Official Servers: Max Tamed Dinos Reached: Solutions/Suggestions

[Lewiatan]

The egg drop rate can be increased as well. Currently it is only 2% every 2 minutes, no surprise why people get lots of females to increase that chance.

[b0ender]

11 hours ago, catnip said:

A personal cap would make sense. Of course you run into the problem with tribes that have their setting set for Tribe Tame. How would that work?

That setting could be removed. That setting is causing many people to play solo anyway. Because if u ever get in fight with admin, u get kicked, or u want to leave, whatever happens u got no dinos.

Also how many times did u see newbies complaining accidentaly leaving their own tribe and loosing all their stuf?

That setting can, and should be removed from the game.

 

But still even they make cap personal not server wide, 4000 is nothing. 500 dinos is nothing for anyone who is into breeding, x8 people and server is full. Breeding system needs to be changed or cap doubled

[b0ender]

So Developer Jen said few things on steam forums regarding this dino cap issue.

1. They want to make about 400 dinos limit per tribe 

2. They are thinking about removing option to claim someones dinos after someones base decays

3. They might rework kibble system once all cratures are in

 

I am happy to see that they are thinking about how to resolve this issue. But the cap they plan to put on is IMO too small. ATM there are 90 Tameable creatures in the game, if you have male and female of each species you are already 180/400. 

 

400 could be fine per player, but limit per tribe just wont work.

And even if they make personal limit, that will get bypassed so easyily.

 

 

Also whats scary is, if they decide to goo with 400 per tribe, whats going to happen to dinos in some tribes that exceeded that limit? Will they die? despawn? turn wild like babys do when u hatch them during server limit?

[Jerryn]

I have removed some of the recent off topic posts; and kudos to you that did resolve a misunderstanding amicably (nice to see and small rep bump from me, for what little that is worth).

On another note, the forums are open to all that follow the rules.  Anyone may post an opinion about a suggestion, including discussing alternatives, minor changes, and possible issues, especially if they are constructive.

 

[JetJaguar]

5 hours ago, b0ender said:

So Developer Jen said few things on steam forums regarding this dino cap issue.

1. They want to make about 400 dinos limit per tribe 

2. They are thinking about removing option to claim someones dinos after someones base decays

3. They might rework kibble system once all cratures are in

 

I am happy to see that they are thinking about how to resolve this issue. But the cap they plan to put on is IMO too small. ATM there are 90 Tameable creatures in the game, if you have male and female of each species you are already 180/400. 

 

400 could be fine per player, but limit per tribe just wont work.

And even if they make personal limit, that will get bypassed so easyily.

 

 

Also whats scary is, if they decide to goo with 400 per tribe, whats going to happen to dinos in some tribes that exceeded that limit? Will they die? despawn? turn wild like babys do when u hatch them during server limit?

400 dinos per player? That wouldn't solve the cap at all. Imagine your server has 100 players with 400 dinos. that's 40,000 dinos. The largest tribe on my server has roughly 7 active members. Even with 400 dinos, I doubt all 7 members are going to use them all let alone all be on at the same time.

[b0ender]

First of all 100 players on pve with 400 dinos will never happen.

Tribe limit wont solve cap either, once tribe reach cap, someone will leave tribe and make his own tribe = dino cap solved + he will make one more base, then we will not only have dino cap issue, but structure limit issue aswell 

[madfretter]

On 2/6/2017 at 10:54 AM, JetJaguar said:

So I want to start this post by saying this is a "think about this" post. Not a bitch and moan post. I also want people not to jump in here and judge others with regards to this but rather, offer a solution. A suggestion. Let Wildcard take a look at this stuff and maybe roll it around, if they haven’t already, and come up with a solution. Its been talked about before but why not have it all here in one place to keep posting on? Has your official server hit the tame cap?

One thing I think would be neat on Officials is a number reader that shows you how close your server is to hitting the max tamed dinos. Like you log in and see: 3,783/4,000. That would give YOU an idea of close you are to hitting 4,000 tames. Doesn't have to say who has the most; I think we are all aware who on our servers has the crazy dino tames/bases.

