Why flying making content trivial isn't a bad thing.

[iAmE]

1 minute ago, chrisnt64 said:

Nerfing flying dinos isn'lt necessarily a bad, it will give players more incentive to use their ground dinos more.

I still spend the majority of my day on ground dinos if I want to do anything productive.

Eg: rather than taking out your ptera to collect meat you could take a rex or a pack of allos.

Or just do what most people in reality do, and walk a giga/therizino five feet outside your base and get 5k meat in 10 minutes. No one seriously goes out and FARMS meat with a Ptera. Maybe if you just need 1-200, but then it's just a quick errand. When flyers are about speed, that's kinda fair, no?

But as you say Ark is one of the most time consuming games out there, if not the most time consuming. And making us have to spend lots of time traveling will just impair the game rather than advancing it. Sky threats are a great idea, imagine having thunder storms and maybe being able to be struck by lightning. Alpha air dinos would be epic to have in the game, right now the only hostile air dino in the game is the argie and they can be outran by any other flying dino in the game. some hostile air bosses that fly around and are super powerful would be awesome in the game, maybe like a giga's strength.

All up i think the devs time would be better suited advancing the game and adding more air content rather than spending their time nerfing dinos all ready in the game.

I'm right there with you mate. They could make the air more challenging. They could make Land Dinos faster (Because who really wants to go on a 45 minute trek with a giga to kill an Alpha, that's why people are killing Alphas with Pteras). They could increase the damage or gathering on Land Dinos to compensate for the fact that they are so incredibly slow.

 

But instead we're just going to make everything take forever, instead of making everything faster, in a game that is, already, horribly riddled with slow paced anything. 

[Argleksander]

6 hours ago, iAmE said:

There is no "Safest" option. At all. You add the human factor and literally any mount in the game, and you can get from point A to point B. You aren't going to die either way in either scenario assuming you have eyeballs and something between your ears. The only difference is time spent travelling. 

I'm *all for adding challenge* but arbitrarily increasing the time it takes to farm and travel does nothing to add difficulty. At all. The only difference pre and post patch, assuming they attack how easy it is to travel, is that it takes 10 minutes to run somewhere, when it would have taken 5 minutes to fly there. No. Other. Difference.

People seem to be under the illusion that "Safest" matters. It doesn't. The reality is, past a certain threshold (You know, where you don't die, which is basically a mounted creature), safety becomes irrelevant. It's like saying "I do more damage then you!", but both of you do enough damage to kill the target. Sure. You do more damage, but the end result is the same. Every. Time. 

The Ark Experience isn't about danger. The Ark Experience is what you *make* it. This is a *sandbox* survival sim. Not an MMO. Not an RTS. This is a game about providing players with endless choices, and allowing them to make those choices.

There is "Fun" content. Content that is difficult. This content, even if it is time consuming, is good content.

There is "Artificial" content. Content that is not difficult. This content, whether time consuming, or not, is bad content.

Arbitrarily increasing travel (And farming) time in the game, which is what many people are suggesting by wanting to eliminate Flyers, is artificial. It is content that is not challenging, engaging, difficult or fun. It is just an arbitrary tedium intended to do nothing but sink time. 

People will play and enjoy time consuming games, but those games have to have a dopamine inducer. Something "Fun" about them and the "Fun" has to outweigh the "Tedious time consuming activities" for "More" players then not. All games are time sinks, they also should be fun to their respective audience.  

1. Repeating it won't make it true. Traveling on ground IS NOT as safe as by air, its not even close. 

2. If you play PVE, you don't really need to "farm" that much anyway, what are you using metal or other high tier resources for? If you play on PVP, then you should not really settle on a scenic beach location, but rather find a spot that is close to said strategic resources

3. It's a survival game, survival games are about danger. I also agree that it's a sandbox game to some extent, but you could only take the sandbox aspect so far before the game becomes trivial. 

4. I don't really think farming metal or any other resource is any fun, the point is that flyers with their insane mobility and speed are better than this than their land based counterparts, and depending no your location, even better than "resource" dinos like anklyos or Doeds

5. No one knows what it means yet, but they said nerf, not remove fliers. If they removed them altogether then yeah, i would be pissed as well .

 

Let's look at some key aspects of the game.

Scouting/travel

Flyers > Land Dinos. You could argue this is how it should be, and i incline to agree, but it also makes dinos like Gali or the Kangaroo completely obsolote. Their little niche simply gets completely dominated by flyers

Farming

Flyers > Land dinos, now if you live in a forest or right atop a big metal spawn, yeah a mammoth or an ankylo would be better, but if there is travel involved, a flyer wins out every time

Combat

Flyers > Land dinos. In all the pvp i have been involved in, it has been high level flyers. Pick up and drop is such a powerful tactic that it's no wonder people use it. You could be sitting on a 100% imprinted, super powerful rex, and all it takes to disarm you completely is to swoop in and snatch you from the saddle. Then you have something like a war quetz, with platform saddles with Plant X and Turrets and poop which will just decimate about anything.

We don't know what the nerf will be yet, but i kinda hope the following will happen

1. Pteras no longer able to carry another player. I don't really have a huge issue with birds picking up unmounted players, but snatching them from saddles is a huge imbalance in the pvp aspect of the game. If they added stirrups or a seatbelt or something this would be resolved

2. Overall a nerf in stats for birds. I still want birds to be able to carry other creatures (except that saddle snatching thing), but reducing their stats would help balance them vs the now inferior land dinos 

3. Remove platform saddle for quetz. I know people are going to hate me for this, but it's really imba and looks completely ridiculous as well. Brontos and Paracers just gets completely outclassed by the quetz and right now there is zero incentive to tame them if you can tame a quetz. Also, about that, taming a quetz isn't that hard. All you really need is an argie and a friend and you are good to go. 

