happen. Pteras barrel role should negate damage, not deal it, and quetz platform builds should be unable to to be built below the platform itself. That would be a good start to me and see what changes with those two nerfs and a land dino buff.

8. Done.

9. I totally disagree. This is something that real soldiers deal with and while this is by no means real I think that this adds to the gamr. You want to be easily recognized? Paint your armor, paint your Dino's, communicate. Those are the options you should have. I know it's a game but there is a point where I would like a tiny bit of realism. 

10. I agree but I think we can wait for the tek spyglass version. But I think the spyglass field of view needs an increase and that would be ok so long as the tek version needs it up much better. 

11. Agree and disagree. Don't really have a preference I guess. I haven't raided anyone with a vault wall so I guess that's sort of why. I think if they redid how fence foundations worked so that we could build better walls with even heights no matter the ground and put ceiling on top (like s+) this could make people actually want to make real walls because as it is now they are ugly and useless. Two bad combinations. 

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1 hour ago, TheRealTFreezy said:

I'll give it some attention. Many things get drowned in a sea of posts and I know the feeling when you think hard about something and get little to no feedback. 

1. Absolutely. We need a Rock Paper Scissors style strategy making many more tames useful. Why fight a giga with anything short of a giga at this point. But what if the best counter to a giga was a raptor back with the ability to cling onto large Dino's and cause bleed damage (the tlc change I'd like to see for raptors) but the best counter for raptors in players on foot with rifles and bolas but the best counter for players on foot are pteras and so on. Imagine to battles in that world. 

2. Agreed. 

3. I disagree. Humans strength is in their strategy. You make it so I can pump movement and run with an assault rifle to be more powerful than raptors you now make raptors basically useless in anything other than early game (as it is now). However I do think ammo should be half as cheap with the exception of turrets. They should use their own specific ammo and it should stay about the same price as now so bases with 100s of full turrets aren't even more prevalent. But would make using assault rifles or shotguns more cost effective. 

4. I think this is a good idea however would not change the game to the extent to constitute the effort put in the change the way they work now. I think the best way to do it is rework plant y to not suck and add things like you describe as plant z or w or something.

5. Absolutely. Imagine the tech siut haveing an ability to once charged give you stealth so no wild dino or turrets can see you. You spend your day grind a resource (black pearls?) to gain this stealth that will last two minutes, parachute into someone's base, land at their front door and now you pick the lock. At this point you have 1 minute before your stealth wares off and every turret in this place lights you up like a Christmas tree. Imagine the adrenaline rush. Just a little though about how stealth could work. I would also like some low tier stuff to help in early game with stealth like maybe a bug spray for avoiding plant x or some other things. 

6. Absolutely. Making it so a broken saddle can always be fixed in your inventory no matter where it's made would be an easy balance. Though the last time I suggested this people cried about losing their quetz platform base because of the saddle breaking. To that I say good, maybe now you have to be more careful with your precious war quetz.

7. This is where we disagree. There is not a way to balance air and ground just by buffing ground. You would OP every land based mount. I personally would like many flier nerfs but with the additions of other ideas you have as well as other have said about buffing ground based combat these are the two nerfs that need to happen. Pteras barrel role should negate damage, not deal it, and quetz platform builds should be unable to to be built below the platform itself. That would be a good start to me and see what changes with those two nerfs and a land dino buff.

8. Done.

9. I totally disagree. This is something that real soldiers deal with and while this is by no means real I think that this adds to the gamr. You want to be easily recognized? Paint your armor, paint your Dino's, communicate. Those are the options you should have. I know it's a game but there is a point where I would like a tiny bit of realism. 

10. I agree but I think we can wait for the tek spyglass version. But I think the spyglass field of view needs an increase and that would be ok so long as the tek version needs it up much better. 

11. Agree and disagree. Don't really have a preference I guess. I haven't raided anyone with a vault wall so I guess that's sort of why. I think if they redid how fence foundations worked so that we could build better walls with even heights no matter the ground and put ceiling on top (like s+) this could make people actually want to make real walls because as it is now they are ugly and useless. Two bad combinations. 

RE: (1) Counter play

People might instinctually balk and the implicit simplicity of the Rock Paper Scissors reference, but that would be a mistake. All we're really emphasizing here is that while you need some degree of linear progression, you can also add complexity to the scenario by creating very clear counters.

RE: (2) Damage Types

I believe this would likely be a primary vehicle for balancing counterplay. Regular, bonus, and debuffed damage vs. creature types or creature classes. 

RE: (3) Humans are too weak

This is--to my surprise--the one area I'm getting consistent pushback. Someone mentioned that a human respawns, a tame doesn't, and that's one of the primary advantages of the human. Which is of course true. But as it stands right now, if you want to do damage to a dino, in a raid environment, and you're a human, you don't really have good options. And while you might respawn, your gear certainly does not, and the gear is ... how to say ... outrageously over-priced. 

If we all want bullets to continue doing basically zero damage to dinos, then they should be equally cheap. Dirt cheap. And yeah, the auto-turret is kinda the issue here, but that deserves a whole separate thread. It's supposed to be the answer to offline raiding, but has become--without question--the definition of raiding, and that's bad. 

RE: (4) Changing plants

Yeah. This could be expanded. It would need a visual indicator, like either a new plant, or a mutation that adding a new fertilizer to the plant would cause. And yeah, Plant Y is actually useless. I've really thought about it, and there is no use for it considering that it requires a large crop plot to grow. 

RE: (5) Stealth

The game clearly needs stealth. Stealth, and counter stealth creates an extremely interesting and diverse gameplay environment. 

RE: (6) Saddles

Yup. We need to break saddles already. Free infinite armor is not okay. Platform saddles with structures built on them would have to be handled differently. Perhaps as soon as a platform saddle breaks, structures now 6x damage (or something like that). 

RE: (7) Fliers are OP

Yeah, I'm not saying that some of the fliers are not a little overpowered and might need to be tweaked, but I don't agree that they are completely overpowered, or even as overpowered as people think. Bring a raptor to an Argy fight, and yeah, you're going to lose. Bring foot soldiers to a pteranodon party, and yeah, you're going to lose. But fliers being strong in an army composition is fine, imo, as long as counters exist, and right now they do. Fliers are garbage against turrets, buildings, and tank-dinos. My issue is that it is quite difficult for any ground-based composition to deal with fliers. 

RE: (8) Permanent 2x

We all knew this was coming. 

