Putting breeding/imprinting into perspective

[Ashslayer]

Putting breeding/imprinting into perspective

So I went ahead and did some simple math to see how crazy the devs were and how little sleep they thought we should allow ourselves. Spoiler: it's 3.1h a night.

 

For my testing I used wyverns and the results may not apply to all creatures, but it shows what the developers thought was a good idea.

 

Time to reach adulthood: 100h

Imprints needed for 100% imprint: 25

Time it takes to reach 100% imprint on average (3.5h per imprint): 87.5h

Time left on average: 12.5h

 

This means that if every imprint gets a 3.5h cooldown, you may at most leave an imprint undone for 12.5h or your 100% goal is over. It's pretty crazy that these 12.5 hours amount to 3.1 hours of sleep a night. It just seems absurd to expect this of anyone.

 

However reality and theory are not always equal. I have myself gotten more sleep than 3.1h a night by resting between imprints and sometimes having fallen asleep doing so. Once you attempt multiple raises at the same time though, it quickly racks up. Now the average time I can stay away without missing an imprint is 1h-1.5h at a time. This is an absolutely absurd amount of time they expect me to be available.

 

That... or the devs never intended for people to be able to reach 100% imprint and only crazy people are doing it. In my opinion it just seems like a wonky system.

 

Suggestion for improvement: Make a dual system where people can choose between natural growth and imprint growth. Natural growth being the current system and imprint growth being my suggestion below.

 

Imprint growth: Making dinos grow at the same rate as they are imprinted. You can go a week between each imprint without any issue. Sure it'll take weeks for the baby to mature into an adult, but it would happen as fast or slow as you would allow and no matter how much or little time a player has on their hands, they would be able to achieve 100% imprint.

 

Thanks for reading. Cheers.

[Sheldor5]

You should realize that this "fact" exists since release of breeding and no dev ever considered to review this ...

[d1nk]

47 minutes ago, Ashslayer said:

Putting breeding/imprinting into perspective

So I went ahead and did some simple math to see how crazy the devs were and how little sleep they thought we should allow ourselves. Spoiler: it's 3.1h a night.

 

For my testing I used wyverns and the results may not apply to all creatures, but it shows what the developers thought was a good idea.

 

Time to reach adulthood: 100h

Imprints needed for 100% imprint: 25

Time it takes to reach 100% imprint on average (3.5h per imprint): 87.5h

Time left on average: 12.5h

 

This means that if every imprint gets a 3.5h cooldown, you may at most leave an imprint undone for 12.5h or your 100% goal is over. It's pretty crazy that these 12.5 hours amount to 3.1 hours of sleep a night. It just seems absurd to expect this of anyone.

 

However reality and theory are not always equal. I have myself gotten more sleep than 3.1h a night by resting between imprints and sometimes having fallen asleep doing so. Once you attempt multiple raises at the same time though, it quickly racks up. Now the average time I can stay away without missing an imprint is 1h-1.5h at a time. This is an absolutely absurd amount of time they expect me to be available.

 

That... or the devs never intended for people to be able to reach 100% imprint and only crazy people are doing it. In my opinion it just seems like a wonky system.

 

Suggestion for improvement: Make a dual system where people can choose between natural growth and imprint growth. Natural growth being the current system and imprint growth being my suggestion below.

 

Imprint growth: Making dinos grow at the same rate as they are imprinted. You can go a week between each imprint without any issue. Sure it'll take weeks for the baby to mature into an adult, but it would happen as fast or slow as you would allow and no matter how much or little time a player has on their hands, they would be able to achieve 100% imprint.

 

Thanks for reading. Cheers.

Not every feature of the game has to appeal to casuals. I work 50h a week and still manage to get imprints in, dont raise until you have time to imprint.. nothing is forcing you to get 100% .. 91, 76, 51, theyre all fine. 

 

Would you go on a roadtrip with no gas in the car? No. Be prepared. Take a weekend, plan it out and imprint. If we do this, it opens the flood gates. Again, not every feature has to appeal to casuals.

[Jtmorris]

1 hour ago, d1nk said:

Not every feature of the game has to appeal to casuals. I work 50h a week and still manage to get imprints in, dont raise until you have time to imprint.. nothing is forcing you to get 100% .. 91, 76, 51, theyre all fine. 