[iAmE]

1 hour ago, Argleksander said:

1. Repeating it won't make it true. Traveling on ground IS NOT as safe as by air, its not even close. 

No, repeating it doesn't make it true. The fact that it's demonstrably true, makes it true. I'm in no more danger running around on my Wolf/Saber/Giga/Allo then I am Flying, because the end result is, nothing exists that can kill me because of the Human factor. So, no, travelling on ground is more dangerous then travelling in the air, in practice, the danger level for both forms of travel is zero. Therefore the differential, is irrelevant. 

1 hour ago, Argleksander said:

 

2. If you play PVE, you don't really need to "farm" that much anyway, what are you using metal or other high tier resources for? If you play on PVP, then you should not really settle on a scenic beach location, but rather find a spot that is close to said strategic resources

Why are you telling people what they need to do in PvE?

In PvP, you don't always get to choose where you settle (Same is true of PvE), as many of the high resource areas are already settled, or aren't exactly defensible. Even saying that, farming one location for materials in PvP is pittance. You can farm the whole map and still not have anything at all. So, again, you have no point at all.

1 hour ago, Argleksander said:

 

3. It's a survival game, survival games are about danger. I also agree that it's a sandbox game to some extent, but you could only take the sandbox aspect so far before the game becomes trivial. 

The game is a progression based sandbox survival sim. The entire point of any progression based game and any survival game (IE Game with levels) is to trivialize content. So.. You know, you kind of don't have a point. Again. 

1 hour ago, Argleksander said:

4. I don't really think farming metal or any other resource is any fun, the point is that flyers with their insane mobility and speed are better than this than their land based counterparts, and depending no your location, even better than "resource" dinos like anklyos or Doeds

Except. They aren't. Quetzals are good for *getting your Anky/Doed to the resources*. They aren't good at getting the resources themselves. Ergo, flyers are best at getting from Point A to Point B. Which is the entire point of their existence. 

1 hour ago, Argleksander said:

5. No one knows what it means yet, but they said nerf, not remove fliers. If they removed them altogether then yeah, i would be pissed as well .

 

Have you seen the other dinos that they have "Nerfed"?

Trilobytes. Argentavis. Spino. Saber. Gigas.

When you nerf something to the point that they are useless. They may as well be deleted. 

1 hour ago, Argleksander said:

Flyers > Land Dinos. You could argue this is how it should be, and i incline to agree, but it also makes dinos like Gali or the Kangaroo completely obsolote. Their little niche simply gets completely dominated by flyers

There is absolutely nothing wrong with Flyers being better then Land Dinos at something. You have a point, but I would argue it's irrelevant.

1 hour ago, Argleksander said:

 

Flyers > Land dinos, now if you live in a forest or right atop a big metal spawn, yeah a mammoth or an ankylo would be better, but if there is travel involved, a flyer wins out every time

Not remotely. A flyer with a gathering dino wins, otherwise the Gathering Dino wins almost every time. Which is kind of the express purpose of a Quetzal. 

1 hour ago, Argleksander said:

 

Combat

Flyers > Land dinos. In all the pvp i have been involved in, it has been high level flyers. Pick up and drop is such a powerful tactic that it's no wonder people use it. You could be sitting on a 100% imprinted, super powerful rex, and all it takes to disarm you completely is to swoop in and snatch you from the saddle. Then you have something like a war quetz, with platform saddles with Plant X and Turrets and poop which will just decimate about anything.

Then you have Gigas/Turtles/Brontos/Paracers/Diplos, all seeing use in every single Raid.

Sure, I agree that Picking is an underdeveloped mechanic in dire need of attention, but that doesn't require you to do what the devs are doing, which is universal stamina/weight/health/speed nerfs.

1 hour ago, Argleksander said:

We don't know what the nerf will be yet, but i kinda hope the following will happen

1. Pteras no longer able to carry another player. I don't really have a huge issue with birds picking up unmounted players, but snatching them from saddles is a huge imbalance in the pvp aspect of the game. If they added stirrups or a seatbelt or something this would be resolved

2. Overall a nerf in stats for birds. I still want birds to be able to carry other creatures (except that saddle snatching thing), but reducing their stats would help balance them vs the now inferior land dinos 

3. Remove platform saddle for quetz. I know people are going to hate me for this, but it's really imba and looks completely ridiculous as well. Brontos and Paracers just gets completely outclassed by the quetz and right now there is zero incentive to tame them if you can tame a quetz. Also, about that, taming a quetz isn't that hard. All you really need is an argie and a friend and you are good to go. 

We do know what they're thinking, in general terms. A universal health/speed/stamina/weight nerf.

1: I agree. Seatbelts should have been a thing that existed from the start. Ptera's should still be able to carry and pick people, but not if they're in a saddle. 

2: Why would nerfing their stats "Bring them in line" with land dinos? Land dinos already excel in their niches, with the exception of the fact that it takes an hour to walk them to any given location. 

3: Brontos and Paracers are in almost every major PvP encounter, as they're some of the best tanks in the game. The main reason a Quetzal is used in PvP is to pick people. Paracers and Brontos don't even occupy the same niche, how does a QQ "Outclass" them? That doesn't even make sense. 

Also, if you remove the Quetzal Platform Saddle, just in general, you are destroying what little balance remains in the PvP environment of attacker vs defender. You may as well delete PvP servers at that point because while I can raise enough turtles each day to drain 50-100k bullets, using only an automated farm, you can't farm half, or even a quarter of that without a Quetzal Platform. Let alone how bad that is, just in general, for exponentially increasing the amount of grinding this game would take.

