WC needs to change Imprinting

[ciabattaroll]

7 minutes ago, Franhi said:

coo

Well I am not imprinting atm and I never thought i would need a SS of this but hey one of my friends in game is imprinting gigas atm so here it is a GLORIOUS 1%!

But hey I must be wrong, I must have doctored that SS right? The internet is NEVER wrong, Wikis are NEVER outdated! 

 

Welcome to Survive the moderator evolved >.<

 

/drop mic

So what you're saying is, with a total time (from baby to adulthood) of 280 hours to raise, there's no real way to get a 100% imprint giga? Why the whine then?

[Rancor]

6 hours ago, Franhi said:

The fact remains wildcard is encouraging players to share their steam accounts with this mechanic and that will not end well, further all those things you mention can be done WITHOUT logging in every 3 hours, 100% imprints CANNOT, trying to excuse a broken mechanic that requires you to log in every 3 hours for over a week on the basis that other aspects of grinding can be taken too far is weak. All of those other things CAN be done over a long period of time the longest tame in the game to my knowledge is still under 4 hours start to finish most of them fall well short of the INTERVAL between imprints.

 

Still waiting to hear about the other wildly successful games that require you to log in every 3 hours for over a week to complete any mechanic, or to see a dev do a 100% imprint on a que solo.

Longest tame being four hours? That is ONLY if you have kibble. I have people in my tribe that berry tamed a Mammoth for 10 hours straight. Thats not a healthy mechanic... might as well remove any other options other than kibble to prevent players from getting dinos Early. Only way to get a higher tame than your capable of.

 

If you want 100% do it on a weekend/vacation (depending on the tame). 

 

I get the feeling that you think you are entitled to everything with out putting in work for it. If you REALLY want 100% earn it, other wise just don't do it and stop worrying so much about it. Not like you can't get through a few days with 3 hour naps. Heck its some times 4 hours between and there is always a few hours you can miss between an imprint here and there and still hit 100%... 

[Dam Son]

all I wanna know is, how the heck do you guys say tell your loved ones that you can't go out and spend time with them during the weekends because you have to take care of some little runt that exists in digital from. how do you even hold a job if you are required to "report in" every 3.5 hours average? how the heck do you guys even function as a normal human bean with only "power naps" of 3 hours? I know I tried, and it resulted me on holding on to the cell phone and jumping on to switch off the alarm so that it doesn't disturb your significant other. this resulted in almost to no sleep.

is it too much to ask for a longer interval time? is it too much to have at least an indicator to say "hey casual gamer, you kinda missed the last imprint by 4 hours, but hey, you still can catch up!" is it also too much to ask when incubating an egg, I wanna know the ETA till its hatched instead of that stupid progress bar? is it? It's not like I don't want to work for it, but it makes it almost impossible to achieve it. you guys say its optional, but damn, let's face it, we all want the very best. but for the love of god, give us casuals a fighting chance.

 

[Franhi]

1 hour ago, ciabattaroll said:

So what you're saying is, with a total time (from baby to adulthood) of 280 hours to raise, there's no real way to get a 100% imprint giga? Why the whine then?

It is not a true 1% in the same way that a pteranodon isn't really 11% it is more like 1.4% or something, a pteranodon is more like 10.6% But it is certainly NOT 5%, it is possible to do a 100% giga, just not realistic unless you acount share.

46 minutes ago, Rancor said:

Longest tame being four hours? That is ONLY if you have kibble. I have people in my tribe that berry tamed a Mammoth for 10 hours straight. Thats not a healthy mechanic... might as well remove any other options other than kibble to prevent players from getting dinos Early. Only way to get a higher tame than your capable of.

 

If you want 100% do it on a weekend/vacation (depending on the tame). 

 

I get the feeling that you think you are entitled to everything with out putting in work for it. If you REALLY want 100% earn it, other wise just don't do it and stop worrying so much about it. Not like you can't get through a few days with 3 hour naps. Heck its some times 4 hours between and there is always a few hours you can miss between an imprint here and there and still hit 100%... 

You can gut it out and put in seven and a half hours to get that mammoth (see devs have already started removing the most retarded time sinks), or you can put in the time over a few weeks to tame up some raptors, make some jerky cook some kibble and then tame a mammoth in one hour and 30 minutes overall you probably spend more than seven and a half hours, but you get to break it up into chunks that are far more manageable.

