Mega Thread: Flyer Rebalance - Thoughts and Feedback.

[KishK0]

1 hour ago, Zederia said:

This will not stop box quetz. they don't LOST stamina while you're standing on them, just don't GAIN any. so you get ready, move them into position and stand and soak bullets

 

your argument is flawed

I was talking more about about open world pvp to be honest

[Lewiatan]

• All flyers hard capped to max 180-200% (depending on flyers main purpose) movement speed. You can level up speed from default one to 180-200% limit. Leveling up movement speed on flyers is the most noticable way to show players their flyers becomes stronger and in the end player is satisfied
• Readd midair stamina regeneration for Quetzal. According to dossier it's long distance flying animal, so you should stick what dossier says for this animal and all flyers.
• Quetzal movement speed has to be increased significantly. It's quite silly to be able to outrun a flying creature on foot.
• Reduce stamina consumption significantly, so we wouldn't have to land constantly to regain stamina. One thing is to lose your bird, because you did something stupid, the other when game punishes you by forcing your bird to land without any control in area filled with microraptor and troodons. In this way game shows us a middle finger.
• Argentavis must be fast enough to allow player to go into wyvern's area, steal egg and leave safetly if he doesn't stay there for too long.
• Wild flyers have to be affected by flyer nerf/rebalance as well. It's unfair to chase flyer which is twice faster than your flyer could be while being forced to regain stamina over and over again.
• Wild Quetzal ought to land from time to time on its own.
• [Bug] - From certain altitude Tapejara flies to the sky higher and higher and cannot land, unless you trigger it by flying below it with a platform and then using bolas on it. Then it will fall to the ground. Then you can try to tame them.
• Make changes to PVP and PVE mode seperatly. If dino from PVE servers joins the PVP one, then PVP balance will be applied to dino temporarly. The dino will get its PVE statistics back if dino comes back to PVE server. For example hard cap of speed on PVP is 180%, then the max speed of dino from PVE server is locked to 180% temporarly on that PVP server.
• Wyvern should be able to use long range attacks more often than it is now. Currently, you can use breath attacks once or twice before you are forced to land. Suggestion: Make seperated stamina bar that's only responsible for breath attacks. It it gives you more flexability in balancing wyverns. In this way you can keep their mobility and balance long range attacks.
• Overall, please do not make this game more grindy and time waster than it should be by making flyers no fun to use and painfully slow. Your game becomes a second job, because of required time to do anything, not entertaining experience.

And developers, for your own sake, please start talking with us about huge planned changes with more details than "there will be a flyer nerf" and start using your own forum to talk with us directly. Not everyone has twitter account, nor has to use it. This PR disaster could have been avoided with proper communication, showing us initial ideas and numbers, before this Flyer Nerf was made public. If you had given us some speed numbers, we would have given ours and we both would have ended up with number somewhere in between. Consensus without current irritation and damaged trust.

I appreciate your recent effort to be more active Jat, but entire team ought to do the same and way more. We lost hope that anything we wrote here about balance and bugs especially are read at all. From my perspective, I reprorted glass structers rendering/shadder bug. 10 months ago. And finally you fixed it in 256. During those 10 months you made me feel you don't care thus I stopped reporting any bugs.

 

@Jat Do you plan to have any thread where people can post their feedback on new sounds? The ones that were created are lost in many other threads about different things. 

[530]

2 hours ago, Jat said:

Just wanted to create a mega thread to help centralise the feedback for flyers. I've gone ahead and locked the prior patch discussion thread (as there were quite a lot of replies) and I am going to be reading through all the responses to that, as well as anything else I've been tagged in over the few days. The team have had a few discussions regarding the patch so far based on the feedback, I would also like to get my bearings to see where everyone's at, what the primary concerns are, etc.

As I mentioned in the other thread: please try and stick to that topic and let's not be so hostile towards one another. Everyone is going to have an opinion, and they're allowed to! Don't give someone a hard time just because you disagree with what they think. If you have a post that you'd like to do separately because you feel it's an alternative approach that may derail current discussion, by all means go for it, we'll check it out but our mods will be redirecting discussion to this thread.