PVE and PVP are worlds apart. You don’t have max tame dino issues on PVP because people are killing each other all the time. On PVE it’s a different story. You have many people/tribes "collecting" dinos for various reasons. I think the tons of dinos happen and fall into the following catergories:

• • Breeding – Dinos with great stats used specifically to keep breeding with for mutations and/or improved upon stats.
  • Usefullness – Dinos tamed because of their ability. Be it ankys, doeds, beavers, etc.
  • Colors – Dinos tamed regardless of level, simply because the color or pattern looked unique/cool to the tribe/person doing the tame. Serve no other purpose.
  • Pokemon – Dinos tamed because the tribe/person feels they need to have one or two of each dino in game. Serves no purpose other then to "have it".
  • Kibble/Egg layers – Dinos that, regardless of level, are used strictly to lay eggs to make kibble. Usually 1 male and dozens of females.

Keep in mind the fact that there are quite literally, dozens of dinos. So if you want kibble for each one, you are looking at dozens of dinos to keep as kibble farms. One of the main ones people have are scorpion kibble farms. Literally, 2-3 dozen of JUST scorpions for rex taming kibble.

So how do you handle a server that can hold up to 70 players, (Mind you, that’s 70 ACTIVE players online. The server can have far more then 70 people on it!) all of which want to tame and keep big dino amounts? This is where a solution needs to be thought up. Maybe the devs didn’t forsee what would happen down the road? Maybe they didn’t anticipate it being as crazy as its become? Whatever the case, with Steam sales on the game and/or rising popularity, the taming cap will be inching closer and closer for Officials if it hasn’t already.

Suggestions/Solutions

Again, this isn’t a chance to rip large dino farms a new one. This a chance for you to enlighten everyone with a suggestion. Why not? The issue IMO, is two fold: How to contend with current tames and then how to work future tames. The biggest culprit seems to be the use of kibble. I would bet a large portion of the tames on servers are simply there to produce eggs for kibble. So how do you fix this?

• • Dino Storage – I had mentioned this a few times. Something that would work sort of the way things work when you put a dino into an obelisk to transfer to another server. In this idea, you build a giant "cube" in your base. You use it to stick dinos in you don’t use/need really. They are put into a "stasis" off the server into this void and you take them out or put them in just like you do an item in a storage box. The dinos could be stored off server on a separate server; not adding to dino count, nor causing any lag issues. Of course there is ironing out: (How many dinos go in here? What if its destroyed? When the dinos are removed, do they add back to count?) etc. This would also be $$ for WC to setup servers just to house dinos but could it help with Official Server loads? Why not?
  • Kibble Revamp – A reworking of the way kibble works. Perhaps a universal kibble used by any dino? Or 1 for all carno types, 1 for all herb types? I think the mutton from sheep is a step in this direction. I also think using oddball stuff like beer, bug repellent, etc is a step away from kibble as well. ALSO think the smaller amounts of kibble needed (ie. compare how much kibble it takes for a 150 baryonyx tame vs a 150 stego tame) is a good step. But will these ideas eliminate egg farms completely?
  • Dino Stat Change – Another suggested idea was changing the way a stat works on a dino. For example, adding a Reproduction stat that you level up after a tame would make that dino lay more eggs so rather then needing 10x of the dino, you could have one or two, pump that stat up, and their egg production would be constant equal to that of 10 or so of them.
  • Old Age/Disasters – This suggestion come up but I disagree with it only because if you spent hours regular taming, or have those few dinos you tamed/kept around from the start of the game that offer that sentimental thought, you wont want them dying. It would also sort of make taming pointless knowing your dino will die and that’s it anyway. Again, a PVE server, the point is killing off other members or their dinos. So while you may not agree with keeping dinos, it’s a different style of gameplay period.
  • Simply Asking People to ditch dinos – This is awkward but one solution. Asking the people with massive zoos to get rid of some is one way. But keep in mind, getting rid of 10 dinos wont make a huge difference in the scheme of things. Getting rid of a few hundred would. How would you feel wanting to tame something but cant, so you now have to beg someone to kill off dinos for you? Do you do this every single time you want a tame? And you, with 100s if not 1000s of dinos tamed, how do you feel knowing no one else can enjoy the game because of your tames? Do you become the "good guy" and kill a few hundred off, or look like the "bad guy" and say "Oh well.."? Very awkward situation..

 

So what are your suggestions? Whats the fix/solution?