There is no option like that for a giga imprint, its log in every 3.5-4 hours for the next 240 hours or you are not hardcore enough. Or do what Ciabt Troll suggest and roll the dice trusting someone you met online with your steam account.

[Taybad]

i just want to throw this out there, i imprinted two gigas to 100% myself and im fine, i was able to live my life and do everything that i needed to get done. i just had to check back in every few hours, to be perfectly honest you dont need to be online every three hours you can push the timer back a little bit each time and make up for that while youre online. The system now is better than when i imprinted my first giga to 100% now at least if i lose power it wont go back down to 0.  

If you want to check my claim you can log into official server 376 and ask around for Tay, ill be happy to show you the giga, i also have screen shots. The other giga isnt with us anymore i stopped playing on that server and that was official server 446, but i still have the screen shots. also my tribe mate skully imprinted a giga to 100% himself back on that server. 

[Franhi]

12 minutes ago, Taybad said:

i just want to throw this out there, i imprinted two gigas to 100% myself and im fine, i was able to live my life and do everything that i needed to get done. i just had to check back in every few hours, to be perfectly honest you dont need to be online every three hours you can push the timer back a little bit each time and make up for that while youre online. The system now is better than when i imprinted my first giga to 100% now at least if i lose power it wont go back down to 0.  

If you want to check my claim you can log into official server 376 and ask around for Tay, ill be happy to show you the giga, i also have screen shots. The other giga isnt with us anymore i stopped playing on that server and that was official server 446, but i still have the screen shots. also my tribe mate skully imprinted a giga to 100% himself back on that server. 

Was there account sharing involved?

Change your profile pic to an owl for yes 

 

OK kidding aside, do you have a wife or kids or a job?

[spangled]

As someone who is 5% (six hours) away from completing her first 100% wyvern imprint, I feel I have good footing to comment on this. Say my peace and be gone. 

I'll start by saying I'm above a casual player in time spent, but I do have a more relaxed playing style so I don't have more dinos than I can remember, I tame those that I want and like. I have no problem spending hours on a tame simply because I like the colors of something, I've berry tamed a mammoth and fish and meat fed a rex. It isn't a Giga imprint, but it's still a time consuming process. There is a difference in earning it and cheating or being so completely unsociable that you develop gaming addictions. "But it's just five minutes every 3 hours." Allow me to walk you through the hell I've been in these past four days. It's currently 7:30 pm on Friday. I hatched this little guy at 3 am on Tuesday.  Why? Because my tribe is EU and they had already hatched theirs hours ahead of me. If it wasn't for them I wouldn't have gotten past 20%...if the thing would even still be alive. This is a  mere 165, decent food mind you. Up every 3 hours? Cool. I can do that the first day or so. I'm free this week. Vacation time. No problem. First mistake. Feeding is one thing. Imprinting during that is easier. However, 'five minutes' my ass. Unless you have someone who can watch cages for you with a suped up account with all the fort and food/water in the world, you have to get up in time to catch a wyvern female and milk her. Depending on if people have swept the trench or if all the females are pushing 150, this can take an hour easy. If no one is on, you have to do it solo or wait for someone which is hell itself. And then you don't even know if it will want cuddles or milk if you try to hit it right on the nose, which I did because you never know when you'll need those late hours down the road. You might have just used all that time to fill 300 points worth of food.Three hours? Try 2 if you're lucky. I was going to give up at 80. Actually set my alarm to go off 8 hours later after I hit that point. However, after nearly 4 days of 'training', I woke up automatically 2 1/2 hours later almost exactly. Decided to go ahead and imprint, turned out to be a walk...okay...10 minutes of logging in and getting it done. Back to sleep...body wakes up again, feeling gross and abused but used to the routine. I counted. The first day I got 5 hours of sleep in a 24 hour period. The second, a whole 9. Third. Amazingly, 11. Today, 3 hours so far. 'Power nap'? I have things to do during the day. Sadly, I have a life offline. I can't sleep and leave everything to crumble. It's not a video game. I can't pause it for 4+ days then start again. Yes. I made it work, but it was exhausting.