When the update was released, Jen had created a post for players so they could learn more about it, if you haven't had a chance to read it yet you can do so here:

 

The nerf on movement speed to flyers should be 20% at most. There should be no stamina nerf. Most gaming companies balance their game around the competitive scene and not around people with just a hundred hours played. You guys should try that.

The only thing OP about flyers was that you can block the rider on the quetzal. That was the ONLY thing you guys needed to disable.

 

Reasons underneath:

 

1. Flyers Cons Before Nerf:

(a) Pteras can be Bolad

(b) If you get picked by ANY flyer, simply have a grappling hook and a parachute and you will not die

(c) Pteras have low hp so if it is simply floating in the air, it can die to fab snipers/any long ranged weapon quickly. Or if it is landed, 2 shots with a composite bow and it's dead.

(d) you can whip the rider off

 

2. Flyers Cons After Nerf:

(a) you move so slow that if someone has a composite bow or a rifle, the bird will die in a couple shots making it completely useless in pvp

(b) Takes 10 minutes to get from stone henge to volcano.

(c) you can't recover stamina in the air so you can't snipe from your dino anymore.

(d) If you even pick someone, the speed is low now that they will be able to snipe/sword the bird while you are picked and it will die before the bird travels anywhere past 10 meters. Not to mention if you pick someone on a ptera/argent/quetzal, they will be able to club it out while you have them in your claws because you travel so damn slow.

Good example of how useless flyers are now is please skip to 35:30 into this video. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/132648212 This is how useless flyers are now.

Simply take a rifle or any ranged weapon out. Shoot it a couple times and it's dead because it can't fly away.

(f) No point in whipping the rider off because you can kill the flyer before it takes you anywhere.

 

3. Flyers Pros Before Nerf:

(a) you could pick someone and take them up a bit and quickly release them before they get the bola off.

(b) You can get to volcano from stone henge within 2 mins.

(c) Quetzal riders are blocked so once you pick a dino, there is nothing stopping you from taking it back to your base to kill.

 

4. Flyers Pros After Nerf:

(a) No pros at all other than you can fly high out of render from the ground but since the stamina is crap and speed is crap you will be forced to land before even getting anywhere making you and your dino an easy target.

[Gamling]

The only correct thing to do to save this game for alot of players is to put an on/off trigger for either speed or the nerf as a whole in server settings. My small but friendly communityserver with about 20 players have been empty since the patch was released. I was online for about 15 minutes today just to check the update on the Ragnarok map. The "feeling" wasnt there. I had to force myself to fly over the new areas to check it out. It was only 5 weeks ago i bought a server for €1300 just to be able to run a server from home, the way WE wanted it. Laid back, friendly and casual.  If i had knew this 5 weeks ago i would NEVER invested €1300. I know you listen, i do. But you will never implement .ini triggers for flyers, as alot of players have suggested. It's beyond me why WC wont give us an .ini for it. heck, we have hundreds of other tweaks we can do. even make the titan permatame for pve. 

[LadyofHats]

3 minutes ago, Cataclisto said:

... I'm going to go with the community consensus and say that PVE and PVP nerfs need to be separated. Dinos are not used the same way depending on the type of server your in. You balance and in some cases make them solely for pvp and then end up with a very large pve backlash as displayed by the community in the last patch...

i do agree with this. i am a PVE player myself and this nerf had no real benefits in a PVE enviroment. we already cant pick anywild animal with any dino. if people are nerfing speed on flyers is becouse they clearly need a faster (and safe) way to move themselves and their stuff

we dont need all animals being equally useless. is ridiculous when a wild animal can do something a tamed one cant

[GreenRoc]

Foreword to non devs: We all have our own personal views of the changes that were made, our own personal experiences. Some think this is better, others think this is worse, and others up and quit the game. If I say anything contrary to what you want, this doesnt mean I am being selfish or think wrong, I just think differently. I do not expect what I want to affect what you want. This is a sandbox game after all, and there's configurations up to wazoo to help make each private server adjustable to server owners personal preferences.

