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Everything You Want To Know About v256!


Jen

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Negotiating A Rough Patch

Just some thoughts from a relatively new player...

1. Utmost sympathy for everyone adversely affected by the flyer nerf. Putting in so much time and effort only to see it become effectively meaningless can only be heartbreaking and discouraging. Rage is understandable, and can be therapeutic, but please try not to let it consume you.

2. That said, it had to happen. Flyers had become so central to gameplay that focusing on them and air power was the only sensible strategy, rendering other gameplay strategies largely irrelevant. It was only natural and logical that in the previous game reality, players would focus their gameplay around flyers, because anything else just didn't pencil out. That's not the sign of a healthy game.

3. Studio Wildcard is clearly aware of these and related issues, and has taken some dramatic and drastic measures to make pursuing the ARK "ground game" a more viable choice. This couldn't have been done without royally pissing off players who had invested so much in flyers (i.e., just about everybody who plays the game), and in some regards is reminiscent of the NGE Debacle. But ARK is still an unfinished, pre-release game, not a finished product, and there is simply no way it can become a finished product without changing the status quo, so bombs away.

4. It's been openly stated that the flyer nerf was deliberately heavy-handed to allow for backing off in some aspects, and I recommend that players offer specific feedback where possible, even if the overall sentiment understandably defaults to "it all sucks!"

5. Making rafts fair game for the oceangoing equivalent of sandworms (or was that deathworms?) renders rafting less of a no-brainer and introduces risk into what has otherwise been a mostly risk-free transportation option.

6. Now, maybe ground travel and caravans won't seem so laughably stupid compared to just throwing everything on a quetzal or super-raft. Danger lurks everywhere. Celebrate diversity.

7. But most important of all... PONIEEEEES!!!  :x

 

 

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17 minutes ago, AndrewLB said:

The funny thing is, a friend of mine who is one of the best breeders on the server i play on was out running around on a galli yesterday because all his flyers were compeltely useless. I have had to resort to using a raptor with 278% speed while abandoning my 8 quetzals, 2 wyverns, 15 argents, and 10 pteras that i spent thousands of hours breeding over the past year and a quarter. All my hard work ruined.

 

Over a year, thousands of hrs and thats it? Sry dude, but you doing something wrong

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41 minutes ago, Teerwenn said:

I watched my buddy level up a goddamn Gallimimus for the Lulz and put it all in speed, he outran my pteradon like it was nothing. that and please make a method of using the mindwipe tonic on tamed dino's please.

 

We went even further... we did a race, my friend on the ground run naked at 130is speed, while I tried to beat him with a quetz.... he outrun me effortlessly, and the top of it, I had to land because I run out of stamina with the quetz. On a bird, what is described by the lore as "primarily used by these masters of the skies to safely carry vast quantities of supplies, creatures and human cargo from one base to another without tiring.'

Man we have 2 bases on The Center (north jungle and vulcan island), had to land with the quetz 3 times between them. I almost fell in the water with it... the bird what flies without tiring :D

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24 minutes ago, Majic said:

Negotiating A Rough Patch

2: No. It didn't. This game uses large amounts of artificial content (Travelling from point A to point B), to cover for a, large, lack of actual content. In such a world, it is natural that you would focus on the avenue that allows you to minimize the artificial content (Travelling) and maximize the actual content (PvP/Boss Fights/Farming/Building). While you are right, that the fact that 95% of the time you were on a bird, you're very wrong on your appraisal that the problem is the flyers. The problem is the lack of actual content. 

Take this scenario, for instance; 

There is an Alpha Rex on the map. You take a Ptera out and find him. This Alpha Rex is 45 minutes away from your base (So basically you built at red ob, and the Alpha Rex is at blue). It would take your rex three minutes to kill the Alpha Rex, but would take 90 minutes to get there, and back. The Ptera would take 45 minutes to kill the Alpha Rex, but can make it back to the base in 3 minutes. 