I haven't gone further than the store down the road, except once, because otherwise I would risk losing all that work because of a traffic jam or what have you. That one time? I timed it so I left the second that I finished an imprint. Sure, I can do work around the house but believe you me, the dogs are overwalked and the bathroom is spotless. I've been offered to share my account so I could get sleep by TRUSTED friends. I wanted to do it myself or not at all plus just because they did it, doesn't make it right. Yes. I want to 'earn' it. I don't want it to be easy. But I also don't want my back to need alignment from sleeping on the couch so I don't wake the family when I get up every 2 hours. I don't want to be shaking from caffeine crashes mixed with sleep deprivation. I would have gone a week imprinting this thing if I could have even 4-5 hours of sleep between. Make small tweeks at least until a perfect balance is found that would still be hard. Still take dedication. Not for the beginner or those looking to run in and get everything day three. No entitlement. I will work for what I want. Proven it already. However, I'm not sure if I'm proud or disturbed at the lengths I had to go to getting here. I hurt. Literally. My body hurts. My mind hurts. This is not a marathon. Not some epic movement. This is supposed to be a game. You should not have to build your life around it for any extended period of time...which is pretty much what addiction entails. And the way I feel now sure as hell doesn't feel 'fun'. 

Maybe I'm weak. Maybe I'm not doing it right. But in my humble opinion, there should be some change...even if minor.

[Franhi]

4 minutes ago, spangled said:

As someone who is 5% (six hours) away from completing her first 100% wyvern imprint, I feel I have good footing to comment on this. Say my peace and be gone. 

I'll start by saying I'm above a casual player in time spent, but I do have a more relaxed playing style so I don't have more dinos than I can remember, I tame those that I want and like. I have no problem spending hours on a tame simply because I like the colors of something, I've berry tamed a mammoth and fish and meat fed a rex. It isn't a Giga imprint, but it's still a time consuming process. There is a difference in earning it and cheating or being so completely unsociable that you develop gaming addictions. "But it's just five minutes every 3 hours." Allow me to walk you through the hell I've been in these past four days. It's currently 7:30 pm on Friday. I hatched this little guy at 3 am on Tuesday.  Why? Because my tribe is EU and they had already hatched theirs hours ahead of me. If it wasn't for them I wouldn't have gotten past 20%...if the thing would even still be alive. This is a  mere 165, decent food mind you. Up every 3 hours? Cool. I can do that the first day or so. I'm free this week. Vacation time. No problem. First mistake. Feeding is one thing. Imprinting during that is easier. However, 'five minutes' my ass. Unless you have someone who can watch cages for you with a suped up account with all the fort and food/water in the world, you have to get up in time to catch a wyvern female and milk her. Depending on if people have swept the trench or if all the females are pushing 150, this can take an hour easy. If no one is on, you have to do it solo or wait for someone which is hell itself. And then you don't even know if it will want cuddles or milk if you try to hit it right on the nose, which I did because you never know when you'll need those late hours down the road. You might have just used all that time to fill 300 points worth of food.Three hours? Try 2 if you're lucky. I was going to give up at 80. Actually set my alarm to go off 8 hours later after I hit that point. However, after nearly 4 days of 'training', I woke up automatically 2 1/2 hours later almost exactly. Decided to go ahead and imprint, turned out to be a walk...okay...10 minutes of logging in and getting it done. Back to sleep...body wakes up again, feeling gross and abused but used to the routine. I counted. The first day I got 5 hours of sleep in a 24 hour period. The second, a whole 9. Third. Amazingly, 11. Today, 3 hours so far. 'Power nap'? I have things to do during the day. Sadly, I have a life offline. I can't sleep and leave everything to crumble. It's not a video game. I can't pause it for 4+ days then start again. Yes. I made it work, but it was exhausting.