I have issues with Platform Farming, but this game is so incredibly grindy that you can spend two weeks farming for the stuff you'll use in two hours of PvPing. Why do you want to make it a month, or two, per hour of PvP? 

[Rofelo]

Wild gigas need to have their stats brought in line with tamed gigas to make traveling by ground appealing.

People are really going to hate alphas when we are forced to build near metal spawns if quetzal farming is nerfed to the ground. 

[Rofelo]

I keep saying they need to reduce material costs by 75% or quadruple what is produced in the cases of things like auto turret ammo.

 

Farming isnt fun WC. Making crap easier to acquire is also better for attracting new players as well as keeping them.  Increasing gather rates does nothing when the carry weight remains the same.

[TranqRex]

2 hours ago, iAmE said:

No, repeating it doesn't make it true. The fact that it's demonstrably true, makes it true. I'm in no more danger running around on my Wolf/Saber/Giga/Allo then I am Flying, because the end result is, nothing exists that can kill me because of the Human factor. So, no, travelling on ground is more dangerous then travelling in the air, in practice, the danger level for both forms of travel is zero. Therefore the differential, is irrelevant. 

What creatures are you choosing to compare here though? Because I can say for certain, that if I'm running about on one of my non-bred, average-to-good tames (e.g. a 80-100 wolf - you can't always find good, high levels although more in a bit on this) and I go into certain areas, I'll be in trouble. I don't have massive stamina or melee, so at some point I'm going to run out of stamina either due to running away, or running away a short distance then having to fight... and then I can't run away. It's absolute nonsense to say that compares in any way to travelling by air - I can simply float around happily on the flying mount, even if it's a relatively weak ptera I can still spot a safe rock from the air to land on and recoup stamina for a minute.

With bred tames then I suppose you're going to be able to compare on a better scale - the whole point of breeding is to get better animals after all (excluding the people who breed for vanity mutations). A bred tame with a good saddle is going to offer you a far greater chance of survival on land but even so, I'm not sure I'd want to get into the mix with some of the things I've seen around - packs of allo's 7 or 8 deep for example should still wreck me on my bred wolf or sabre - I suppose I could avoid the obstacle though, just as if I was flying.

Expanding on the high level tame bit - I choose not to use taming pens if I can help it (because as you've noted previously, this is a survival game after all) so finding a good high level wolf for example can be tricky. If you find one in a pack, you have to kill the others without the one you want getting too badly hurt in the fight etc. So many times I've watched a decent creature for a bit only to see it go and run at a rhino or couple of mammoths and get killed!

Oh and one final thing - w.t.f kind of bronto's do you have that take out a wild giga?! I'm assuming platform saddled with plants/turrets on?

[BobRoss]

12 hours ago, skeeta said:

To be honest, the reason I chose PvE is so that I don't have to build a huge, fully enclosed monster of a base with all my dino's inside. My new place has a 12 story (3 floor) stone built octagonal main building with an aviary in the top level and a 50 plot 300% greenhouse on the top. There's an external crafting area in the paddock and I'm building a cooking area at the moment that's going to be pretty to look at with decking and a thatched roof. All the dino's are kept out in the paddock and I just leave a couple on neutral to deal with any Argies that drop in for a snack. I have big plans for the place. Plans that would be ridiculous in a PvP environment. I've already had a couple of players drop in and comment on how nice the place looks. I like that.

To me the birds are just tools I can use to make this aspect of the game easier. If I need to farm meat I use a Rex. If I need pelt I use a Sabertooth or a Wolf. The birds aren't a one stop shop to me. They serve very specific purposes. Yes, they take the danger out of long distance travel but so what? I've earned that right by the toll of a hundred deaths and by the fact that my main advantages (as a human) are intelligence and adaptability. 

It's no different to going hunting on a 250 Rex (I'd say Giga but I accept they're a pain to tame). You go out on one of those and you're pretty much untouchable. Should I use a Carno or some other lesser creature just to increase the challenge or even not bother and do it on foot?

youre still playing a survival game and any changes made to increase the survival aspect both pve and pvp will always be justified in my opinion. we should never reach the point of untouchability. on pvp thats players but since you play pve you take out the biggest threat. so if that means the devs make air transport risk free it should give small rewards. right now the fliers are risk free and the most rewarding dinos in all aspects

[iAmE]

58 minutes ago, TranqRex said:

What creatures are you choosing to compare here though? Because I can say for certain, that if I'm running about on one of my non-bred, average-to-good tames (e.g. a 80-100 wolf - you can't always find good, high levels although more in a bit on this) and I go into certain areas, I'll be in trouble. I don't have massive stamina or melee, so at some point I'm going to run out of stamina either due to running away, or running away a short distance then having to fight... and then I can't run away. It's absolute nonsense to say that compares in any way to travelling by air - I can simply float around happily on the flying mount, even if it's a relatively weak ptera I can still spot a safe rock from the air to land on and recoup stamina for a minute.

With bred tames then I suppose you're going to be able to compare on a better scale - the whole point of breeding is to get better animals after all (excluding the people who breed for vanity mutations). A bred tame with a good saddle is going to offer you a far greater chance of survival on land but even so, I'm not sure I'd want to get into the mix with some of the things I've seen around - packs of allo's 7 or 8 deep for example should still wreck me on my bred wolf or sabre - I suppose I could avoid the obstacle though, just as if I was flying.