There is a problem with that gameplay. It isn't the fact that it takes less time to kill the Alpha rex. It's the fact that travelling for 90 minutes is rewarded with three minutes of actual content .

That is the crux of what was, and is, wrong with Ark.

3: Studio Wildcard is not aware of these issues, and has made absolutely no actions indicating that they understand, or listen, to their community. This is very comparable to the NGE debacle, and, as we can see via almost every representative metric, the results are similar (A mass exodus from the game, though, unlike SWG, they are saved by the Modders in their game). 

4: It was deliberately stated after the fact in a brazen attempt to not look completely incompetent. That being said, I think the literally tens of thousands of posts and threads spread across multiple social media outlets attest to the fact that, most of it outright sucks, and much feedback has been given. Although, in reality, this is similar to what happened when they asked for the opinions of people pre-patch, only to ignore literally almost all of them and implement a nerf that almost anyone who actually played the game would tell them would end badly. 

6: There is no diversity and there is no danger. Three of my brontos can kill a Wild Giga. That being said, I will still use the fastest transportation option to move things. Whether that was flyers, or what ever it ends up being, is irrelevant. 

The simple reality is this; 

Instead of making land travel fast and comparable to flight, they made all travel utterly repulsive and borderline, if not, unplayable. 

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9 minutes ago, Majic said:

 

5. Making rafts fair game for the oceangoing equivalent of sandworms (or was that deathworms?) renders rafting less of a no-brainer and introduces risk into what has otherwise been a mostly risk-free transportation option.

 

I agree with you that the rafts do need some some of threat but there are two massive issues for me, first is just how common the Leedsichthys are. They are everywhere, I counted 8 of them near the surface around Cragg's Island alone. Secondly but most importantly is the sheer lack of defence against them. The people I play with don't just use rafts as a means of transportation, we loosely role play a naval style and build reasonably complicated and elaborate boats/ships that each serve a different purpose. This new creature has effectively forced that kind of gameplay to cease. To perfectly frank it hasn't added anything to the game at all, (in its current configuration) which is way I have just disabled Leedsichthys from spawning on the server.

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if you are in an strong tribe you don't need any flyer. use your tek tier armor and fly arround it is all you need. who care about dinos after you defeat the bosses for tek tier.

Wildcard want to bring us to another kind of game like HALO 5.0. on some servers it looks already like that.

the server where i had played almost 1.5k hours is almost empty now. the best players are gone trough the patch.

perhaps is time to say : it was a nice time in ARK. now let's see what Conan can do for us.

i have learned that is not nice to speak bad about dead people so let us speak nice about ARK it is dead too

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feed back  can be positive or negative, if we didn't voice our pleasure of displeasure about changes  what is the point of early access testing? U might as well just release a game "as is", and say "that's it"..

This is a chance for every one to shape the game..players and Developers alike..u call it " complaining ", thanx for ur two cents, but really don't complain about the comments..comment on the game..no one is forcing u to post..

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1 hour ago, iAmE said:

The simple reality is this; 

Instead of making land travel fast and comparable to flight, they made all travel utterly repulsive and borderline, if not, unplayable. 

Obviously, we have different opinions on some things. No surprises and no worries. ^_^

I don't think travel is any more artificial than anything else in the game. Contending with the environment is at the heart of what ARK is all about. If that's artificial, then so is everything else.

If you dislike travel versus PvP/Boss Fights/Farming/Building, I'm sure you're not alone. But just as in the real world, traveling in ARK exposes players to situations, risks and outcomes that they would likely otherwise avoid, and has significant strategic and tactical effects throughout all aspects of gameplay.

Dealing with it is part of the package.

Given their attempt at a dune buggy, it may well be in Wildcard's plans to make land travel faster at some point, and I would welcome that for sure. But there's no way land travel could compare with how easy air travel has been without making it just as cheesy.

I do think making air travel less of a no-brainer provides impetus for adaptations that were less attractive before, such as road-building, relay stations and outposts being planned and coordinated in ways that weren't necessary with super-birds. Whether that's an improvement or not is a matter of opinion, but I think it is.