I haven't gone further than the store down the road, except once, because otherwise I would risk losing all that work because of a traffic jam or what have you. That one time? I timed it so I left the second that I finished an imprint. Sure, I can do work around the house but believe you me, the dogs are overwalked and the bathroom is spotless. I've been offered to share my account so I could get sleep by TRUSTED friends. I wanted to do it myself or not at all plus just because they did it, doesn't make it right. Yes. I want to 'earn' it. I don't want it to be easy. But I also don't want my back to need alignment from sleeping on the couch so I don't wake the family when I get up every 2 hours. I don't want to be shaking from caffeine crashes mixed with sleep deprivation. I would have gone a week imprinting this thing if I could have even 4-5 hours of sleep between. Make small tweeks at least until a perfect balance is found that would still be hard. Still take dedication. Not for the beginner or those looking to run in and get everything day three. No entitlement. I will work for what I want. Proven it already. However, I'm not sure if I'm proud or disturbed at the lengths I had to go to getting here. I hurt. Literally. My body hurts. My mind hurts. This is not a marathon. Not some epic movement. This is supposed to be a game. You should not have to build your life around it for any extended period of time...which is pretty much what addiction entails. And the way I feel now sure as hell doesn't feel 'fun'. 

Maybe I'm weak. Maybe I'm not doing it right. But in my humble opinion, there should be some change...even if minor.

And how would you feel at this point if you end up missing the last imprint my less than 5 minutes?

Had that happen on a bronto when I overslept one of the imprints by 2 hours >.<

[LilNastyGurl]

Basically every argument I've seen so far amounts to

Quote

 

I lose imprinting when I have to go to work and sleep

 

and that can't be remedied with the current system.

As somebody who has done multiple 100% imprints without worry, and HAS the time to 100% imprint, I admit that the system desperately needs to be redesigned. 

[spangled]

Just now, Franhi said:

And how would you feel at this point if you end up missing the last imprint my less than 5 minutes?

Had that happen on a bronto when I overslept one of the imprints by 2 hours >.<

Sleeping? Hahaha...no.

I'm doing base maintenance until it gets to the hour mark, doing a milking so I have milk in inventory when it hits 0:00. Two more times. Six hours online so the last 4 days don't go to waste. Toughing it out I guess. Though odd that an aspect of the game can make you want to stop playing for a while once you hit it. I thought getting to this point would make me excited to have such a creature. Now I'm just ready for it to be over so I don't have to log on for a day or two at least.

[BK]

Coming from a tribe that has done a ton of imprintng...  my suggestion is:

1. Let tribes imprint for overall stat boost

2. The individuals (one who initially claimed the dino) imprint should count toward overall stats AND the reduced damage percentages. 

This way you can still imprint high stats as a tribe but if people still want the serious buff.. you still have something to wake up for at 4am.

[Taybad]

1 hour ago, Franhi said:

Was there account sharing involved?

Change your profile pic to an owl for yes 

 

OK kidding aside, do you have a wife or kids or a job?

no wife or kids, and im a sub teacher. 

[TimeSpiral]

Time's Big Imprinting Rant and Overhaul Suggestion

Raising dinos is not hard. Imprinting is not hard. It's not skill based. The only part of the entire process of getting the best dinos in the game that requires skill is knocking out the correct dinos. Taming after ko is easy, and everything after that is easy. And by easy I mean, none of it is skill-based. It's difficulty by annoyance, or difficulty by deterrent. 

Solution (1): Remove Imprinting. 

It's a terrible mechanic. It's not tribal. It's really just very bad, and it's required to get the best stats. I'd be perfectly fine with them removing the imprinting process completely (and I've raised many dinos).

Solution (2): Tribe Imprinting.

Seems obvious. It's a tribal game. Imprinting is the most important process in the game for achieving the best stats on dinos, and dinos are the strongest things in the game. Makes sense. The problem is that with tribal imprinting it essentially makes imprinting trivial, which is stupid. (Btw, this is already what's happening with the bigger tribes, they just share account info, which is unethical and potentially dangerous). 

Solution (3): Add skill and choice to the imprinting process.

This idea is still in the conceptual phase, but hear me out. Change the imprinting requirements to involve things that require skill, and give the player choice. You achieve this by training your baby dino in various ways. You can only boost stats by a certain cap, but you get to choose how to allot that with the training you choose, and you can perform this training at any time in the raising process without penalty. But, if you fail one of the training exercises, then you don't get that bonus opportunity. Not if you miss it, but if you fail it.

Example (i): You want to improve melee

You take the dino out into the wild (a certain distance from anything considered your base), and the baby dino has an attention radius that you can see. You then have to fight dino with melee weapons while inside of that attention radius. The attention radius expands throughout the maturation process. If you or the baby take too much damage, you fail the routine.