RE: (9) Friend vs Foe

We need ask ourselves, as a community, what is more important: tactics, strategy, and execution, or being able to tell friend from foe in the heat of battle? The suggestion to paint your armor, paint your dinos, and communicate sounds like it makes sense. And in some cases it does, but I've been on massive raids, and this is simply not practical or possible. Dinos look the same. The render distance sucks. Armor in a huge raid? Lol. You're getting killed 20 times. You don't have 20 sets of painted armor for each member tribe. Painting dinos is not possible on the Xbox. Communicate? Sure. With what? If there is a large number of people on your team you're likely split up into different group chats and the best you can do it extremely basic tribe chat messages. It's a game, and we're pieces on the board. Those pieces should be clearly marked friend or foe. At the end of the day, I'd much rather have tactics and strategy rise above some adherence to the real-life struggle of friend vs. foe. (Keep in mind, I'm not suggesting we remove friendly fire, just an optional toggle for the tactically-minded folks)

RE: (10) Spyglass

Or we could have both, a non-broken spyglass, and a cool higher-tech version : D

RE: (11) Vault walls

Just wait until you raid someone who builds 50 vaults. It's utterly stupid. 

RE: (12) Oh wait, there is no 12 ... xD

 

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4 hours ago, TimeSpiral said:

RE: (1) Counter play

People might instinctually balk and the implicit simplicity of the Rock Paper Scissors reference, but that would be a mistake. All we're really emphasizing here is that while you need some degree of linear progression, you can also add complexity to the scenario by creating very clear counters.

RE: (2) Damage Types

I believe this would likely be a primary vehicle for balancing counterplay. Regular, bonus, and debuffed damage vs. creature types or creature classes. 

RE: (3) Humans are too weak

This is--to my surprise--the one area I'm getting consistent pushback. Someone mentioned that a human respawns, a tame doesn't, and that's one of the primary advantages of the human. Which is of course true. But as it stands right now, if you want to do damage to a dino, in a raid environment, and you're a human, you don't really have good options. And while you might respawn, your gear certainly does not, and the gear is ... how to say ... outrageously over-priced. 

If we all want bullets to continue doing basically zero damage to dinos, then they should be equally cheap. Dirt cheap. And yeah, the auto-turret is kinda the issue here, but that deserves a whole separate thread. It's supposed to be the answer to offline raiding, but has become--without question--the definition of raiding, and that's bad. 

RE: (4) Changing plants

Yeah. This could be expanded. It would need a visual indicator, like either a new plant, or a mutation that adding a new fertilizer to the plant would cause. And yeah, Plant Y is actually useless. I've really thought about it, and there is no use for it considering that it requires a large crop plot to grow. 

RE: (5) Stealth

The game clearly needs stealth. Stealth, and counter stealth creates an extremely interesting and diverse gameplay environment. 

RE: (6) Saddles

Yup. We need to break saddles already. Free infinite armor is not okay. Platform saddles with structures built on them would have to be handled differently. Perhaps as soon as a platform saddle breaks, structures now 6x damage (or something like that). 

RE: (7) Fliers are OP

Yeah, I'm not saying that some of the fliers are not a little overpowered and might need to be tweaked, but I don't agree that they are completely overpowered, or even as overpowered as people think. Bring a raptor to an Argy fight, and yeah, you're going to lose. Bring foot soldiers to a pteranodon party, and yeah, you're going to lose. But fliers being strong in an army composition is fine, imo, as long as counters exist, and right now they do. Fliers are garbage against turrets, buildings, and tank-dinos. My issue is that it is quite difficult for any ground-based composition to deal with fliers. 

RE: (8) Permanent 2x

We all knew this was coming. 

RE: (9) Friend vs Foe

We need ask ourselves, as a community, what is more important: tactics, strategy, and execution, or being able to tell friend from foe in the heat of battle? The suggestion to paint your armor, paint your dinos, and communicate sounds like it makes sense. And in some cases it does, but I've been on massive raids, and this is simply not practical or possible. Dinos look the same. The render distance sucks. Armor in a huge raid? Lol. You're getting killed 20 times. You don't have 20 sets of painted armor for each member tribe. Painting dinos is not possible on the Xbox. Communicate? Sure. With what? If there is a large number of people on your team you're likely split up into different group chats and the best you can do it extremely basic tribe chat messages. It's a game, and we're pieces on the board. Those pieces should be clearly marked friend or foe. At the end of the day, I'd much rather have tactics and strategy rise above some adherence to the real-life struggle of friend vs. foe. (Keep in mind, I'm not suggesting we remove friendly fire, just an optional toggle for the tactically-minded folks)

RE: (10) Spyglass

Or we could have both, a non-broken spyglass, and a cool higher-tech version : D

RE: (11) Vault walls

Just wait until you raid someone who builds 50 vaults. It's utterly stupid. 

RE: (12) Oh wait, there is no 12 ... xD

 

The only points I want to really still discuss considering we agree on most is player buffs, platform saddles breaking and fliers. 

As far as human buffs go, the biggest thing is the reapawn, the strength of the player should be wit, not raw power. And there are things already in the game that give us more power, plus things coming that look to be giving us even more. Bullets should absolutely cost less, half in my opinion, and adding a headshot multiplier to every dino would help. But really guns are for small Dino's and people. Either snipe them off their mount or light up thier raptor. The real problem stems from the fact that the only Dino's used are the ones that are counters to players, fliers and big Dino's. You change that and the price of ammo, specifically the shotguns, and I think you balance it.

saddles, platform or not they need to break and honestly I think if you have a structure built on a platform and let it break then you lose the structure like if the foundations break out from under a structure. You would just have to be able to fix a saddle without taking it off of the dino so long as it doesn't totally break. This just makes quetz unable to tank which shouldn't be their role anyway. 

And lastly, fliers. What are your suggestions for balancing them? I don't want to nerf them into the ground but they need some things done to make them less all around amazing and I'd like to hear your specific ideas on it.

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11 hours ago, TheRealTFreezy said:

The only points I want to really still discuss considering we agree on most is player buffs, platform saddles breaking and fliers. 

As far as human buffs go, the biggest thing is the reapawn, the strength of the player should be wit, not raw power. And there are things already in the game that give us more power, plus things coming that look to be giving us even more. Bullets should absolutely cost less, half in my opinion, and adding a headshot multiplier to every dino would help. But really guns are for small Dino's and people. Either snipe them off their mount or light up thier raptor. The real problem stems from the fact that the only Dino's used are the ones that are counters to players, fliers and big Dino's. You change that and the price of ammo, specifically the shotguns, and I think you balance it.

saddles, platform or not they need to break and honestly I think if you have a structure built on a platform and let it break then you lose the structure like if the foundations break out from under a structure. You would just have to be able to fix a saddle without taking it off of the dino so long as it doesn't totally break. This just makes quetz unable to tank which shouldn't be their role anyway. 

And lastly, fliers. What are your suggestions for balancing them? I don't want to nerf them into the ground but they need some things done to make them less all around amazing and I'd like to hear your specific ideas on it.