Expanding on the high level tame bit - I choose not to use taming pens if I can help it (because as you've noted previously, this is a survival game after all) so finding a good high level wolf for example can be tricky. If you find one in a pack, you have to kill the others without the one you want getting too badly hurt in the fight etc. So many times I've watched a decent creature for a bit only to see it go and run at a rhino or couple of mammoths and get killed!

Oh and one final thing - w.t.f kind of bronto's do you have that take out a wild giga?! I'm assuming platform saddled with plants/turrets on?

You said it yourself. If you *go into certain areas*. That's the entire thing. If you don't go into certain areas, there's no danger. You can go around them just like you can go around mountains. We aren't talking about fighting. We're talking about moving between bases. That being said, it doesn't matter how good your Dino is, of course higher level dinos help, but a dino with 20-30 levels in speed, really, will have absolutely no issues moving almost anywhere in the game in no danger. 

With bred tames then I suppose you're going to be able to compare on a better scale - the whole point of breeding is to get better animals after all (excluding the people who breed for vanity mutations). A bred tame with a good saddle is going to offer you a far greater chance of survival on land but even so, I'm not sure I'd want to get into the mix with some of the things I've seen around - packs of allo's 7 or 8 deep for example should still wreck me on my bred wolf or sabre - I suppose I could avoid the obstacle though, just as if I was flying.

You're starting to get the picture. People are arguing about "Trivializing" challenge, but the issue is, on any mount, at all, you can avoid the problem. With ease. The "Challenge" of "Avoiding these things" doesn't enter into the equation. The end result is always going to be the mount that gets you from point A to point B the fastest is the one that's going to be used. The circumvention of "Danger", or as everyone refers to it in regards to Flyers "Trivialization", is going to exist regardless of whether you are flying or not. The reality is that the only difference will be how long it takes. 

Oh and one final thing - w.t.f kind of bronto's do you have that take out a wild giga?! I'm assuming platform saddled with plants/turrets on?

Wild Giga's don't do all that much damage anymore. They've kinda been nerfed into the ground, I kill them with my Wyverns and Gigas all the time. The high level ones get dangerous, but anything below 100 is fodder. To be specific, the Brontos in Question were nothing special. 3-500 melee, 75 armor saddles, 6-80k HP. Can't put turrets or plants on official server platforms, and that's where I was playing at the time. 

[iAmE]

28 minutes ago, BobRoss said:

youre still playing a survival game and any changes made to increase the survival aspect both pve and pvp will always be justified in my opinion. we should never reach the point of untouchability. on pvp thats players but since you play pve you take out the biggest threat. so if that means the devs make air transport risk free it should give small rewards. right now the fliers are risk free and the most rewarding dinos in all aspects

Except. They aren't the most rewarding dinos in all aspects. The only aspect that they are "The most rewarding in" is travelling from point A to point B. That's it. 

[hsaK]

On 28.3.2017 at 10:42 PM, iAmE said:

Realistically, as someone who plays exclusively PvP, the ONLY thing Flyers need to have addressed is picking. Anything further is just the developers acting on their own shaping the game to how/what they like.

Even Ptera's Barrel Roll is extremely over-exaggerated. It's good for PvE (But who cares if it's good for PvE, everything is good for PvE), and good for PvP on/in the rare cases that the person you picked popped a Parachute. That's about it. 

I know, its kinda hard when PvE playing guys have to tell you, how PvP works, but carry a crossbow with grappling hooks and a parachute with ya... When you use a grappling hook, every carrier will instantly drop you.  

You can even change weapon, while grappling hook will hold you safe on ground. Just dont crouch.

[iAmE]

15 minutes ago, hsaK said:

I know, its kinda hard when PvE playing guys have to tell you, how PvP works, but carry a crossbow with grappling hooks and a parachute with ya... When you use a grappling hook, every carrier will instantly drop you.  

You can even change weapon, while grappling hook will hold you safe on ground. Just dont crouch.

I'm not even sure what that means or why it matters. I'm well aware how Grappling hooks work. You don't barrel roll people grappled to the ground. They will kill you long before you kill them, unless they are brain dead.

Seriously. One metal arrow is 1100 damage. Plus you can headshot them for 3x that damage. You are definitely not Barrel Rolling someone on the ground whose grappled to the ground.

[[EG] Comdriver W31]

5 hours ago, Argleksander said:

2. If you play PVE, you don't really need to "farm" that much anyway, what are you using metal or other high tier resources for?

do you know what it sounds like "if you want to build beautiful base and breed dinos you shouldn't play ark"?

going that way pve plyers should just stay in thatch/wood house with a raptor/carno and a set of metal tools. because why do we need anything else on pve

5 hours ago, Argleksander said:

Flyers > Land dinos, now if you live in a forest or right atop a big metal spawn, yeah a mammoth or an ankylo would be better, but if there is travel involved, a flyer wins out every time

and good luck farming metal/wood/stuff on quetzal without anky/doed/beaver/cthulhu because flyers can do everything alone

[Argleksander]

3 hours ago, iAmE said:

No, repeating it doesn't make it true. The fact that it's demonstrably true, makes it true. I'm in no more danger running around on my Wolf/Saber/Giga/Allo then I am Flying, because the end result is, nothing exists that can kill me because of the Human factor. So, no, travelling on ground is more dangerous then travelling in the air, in practice, the danger level for both forms of travel is zero. Therefore the differential, is irrelevant. 

Why are you telling people what they need to do in PvE?

In PvP, you don't always get to choose where you settle (Same is true of PvE), as many of the high resource areas are already settled, or aren't exactly defensible. Even saying that, farming one location for materials in PvP is pittance. You can farm the whole map and still not have anything at all. So, again, you have no point at all.