Example (ii): You want to improve health

You take it out into the wild and feed it from the meat of wild animals killed in its attention radius, or berries harvest in it's radius (if it's herbivore).

Example (iii): You want to increase movement speed

You take it for a run, and you have to escape aggro from dinos that enter into it's attention radius. This can be done by running, picking up the babies (yes, with my overhaul you can pick up babies and juveniles), and clever usage of the terrain.

Additional Examples: You want to improve weight, food, or oxygen

You enter into increasingly-difficult mini-games similar to fishing. Make it change, make it more complex. Maybe you have to make certain recipes in a short period of time to increase food. Maybe you have to go through a series of gestures and movements to increase weight, and maybe you have to perform complex button combinations to increase oxygen.

I want these tests to be difficult, but not impossible, but I want the chance of getting a 100% to be low because of the skill requirement and ingenuity to complete all of the routines.

 

We can keep the rider bonus, if we want, but if we start thinking in a direction like this, at least the defining factors for achieving high imprints would be the mastery of in-game skill-based mechanics, and not: I logged on every four hours for 14 days and followed extremely-simple on-screen instructions, slapped a red saddle on it that I got while I was forcing crates, and call it a day. What do you guys think; is this moving more in the direction we like? This would allow players to improve the stats via imprinting, on their schedule, but with the risk that each time they initiate a "training routine" they could fail it.

Thoughts? 

[Chewytowel]

My short and sweet opinion is that raising something for 2 weeks and imprinting it every so many hours is crazy.  It might be a super powerful Giga that can easily solo 3 Titans in a row and then go on a raid, but wow if you lose it that is one serious blow.  I know people that literally have to have two accounts at least running on two separate computers to make this work for them while raising.  I wouldn't bother to do this though.  With giga's easily dying to flame arrows or solo commando snipers on thatch sniper towers it's just not a risk I'd like to take.  I'd feel way too stressed out to put in the time for this or even a Quetz to only lose it to server lag, a bug, or who knows what else... or to even fear losing it.  So I agree with the OP that this the way it is now seems very unhealthy.  I am happy you all are happy if you like it, but man there is just about no way I think I would do this without it ruining my enjoyment of the game.

[Dreadnaught]

10 hours ago, ilShadow said:

The imprinting mechanic is dumb as is, in nature a creature imprints on the first thing it sees, in the game it requires anywhere from 4 to 70 imrpints to complete, depending on dino. I used Dodo to Giganotosaurus. 70 Imprints is a metric buttload of imprints. That is 245 hours. thats nearly 10 days of getting 2 hours of sleep, not being able to work, and a whole host of other things. That is way too much to ask of one person. An allosaurus is 12 imprints thats 42 hours. Raptor? 35 hours. I can see someone devoting 12-14 hours to imrprint a dino, thats reasonable to ask, and mind you that should be a standard unit across all dinos, 12-14 hours to imprint.

The breeding can still take all forever, but the imprinting needs to drop down to be reasonable but still challenging. I think asking for something withing reason isnt too unreasonable.

Your comparing real life creatures imprinting to a video game that let's you tame and ride dinosaurs.....  the only two tames that are really unreasonable for one person are also the two most powerful you can breed, almost like it's a balance mechanic, weird....

[Unseen]

9 hours ago, TimeSpiral said:

Time's Big Imprinting Rant and Overhaul Suggestion

Raising dinos is not hard. Imprinting is not hard. It's not skill based. The only part of the entire process of getting the best dinos in the game that requires skill is knocking out the correct dinos. Taming after ko is easy, and everything after that is easy. And by easy I mean, none of it is skill-based. It's difficulty by annoyance, or difficulty by deterrent. 

Solution (1): Remove Imprinting. 

It's a terrible mechanic. It's not tribal. It's really just very bad, and it's required to get the best stats. I'd be perfectly fine with them removing the imprinting process completely (and I've raised many dinos).

Solution (2): Tribe Imprinting.

Seems obvious. It's a tribal game. Imprinting is the most important process in the game for achieving the best stats on dinos, and dinos are the strongest things in the game. Makes sense. The problem is that with tribal imprinting it essentially makes imprinting trivial, which is stupid. (Btw, this is already what's happening with the bigger tribes, they just share account info, which is unethical and potentially dangerous). 