RE: Human Buffs

I like all of your thoughts, except perhaps the reasoning behind the human's (i.e., player character) power or advantage being wit. The human character in the game is no different than the dino, in a way, in that it's just another piece on your board that you--the real human--have control over. It has no inherent wit or strategic insight. That comes from the player, and can be imparted on all aspects of the game: player character, dinos, gathering, spending, building, taming, breeding, politics, raiding, defending, etc ... 

I think the main takeaway is that ammo is far too expensive. And as someone else mentioned earlier, perhaps the assault rifle and the auto turret should have separate ammo types, so you could decrease the cost of advanced rifle bullets without buffing the already-problematic auto turret.

I would also like to see some different damage types on the ranged weapons.

RE: Breaking Saddles

I was talking with one of my high-level buddies last night (and I don't mean like, has a high character level, lol), and we were theorizing about breaking saddles. We didn't get into platform saddles, but when talking about red giga saddles, breaking the saddles does become an issue, especially out in the field on a raid. Even if the cost was halved to repair on the dino, in the field, you're not carrying around 1k ingots per giga in case your saddles break. So if we're going to break saddles out in the field, we need to have a reasonable way to repair them out in the field. Bringing back-up saddles would also become an option, but in a game that is already too expensive in almost all aspects, I think we need to watch out for effects like that. 

The meta will soon--if it hasn't already--fully shift to cross ark raiding (sure the smaller tribes will always intra-Ark raid each other, and you'll have your Alpha wars and stuff), so all of this has to be viewed in the context of raiding out in the field, off-server. You already have to build the structures on the platform saddles after you've arrived to raid, if the structures broke completely when the saddles break, I think that would be unreasonable--especially if the saddles are as easy to break as armor is. Why not add a damage multiplier to structures on a broken platform saddle? That would essentially cause the flier to retreat and repair. But adding the cost of an entire structure to a broken saddle, when it's going to break in a raid, is too much, imho, especially considering defender's advantage. 

Any dino with a large health pool, and / or a platform saddle is going to be used as a tank, and I think that is fine. 

RE: Fliers

This is probably one of the most contentious debates in the Ark community at the moment. I'm not entirely convinced that fliers are as OP as some would have us believe. The Ptera and the Quetzal are the two prime targets of this claim. Sometimes the dragon, and sometimes the Argy (because people are silly).

The entire conversation has to take place in context of end-game raiding. Because there is no time component to Ark, you can only truly look at end-game fights. And when balancing, you have to take things like investment into consideration. A bred Quetzal with a platform saddles, metal structures, a pilot cage, and some mounted turrets is an incredibly expensive and time-consuming endeavor. It should be able to cause significant damage, and it should require a similarly-expensive counter measure.

The Ptera. Again, in the context of a late-game raid, the Ptera is fairly squishy, and doesn't do enough damage to contend with really anything out on field except maybe humans on foot, in which case, I think this is fine. It's primary role, picking, already has numerous counters. I think people's main issue with the Ptera's barrel roll is in a situation where someone is just getting outmatched. In an end-game raid, the Ptera puts pressure on the aerial component of the battle, and picks people off mounts. This is hard to do, and risky, if the target took any of the counter measures (weighed themselves down, has a bola, quality pike, compound bow, grappling hook, parachute, etc ...). Also, it should be noted that you're not getting any work done with a tamed Ptera with a low-quality saddle in a raid like this. Again, you need to be at breeding tech with a minimum of an MC saddle to get anything done. 

Limiting platforms to above the saddle only. I don't like this because it limits creativity. I like people being able to create technology using platform saddles, like aerial siege weapons and harvesters.

The Argy does not truly have an end-game role, except perhaps picking the super-encumbered giga riders (but the Quetzals and Dragons can do this better).

Imprinted dragons are tough, and the range on the poison dragon seems a bit extreme, but really the dragons are not overpowered at all. They might even be slightly underpowered for what it takes to imprint them. 

 

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22 minutes ago, TimeSpiral said:

RE: Human Buffs

I like all of your thoughts, except perhaps the reasoning behind the human's (i.e., player character) power or advantage being wit. The human character in the game is no different than the dino, in a way, in that it's just another piece on your board that you--the real human--have control over. It has no inherent wit or strategic insight. That comes from the player, and can be imparted on all aspects of the game: player character, dinos, gathering, spending, building, taming, breeding, politics, raiding, defending, etc ... 

I think the main takeaway is that ammo is far too expensive. And as someone else mentioned earlier, perhaps the assault rifle and the auto turret should have separate ammo types, so you could decrease the cost of advanced rifle bullets without buffing the already-problematic auto turret.

I would also like to see some different damage types on the ranged weapons.

RE: Breaking Saddles

I was talking with one of my high-level buddies last night (and I don't mean like, has a high character level, lol), and we were theorizing about breaking saddles. We didn't get into platform saddles, but when talking about red giga saddles, breaking the saddles does become an issue, especially out in the field on a raid. Even if the cost was halved to repair on the dino, in the field, you're not carrying around 1k ingots per giga in case your saddles break. So if we're going to break saddles out in the field, we need to have a reasonable way to repair them out in the field. Bringing back-up saddles would also become an option, but in a game that is already too expensive in almost all aspects, I think we need to watch out for effects like that. 

The meta will soon--if it hasn't already--fully shift to cross ark raiding (sure the smaller tribes will always intra-Ark raid each other, and you'll have your Alpha wars and stuff), so all of this has to be viewed in the context of raiding out in the field, off-server. You already have to build the structures on the platform saddles after you've arrived to raid, if the structures broke completely when the saddles break, I think that would be unreasonable--especially if the saddles are as easy to break as armor is. Why not add a damage multiplier to structures on a broken platform saddle? That would essentially cause the flier to retreat and repair. But adding the cost of an entire structure to a broken saddle, when it's going to break in a raid, is too much, imho, especially considering defender's advantage. 

Any dino with a large health pool, and / or a platform saddle is going to be used as a tank, and I think that is fine. 

RE: Fliers

This is probably one of the most contentious debates in the Ark community at the moment. I'm not entirely convinced that fliers are as OP as some would have us believe. The Ptera and the Quetzal are the two prime targets of this claim. Sometimes the dragon, and sometimes the Argy (because people are silly).

The entire conversation has to take place in context of end-game raiding. Because there is no time component to Ark, you can only truly look at end-game fights. And when balancing, you have to take things like investment into consideration. A bred Quetzal with a platform saddles, metal structures, a pilot cage, and some mounted turrets is an incredibly expensive and time-consuming endeavor. It should be able to cause significant damage, and it should require a similarly-expensive counter measure.