 

To Devs:

My personal thoughts on these changes (which is similar to my private server residents, as I only invite like-minded people), is this flier nerf is unacceptable for our server's style! Our server is currently offline until a config is made to remove the cap. We have not updated to the nerf patch, so the stats of our dinos are untouched at this time.

If this config is added, or a practical alternative that pleases us, I will restart our server. Until then this server is offline. If there is no acceptable solution to remedy this change, then our server is no more.

We play PvE only, we like to collect and build and hoard things. Our server has settings making Ark super easy. We hate loss, and I set configs to make loss as minimial as possible (preferably with zero loss). The way our server is, is how WE like it. Wilds do zero damage, players have zero food/stamina/water drain, player resistance is to a point that a fall from world ceiling to ground floor doesnt hurt at all. This is how we like it.

We still  want zero stamina drain and food drain for tames (that will not cause issues elsewhere, like with taming and breeding). This flier stat cap goes against what we want on our server, as some of us have leveled pure speed into dinos, and most of our tames have reached the max dino leveling cap (which is reached in less than 30 min on our server). I do not understand why there has not been a config added to remove the cap, a config made for servers like ours.

Please please PLEASE! Add a config to remove the stat cap! Without this nerf as an "option", our server is dead. This is so very important for us to have this config! I am desperate to have this config for our server. I have loved ark so very very much, as has my other server residents, but this stat cap is game breaking for us!

 

Here's a wild idea, have you considered separating pvp development from pve development? Daybreak did that with h1z1, and how drastically different those games are now! Sadly in h1z1, you cant tame the zombies and ride them around or fly. It's a very different game. Dinos and visuals and building are such a great appeal here! Please don't ruin it for some of us who don't play like the rest of them.

Another suggestion... Let us play older versions on private and single players, of course with the warning that playing older versions may corrupt things and what not. Mojang makes it possible for their Minecraft players (some versions are not available because some versions are very very broken). Why not here?

[LadyofHats]

1 minute ago, Gamling said:

The only correct thing to do to save this game for alot of players is to put an on/off trigger for either speed or the nerf as a whole in server settings. My small but friendly communityserver with about 20 players have been empty since the patch was released. I was online for about 15 minutes today just to check the update on the Ragnarok map. The "feeling" wasnt there. I had to force myself to fly over the new areas to check it out. It was only 5 weeks ago i bought a server for €1300 just to be able to run a server from home, the way WE wanted it. Laid back, friendly and casual.  If i had knew this 5 weeks ago i would NEVER invested €1300. I know you listen, i do. But you will never implement .ini triggers for flyers, as alot of players have suggested. It's beyond me why WC wont give us an .ini for it. heck, we have hundreds of other tweaks we can do. even make the titan permatame for pve. 

some people do play official. and vanilla game should be a functional unit. 

[Freya]

Here's a thought!

How about you actually MENTION everything you do in the patch notes? I don't see anything mentioned about a bronto HP nerf but it's there! 

[Royalstar]

Before this nerf, every creature in the game filled its own little niche. Now, the flyers are nothing but wasted resources (in terms if taming them). This is my idea for how the stats of the flyers in ark should look:

 

Pteranodon: low health, stamina, weight and damage, high movement speed. It should be the ultimate way to get around the map, but with a catch: if it's low amount of stamina does run out, it's completely defenseless on the ground. And the ability to carry players/small dinos should be removed.

Argentavis: high health and stamina, average weight and damage (it is a bird, after all), and poor movement speed. (Basically the opposite of the pteranodons). It should be able to carry small creatures.

Quetzal: high health, weight and stamina (the wild quetzals don't even touch down once), and poor damage. You should be able to have a mobile base on its back, just like it was before  the last update. But it's weight should be nerfed. Not crazy nerfed, but you shouldn't be able to place stone/metal structures on it, or else it won't be able to move. That's how it should be. It *does* have hollow bones, after all.

Wyvern: doesn't need a nerf. It's a f*cking dragon! (yes I know, it's a wyvern but their basically the same thing). It should be OP as hell! Although you (wildcard) need to make it so players have to be a certain level to hatch a wyvern egg. As it is, you can tame a wyvern as soon as you can tame a flyer, which on scorched earth is 45. The min level for wyvern taming should be at least 60. 