Regarding dino life cycles..... I just want everyone to think about this...For every month that passes  in real life is 2 years pass in ARK. If they added this, they would most likely use actual dino life estimates....This, for me, would give me my final excuse to get off of online and host my own server.  This would make the game so much more tedious than it already is. This is a bad idea. Maybe a better way would be to have animals stats weaken slightly over time, but not die. This would then give people the choice if they want to replace it. Also it would stop people from having to replace all their egg layers every 3-4 months.

 Larger animals average at 15 years. Most small animals are under 8 years

Here are a few examples:

Troodon - 3-5 years - dead in 2 months tops

T rex - 20-28 years. - Dead in a year

Beavers- 6-10 years. Dead in 4 months tops.

The only dinos that would live longer than a year would be brontos and turtles. Yay!  So, basically we would need to tame and re-tame, raise and re re-raise all the time. This isn't as annoying for egg layers, but man would it suck for mammals. Plus it would severely limit mutations because for most of us the older generation would be long dead before we got to breed it with a 6th generation

 

[JetJaguar]

Official PVE 441 easily has over 100 players. We average 30+ a night and that's with other players/tribes not even on every night and new players joining constantly. check out arkservers.net, its nuts . So 100 players all hitting 400 dinos or at least trying to, is completely and absolutely within the realm of possibility.

As for the Alliance thing to workaround the cap: they are aware of that with WC. They could for PVE, make Alliances forced into the 400 cap or limit an alliance to just one other tribe at a time. So only 2 tribes could ever be in an alliance. Would still give you 800 dinos but its a fix at least from the people sporting 1000+ dinos in some tribes.

[catnip]

33 minutes ago, JetJaguar said:

Official PVE 441 easily has over 100 players. We average 30+ a night and that's with other players/tribes not even on every night and new players joining constantly. check out arkservers.net, its nuts . So 100 players all hitting 400 dinos or at least trying to, is completely and absolutely within the realm of possibility.

As for the Alliance thing to workaround the cap: they are aware of that with WC. They could for PVE, make Alliances forced into the 400 cap or limit an alliance to just one other tribe at a time. So only 2 tribes could ever be in an alliance. Would still give you 800 dinos but its a fix at least from the people sporting 1000+ dinos in some tribes.

Official PVE 592 is the same way. In the evenings and weekends I've noticed 30+ on the server. We've reached cap a few times, and it kind of spoiled the opening of the Valentine's event because nobody could breed and/or tame any animals. I had to go to our SE server to do any of that. We took what few fertilized eggs we already had and hatched them over there. Not a perfect solution but it was the only way we could take advantage of the event. On 592 we have a few good-sized tribes that admittedly have the most dinos partially due to their size. These tribes would be decimated by a 400 dino limit, leading to multiple break ups just so folks could continue to do what they like to do-tame and breed animals.

Also, how are they going to handle the tribes with over 400 already? Will they log in to find only 400 of their animals remaining? People will get really pissed if their favorite animals just up and disappear. Some of my favorite animals are not necessarily the tribes best, but I put a lot of heart and effort into taming them-especially my first dinos. Will they disappear simply because they are the lowest lvls?? Admittedly I don't think we're close to the 400 cap in my tribe but I know others who this would affect.

This is going to make a mess of the current tribe structure, causing fracturing and dissention as to who gets when during the break-ups due to the tribe dino cap. Not well thought out.

[Kallor]

400 per tribe is pretty anti-social and in the long term probably ends up with more dinos being tamed (and more bases built).  Tribes will split up and egg farms duplicated for convenience rather than being shared in a large tribe.  So it's worse for old players and worse for new players (less places to build and dinos still capped).

They should be making things easier for large tribes so that many people can be supported from a single egg farm.

I understand that they don't want to rework the kibble system till later, which is understandable.  However there are a few easy changes that don't really need any dev work that would make a dino cap semi viable.  This isn't really a solution, just a temporary workaround so things still function until they get to reworking kibble completely.

1. Remove the egg laying increase from mate boost buff, increase base laying rate.  This gets rid of almost every male dino out of egg farms.

2. Remove the need for multiple females by boosting egg laying rate so that 1 is all that's required even for a tribe, maybe 2 if you are mass taming and starting a new breeding program.

3. Get rid of the Ovi egg boost buff.  I know it's unique, but if you accept the fact that's it valuable, then all that means is that default levels of egg laying are too low which causes people to tame more females.

I would expect that most people with egg farms have them because they HAVE to, not because they want to.  Make it viable to cull them down to 1 female and they probably will.  It's possible some people won't simply because no one knows what Wildcard is planning int he future so they might be tempted to keep everything "just in case".  But at least it's a viable workaround with minimal dev time required.