The game is a progression based sandbox survival sim. The entire point of any progression based game and any survival game (IE Game with levels) is to trivialize content. So.. You know, you kind of don't have a point. Again. 

Except. They aren't. Quetzals are good for *getting your Anky/Doed to the resources*. They aren't good at getting the resources themselves. Ergo, flyers are best at getting from Point A to Point B. Which is the entire point of their existence. 

 

Have you seen the other dinos that they have "Nerfed"?

Trilobytes. Argentavis. Spino. Saber. Gigas.

When you nerf something to the point that they are useless. They may as well be deleted. 

There is absolutely nothing wrong with Flyers being better then Land Dinos at something. You have a point, but I would argue it's irrelevant.

Not remotely. A flyer with a gathering dino wins, otherwise the Gathering Dino wins almost every time. Which is kind of the express purpose of a Quetzal. 

Then you have Gigas/Turtles/Brontos/Paracers/Diplos, all seeing use in every single Raid.

Sure, I agree that Picking is an underdeveloped mechanic in dire need of attention, but that doesn't require you to do what the devs are doing, which is universal stamina/weight/health/speed nerfs.

We do know what they're thinking, in general terms. A universal health/speed/stamina/weight nerf.

1: I agree. Seatbelts should have been a thing that existed from the start. Ptera's should still be able to carry and pick people, but not if they're in a saddle. 

2: Why would nerfing their stats "Bring them in line" with land dinos? Land dinos already excel in their niches, with the exception of the fact that it takes an hour to walk them to any given location. 

3: Brontos and Paracers are in almost every major PvP encounter, as they're some of the best tanks in the game. The main reason a Quetzal is used in PvP is to pick people. Paracers and Brontos don't even occupy the same niche, how does a QQ "Outclass" them? That doesn't even make sense. 

Also, if you remove the Quetzal Platform Saddle, just in general, you are destroying what little balance remains in the PvP environment of attacker vs defender. You may as well delete PvP servers at that point because while I can raise enough turtles each day to drain 50-100k bullets, using only an automated farm, you can't farm half, or even a quarter of that without a Quetzal Platform. Let alone how bad that is, just in general, for exponentially increasing the amount of grinding this game would take.

I have issues with Platform Farming, but this game is so incredibly grindy that you can spend two weeks farming for the stuff you'll use in two hours of PvPing. Why do you want to make it a month, or two, per hour of PvP? 

 

Demonstrably true? Lol. I've lost several very powerful ground mounts too wildlife, not so much with fliers. Unless you are suicidal and land your lvl 15 ptera in the middle of a Allo pack, you are usually 100% safe, on ground there is all kinds of nasties you can run into. Go on, take your wolf and run into Snow biome or the swamp on Center or metal mountain on Island. 

"You can farm the whole map and don't have anything at all". Talk about moot points here pal, what does that even mean?. The fact is, this nerf will affect everyone, so yeah, it might not be as easy to get a bazzillion auto turrets and a behemoth metal base with 10 layers of walls. And if you need to carry 1000 units of weight across the map regularly you are doing something wrong. On PVE, you don't need so many high tier resources and thats a fact, if you play pve and stockpile thousands of ingots it means you either are insane or enjoy the grind.

"The entire point of any progression based game and any survival game (IE Game with levels) is to trivialize content" According to whom? If a game is trivial (IE no challenge) it becomes boring. As the devs said, people are "missing out" on the core experience because everyone is just flying around.

Also, i never said i had any issue with a quetz grabbing a friendly dino and flying it somewhere, the "problem" is that even a low level quetz has amazing stats for how much utility it brings. Spinos, Sabres, Gigas and Argies (post nerf) are fine, hell i'd say the two latter both are in the top 5 best dinos still. 

Flyers have their niche, which is mobility/transport, even with a nerf they will still be best at this. The problem is that they dominate the other aspects of the game as well: Taming, farming and combat. Taming becomes 100% trivial after argie/quetz, you simply grab your prey and drop it in a taming pen. Farming as i said, i don't have a problem with quetzes carrying dinos, but when you can build a factory on top of them it becomes imbalanced. They also dominate combat because of their mobility, ability to completely disarm other players on dinos.

A quetz with a platform saddle is a whole lot more powerful and useful than a paracer/bronto. Firstly because the latter two are slow as hell, but more importantly because the quetz is "immune" to land dinos unless you do something really stupid

Just to be clear here, i don't enjoy grinding at all, and i honestly think this game is way to grindy. With a fairly large base, there is quite a bit of work just in upkeep and at some point i hope the devs realize this. As a follow up to this i hope they make some of the items less costly to make, gunpowder and CP in partilcular are a pain in the ass. Just the fact that you and so many others make such a fuss about this does prove the point: Flyers are a lot more useful than their ground based counter parts

With a nerf to flyers, so should hopefully there be a nerf to crafting req's soon

[[EG] Comdriver W31]

54 minutes ago, Argleksander said:

On PVE, you don't need so many high tier resources and thats a fact

and also on pve we don't need high tier saddles, tek replcator to make them, tek structures (what sane person would need them on pve? thatch looks 300% better!), tek doors/gates (because opening/closing them manually is the fun. if you don't get it - you wasting your time in ark), industrilal grinder, forge (you don't need amy metal anyway, why bother?), cooker.. pve people are really happy on then they are in stone age.

54 minutes ago, Argleksander said:

Taming becomes 100% trivial after argie/quetz, you simply grab your prey and drop it in a taming pen.

are we still talking about pve?