That doesn't mean I agree with every aspect of the nerf. I'm hoping the end result will offer flight options that are reasonably practical for tasks like personal travel and scouting, while moving away from a world where C-5 Galaxy quetzals are the solution to every transportation problem.

A balanced solution to flyers will require trade-offs that will never please everyone, but will ideally position flyers such that they make sense in some cases and don't in others.

I don't know how well Wildcard will accomplish that, but I'm hoping they do.

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2 hours ago, Sissyl said:

if you are in an strong tribe you don't need any flyer. use your tek tier armor and fly arround it is all you need. who care about dinos after you defeat the bosses for tek tier.

Wildcard want to bring us to another kind of game like HALO 5.0. on some servers it looks already like that.

Maybe they killed the flyers because they wanted it to be a Halo-clone? Travel across the map with a Quetz? Why if you can use your fancy tek-armor or teleporters, because they are so easy to access and kept powered! I can't believe that this is the dino-game they dreamed of... But pew-pew-games sell better than anything else!

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1 minute ago, Majic said:

I don't think travel is any more artificial than anything else in the game. Contending with the environment is at the heart of what ARK is all about. If that's artificial, then so is everything else.

You are not contending with the environment every minute when you're on the ground. You have a lot more travelling (IE doing nothing but hitting W or Shift+W) to do, then you have to do contending with the environment. It is vastly more artificial then everything else because there is no thought into it. It is simply an arbitrary amount of time that you have to spend between encounters with wildlife or other "Content". 

1 minute ago, Majic said:

If you dislike travel versus PvP/Boss Fights/Farming/Building, I'm sure you're not alone. But just as in the real world, traveling in ARK exposes players to situations, risks and outcomes that they would likely otherwise avoid, and has significant strategic and tactical effects throughout all aspects of gameplay.

I would lump those "Strategic decisions (Where I just two shot anything in my way and strategy thrown out the window because unless it's a Wild Giga)" into the bin of "Content". What I am talking about is the other 95% of your time where you are just pressing W thinking about nothing in particular because there is nothing to be thought about that is relevant to what you are doing. 

1 minute ago, Majic said:

Dealing with it is part of the package.

You are starting to get it. This is called Carrot, and Stick. Stick is always larger then the carrot, and it is the amount of arbitrary work you have to put in to get the Carrot. The Carrot is the reward, or the party you enjoy. Every game follows this general model in some general sense. The problem with this change, and with Ark in general, is that there is too much Stick and not enough Carrot. This change just doubled the Stick. Which is a big reason why the majority of the playerbase avoids Official Servers, and play on various amounts of acceleration via unofficial servers.

1 minute ago, Majic said:

Given their attempt at a dune buggy, it may well be in Wildcard's plans to make land travel faster at some point, and I would welcome that for sure. But there's no way land travel could compare with how easy air travel has been without making it just as cheesy.

It never should have been, and never should be, because, generally, all the dinos on Land are pretty bloody good at things besides travelling. Flyers, at the moment, and to this point, have essentially had no other competitive function besides their mobility. 

1 minute ago, Majic said:

 

I do think making air travel less of a no-brainer provides impetus for adaptations that were less attractive before, such as road-building, relay stations and outposts being planned and coordinated in ways that weren't necessary with super-birds. Whether that's an improvement or not is a matter of opinion, but I think it is.

Ground movement and travel is a no brainer. As much of a no brainer as air travel. It is simply longer. There is no actual strategy, as once you've gotten to level 20, made a Pike, and are on a Raptor of decent level, you are in the same amount of danger on land, as in the sky. Which is zero. Flyers are, without a doubt, "Safer", but the reality stands that as long as you arrive at your destination unharmed, that extra "Safety" flyers have on ground travel, is irrelevant, because it has no effect on the outcome. 