[Fix]

Think about a dino freezer.

[Vad]

I feel this is just passing along poor performance of the game onto the very people who play. Lack of optimization.

1. Dino levels were taken up to 150 and people haven't yet acquired all better replacements for the older tames.
2. You need 20 rexes for a boss fight, that's 5% of your tribe cap.
3. Some people love to breed and work the stats and now mutations with having different colors implemented by the hand of WC that now wants to take away what has been long worked for.
4. The official I have played on had way more tames than now. It used to be loaded and you had to wait 20 minutes before you could squeeze on. So what has changed? The servers were switched to different hardware. Since then existent and tolerable lag has exploded to 30 second stalls followed by rubber-banding once or twice. To the degree on the island that playing on SE and the Center have become most of my playtime as of late.

I don't mind having less dinos. I have culled my herd several times already but I fear when WC starts talking about something this serious when the patch is supposedly 5 days away and they don't seem to have concrete answers nor have they offered a thread of the imposing situation. They put up plenty of info about biome changes and even walls to show where things would happen but I think it is their way of wiping servers after a post saying they wouldn't.

[Dam Son]

i am all for limiting tamed dinos. somehow this I feel that this is the defining moment for the attitude between the Devs and PvE players. so, for the love of god, before you guys (the Devs) do anything drastic, please consider the following. some of the players are really attached to their tames. I have many times tried to cull dinos and I was met with strong protest from a fellow tribemate, so much so he almost quit the tribe. he had always considered the dinos as mementos and milestones as to what he has achieved so far in his gameplay. however, for this exercise, I also see it as an opportunity as well to improve and enhance the value of gameplay experience to players. here's some of my thoughts:

please consider a cloud based storage for dinos. and limit what could be downloaded. culling is not the best solution. who knows we might need that bunch of dinos again. like in real life, never burn the bridges. perhaps, this way you might save a little trouble on reinventing the kibble tree issue. also saves time for the players having to re-tame again. that is already a big time sink

allow resetting timers for cloud based dinos. as we all know, ARK is a cruel mistress. you love her, but you know deep down you will have to return back to real life. everyone needs a break, a vacation, a revitalisation. so, when a player leaves the server exceeding 7 days, all he loses is his base. but not his dinos. the loss will not be that bad, and besides, this gives the player a good chance to move his base. to restart.

 

given the devs track record of solving issues the easy way (for example kapros, megas and squids cannot grab), I really hope that they take some time to think this out. cutting the Gordian knot is not always the best solution.

[Godan]

@Jen @Jat

Many players have lost their buddies in the past and made use of the tribe merge function to be able to play together. With that dino cap per tribe (I think Jen mentioned 400), you would just punish players for playing in tribes/merging, and force them to play alone again, and have them do their own kibble farms and breeding.

I would suggest doing a dino per player/per level cap - that means, for each level the player achieved, they'll be able to own 3 more dinos. So a lvl 100 player will be able to own 300 dinos, and a tribe with 2 active lvl 100 players may own 600 dinos, and so on.....

This way players won't get punished for playing together, and there won't be like 50 one-man tribes with kibble farms on the server.

 

Oh, and please consider that idea automatically killing off abandoned dinos (raise their timers though) - there's vultures even roaming other servers for claimable stuff all day long to transfer to their server.

[JetJaguar]

23 minutes ago, Godan said:

@Jen @Jat

Many players have lost their buddies in the past and made use of the tribe merge function to be able to play together. With that dino cap per tribe (I think Jen mentioned 400), you would just punish players for playing in tribes/merging, and force them to play alone again, and have them do their own kibble farms and breeding.

I would suggest doing a dino per player/per level cap - that means, for each level the player achieved, they'll be able to own 3 more dinos. So a lvl 100 player will be able to own 300 dinos, and a tribe with 2 active lvl 100 players may own 600 dinos, and so on.....

This way players won't get punished for playing together, and there won't be like 50 one-man tribes with kibble farms on the server.

I like this, this has potential. Its early here but let me talk this out! Clearly if implemented, the kibble revamp and I think server population limits need to go into affect as well.

https://arkservers.net/ - This site is awesome to see how crowded servers are, how many new people joined, etc. Right now The ISland is capped at 70 active players and Center at 100. That means active, online players. That doesn't mean that the server has 70 people and the 71st cant join. It means only 70 can be online at any given time. Which means the server can potentially have 100+ people (Of which only 70 can be online at the same time).