[iAmE]

5 minutes ago, Argleksander said:

 

Demonstrably true? Lol. I've lost several very powerful ground mounts too wildlife, not so much with fliers. Unless you are suicidal and land your lvl 15 ptera in the middle of a Allo pack, you are usually 100% safe, on ground there is all kinds of nasties you can run into. Go on, take your wolf and run into Snow biome or the swamp on Center or metal mountain on Island. 

Been there. Done that. Multiple times. Never died trying to travel. Not once. Hell, I don't think I've actually died to anything short of being suicidal.

5 minutes ago, Argleksander said:

"You can farm the whole map and don't have anything at all". Talk about moot points here pal, what does that even mean?. The fact is, this nerf will affect everyone, so yeah, it might not be as easy to get a bazzillion auto turrets and a behemoth metal base with 10 layers of walls. 

I can fill 15 forges full of metal (Around all the metal on the Island map) and not even get enough metal to put up a FoB in PvP. So, no, it isn't a moot point. It's quite relevant. the entire map doesn't have much metal, let alone these localized areas you're talking about.

5 minutes ago, Argleksander said:

 

And if you need to carry 1000 units of weight across the map regularly you are doing something wrong.

Or you're just playing the game as the developers intended. 

5 minutes ago, Argleksander said:

On PVE, you don't need so many high tier resources and thats a fact, if you play pve and stockpile thousands of ingots it means you either are insane or enjoy the grind.

Or you just enjoy building?

You do know that your opinion isn't fact, right? I can go through 50k Ingots in an hour building in PvE, and still need ten times that amount. 

5 minutes ago, Argleksander said:

 

"The entire point of any progression based game and any survival game (IE Game with levels) is to trivialize content" According to whom? If a game is trivial (IE no challenge) it becomes boring. As the devs said, people are "missing out" on the core experience because everyone is just flying around.

According to the nature of the game?

If the game is 100% trivial, then you have beaten the game. That's literally how games work. Which the developers are supposed to fix, by introducing new content, at regular intervals that isn't trivial. Like PvE bosses (Which no one has trivialized without exploits, so no, the entire game isn't trivialized.)

5 minutes ago, Argleksander said:

Also, i never said i had any issue with a quetz grabbing a friendly dino and flying it somewhere, the "problem" is that even a low level quetz has amazing stats for how much utility it brings. Spinos, Sabres, Gigas and Argies (post nerf) are fine, hell i'd say the two latter both are in the top 5 best dinos still. 

Giga's get outfarmed on meat or hide by half a dozen dinos. They don't work if the ping on a server is over 150. They're incredibly slow. 

Argies are. Well they're basically outclassed by the Quetz in every single way.

Not sure where I ever mentioned that picking up friendly dinos is a problem, but yeah. It isn't.

5 minutes ago, Argleksander said:

Flyers have their niche, which is mobility/transport, even with a nerf they will still be best at this. The problem is that they dominate the other aspects of the game as well: Taming, farming and combat. Taming becomes 100% trivial after argie/quetz, you simply grab your prey and drop it in a taming pen. Farming as i said, i don't have a problem with quetzes carrying dinos, but when you can build a factory on top of them it becomes imbalanced. They also dominate combat because of their mobility, ability to completely disarm other players on dinos.

 

So, basically you only have a problem with Flyers because of.....their ability to pick. Please explain why they need universal stat nerfs on top of that?

I've said multiple times that the problem factor with flyers is the picking ability, and how/what it does to the game. 

5 minutes ago, Argleksander said:

A quetz with a platform saddle is a whole lot more powerful and useful than a paracer/bronto. Firstly because the latter two are slow as hell, but more importantly because the quetz is "immune" to land dinos unless you do something really stupid

No. It isn't. Quetzals are better then Paracers and Brontos at specific things (Limited solely to picking people, and carrying dinos/weight). Paracers and Brontos are an order of magnitudes. leagues. better at tanking. They are necessary in PvP, more so, actually, then Quetzals. 

5 minutes ago, Argleksander said:

Just to be clear here, i don't enjoy grinding at all, and i honestly think this game is way to grindy. With a fairly large base, there is quite a bit of work just in upkeep and at some point i hope the devs realize this. As a follow up to this i hope they make some of the items less costly to make, gunpowder and CP in partilcular are a pain in the ass. Just the fact that you and so many others make such a fuss about this does prove the point: Flyers are a lot more useful than their ground based counter parts

With a nerf to flyers, so should hopefully there be a nerf to crafting req's soon

Flyers are more useful. That is true. That is because so much of the game is Point A to Point B. Reduce the need for me to fly to every bloody mountain on the map in order to farm enough material to PvP for an afternoon, and I won't use a Quetzal. Reduce the time it takes me to get a Rex to that Alpha to something under an hour, and I won't use a Ptera to kill that Alpha. 

 

I'll reiterate. I see absolutely no logical reason to nerf or address anything about flyers except the picking mechanic. The picking mechanic is problematic in both PvP and, as you said, in PvE. Flyers need a nerf, but I don't think the Developers are doing it the right way, or for the right reasons.

The devs seem to think that Ark needs to "Take longer". It doesn't. Ark is already incredibly tedious. They want to do that by unilaterally nerfing Flyers Stam/Weight/Health/Speed. That doesn't address the core problem of Flyers (Picking), nor does it do anything but artificially lengthen the amount of time people spend playing your game.

In reality, Ark needs to be much less "Grindy". Ankys shouldn't be overencumbered with one tail swing. I shouldn't need to clear all the resources on the map to put together enough mats for my tribe to PvP for one afternoon. 