 

Would you go on a roadtrip with no gas in the car? No. Be prepared. Take a weekend, plan it out and imprint. If we do this, it opens the flood gates. Again, not every feature has to appeal to casuals.

Exactly. 

[Sheldor5]

2 hours ago, d1nk said:

Not every feature of the game has to appeal to casuals. I work 50h a week and still manage to get imprints in, dont raise until you have time to imprint.. nothing is forcing you to get 100% .. 91, 76, 51, theyre all fine. 

 

Would you go on a roadtrip with no gas in the car? No. Be prepared. Take a weekend, plan it out and imprint. If we do this, it opens the flood gates. Again, not every feature has to appeal to casuals.

A computer game is part of my real life and not vice versa ...

[Jim359]

No effort, no gain.

Imprinting is actually very OP for how easy it is to do.  It should take more special foods etc to feed thier desires every cycyle.  Like 7 or 8 kibbles/flowers/shrooms/specialfoods etc all combined in Industrial cooker into one mega Kibble.  I think they could toss a bone and make the cycles go to 5-6 hours though.

Imprinting gives a huge 20% (up too) bonus to stats,  Then if ridden by imprinter 30% more dmg and 30% dmg resistance.  Thats just huge man.

[reamer]

D!nk Shares my thoughts, but to add to it 

Real-life time management is a resource in all online game in Ark it is huge if you want to tame a 150 Beaver it will take you 01:19:10 - 06:23:24 and every 11 min you need to give it narco

Breed and imprinted are the strongest dinos in the game, so getting them shouldn't take time investmenT. (is this system perfect? no, do I think it's good? no)

Your system removes the real-life time investment so i think it would be a bad implement to the game personally

[d1nk]

1 hour ago, reamer said:

D!nk Shares my thoughts, but to add to it 

Real-life time management is a resource in all online game in Ark it is huge if you want to tame a 150 Beaver it will take you 01:19:10 - 06:23:24 and every 11 min you need to give it narco

Breed and imprinted are the strongest dinos in the game, so getting them shouldn't take time investmenT. (is this system perfect? no, do I think it's good? no)

Your system removes the real-life time investment so i think it would be a bad implement to the game personally

I agree. This isnt to say that i like imprinting.. but i see its gain vs effort ratio as fair. Waaaaaay better than it used to be. Did you play then, @Ashslayer

[ciabattaroll]

2 hours ago, Sheldor5 said:

A computer game is part of my real life and not vice versa ...

I dunno. I'd say it goes both ways considering that things you do within the server you play on in this game has lasting effects on that server. So as much as the game is part of your life, your life is also part of the game due to it's persistence.

[ncola7]

5 hours ago, d1nk said:

Not every feature of the game has to appeal to casuals. I work 50h a week and still manage to get imprints in, dont raise until you have time to imprint.. nothing is forcing you to get 100% .. 91, 76, 51, theyre all fine. 

 

Would you go on a roadtrip with no gas in the car? No. Be prepared. Take a weekend, plan it out and imprint. If we do this, it opens the flood gates. Again, not every feature has to appeal to casuals.

Honestly that's such a cop out. Casual or not do you have fun doing this mechanic? is it hard? I would say no to both. I would say it's just a continuous time dump. why can't Giga imprinting be 2 weeks of work spread out over however long you want? why does it have to be continuous?

why not make it consist of something actually difficult too? nothing hard about pressing e to imprint. Maybe have some extreme type of kibble that someone mentioned earlier. Or a task you have to do that only a high level player could accomplish.

With the current system, assuming someone let you claim their new born Giga. A relatively new player could imprint a 75%+ Giga and all they have to do is wake up in 3 hour intervals and gather meat. 

[Jostabeere]

Just sleep 3 hours after an impring. Wake up, imprint and continue sleeping.

[ncola7]

8 hours ago, Jostabeere said:

Just sleep 3 hours after an impring. Wake up, imprint and continue sleeping.

What about the 9 hours I'm away from my computer while at work?

[Jostabeere]

8 minutes ago, ncola7 said:

What about the 9 hours I'm away from my computer while at work?