This is important to keep in mind. Our server averages 30-35 a night, and as many as 40+ on the weekends. The server also gets probably 5+ new players per DAY. that's a lot of people. we are server capped for dinos and also platforms. The "biggest" Tribe probably has 6 people. It also has over 1200 dinos in it..

We also know the 4000 dino cap isn't going away. If we give level 100 players 300 dinos each, and lets say we use 70 since the cap is 70 active players online at a time, that's 21,000 dinos. That's assuming all 70 players are level 100 and have 300 tames each, which cant happen because 21,000 is way over the 4,000 limit. If we just say 10x players each having 300 dinos each, which is possible, that is already 3,000 dinos.  Now its definitely not difficult to imagine 10, or 20 players on the server at level 100, nor to imagine them having 300 dinos. There are many tribes on my server that have hundreds of dinos currently.

So in the LONG TERM, this would kind of stall, wouldn't it? As more players hit 100/do more tames/etc. The kibble rework and the need to have dozens of tamed dinos for eggs definitely needs adjusting. But the breeding stuff also needs a rework. Some people have hundreds of dinos just to work mutations, breeding, etc.

 

 

[Godan]

No idea which server you're playing on, that has potential to have 70 lvl 100+ players with 300 dinos each, but that's not what I was refering to anyways.

I just try to make a better suggestion than a 400 dino per tribe cap, since this will just force players to play alone and do their own breeding and kibble farms, which is even worse. I'd even suggest to maybe limit it to 2 dinos per level, which definitely would make players want to team up.

On a side note, all the calculations and cap suggestions wouldn't be necessary if they'd just automatically kill abandoned dinos. This is, in my opinin, the main problem why we reach server caps after 1-2 years.

 

 

[JetJaguar]

12 minutes ago, Godan said:

No idea which server you're playing on, that has potential to have 70 lvl 100+ players with 300 dinos each, but that's not what I was refering to anyways.

I just try to make a better suggestion than a 400 dino per tribe cap, since this will just force players to play alone and do their own breeding and kibble farms, which is even worse. I'd even suggest to maybe limit it to 2 dinos per level, which definitely would make players want to team up.

 

I used 70 as an example. If you take as little as 15x level 100s at 400 dinos each: 6,000 tamed dinos, way over the cap. Im not trying to argue what servers have how many level 100 players. Any server Im sure has at *least* 15 people that are level 100. If we use 15 people and your 300 dino per person limit, that's still 4,500 dinos, over the cap limit.

And here, my official server is PVE 441 - as I said, 30 players per night, 40+ on the weekends, new players joining daily. Check arkservers.net and read the analytics and see for yourself.

Im not trying to argue the point; Im trying to get to the math behind it.

[b0ender]

You are becoming really annoying with your math and your imagionation about so many players on single server reaching those numbers in dinos. Wake up. We are not writing fictional book here but fixing real problem.

Stop doing math with imagionary numbers. Use real data, go and see how many level 100 players you have at your server, and count their dinos. Then we can talk.

 

What godan said is the best thing we have had someone suggest so far.

 

In 5 days patch with TRIBE limit is coming out. We cant let that happen, that is wrong and worst possible solution. Closest and easisest alternative solution is instead of limiting tribe dino limit, to limit player dino limit.

 

Main goal, for all of us, right now should be to tell devs that tribe limit is bad. I have tribe on my server that is result of 4-5 tribes merging into one. How will they survive 400 dino cap?? How is it fair for some solo player to own same number of dinos as 10 players in tribe? This will force people to simply play alone.

[JetJaguar]

23 minutes ago, b0ender said:

You are becoming really annoying with your math and your imagionation about so many players on single server reaching those numbers in dinos. Wake up. We are not writing fictional book here but fixing real problem.

Stop doing math with imagionary numbers. Use real data, go and see how many level 100 players you have at your server, and count their dinos. Then we can talk.

 

What godan said is the best thing we have had someone suggest so far.

 

In 5 days patch with TRIBE limit is coming out. We cant let that happen, that is wrong and worst possible solution. Closest and easisest alternative solution is instead of limiting tribe dino limit, to limit player dino limit.