 

I'm not saying, either, that the nerf is unacceptable, but it will certainly need follow up. The problem being, the Developers have, historically, shown that they do not "Follow up" on their implementations or balance passes (Evidenced by Gigas/Titans being essentially useless in PvP, Spinos/Argies/Sabers being largely useless in everything). 

[BobRoss]

3 hours ago, iAmE said:

Except. They aren't the most rewarding dinos in all aspects. The only aspect that they are "The most rewarding in" is travelling from point A to point B. That's it. 

transporting resources and dinos. finding and killing alphas. tameing dinos. fighting in pvp. need i go on?

[Rofelo]

Why can't we all just get along and agree that the arthropluera need a buff!?!?

[vanyelxp5]

6 hours ago, TranqRex said:

What creatures are you choosing to compare here though? Because I can say for certain, that if I'm running about on one of my non-bred, average-to-good tames (e.g. a 80-100 wolf - you can't always find good, high levels although more in a bit on this) and I go into certain areas, I'll be in trouble. I don't have massive stamina or melee, so at some point I'm going to run out of stamina either due to running away, or running away a short distance then having to fight... and then I can't run away. It's absolute nonsense to say that compares in any way to travelling by air - I can simply float around happily on the flying mount, even if it's a relatively weak ptera I can still spot a safe rock from the air to land on and recoup stamina for a minute.

With bred tames then I suppose you're going to be able to compare on a better scale - the whole point of breeding is to get better animals after all (excluding the people who breed for vanity mutations). A bred tame with a good saddle is going to offer you a far greater chance of survival on land but even so, I'm not sure I'd want to get into the mix with some of the things I've seen around - packs of allo's 7 or 8 deep for example should still wreck me on my bred wolf or sabre - I suppose I could avoid the obstacle though, just as if I was flying.

Expanding on the high level tame bit - I choose not to use taming pens if I can help it (because as you've noted previously, this is a survival game after all) so finding a good high level wolf for example can be tricky. If you find one in a pack, you have to kill the others without the one you want getting too badly hurt in the fight etc. So many times I've watched a decent creature for a bit only to see it go and run at a rhino or couple of mammoths and get killed!

Oh and one final thing - w.t.f kind of bronto's do you have that take out a wild giga?! I'm assuming platform saddled with plants/turrets on?

You do realize that plant X and auto turrets can't be used on platforms on official servers right? It's been at least a year since they changed that, probably longer...

 

While the question wasn't directed at me... I suspect that my brontos could take a low level Giga, but I have not been willing to attempt it. If I had a second person to control the second murder bronto, I wouldn't even question it. I would state flat out that my brontos could take a low level giga. What makes it a question at this time, is the fact that the AI is stupid enough to chase after it instead of staying at the top of the incline where the knockback is most effective.

 

Big packs of high level allos can take your bred wolf, but not your bred rex. or Giga, or murder bronto. Honestly though? The biggest threat to you on your wolf would probably be Kapros. They can drag you right off the wolf, and glitch it out.

 

Top tier tames trivialize most combat encounters. That's just the way things work. If you want a challenge, you have to seek one out.

[Veritas716]

I feel like there are only a few fundamental issues to flyers.

1. Ptera's shouldn't be grounded by a regular bola and have slightly higher torpor so that it takes at least 3 tanq arrows to take down. This will require you to at least get darts before you can get a flyer. Also, shouldn't be able to pick people off mounts and the barrel roll should take more stamina.

2. Quetzes need to lose stamina quicker when hovering so that you cannot catch and tame mid air unless you have some type of bred for stamina super quetz

3. fix the 50/50 glitch. If dropping a quetzal was more of a random location and you didn't know before hand pretty much exactly where it would drop it would be much more difficult to acquire one and get it tamed before wild ground threats came in and killed it.

I think some of the comments on here must come from boosted taming servers. 

A full stat nerf to all flyers, if that is true, will hurt the game in my opinion

[Gunslingerediel]

So that once knocked on Galli is looking mighty fast right now... lol 

[TranqRex]

1 hour ago, vanyelxp5 said:

You do realize that plant X and auto turrets can't be used on platforms on official servers right? It's been at least a year since they changed that, probably longer...

While the question wasn't directed at me... I suspect that my brontos could take a low level Giga, but I have not been willing to attempt it. If I had a second person to control the second murder bronto, I wouldn't even question it. I would state flat out that my brontos could take a low level giga. What makes it a question at this time, is the fact that the AI is stupid enough to chase after it instead of staying at the top of the incline where the knockback is most effective.

Big packs of high level allos can take your bred wolf, but not your bred rex. or Giga, or murder bronto. Honestly though? The biggest threat to you on your wolf would probably be Kapros. They can drag you right off the wolf, and glitch it out.

Top tier tames trivialize most combat encounters. That's just the way things work. If you want a challenge, you have to seek one out.

Point 1 - yeah, I don't play officials so I forget that certain aspects I choose to allow still apply to those. I just have never really considered that bronto's could take out a giga, mainly because even using a low-level crappy tamed giga (we're talking like a level 15 here) with abysmal melee and basic saddle - which is, post-tame, obviously worse than it's wild counterpart - I've never had an issue chomping on a pack of wild bronto's (of varying levels). Not been in danger once, which is why when you look at that, I'd naturally assume that some tamed bronto's would get absolutely destroyed by a wild giga. Perhaps I'll boot up a solo game and spawn some stuff in, perhaps I'll be surprised!!

This has gone quite far off the original topic now so I guess I'll leave it there... given me some food for thought, thanks

[Bogger]

On March 28, 2017 at 9:42 PM, iAmE said:

Realistically, as someone who plays exclusively PvP, the ONLY thing Flyers need to have addressed is picking. Anything further is just the developers acting on their own shaping the game to how/what they like.