1 minute ago, Majic said:

That doesn't mean I agree with every aspect of the nerf. I'm hoping the end result will offer flight options that are reasonably practical for tasks like personal travel and scouting, while moving away from a world where C-5 Galaxy quetzals are the solution to every transportation problem.

They never actually were the solution to every transportation problem, as Ptera's were there as competitors, and considering those animals do nothing but specialize in transportation, I don't see why them being the best transportation, is problematic. 

1 minute ago, Majic said:

A balanced solution to flyers will require trade-offs that will never please everyone, but will ideally position flyers such that they make sense in some cases and don't in others.

You mean a trade off like being third class gatherers of an extremely limited amount of objects, being horrible combatants and highly dependent on Stamina?

The reality is there were huge trade offs made for their respective mobility. Not enough, debatable, but the reality is, they gave up a lot to be as fast as they were. 

1 minute ago, Majic said:

I don't know how well Wildcard will accomplish that, but I'm hoping they do.

After over 60 pages, and tens of, if not hundreds of thousands of answers to their "Flyer Rebalance" inquiries, if the best they can come up with is this patch, I don't have any faith. My Wyvern can't kill a Phiomia. He's. Too. Slow.

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Would have been much less painful for them to just wipe the servers and force everyone to square one, if newbs were having so much trouble on pvp servers vs established high level tribes. People would still complain, but at least everyone is forced to compete again on equal footing. Instead, they hammer everyone hard as hell, make it so newbs can't even use flyers to work their way up, making it actually harder on them. Established groups have the resources to compensate, newbs do not.

A few have said this would bring new blood in. It won't. One of the problems with pvp games has always been the bored kids who find it funny to attack people who can't fight back, it always has been, which is why most AAA titles had rules coded in to prevent it. So players fled servers, devs noticed, and in a burst of extremely short sighted thought have removed one of the tools that all players could make use of, but that hurts the lower levels far more than the higher ones.

One of the reasons I don't play pvp is due to the built in imbalance, there really is no way to get around it if you are constantly ganked. I understand the reasoning behind the ganking, but also understand that the proof of concept is that it does not work. Most pvp players do not ever fight on equal footing, they always do what they can to achieve dominance by avoiding a fight they could lose, and that includes ganking players to the point of frustration and quitting. It's been said that pvp came about because players are better opponents, but players never seem to allow other players to reach the point where skill really is a factor, and not just dominate through equipment.

Devs will never be able to fix that, there is no point in trying. A wipe makes more sense because it forces the alpha player to start over, giving the newb a chance to work up at the same time. Granted if you are a casual player, you should avoid pvp because you simply cannot compete with someone that has no real life responsibilities and can play all the time (unless a tribe lets you join them). Even if they did wipe, in a week or so the server would be right back to where it was: a stagnant shell empty of purpose. People would now say "but cross-ark!". To which I would reply, same stink, different day. No change, just takes a little longer.

Worse, the pve has been totally hammered, due to what was happening in pvp. The claim by WC that it's because flyers allow pve people to avoid content is disingenuous and does not hold up under close examination (it allowed pvp gamers to do the same), particularly since all the defenders of the nerf that play the game regularly use pvp examples to defend it.

The whole purpose of a survival game is to avoid being killed, and that includes using resources to avoid problematic areas. They have now just removed the only way to do that that even assisted with the capture and training of other dinos that may have allowed you to go through those areas with larger dinos (if you weren't always being tossed from the back of a rex by something 1/4 the size, but I digress). And if you play a solo game, now what can you do? How was YOUR game play negative with the flyers as they were? (rhetorical question) The answer is it was not. And as pve prohibits any negatives on players regardless of dino usage, that leaves only pvp as the source for the change. (wonder how they will try and twist that logic to support their change)

It's unfortunate they decided to do this; they certainly are allowed to do what they want as it's their game after all, but I would think they would want some LIFE in it from players. If players do not enjoy playing it what's the point of making it? I haven't yet seen a mod that was exclusively aimed at restoring any dino to usability, but now we have one. What does that say about the state of the game? And what does that say about WCs ability to read their player base? (I should add that the Raptor Claus is no longer a workable event, ground travel at night is crazy, and as those gifts have a timer ground travel isn't going to cut it speed wise, so that entire event has now been rendered pointless.)