 

Main goal, for all of us, right now should be to tell devs that tribe limit is bad. I have tribe on my server that is result of 4-5 tribes merging into one. How will they survive 400 dino cap?? How is it fair for some solo player to own same number of dinos as 10 players in tribe? This will force people to simply play alone.

You're actually the annoying one whos rude and insulting. You've been throwing tantrums on these forums for days now. You have zero clue what level people are on servers, how many people play on those severs, how many dinos they may already all have, etc. Im using HYPOTHETICAL examples. Look up the word.

15 people at level 100 on a server that is high pop is not an outrageous hypothetical example..Just because you cant accept it as a possibility doesn't mean it goes away..

If you take as little as 15x level 100 players at 400 dinos each: 6,000 tamed dinos.

We average 30+ players DAILY.  How is that even a LONG TERM solution? People just going to stop leveling? Stop being so blind and insulting to others. We have one tribe with over 1,000 dinos alone in it. The cap isn't going to change from 4,000. What does it matter if the guy is solo and has 400 dinos or its a tribe of 10 and has 400 dinos? Is a solo player not entitled to the same thing?

Im not going to go around and look at peoples levels or dinos. If there weren't too many tamed dinos none of us would be having these discussions. Clearly people on many of the official servers have way too many dinos tamed and are reaching the cap. Are we saying that a player isn't going to have 400 dinos or that's too outrageous?

Can you offer a detailed, rational, logical, non condescending explanation why your tribe, be it 1, or 10, needs 1,000 dinos alone in it? Feel free to justify it, I'd love to know the logic behind it. 10 players in a tribe is 40 dinos each with the 400 cap. Given that you all share dinos, you have your worker dinos (Ankys, Doeds, etc), your 20 rexes for boss fights, etc. Please explain the need for 1,000 or more dinos as some tribes have.

[b0ender]

18 minutes ago, JetJaguar said:

You're actually the annoying one whos rude and insulting. You've been throwing tantrums on these forums for days now. You have zero clue what level people are on servers, how many people play on those severs, how many dinos they may already all have, etc. Im using HYPOTHETICAL examples. Look up the word.

15 people at level 100 on a server that is high pop is not an outrageous hypothetical example..Just because you cant accept it as a possibility doesn't mean it goes away..

If you take as little as 15x level 100 players at 400 dinos each: 6,000 tamed dinos.

We average 30+ players DAILY.  How is that even a LONG TERM solution? People just going to stop leveling? Stop being so blind and insulting to others. We have one tribe with over 1,000 dinos alone in it. The cap isn't going to change from 4,000. What does it matter if the guy is solo and has 400 dinos or its a tribe of 10 and has 400 dinos? Is a solo player not entitled to the same thing?

Can you offer a detailed, rational, logical, non condescending explanation why your tribe, be it 1, or 10, needs 1,000 dinos alone in it? Feel free to justify it, I'd love to know the logic behind it. 10 players in a tribe is 40 dinos each with the 400 cap. Given that you all share dinos, you have your worker dinos (Ankys, Doeds, etc), your 20 rexes for boss fights, etc. Please explain the need for 1,000 or more dinos as some tribes have.

 

you copy pasted same math u did before, which involves imaginary numbers, which i said i dont care about

 

 

do math with real numbers, not ones that exist in your head

 

 

[JetJaguar]

2 minutes ago, b0ender said:

 

you copy pasted same math u did before, which involves imaginary numbers, which i said i dont care about

 

 

do math with real numbers, not ones that exist in your head

 

 

Not even going to bother going on with you. You can produce whatever numbers you want to justify what you want but then want to write off something that goes against your thoughts. Good luck with the patch and your ideas..

[b0ender]

I will not need luck with patch. My tribe will survive cap.

 

But my friends will need lots of luck since they merged into one big tribe. I actualy wanted to join them. Now, that will never be possible. I hope their dinos won't despawn / turn wild once patch is out.

And if their dinos that exceed that number survive this patch I feel sorry for them becase they will have to split up tribe into several smaler tribes, transfer dinos and make new bases to keep on playing.. very very bad solution from dev's side, not well thought out at all

[Godan]

All that hypothetical theorycrafting gives me headache, I didn't even bother continue reading that, sorry. I played the game for about 4500 hours, and I can say, without any calculations, that we finally hit server cap after 1 1/2 years due to excessive claiming/transfering and breeding for mutations/stats., and punishing tribes won't solve this.