Even Ptera's Barrel Roll is extremely over-exaggerated. It's good for PvE (But who cares if it's good for PvE, everything is good for PvE), and good for PvP on/in the rare cases that the person you picked popped a Parachute. That's about it. 

Over-exaggerated my foot.It's ridiculous that a barrel rolling ptera can clear out swathes of plant x and leave a base completely vulnerable.You may need to breed for a stronger ptera,but that's offset with ptera being one of the easiest to raise.I'd nerf ptera barrel roll into the ground,and allow them to either only pick flyers or if thats too difficult to code in(lol) only be allowed to pick players on foot.If anything the argy should get a small buff,and quetz platform have full weight transferrence and wildcard actually fix it so no one can make box quetzes instead of relying on player reports and then action taken a month later when box quetzes have already done the damage to the victims base.

[iAmE]

5 hours ago, Bogger said:

Over-exaggerated my foot.It's ridiculous that a barrel rolling ptera can clear out swathes of plant x and leave a base completely vulnerable.You may need to breed for a stronger ptera,but that's offset with ptera being one of the easiest to raise.I'd nerf ptera barrel roll into the ground,and allow them to either only pick flyers or if thats too difficult to code in(lol) only be allowed to pick players on foot.If anything the argy should get a small buff,and quetz platform have full weight transferrence and wildcard actually fix it so no one can make box quetzes instead of relying on player reports and then action taken a month later when box quetzes have already done the damage to the victims base.

You can flame arrow plant species to death. Rock elementals are completely immune to plant species and eat them for breakfast. Rexes with 20-30k HP can ignore 150-200 plant species and just eat one alive.

 

Ptera's Barrel Roll does 50 base damage. My ptera's hatch with 536 base melee. That means they do about as much damage, in one barrel roll, as a bite from a rex with 400 melee or so. Rexes bite twice as fast as Barrel Roll happens, and can do so for about 15-20 minutes without needing to get more stamina. Meanwhile, even though my Pteras hatch with 2k Stamina, they can only Barrel Roll 22-24 times before running out of stamina. Meanwhile they have like a tenth of the HP of a Rex.

Ptera's can indeed kill Plant Species (Though if all you have is Plant Species, your base was always vulnerable), but as I said, there's about 6-12 dinos that do it better. 

Ptera's Barrel Roll has already been nerfed. Heavily. To the point where it's rarely even used on PvP servers because everything can kill you well before you can kill them.

[Probitas]

On 3/28/2017 at 4:39 PM, Ep1cM0nk3y said:

I've noticed this.. between watching their fun little "skits" when new content comes out and how op or not op things are when they arrive.. there definitively seems to be a gap between what they see and what players see..  

As far as what to do with flyers.. argy seems to be in a good place.. quetz should be slower, maybe disallow it to carry larger tames.. ptera barrel roll should be an ability with a cool down, and remove the ability to grab,  make it a niche scout with the barrel roll being a burst damage so they can still snipe players but not spam it..

Can't forget the whole "stealing wyvern eggs" thing either,  unless they get hit with a speed nerf themselves,  assuming a speed/stamina nerf gets levelled across all flyers.. 

Just some of my thoughts..

Barrel roll uses up stamina quickly and so already has limitations. There is no reason to disallow them to carry small dinos or players. I think that's mainly a pvp complaint. Keep your eyes open and avoid making a target of yourself if you find people on flyers are problematic for you. Or have a shoulder mounted dimorph for defense against what attacks you, it will go right after the character on the mount. (I don't think people are really thinking of proper counters, it's all hack and slash with no finesse - some people find good ways to use the current set up and people that lack imagination cry to devs for nerfs, even so called alpha tribes are guilty of it).

And you are correct, remove ptero sprint distance (which is what a nerf would do) and you can forget using them to steal wyvern eggs. It's all fine for established alpha tribes to want to limit it now, they already have their wyverns. I think this may be more about removing competition, and in that respect devs should not be doing any fighting or game adjustments for them.

[iAmE]

9 minutes ago, Probitas said:

Barrel roll uses up stamina quickly and so already has limitations. There is no reason to disallow them to carry small dinos or players. I think that's mainly a pvp complaint. Keep your eyes open and avoid making a target of yourself if you find people on flyers are problematic for you. Or have a shoulder mounted dimorph for defense against what attacks you, it will go right after the character on the mount. (I don't think people are really thinking of proper counters, it's all hack and slash with no finesse - some people find good ways to use the current set up and people that lack imagination cry to devs for nerfs, even so called alpha tribes are guilty of it).

It takes me about half a second on a 300% Ptera to drop you from lethal height. That Dimorph isn't a counter. Realistically, the only semi-counter is a Whip, and since that still doesn't allow you to win the engagement most of the time, just force a sum-zero of both of you dying. 

Realistically, the only thing that needs to be addressed in PvP is the ability for Flyers to universally grab people off mounted Dinos. I don't know why we have laser rifles and space suits, but the concept of a seatbelt is too far advanced for us to understand. That is, literally, the only thing in PvP that needs to be done. However, since the devs don't like what's happening in PvE, they're nerfing the stats of the birds instead.

 

And you are correct, remove ptero sprint distance (which is what a nerf would do) and you can forget using them to steal wyvern eggs. It's all fine for established alpha tribes to want to limit it now, they already have their wyverns. I think this may be more about removing competition, and in that respect devs should not be doing any fighting or game adjustments for them.

You're seriously just wearing tin foil at this point. Wyverns aren't something that allow small tribes to compete with Alpha tribes. Not in a million years.