Then you give your account data to someone who can access the game and imprint for you, or you don't get a 100%. Or you take a week off work.

[iAmE]

14 hours ago, d1nk said:

Not every feature of the game has to appeal to casuals. I work 50h a week and still manage to get imprints in, dont raise until you have time to imprint.. nothing is forcing you to get 100% .. 91, 76, 51, theyre all fine. 

 

Would you go on a roadtrip with no gas in the car? No. Be prepared. Take a weekend, plan it out and imprint. If we do this, it opens the flood gates. Again, not every feature has to appeal to casuals.

 

 

I am, by no means, casual. Even I think the Imprinting system is outright broken. From the perspective of someone who has spent time in a top 30 WoW Raiding guild from Vanilla to Cata, as someone who has spent entire seasons at the top of D3/PoE Ladders, 120-140 hour gaming weeks are no stranger to me;

 

It's not necessarily a bad idea, but between RNG timers and how long it takes to actually raise the Dinos, the system is hamfisted and impractical for even the average power gamer. It needs to be heavily refined before it's anything that will be considered a good idea or system. Until such a time happens, Imprinting will largely be relegated to tribes willing to share their account info and other such groups. 

 

And no. You don't get to say "Well I did Imprinting on a Wyvern and got it to 60%, so it's just fine". 

[ncola7]

4 minutes ago, Jostabeere said:

Then you give your account data to someone who can access the game and imprint for you, or you don't get a 100%. Or you take a week off work.

none of those are good options. cause it's not just my ark account it's my steam account. if I miss one a day I'm at like 80% best case scenario imprint. and take a week off work every time I want to breed effectively? seriously? if you think that a good game mechanic means I have to take time off work and put my real life on hold for a week or two to fully participate then I guess we just have different opinions on what makes a good game. 

[Jostabeere]

Just now, ncola7 said:

none of those are good options. cause it's not just my ark account it's my steam account. if I miss one a day I'm at like 80% best case scenario imprint. and take a week off work every time I want to breed effectively? seriously? if you think that a good game mechanic means I have to take time off work and put my real life on hold for a week or two to fully participate then I guess we just have different opinions on what makes a good game. 

Well, what should I say? There is no way to imprint a hard dino if you work 8 hours a day without such steps. We could argue a lot, it's just not possible.

[iAmE]

6 minutes ago, Jostabeere said:

Well, what should I say? There is no way to imprint a hard dino if you work 8 hours a day without such steps. We could argue a lot, it's just not possible.

And why should that be a thing when end game PvE and PvP content are gated in such a way that imprinted, particularly high imprinted, dinos are required to play said content?

 

Excluding exploits (Like Monkey ledge and pinning the dragon/brood), fully imprinted, 30-50k HP rexes and 3-700% damage with 78-92 armor saddles, all imprinted above 60%, are incapable of clearing Easy dragon, even when passing all the mechanics. 

 

It's all good to have "No Casual" mechanics in a game, but you can't gate large portions of the game away from Casuals and be expected to survive as a game. 

[Intentfeed]

  I'd suggest having your tribe be allowed to help with 10% maybe 15% of an imprint but anything more than that would be too much since the buff it's self is really OP.

And I'm saying this even though I don't mind the current system. I think it's OK to have a game that rewards you for your time playing, 

  

[iAmE]

10 minutes ago, Intentfeed said:

  I'd suggest having your tribe be allowed to help with 10% maybe 15% of an imprint but anything more than that would be too much since the buff it's self is really OP.

And I'm saying this even though I don't mind the current system. I think it's OK to have a game that rewards you for your time playing, 

  

Aside from RNG feed timers (You allow Fishing scripts, why would imprinting scripts be that much worse?), the system isn't bad, in and of itself. The issue comes from the content that Wildcard has, apparently, balanced around it.

 

Boss fights, and progressing beyond Medium Broodmother, is essentially impossible without imprinted dinos. In a world where Imprinted Dinos weren't a necessity for end game pve content of such importance,  the system would be largely negligible. 

[Intentfeed]

18 minutes ago, iAmE said:

Aside from RNG feed timers (You allow Fishing scripts, why would imprinting scripts be that much worse?), the system isn't bad, in and of itself. The issue comes from the content that Wildcard has, apparently, balanced around it.