Solution (3): Add skill and choice to the imprinting process.

This idea is still in the conceptual phase, but hear me out. Change the imprinting requirements to involve things that require skill, and give the player choice. You achieve this by training your baby dino in various ways. You can only boost stats by a certain cap, but you get to choose how to allot that with the training you choose, and you can perform this training at any time in the raising process without penalty. But, if you fail one of the training exercises, then you don't get that bonus opportunity. Not if you miss it, but if you fail it.

1. Lets be honest there not going to remove it its become major part of the game I get that in some ways it can be seen as op 30% reduction in damage that's almost as good as a saddle 30% increase in damage that is massive and that's not even including the stat bonus. So it defiantly has a large impact making people feel like its a requirement which it is to some degree, WC has been taking about nerfing dinos and promised balancing on release i would not be surprise if they nerf imprinting to some degree.

2. Yer it does make it more trivial but not hugely sure if your in a mega alpha tribe it going to make it extremely easy but for the rest of us in small/medium size tribes someone still is going to have to stay up all night. And i would not call sharing you steam ID unethical problematic games really should not be pushing players to hand out steam passwords imo.

3. I like the idea i just think it would take forever to implement I think it would be better to go for a simpler one how about just increasing the time in between imprint that would mean you would have to keep imprinting once it had matured and it would not take away from the difficulty of the task but then at least people could sleep IDK some people really seem to like the 'challenge'. 

[TimeSpiral]

51 minutes ago, Unseen said:

1. Lets be honest there not going to remove it its become major part of the game I get that in some ways it can be seen as op 30% reduction in damage that's almost as good as a saddle 30% increase in damage that is massive and that's not even including the stat bonus. So it defiantly has a large impact making people feel like its a requirement which it is to some degree, WC has been taking about nerfing dinos and promised balancing on release i would not be surprise if they nerf imprinting to some degree.

2. Yer it does make it more trivial but not hugely sure if your in a mega alpha tribe it going to make it extremely easy but for the rest of us in small/medium size tribes someone still is going to have to stay up all night. And i would not call sharing you steam ID unethical problematic games really should not be pushing players to hand out steam passwords imo.

3. I like the idea i just think it would take forever to implement I think it would be better to go for a simpler one how about just increasing the time in between imprint that would mean you would have to keep imprinting once it had matured and it would not take away from the difficulty of the task but then at least people could sleep IDK some people really seem to like the 'challenge'. 

(1) RE: Remove imprinting - sure they could remove it. It would be the fastest and easiest way to nerf dinos. Remember, this game is in the development process (so they say). Adding and removing major game mechanics is still on the table. 

(2) RE: tribe imprinting - it makes something that is already easy, trivially easy.

(3) RE: integrate skill-based difficulty into the imprinting process - "it would be hard to implement" is not a great argument, since we're talking about a professional development company charging retail prices for access to its development process. Nothing I suggested is even outside of normal game mechanics: fighting, triggering and leaving dino aggression, ranges, harvesting, recipes, mini-game challenges. These already exist in the game. They'd just write some logic and some new mechanics to introduce "Imprinting Routines". Completely get rid of the cuddle timer and allow the player to run an imprint routine whenever he wants.

TL;DR -- Imprinting in its current form is bad game design, so I'm tossing out the "solution" of just increasing cuddle timers to something more reasonable (like 12 hours). We've a few options: (1) remove imprinting, which I'd be fine with. (2) Implement tribe imprinting, which is stupid, because it would just mean that every decent tribe gets 100% on every dino. Or finally, introduce "Imprinting Routines" which are skill-based exercises you do with your dinos, as you're raising them, on your schedule, that involves choice and risk: there is a cap to the amount of skill you can train into a dino, and you get to choose based on the routines you perform. But if you fail the routine, you do not get the bonus, and the routines are inherently dangerous and the risk is that you could het your dino killed. 

[trickshot420]

yea i am about to 100% a giga its 94% and needs 4 more imprints with no tribe member help and i feel poop as i have gotten no sleep at all, wake up with headaches everyday, pretty much have to awake up every 3h for 11 days on a giga is crazy they need to fix it to every 6h so u get somewhat sleep....