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What content am I missing by using my Argent to fly from point A to point B? An hour of laboring across the map to lose a drop or to be wiped by a troodon pack? To get my caravan stuck to the point where I have no choice but to abandon dinos? 

Are they going to cap raptor, galli, etc. speed? Kill the iguanodon stam? Because I can accomplish the same thing as a flyer if I wanted to in the end. I can get a galli and pump nothing but speed and stam and bypass all this "content" by blitzing across the map and moving fast enough to avoid everything. The problem is that on the ground, I niss a TON. 

What I like doing is taking my Quetz or Argent with one of my runners and finding cool places to explore. I can see neat little areas from the sky, drop my raptor, and cruise around. I don't get stuck. I don't lose caravan dinos. I get to enjoy the neat locales in a reasonable amount of time. There's still danger. I've wandered into Allo packs and have had alphas spawn which ends in a nerve wracking dash back to my quetz in hopes that nothing is getting after it. 

I'm still getting the content. I'm still enjoying the map but in MY way. How will nerfing my flyers improve an experience I'm already happy with by making it impossible?

Again, why not focus on fixing map pathing an AI? Why not fix it so my awesome spino army CAN traverse rivers and land without ending in a cluster of dinos stuck in each other, rocks, or in the ground? Why nerf wyverns which ARE supposed to be top dogs for end game content? What does any of this TRULY add to gameplay when it is not done in accordance with fixes to existing issues?

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6 minutes ago, Fatdog said:

What content am I missing by using my Argent to fly from point A to point B? An hour of laboring across the map to lose a drop or to be wiped by a troodon pack? To get my caravan stuck to the point where I have no choice but to abandon dinos?

Yup, it's not like we've seen the whole island 27 trillion times before getting ourselves an Argy or a Quetz. I've been still on foot because of explorer notes, Alphas, etc. and see all the stuff again and again.

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I think the real reason for this nerf is to clean the server from old players to make room for new players and tribes on PvE, other than that, it is nonsense.
They made a lot of sales but never increased the number of official servers, lag become a serious issue, the tribe cap of 500 creatures help a lot cleaning servers, but I guess this patch will get the full effect after a few days, there are still tons of players waiting for devs to rollback this awful update, but I doubt they will even consider that.

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Just now, Ferdinand said:

I think the real reason for this nerf is to clean the server from old players to make room for new players and tribes on PvE, other than that, it is nonsense.
They made a lot of sales but never increased the number of official servers, lag become a serious issue, the tribe cap of 500 creatures help a lot cleaning servers, but I guess this patch will get the full effect after a few days, there are still tons of players waiting for devs to rollback this awful update, but I doubt they will even consider that.

These dino adjustments were not done for pve reasons. That is a red herring, as WC lacks the stones to admit the truth of it. Even the reddit people can see that. This nerf on flyers just makes pve play far more time consuming and grindy, but in pvp it removes all the issues pvp players have been crying about - armored quetz, ptero speed, ptero picks, etc..That the speeds came from breeding using the breeding mechanics apparently doesn't wash. They could have simply changed that, but no, they had to pull a scorched earth on flyers. How would a pve server have need of new players and tribes when there is no non-consensual combat there?

No, it was a pvp adjustment all the way, and like all games with both pve and pvp, pve has been made worse. GG WC.

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we just need to realise, for some reason WC has lost all sight of any vision they may have had at the begining.

They seem to take "haircuts" as more important that fixes. Unicorns more important than balance.

They seem to have completely got their priorities wrong (but it maybe right if trying to attract new business perhaps) and dont seem to grasp the concept of the game is very different between pve and pvp.