 

Boss fights, and progressing beyond Medium Broodmother, is essentially impossible without imprinted dinos. In a world where Imprinted Dinos weren't a necessity for end game pve content of such importance,  the system would be largely negligible. 

I agree with the fact that not being able to do end game content because the lack of time someone has is an issue but tbh I think we should be looking at the boss here more than the time it takes to imprint

[iAmE]

3 minutes ago, Intentfeed said:

I agree with the fact that not being able to do end game content because the lack of time someone has is an issue but tbh I think we should be looking at the boss here more than the time it takes to imprint

Oh, I certainly agree, but as long as it is, as it is, when people say "Well, you don't need it" or "It isn't for casuals", and it exists as it is, reality needs to be acknowledged for what it is, until a developer comments about it, or changes are made. Though the RNG breeding timers are absolutely atrocious and need to go, or at least babies in the same area need to share the timer somehow.

 

I don't mind doing imprinting, but if you do more then 3 dinos at a time, the RNG timer often ends up being in such a way that the limited sleep you can get between timers, disappears, because you get stuck doing imprints every 45 minutes. 

[Roland151b]

Imprinting on my Ptera's makes them beastly, so whilst I can see your point that Imprinting is far to time consuming I can also see the other side of the coin which is all about putting in the effort for the reward. A tough cookie to eat this one.

[Jostabeere]

2 hours ago, iAmE said:

And why should that be a thing when end game PvE and PvP content are gated in such a way that imprinted, particularly high imprinted, dinos are required to play said content?

 

Excluding exploits (Like Monkey ledge and pinning the dragon/brood), fully imprinted, 30-50k HP rexes and 3-700% damage with 78-92 armor saddles, all imprinted above 60%, are incapable of clearing Easy dragon, even when passing all the mechanics. 

 

It's all good to have "No Casual" mechanics in a game, but you can't gate large portions of the game away from Casuals and be expected to survive as a game. 

In case you didn't notice. I never stated if I think it's good or bad to have such mechanics. I'm just stating the fact that it isn't possible right now. I wish that they make Imprinting easier aswell. While I am capable of Imprinting, because I work on my PC as a customer support monkey for videogames, imprinting is still a hard job to do and I would like to get really strong dinos easier aswell. But right now, there is not much to do or say about this.

[iAmE]

3 minutes ago, Jostabeere said:

In case you didn't notice. I never stated if I think it's good or bad to have such mechanics. I'm just stating the fact that it isn't possible right now. I wish that they make Imprinting easier aswell. While I am capable of Imprinting, because I work on my PC as a customer support monkey for videogames, imprinting is still a hard job to do and I would like to get really strong dinos easier aswell. But right now, there is not much to do or say about this.

I never passed judgement on you for your implications either way. I simply used your statement to make a point.

 

Though I would disagree with the "Make it easier to get stronger dinos" part, it isn't "Hard" to imprint, just tedious and physically demanding (As you don't actually get to sleep). 

 

As I mentioned in the Flyer rework thread, I think the devs need to have an internal discussion about artificial difficulty, because they seem to think that adding artificial content and difficulty is good for the game. 

[ncola7]

@iAmE @Jostabeere @Roland151b

I have no problem with it being a hard thing to do as I agree the reward you get is very strong. I think it should be more difficult somehow instead of just a pure continuous time dump.

My real problem is that it's impossible to do, no matter how many hours into the game I put, I could spend 16 hours a day playing this game and 8 hours at work and I won't get a 100% imprinted rex. Let me spend the time at my discretion, doesn't matter how much of it but let me play and progress at my own speed and on my time.

and just like you said, it's only an issue cause end game content and the whole tek tier is gated behind it. Since you will spend a lifetime finding good enough rng on wild tames to get the stats needed for the bosses if you can't imprint.

Allow me to fit the game into my life instead of having to fit my life into the game.

 

Any ideas on a better system? Maybe some type of super kibble? Something that I can spend hours on my own time gathering and crafting before I hatch the egg. then place in inventory to give it imprint bonus every 4 hours. This way it still takes lots of effort to do, just not in the middle of my sleep or work.