The Ptera. Again, in the context of a late-game raid, the Ptera is fairly squishy, and doesn't do enough damage to contend with really anything out on field except maybe humans on foot, in which case, I think this is fine. It's primary role, picking, already has numerous counters. I think people's main issue with the Ptera's barrel roll is in a situation where someone is just getting outmatched. In an end-game raid, the Ptera puts pressure on the aerial component of the battle, and picks people off mounts. This is hard to do, and risky, if the target took any of the counter measures (weighed themselves down, has a bola, quality pike, compound bow, grappling hook, parachute, etc ...). Also, it should be noted that you're not getting any work done with a tamed Ptera with a low-quality saddle in a raid like this. Again, you need to be at breeding tech with a minimum of an MC saddle to get anything done. 

Limiting platforms to above the saddle only. I don't like this because it limits creativity. I like people being able to create technology using platform saddles, like aerial siege weapons and harvesters.

The Argy does not truly have an end-game role, except perhaps picking the super-encumbered giga riders (but the Quetzals and Dragons can do this better).

Imprinted dragons are tough, and the range on the poison dragon seems a bit extreme, but really the dragons are not overpowered at all. They might even be slightly underpowered for what it takes to imprint them. 

 

I just think your under estimating the actually effectiveness of both the quetz and the ptera. I think dragons and argys are fine as is for the most part, though the dragons natural speed is a little much. 

But for the quetz, there has to be some counter play. And if you have one that has ramps built to cover the wings and head, a box around the rider, and mounted guns on top yeah it took time to build but what is the counter? How do you stop it? You can't pick the rider and even if you could the only dino that can is the ptera which I'll get to in a minute. You can't hit the quetz both because of the structure built so that it can be hit anywhere but it's head and because even if you did most battle quetz are going to be 30k or higher health and nothing is doing significant damage to it. I understand that the time investment to get one is great but with all that they can do they do not need to be so good as a battle mount.

A bred quetzal makes all things on the island trivial, you need metal? Grap your anky and head to the volcano. You need cp? Fly to a beaver damn and the beavers can't hurt you as you get everything off the quetz back. Need to tame anything smaller than an allo? Pick it up and place it in a box to shoot it for five minutes. Need xp? Go kill an alpha, you have no trouble with anything but maybe a high level alpha Rex. Need to go to war? Carry your billet soaker all the way to wherever this base is and soak Avery bullet with zero fear of personal injury, then kill every dino outside with a mini gun, and then pick up their Dino's and drop them away from their base. You see what I mean? Their utility is endless and without drawbacks. The dossier (I know it isn't meant to be the end all but it has the right idea) says they are "too slow to be an efficient local transport, and too weak to be an effective warbird". This is just not true, they are faster than an argent and have the most health of any fliers by thousands. And even if you nerf their health into the ground the ability to build below the wings and negate damage while still being able to fly makes them a tank which they absolutely should not be. They should be a cargo mount, used to carry your war mounts to and from but having to be hidden in the bushes as to not die in battle. 

As for the ptera, I don't want to sound like an ass so I do apologize if this comes off rude but have you pvp'ed in ark? Or watched it on YouTube? The ptera is a god. Thier low health does not matter as they rarely get hit by anything due to their speed and I can get their health to 5k with ease. The counters measures have helped a bit but when they are fast enough to pick and drop before you can get out a bola, gun or pike they just don't matter. And so say you do weigh yourself down so when you're on your mount and they get you they can't go anywhere, great, now your just off your mount in combat and with dino ai being so abismal your mount if effectively out of the fight until you get back on. Yet again win for the ptera rider. Plus their saddle is unlocked at 35, thier kibble is dodo and they are in all the easy spawns. Sure breeding and a mc saddle is ideal but I can go find a 125+ ptera, kibble tame it in an hour, throw a primitive saddle on it and do work with ease. Their "counters" are what? People on foot using bolas? Well what are they strong at dealing with? People on foot? You see the problem. The barrel role is a whole different thing and while its a good tool if it didn't do damage it would be fine, should be used as an escape maneuver not a battle one. 

And lastly even a red giga saddle breaking in fight is good. Should have planned better. You took that much damage on your giga maybe you should bring more? Or be ready to have to repair it. Or this makes you have to fall back to base to regroup and fix stuff and if you aren't coordinated enough then. You might get counter attacked, strategy. It's a novel idea. And  as far as cross ark raiding goes, you should have an advantage if it's your home server, so someone comes into your server they should have to be ready to repair saddles if they want to bring the fight to you.

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5 hours ago, TheRealTFreezy said:

I just think your under estimating the actually effectiveness of both the quetz and the ptera. I think dragons and argys are fine as is for the most part, though the dragons natural speed is a little much. 

But for the quetz, there has to be some counter play. And if you have one that has ramps built to cover the wings and head, a box around the rider, and mounted guns on top yeah it took time to build but what is the counter? How do you stop it? You can't pick the rider and even if you could the only dino that can is the ptera which I'll get to in a minute. You can't hit the quetz both because of the structure built so that it can be hit anywhere but it's head and because even if you did most battle quetz are going to be 30k or higher health and nothing is doing significant damage to it. I understand that the time investment to get one is great but with all that they can do they do not need to be so good as a battle mount.

A bred quetzal makes all things on the island trivial, you need metal? Grap your anky and head to the volcano. You need cp? Fly to a beaver damn and the beavers can't hurt you as you get everything off the quetz back. Need to tame anything smaller than an allo? Pick it up and place it in a box to shoot it for five minutes. Need xp? Go kill an alpha, you have no trouble with anything but maybe a high level alpha Rex. Need to go to war? Carry your billet soaker all the way to wherever this base is and soak Avery bullet with zero fear of personal injury, then kill every dino outside with a mini gun, and then pick up their Dino's and drop them away from their base. You see what I mean? Their utility is endless and without drawbacks. The dossier (I know it isn't meant to be the end all but it has the right idea) says they are "too slow to be an efficient local transport, and too weak to be an effective warbird". This is just not true, they are faster than an argent and have the most health of any fliers by thousands. And even if you nerf their health into the ground the ability to build below the wings and negate damage while still being able to fly makes them a tank which they absolutely should not be. They should be a cargo mount, used to carry your war mounts to and from but having to be hidden in the bushes as to not die in battle. 

As for the ptera, I don't want to sound like an ass so I do apologize if this comes off rude but have you pvp'ed in ark? Or watched it on YouTube? The ptera is a god. Thier low health does not matter as they rarely get hit by anything due to their speed and I can get their health to 5k with ease. The counters measures have helped a bit but when they are fast enough to pick and drop before you can get out a bola, gun or pike they just don't matter. And so say you do weigh yourself down so when you're on your mount and they get you they can't go anywhere, great, now your just off your mount in combat and with dino ai being so abismal your mount if effectively out of the fight until you get back on. Yet again win for the ptera rider. Plus their saddle is unlocked at 35, thier kibble is dodo and they are in all the easy spawns. Sure breeding and a mc saddle is ideal but I can go find a 125+ ptera, kibble tame it in an hour, throw a primitive saddle on it and do work with ease. Their "counters" are what? People on foot using bolas? Well what are they strong at dealing with? People on foot? You see the problem. The barrel role is a whole different thing and while its a good tool if it didn't do damage it would be fine, should be used as an escape maneuver not a battle one. 