The pro PVP's are all yea its great we love it. Yea I used to pvp I am sure i would agree. PVE i do not.

WC wanted people to be in tribes, breed dinos and have fun, together.

Then they nerf massively the amount of dinos you are allowed to have (because the server hosts suck and cant handle the game imho)but wait we still want you to tribe up?

Then we nerf the flyers- THis will be the first of many many nerfs to come. You watch this space. Balancing is not just about fixing one (dino in this case) it will be about fixing many.

For some games rebalancing can be a killer, it just goes too much one way people will go elsewhere for fun.

WC @Jen you need to stop this "like it or leave" mentality. I have watched hundreds of posts here, reddit, steam and Twitter.

You guys ONLY want to post or reply on anything thats postitive.

Good luck to anyone staying around- I have 3 accounts mine, and 2 for my kids, one only has a couple hours played which i will be asking for refund on.

Others will likely be going in the bin.  They are not going to listen, just look at their recent posts, to understand that this is the case.

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56 minutes ago, Fatdog said:

What content am I missing by using my Argent to fly from point A to point B? An hour of laboring across the map to lose a drop or to be wiped by a troodon pack? To get my caravan stuck to the point where I have no choice but to abandon dinos? 

Are they going to cap raptor, galli, etc. speed? Kill the iguanodon stam? Because I can accomplish the same thing as a flyer if I wanted to in the end. I can get a galli and pump nothing but speed and stam and bypass all this "content" by blitzing across the map and moving fast enough to avoid everything. The problem is that on the ground, I niss a TON. 

What I like doing is taking my Quetz or Argent with one of my runners and finding cool places to explore. I can see neat little areas from the sky, drop my raptor, and cruise around. I don't get stuck. I don't lose caravan dinos. I get to enjoy the neat locales in a reasonable amount of time. There's still danger. I've wandered into Allo packs and have had alphas spawn which ends in a nerve wracking dash back to my quetz in hopes that nothing is getting after it. 

I'm still getting the content. I'm still enjoying the map but in MY way. How will nerfing my flyers improve an experience I'm already happy with by making it impossible?

Again, why not focus on fixing map pathing an AI? Why not fix it so my awesome spino army CAN traverse rivers and land without ending in a cluster of dinos stuck in each other, rocks, or in the ground? Why nerf wyverns which ARE supposed to be top dogs for end game content? What does any of this TRULY add to gameplay when it is not done in accordance with fixes to existing issues?

Agreed.  Apparently WC thinks "harder" means for tedious. The reason flyers are so popular is because people don't want to spend all their time travelling. Forcing people to waste more time travelling does nothing to improve the game.

 

I'm constantly trading dinisaurs, items and kibble and rescuing newbs who have a bird way up in the air. Looks like those days are over.

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36 minutes ago, Stupiditykills said:

Agreed.  Apparently WC thinks "harder" means for tedious. The reason flyers are so popular is because people don't want to spend all their time travelling. Forcing people to waste more time travelling does nothing to improve the game.

 

I'm constantly trading dinisaurs, items and kibble and rescuing newbs who have a bird way up in the air. Looks like those days are over.

Let's not forget picking people up stuck in terrain errors, stuck on rocks, trees, holes in the ground. Same with dinos getting stuck. Knee jerk fix for a stupid pvp problem. I wonder just how many pvp gamers there were vs pve anyway. Probably more pvp now, but less pve.

I explained this to my 12 yr old son like this. You have a problem in pvp caused by breeding mechanics such that flyers are all very fast and can carry insane amounts. You have two ways to fix it. One is very easy, patch game to slow down all mounts and cap speed and prevent raising it. Hits everyone pve and pvp alike. Or you fix breeding and wipe pvp servers, which takes work and will anger a few people a lot. He said wipe pvp and fix breeding, patching the whole game base doesn't leave the game fun for all. The wipe is fair because all the top tribes got there using flyers, so even harder now to reach that level for anyone new. Only fair to put all at the same level.

From a 12 yr old......

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