Maybe this was the wrong thread to post my suggestion

 

[Franhi]

add mutations for breeders to obsess over and double if not triple or quadruple the number of breeding dinos in any given program.

 

Add per tribe dino cap

 

welcome to Ark development devolved

 

They need to at least tell us if the dinos over the number will just poof or what when the new cap is added

 

[HiImZech]

here's my 2 cent's worth

having any form of cap is not going to work, no matter how high the number is. the game allows 70 people to log in at any point in time, but that does not mean only 70 players will have data in the server. you can actually have 140+++ players taking turns logging in at different times. simply put, you have an unlimited amount of players playing on a limited game. this will never work.

so what do I propose to be done? I have 4 proposals that will work individually on their own to a certain extend.

 

Quote

1) increase server capabilities
this is the best solution, because no matter how the game gets limited eventually it will hit the cap again.
if the server can perform better, lots of timing issues will be resolved as well. the only drawback is higher maintenance cost.
I'm all for a subscription service if it is needed to help maintain a better  the best server. 12 dollars a month like WoW is reasonable, unless your target audience are not 18+ 
having a subscription server also filters out most of the nasty trolls that comes online and grief people. gm can get paid better, easier time for the finance department etc etc

that being said, there will still be people complaining about lag. this is not the server's fault. if your game stutters, it's your computer. if you rubberband, that's synchronization (your internet). if you go into a base but it loads slowly piece by piece into view, that's server.

ark is not a game where you can run on a 10 year old machine. there should be an updated system requirement. geforce 700 series is just slightly on top of the minimum line.

 

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2) rework the whole taming system (from KO to kibble)
if we were not to increase server performance, we then have to limit ourselves and consider our options

firstly, what's wrong with this system?

• there are much more variety of dinos in game since 2015
• each wild dino is individually levelled, and their starting levels cannot be altered post-tamed
• on top of the variety of dinos, colors were introduced
• there is a breeding system that has a chance for random color mutation
• there is now a cap of 6 eggs per dino species besides dodo at any time
• there is a low chance of egg popping every 17 mins, and eggs are being used as the main ingredient for kibble
• kibble was introduced to help lower taming times drastically (but in reality from eggs to fully kibbled tame you might be spending much more time than taming with prime meat)
• every tribe wants their own kibble farm because server's egg farms are large and laggy to load in
• wild dinos don't drop eggs as often, and does not have a specific spot to lay eggs

so how do we supposed to improve this system?

• increase stack size for meat / add refrigrated trough for METAL tier

this will lower the amount of people playing at a time getting meat for their carnivores. lesser people online = higher server performance

• increase egg laying chance / replace egg in some kibble formula / remove egg laying cap

this should drastically reduce the amount of dino needed for an egg farm to get kibble. please avoid using any farmables like squid oil or archatina paste. you'll create another set of the same problem

• allow players to mutate the colors on their dinos

not talking about the warpaints but the ability to "genetically modify" the base color of their dino. this should discourage the behavior of having a dino museum for beautiful dinos AND a garrison of strong dinos for........gathering meat and berries. *facepalm*

• allow players to increase their dino's starting levels

maybe during the taming process players can use some special items on it and it will add permanent points to certain stats up to the maximum wild level allowed (150 atm) for the same reason stated above

please note this method is just a short term solutions to a long term problem. it's kicking the responsibly of fixing server performance down to the next engineer who happens to come onboard.

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3) assign players to a specific cluster
this should help in limiting the amount of players that will ever be on a server, and whatever limits that we have now will work better.

however this does come with a price. when most people assigned on that server stops playing, they won't be getting new neighbors. it literally turns into their private playground if they manage to drive everyone else out. it is not feasible to maintain a server just for this small group of people playing as a small company with a triple A title.

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4) dino storage
taking a leaf off pokemon, who now has 802 different species, excluding color variation (which doubles this to 1604 individual pokemon), excluding pattern variation (unown is a pokemon which on its own has 28 patterns, and there are many more other species with pattern variations), has made a online storage for us to keep our pokemon in. it is a subscription service, at 5.99 a year, with 100 boxes of 36 slots each for pokemon. we gladly paid for it.

the data could be stored on another server with our player id. you don't have to rely on steam inventory.

sidetracking, spinda is a pokemon that in itself theoretically has  4,294,967,295 different pattern (spots) variation. good luck