And lastly even a red giga saddle breaking in fight is good. Should have planned better. You took that much damage on your giga maybe you should bring more? Or be ready to have to repair it. Or this makes you have to fall back to base to regroup and fix stuff and if you aren't coordinated enough then. You might get counter attacked, strategy. It's a novel idea. And  as far as cross ark raiding goes, you should have an advantage if it's your home server, so someone comes into your server they should have to be ready to repair saddles if they want to bring the fight to you.

First of all, I'm enjoying this argument! Well-articulated opposition. Don't worry about sounding rude or offending. I'm not that easily rattled xD 

I guess this is a fair question, when you asked if I've PvP'd in Ark (lulz), so, without getting to braggadocios ... yes. I have. We've locked up servers 100+ on Island maps with some of our raids (Xbox official). I've personally been involved in truly large-scale end-game conflicts. 

RE: Quetz

Gathering basic resources and taming smaller dinos should be trivial at the end of the game. So I guess maybe we're just going to disagree here? I truly don't understand why some people argue that gathering basic materials should be a grueling weeks-long process. Yuck. How about the bulk of PvP be fighting, building, and politics? Sounds way better to me.

What is the counter to a War Quetz? Depends on the design, of course. But naturally you're going to want rockets to destroy their metal cage. Then the bird is exposed, and you kill the bird.

The War Quetz should cause massive damage, otherwise, what's the point? Your War Quetz should be just as awesome in an even fight, and if you're defending, blow the living hell out of it with your mounted rocket turrets, miniguns, and homing rockets.

RE: Ptera

I read this part twice, and it sounds to me like you don't like that it can pick up people. You mentioned level 35, and dodo kibble, which I think is completely irrelevant unless you're playing extinction. Maybe if you have a god-bird that does 2000+ damage per barrel roll you can hit an imprinted dragon 15-20 times and maybe kill it (you're absolutely not hitting a dragon 15 times in a battle with a ptera unless they're very bad). The barrel roll is not OP, and if it can't pick up people, then what is it good for? Is the suggestion really to remove the battle capabilities from the Fighter Jet of the game? That seems a bit extreme.

Let's review: the damage of the barrel roll is trivial in a late-game raid. They are able to swoop in and pick people off mounts, to which there are counter measures. I guess I just don't understand why this is OP?

I think one of the common misconceptions in balance discussion is that all strats should be able to be countered while taking zero damage, and I just don't believe that to be true. Units should cause damage. Counters should mitigate damage. Being better, and more prepared, and potentially having a larger and better army should allow you to completely reverse the damage and be dealing it out instead (on the balance).

RE: Breaking saddles

We both agree that saddle durability should have a use in the game, but we're disagreeing on what that use is. How can you be more prepared? In a pitched battle you could have multiple gigas and rexes attacking multiple gigas and rexes, all while being bombed by dragons, war quetzs, and rockets ... MASSIVE amounts of damage are going to be dealt, and are expected to be dealt ... how exactly does one "better prepare" for a saddle breaking in the middle of all of that?

I propose that when a saddle breaks it debuffs movement speed and armor. I'm not sure how to handle the field repairs. I'm open to suggestions. If a platform saddle breaks, structures on it take 6x damage. A percentage of damage dealt to structures on a platform saddle will transfer to the saddle.

RE: Cross Ark

Fighting is the point. That is the whole reason Cross Ark exists, so people actually fight on PvP servers. No matter what, if you're base is getting attacked, you have defender's advantage. You have an even bigger advantage in a Cross Ark situation. I think it's important that we keep these things in mind when discussing balance adjustments. You don't want Cross Ark raiding to be too extremely difficult for the attacker, otherwise it just won't happen and we'll continue to have our no-attack turtle-behind-turrets PvP game that we largely had before Cross Ark. 

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2 hours ago, TimeSpiral said:

First of all, I'm enjoying this argument! Well-articulated opposition. Don't worry about sounding rude or offending. I'm not that easily rattled xD 

I guess this is a fair question, when you asked if I've PvP'd in Ark (lulz), so, without getting to braggadocios ... yes. I have. We've locked up servers 100+ on Island maps with some of our raids (Xbox official). I've personally been involved in truly large-scale end-game conflicts. 

RE: Quetz

Gathering basic resources and taming smaller dinos should be trivial at the end of the game. So I guess maybe we're just going to disagree here? I truly don't understand why some people argue that gathering basic materials should be a grueling weeks-long process. Yuck. How about the bulk of PvP be fighting, building, and politics? Sounds way better to me.

What is the counter to a War Quetz? Depends on the design, of course. But naturally you're going to want rockets to destroy their metal cage. Then the bird is exposed, and you kill the bird.

The War Quetz should cause massive damage, otherwise, what's the point? Your War Quetz should be just as awesome in an even fight, and if you're defending, blow the living hell out of it with your mounted rocket turrets, miniguns, and homing rockets.

RE: Ptera

I read this part twice, and it sounds to me like you don't like that it can pick up people. You mentioned level 35, and dodo kibble, which I think is completely irrelevant unless you're playing extinction. Maybe if you have a god-bird that does 2000+ damage per barrel roll you can hit an imprinted dragon 15-20 times and maybe kill it (you're absolutely not hitting a dragon 15 times in a battle with a ptera unless they're very bad). The barrel roll is not OP, and if it can't pick up people, then what is it good for? Is the suggestion really to remove the battle capabilities from the Fighter Jet of the game? That seems a bit extreme.

Let's review: the damage of the barrel roll is trivial in a late-game raid. They are able to swoop in and pick people off mounts, to which there are counter measures. I guess I just don't understand why this is OP?

I think one of the common misconceptions in balance discussion is that all strats should be able to be countered while taking zero damage, and I just don't believe that to be true. Units should cause damage. Counters should mitigate damage. Being better, and more prepared, and potentially having a larger and better army should allow you to completely reverse the damage and be dealing it out instead (on the balance).

RE: Breaking saddles

We both agree that saddle durability should have a use in the game, but we're disagreeing on what that use is. How can you be more prepared? In a pitched battle you could have multiple gigas and rexes attacking multiple gigas and rexes, all while being bombed by dragons, war quetzs, and rockets ... MASSIVE amounts of damage are going to be dealt, and are expected to be dealt ... how exactly does one "better prepare" for a saddle breaking in the middle of all of that?

I propose that when a saddle breaks it debuffs movement speed and armor. I'm not sure how to handle the field repairs. I'm open to suggestions. If a platform saddle breaks, structures on it take 6x damage. A percentage of damage dealt to structures on a platform saddle will transfer to the saddle.

RE: Cross Ark

Fighting is the point. That is the whole reason Cross Ark exists, so people actually fight on PvP servers. No matter what, if you're base is getting attacked, you have defender's advantage. You have an even bigger advantage in a Cross Ark situation. I think it's important that we keep these things in mind when discussing balance adjustments. You don't want Cross Ark raiding to be too extremely difficult for the attacker, otherwise it just won't happen and we'll continue to have our no-attack turtle-behind-turrets PvP game that we largely had before Cross Ark. 

So all in all what are your propositions to make fliers less used in comparison to every other dino? Up until this point only fliers and the occasional giga and Rex are used in pvp due to the total dominance that all fliers, specifically the ptera and quetz, have over all other mounts. I just have yet to see anything from your side really giving a "fix". And ptera barrel role isn't op due to its ability to kill gigas or wyverns, it's the ability to destroy anyone on foot or on a small dino.

The entire point of the thread is to make pvp more viable with a larger variety of mounts and the ptera makes anything smaller than a Rex obsolete. Tell me if you disagree but please tell me a situation you would use something small besides a ptera. 

And I mention level 35, and dodo kibble in less than an hour because it very much matters. The level might not matter as much but the kibble needed and the speed at which it can be tamed is huge. Would you say that the first or second best combat mount in the game should only take dodo kibble and an hour. How long does a giga take? How many narc or what kibble? How about the quetz? Rex? Moss? These are late game Dino's, they are what you need end game. Even the bear and wolf is Carno kibble and the saber bronto. The ease at getting ptera kibble makes it so not only can anyone have them, they can have a ton making it the obvious pvp choice. They should take longer and use a different kibble. If the quetz took raptor kibble and an hour or two to tame would that be ok? Or how about the giga? The point is to make other options be viable and without a hard nerf to flying but very specifically the quetz and ptera we will never get there no matter the buffs to land based mounts.

ultimately, air is better than land if straight up compared, always. So the air needs some downsides to outweigh their massive positives and at this point they just have more upsides.

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13 hours ago, TheRealTFreezy said:

So all in all what are your propositions to make fliers less used in comparison to every other dino? Up until this point only fliers and the occasional giga and Rex are used in pvp due to the total dominance that all fliers, specifically the ptera and quetz, have over all other mounts. I just have yet to see anything from your side really giving a "fix". And ptera barrel role isn't op due to its ability to kill gigas or wyverns, it's the ability to destroy anyone on foot or on a small dino.

The entire point of the thread is to make pvp more viable with a larger variety of mounts and the ptera makes anything smaller than a Rex obsolete. Tell me if you disagree but please tell me a situation you would use something small besides a ptera. 

And I mention level 35, and dodo kibble in less than an hour because it very much matters. The level might not matter as much but the kibble needed and the speed at which it can be tamed is huge. Would you say that the first or second best combat mount in the game should only take dodo kibble and an hour. How long does a giga take? How many narc or what kibble? How about the quetz? Rex? Moss? These are late game Dino's, they are what you need end game. Even the bear and wolf is Carno kibble and the saber bronto. The ease at getting ptera kibble makes it so not only can anyone have them, they can have a ton making it the obvious pvp choice. They should take longer and use a different kibble. If the quetz took raptor kibble and an hour or two to tame would that be ok? Or how about the giga? The point is to make other options be viable and without a hard nerf to flying but very specifically the quetz and ptera we will never get there no matter the buffs to land based mounts.

ultimately, air is better than land if straight up compared, always. So the air needs some downsides to outweigh their massive positives and at this point they just have more upsides.

I don't agree with your first point. In the raids I've been a party to the meta is this (this assumes you're attacking):

Gigas tank and deal with land-based tames.

Brontos and Golems are used to tank and drain bullets.

Turtles are used to drain bullets.

Quetzals are used to reposition turtles, rescue missions, but mainly as aerial tanks and damage dealers (because of the mounted weaponry).

Pteranodons provide air support by putting pressure on enemy fliers, picking, attacking foot soldiers, positioning snipers, suicide bombs, and finding holes in the defenses.

Dragons are used to apply aerial pressure, pick people of large dinos, and bomb encampments with poison.

Every once in a while someone brings out a god Argy, and it's able to get work done. But it's mainly style. 

Foot soldiers are used for obvious things: supply lines, demolition, sniping, combat, etc ...

Ideally, each mount is imprinted to the rider. 

 

Saying it's all fliers and the occasional giga and rex is not consistent with my experience, but that doesn't mean it's not a lot of other people's experience. Before we get any deeper into the particulars of the fliers, do you not agree with the above general assessment of a land-based attack raid?

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1 hour ago, TimeSpiral said:

I don't agree with your first point. In the raids I've been a party to the meta is this (this assumes you're attacking):

Gigas tank and deal with land-based tames.

Brontos and Golems are used to tank and drain bullets.

Turtles are used to drain bullets.

Quetzals are used to reposition turtles, rescue missions, but mainly as aerial tanks and damage dealers (because of the mounted weaponry).

Pteranodons provide air support by putting pressure on enemy fliers, picking, attacking foot soldiers, positioning snipers, suicide bombs, and finding holes in the defenses.

Dragons are used to apply aerial pressure, pick people of large dinos, and bomb encampments with poison.

Every once in a while someone brings out a god Argy, and it's able to get work done. But it's mainly style. 

Foot soldiers are used for obvious things: supply lines, demolition, sniping, combat, etc ...

Ideally, each mount is imprinted to the rider. 

 

Saying it's all fliers and the occasional giga and rex is not consistent with my experience, but that doesn't mean it's not a lot of other people's experience. Before we get any deeper into the particulars of the fliers, do you not agree with the above general assessment of a land-based attack raid?

I will preface everything from here forward with this, I have not been in any current meta official raids as I left about 6 months ago for player dedicated servers. That said, I watch a lot of YouTube and have seen a lot of raids and so a lot of my information stems from friends, YouTube and this forum. The raid experience I have is mostly smaller stuff since you don't tend to see a lot of large scale pvp on the dedicated servers I've been on. So with that said let's get into it. 

Yes, gigas are used as the go to land mount in terms of damage, though it's not often that I see people in need of them for anything other than clearing out people's tames. 

I have seen 1 bronto used ever, and it actually was used as cover damage for ground mounts quite effectively but it also tanked a little. But with the multiple (unnecessary) bronto nerfs I feel as though any use they might have had is dwindleing. And the golem is absolutely a tank and I forget to really talk about it since it's scorched earth but it's a turtle on steroids.

turtles are the bullet soakers unless you have a golem. Though I feel the bullet soaking meta is almost boring? Maybe not. It's nice to see a dino used like the turtle and I wouldn't mind, if we keep the bullet soaking thing, if more Dino's like the doed or anky get the ability to drain turrets in a different way. Thoughts?

quetzals are used for what seems like anything and everything. I personally don't like there being an air tank, I know I've quoted the dossier before but the original concept of the quetz is massive transport and is very specifically not a war bird. Using it as damage because of turrets and mounted weaponry with the upside of maneuverability but down side of a lower health pool vs things like a bronto seem to be more interesting to me. The bronto would be the tank with mounted weapons instead but because of quetz having equal health and more speed and maneuverability there isn't a good reason to use bronto or even paracers.

i agree with your assessment of pteras especially in late game. I think the ptera op threads are more from early to mid game pvp when they can dominate everything. Late game they might not be so op but I think them being able to outrun turrets make it so foot soldiers are too much risk for less reward. You aren't even safe behind turrets. You're right, thier damage is obsolete in comparison to other late game tames when spec'ed for speed or stam but compared to any speed based tames they have far more damage and speed.

i agree with dragons. Their speed might be a little out of wack but the turning radius and difficulty of their breathe weapons make them balanced.

never seen an Argy used honestly. They need a role because as of now the ptera has more damage and speed and the quetz has more health, speed, and stam and can have more damage due to mounted weapons. They are supposed to be the damage dealers but the barrel role takes that from them.

and foot soldiers are normally just snipers or once your in the base with the exception of rocket men but normally that seems to be someone riding a quetz or ptera.

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3 hours ago, TheRealTFreezy said:

I will preface everything from here forward with this, I have not been in any current meta official raids as I left about 6 months ago for player dedicated servers. That said, I watch a lot of YouTube and have seen a lot of raids and so a lot of my information stems from friends, YouTube and this forum. The raid experience I have is mostly smaller stuff since you don't tend to see a lot of large scale pvp on the dedicated servers I've been on. So with that said let's get into it. 

Yes, gigas are used as the go to land mount in terms of damage, though it's not often that I see people in need of them for anything other than clearing out people's tames. 

I have seen 1 bronto used ever, and it actually was used as cover damage for ground mounts quite effectively but it also tanked a little. But with the multiple (unnecessary) bronto nerfs I feel as though any use they might have had is dwindleing. And the golem is absolutely a tank and I forget to really talk about it since it's scorched earth but it's a turtle on steroids.

turtles are the bullet soakers unless you have a golem. Though I feel the bullet soaking meta is almost boring? Maybe not. It's nice to see a dino used like the turtle and I wouldn't mind, if we keep the bullet soaking thing, if more Dino's like the doed or anky get the ability to drain turrets in a different way. Thoughts?

quetzals are used for what seems like anything and everything. I personally don't like there being an air tank, I know I've quoted the dossier before but the original concept of the quetz is massive transport and is very specifically not a war bird. Using it as damage because of turrets and mounted weaponry with the upside of maneuverability but down side of a lower health pool vs things like a bronto seem to be more interesting to me. The bronto would be the tank with mounted weapons instead but because of quetz having equal health and more speed and maneuverability there isn't a good reason to use bronto or even paracers.

i agree with your assessment of pteras especially in late game. I think the ptera op threads are more from early to mid game pvp when they can dominate everything. Late game they might not be so op but I think them being able to outrun turrets make it so foot soldiers are too much risk for less reward. You aren't even safe behind turrets. You're right, thier damage is obsolete in comparison to other late game tames when spec'ed for speed or stam but compared to any speed based tames they have far more damage and speed.

i agree with dragons. Their speed might be a little out of wack but the turning radius and difficulty of their breathe weapons make them balanced.

never seen an Argy used honestly. They need a role because as of now the ptera has more damage and speed and the quetz has more health, speed, and stam and can have more damage due to mounted weapons. They are supposed to be the damage dealers but the barrel role takes that from them.

and foot soldiers are normally just snipers or once your in the base with the exception of rocket men but normally that seems to be someone riding a quetz or ptera.

Okay, cool. Fair enough, man. None of us are pros, the game is still extremely young, and the meta is horribly young compared to more-established games (like StarCraft II, which I have much more experience with). We're all just members of this bizarre early-access community trying to hash things out for the shared purpose of influencing a better game in the end (assuming there is one, lol, but that's a different argument). 

Gigas can tank quite well, but yeah, they're mainly designed to output damage to tames and people. 

Ahh, the bronto is quite a thing to see in action. I think it's performing it's battle function just fine (though we'll see if people continue using brontos after the nerf). 

Turtles have advantages over golems, and vice versa. The golem's role is redundant, imo, and since you can't heal it, it feels to me like a worse option than either the turtle or the bronto. Again, the golem feels like a style choice (similar to the Argy). 

Bullet soaking. This all stems from the games sharpest double-edged sword: the persistent game world. Auto Turrets completely and 100% define the way this game is played. That one structure. Every. Literally everything stems from it. I addressed this in an earlier post by suggesting ways to bypass automated defenses, such as stealth--in which case you'd have counter measures to stealth, etc ... But yes, currently there is no reason to attack unless you know or strongly feel you're going to win, and the defender has no incentive to come out onto the field until all the resources spent in turrets has been used (otherwise you waste defender's advantage). Auto Turrets are designed to reduce the effectiveness of offline raiding, but also make it so online raiding is incredibly linear: soak bullets > fight tames > rocket vaults. Chances are, if there is a siege at your front door, soaking your bullets, you've already lost.

The Quetzal is the ultimate end game flier. If supported by a decent army composition, is going to be incredibly difficult to deal with. I think saddle durability and adding a damage multiplier to structures built on the platform saddle would move us in the right direction. But really, we just need more fliers, or more land-based dinos that are specifically designed to deal with fliers. What if the spider could shoot a web and "bola" the Ptera? What if a super high-level spider could shoot a chain bola type of web on a cool down? More on this later ... 

Yeah, I think we can move on from dragons. They seem fine, atm. Other than their ridiculous bad landing AI, and the fact that they fly much faster than the game can render a base, lol--which is actually a game breaking problem. 

Argy is style. We agree here. It could have a more defined role.

Nah, foot soldiers are the most versatile in a large raid. All sorts of stuff happening on the ground level. 

Late Game Dino Abilities

Even though the persistent world completely destroys any timing-based attacks, or timing-based attempts at balancing, I still think we should pay attention to it. People have mentioned that the Ptera is too good for being an early-game mount. I disagree, because I don't think something being early game necessarily means it can't be useful in the late game. So perhaps something like unlockable abilities could be implemented. 

Hear me out: perhaps the Ptera cannot lift a dino until it hits level 100. A Ptera cannot lift a human until level 150. A Ptera cannot barrel roll until level 200.

You see where I'm going. You could also require "teching" to unlock certain abilities. Maybe you have to build an Aviary. This specific structure (or collection of placeables) can only be unlocked at level-whatever. Then, once you have the building, you can unlock fliers' abilities. This is a tried and true path RTS's take, and it's cool. The building provides timings, and a barrier to entry, but it also provides a bonus for scouting. If you scout an early Aviary, it means they probably didn't rush to the Carnovore Pit, which unlocks the Raptor, Carno, Rex, and Giga abilities (whatever, you get it).

Maybe you could work this into imprinting. I think the imprinting process should be more skill-based. Performing certain tasking during the imprinting process could unlock an ability for that one dino only. Etc ...

Thoughts on an approach like this? 

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Honestly there is a lot of good suggestions  in this thread so In my opinion The meta is stagnant  because the development of the game still hasn't  fixed tons of core issues:

Most of the actual raids are fight offline players vs turrets  there is no system in place to give chance to the defender to actually  log in and defend if you are attacking  the main base.  It's  been a while since I played but Im still  part of an alpha tribe and the most fun that we had in raids,  where when the other alpha  tribe were  online to defend and that rarely happens most of the time is  the attacker has to drain turrets and loot and empty base  pretty much ark turrets evolve...  Now  this point alone needs a full post so moving on... 

The land is never going to be taken  seriously  over the air units until they cut the bad performance rubberbanding,    glitches exploits like the first  person turtle soacking,  render time on big bases and the rest of the stuff that make the land tedious. 

The defense options are bad and useless if you dont have a fluid pvp (previous  point) ,  that makes the auto turret the only viable option to do and kill something since you don't  know if someone is going to glitch  out inside  the base with his dino,  if a rain of c4 turtles is going to warp your character  to the sky of the map  or something  around that. 

You cant add patterns or customize   the tamed dinos AI so the PvPvE options  are limited  to the fact that you cant spice up the battleground  destroying any chance to a full scale raid or more tactics  to defend your base other than the auto turret.

Overall  like some of you have said there is tons of interesting ways to balance the dinos but in my opinion  unless something change  in the mechanics and their vision.   adding more dinos is  not going to invigorate the meta. 

 

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8 hours ago, TimeSpiral said:

Okay, cool. Fair enough, man. None of us are pros, the game is still extremely young, and the meta is horribly young compared to more-established games (like StarCraft II, which I have much more experience with). We're all just members of this bizarre early-access community trying to hash things out for the shared purpose of influencing a better game in the end (assuming there is one, lol, but that's a different argument). 

Gigas can tank quite well, but yeah, they're mainly designed to output damage to tames and people. 

Ahh, the bronto is quite a thing to see in action. I think it's performing it's battle function just fine (though we'll see if people continue using brontos after the nerf). 

Turtles have advantages over golems, and vice versa. The golem's role is redundant, imo, and since you can't heal it, it feels to me like a worse option than either the turtle or the bronto. Again, the golem feels like a style choice (similar to the Argy). 

Bullet soaking. This all stems from the games sharpest double-edged sword: the persistent game world. Auto Turrets completely and 100% define the way this game is played. That one structure. Every. Literally everything stems from it. I addressed this in an earlier post by suggesting ways to bypass automated defenses, such as stealth--in which case you'd have counter measures to stealth, etc ... But yes, currently there is no reason to attack unless you know or strongly feel you're going to win, and the defender has no incentive to come out onto the field until all the resources spent in turrets has been used (otherwise you waste defender's advantage). Auto Turrets are designed to reduce the effectiveness of offline raiding, but also make it so online raiding is incredibly linear: soak bullets > fight tames > rocket vaults. Chances are, if there is a siege at your front door, soaking your bullets, you've already lost.

The Quetzal is the ultimate end game flier. If supported by a decent army composition, is going to be incredibly difficult to deal with. I think saddle durability and adding a damage multiplier to structures built on the platform saddle would move us in the right direction. But really, we just need more fliers, or more land-based dinos that are specifically designed to deal with fliers. What if the spider could shoot a web and "bola" the Ptera? What if a super high-level spider could shoot a chain bola type of web on a cool down? More on this later ... 

Yeah, I think we can move on from dragons. They seem fine, atm. Other than their ridiculous bad landing AI, and the fact that they fly much faster than the game can render a base, lol--which is actually a game breaking problem. 

Argy is style. We agree here. It could have a more defined role.

Nah, foot soldiers are the most versatile in a large raid. All sorts of stuff happening on the ground level. 

Late Game Dino Abilities

Even though the persistent world completely destroys any timing-based attacks, or timing-based attempts at balancing, I still think we should pay attention to it. People have mentioned that the Ptera is too good for being an early-game mount. I disagree, because I don't think something being early game necessarily means it can't be useful in the late game. So perhaps something like unlockable abilities could be implemented. 

Hear me out: perhaps the Ptera cannot lift a dino until it hits level 100. A Ptera cannot lift a human until level 150. A Ptera cannot barrel roll until level 200.

You see where I'm going. You could also require "teching" to unlock certain abilities. Maybe you have to build an Aviary. This specific structure (or collection of placeables) can only be unlocked at level-whatever. Then, once you have the building, you can unlock fliers' abilities. This is a tried and true path RTS's take, and it's cool. The building provides timings, and a barrier to entry, but it also provides a bonus for scouting. If you scout an early Aviary, it means they probably didn't rush to the Carnovore Pit, which unlocks the Raptor, Carno, Rex, and Giga abilities (whatever, you get it).

Maybe you could work this into imprinting. I think the imprinting process should be more skill-based. Performing certain tasking during the imprinting process could unlock an ability for that one dino only. Etc ...

Thoughts on an approach like this? 

I don't think an approach like that is a bad option when talking of a new game. Like you said, it's tried and true and flat out works for balancing. But in my opinion we are too far along in the process to add that sort of progression system. It would involve so much reworking that I just don't think it would be a viable option for this game.

however there is a way to sort of incorporate it kind of maybe. Here is what I mean. A low level ptera can only have so many stat points so it's going to have low weight or stam or health. What if we make players weigh more? Or add the chance of missing a player pick up based on a specific stat. Or being unable to fly away holding the enemy player causing your bird to slow down a bit. Any of these options could be tied to say the weight stat. So even if you have 200 weight on your ptera you have a better chance to actually grab someone if your weight is 250. Could give more stats more purpose after you've put in the bare minimum. This is a very new thought that has no polish so let me know if you think it's even possible. 

And lastly, I actually 110% agree with you saying it doesn't matter the level you can ride the dino, they can still be used in late game. The problem is when it's so good and every other one is so bad. I'm not saying we need to knock the ptera so far back that it's as useless as the raptor or parasaur but I think it's needs to be moved ever so slightly to not be on par with a quetz in terms or all around usage and then I think we both agree on this) we need to buff those other Dino's and give them some sort or late game utility.

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