 

[GaymerTrav]

Literally right now, I can't believe I'm actually feeling GRIEF! Like my chest is heavy, I feel like I just LOST something. This is hitting so hard, I'm already convinced that when I get home that I will uninstall this game.

I'm probably over reacting, but I don't even play with other people. I just play solo, and I can't help thinking WHY does this have to affect me. I'm not pvp'ing with anyone. I just play ark to relax, I've looked past all the bugs and glitches, the unfortunate happenings of wild OP dino's ganking you, just to be able to play in singleplayer, build my pretty houses with the pretty views, and fly around looking at the pretty island. The serenity of it all has always just been a stress reliever for me. Could there at least be a slider somewhere in single player that will fix this?

After the purlovia was put in the game I've been too scared to land anyway, and now I'm hearing you have to land every few seconds. Not only that, boats aren't even safe, so what is the viable transportation for resources/tames? How do we even tame queztals if I can't stay in the air long enough to chase it when it runs?

Can you just leave us pve'ers alone with all of this pvp drama. I left pvp for that very reason of not being able to have a life and enjoy this game.

 

*Sorry for my rambling, still too frustrated to articulate properly.

[spacejam]

I hope everyone understands what might happen if they eventually undo the nerf. like most people all the points I was given i spent on stamina. If they change or revert the patch I no longer have these points to spend to regain some stamin or speed. I would expect another roll back.

[Probitas]

That classic flyer mod is great, back to flying properly now. And I can't believe how much slower they are post-nerf compared to pre-nerf. Even a non trained dino post nerf is slower than pre nerf, at least with the mod. So they didn't just set back to the number stat, they actually reduced the speed that the stat controls.

[Smash]

Largely, I think you've gone in the right direction with this.  Has it been too much?  I'd be hesitant to say yes because I've been one of the biggest proponents for bird nerfs on this forum.  I think that there were probably 2 things that needed to be achieved in this nerf:

1) knock quetzals out of best in slot for absolutely everything

2) Get people back on the ground for PvP.

Things that I like:

Remove Bird speed and stam scaling:  This was definitely needed.  I think to make this work it needs to be implemented across the board.  I probably shouldn't be able to make a raptor that outpaces an Argy for example.  I'd review every dinos speed and lock them al at whatever is reasonable.  Raptors for example are a dino that are way to slow for their role.  They would need a buff before locking their speed. 

What I would have done:

Pteradons: I can see how some people may now think that pteradons are completely useless.  In my opinion they needed to be good at one thing; Scouting.  Can they still fill this role?  I'm not so sure.  I'd probably have reduced both the speed and stam scaling, Removed the weight scaling and set it to like whatever a guy in flak with a longneck and a stack of food weighs and most importantly; Removed the ability for them to pick up humans and; Remove the barrel roll.

End Result:  Pteradons can cross the map in a good time, maybe having to stop 4-5 times end to end, can be used to deliver blueprints, small amounts of light resources to allies (like CP and polymer, definitely not whole stacks of metal or stone), but have almost no utility in PvP except to get good vantages for sniping.

Argys:  I'd be reluctant to say keep the ability to pick up humans, but if we must keep this mechanic how about we do something like if the bird takes damage while holding something it automatically drops it?  They need to be slower than Pteradons, but probably faster than they are now.  Can cross the map needing to stop twice.  Reduce their carry weight from 400 to something more like 250-300 (Remove are heavily reduce how much it scales) so that they can't be used efficiently as carriers.

Quetzals:  I love how they have to land for stam(Yum), No more weight glitch (omg that's so hot!), and health nerf (/hhhrrrnnng!).  Love it all!  Health nerf probably didn't go far enough I'd make it even harsher.  These guys should be able to cross the map (slowly) while only needing to land once.  Weight needs to be really nerfed (like 500 base).  Ultimately these guys should be used for light transport duties but should never, ever be better at it than the ground based haulers (Brontos, paracers, diplos, rhinos, bears...... I'd probably buff stegos a bit for this role too).

Overall WC, excellent work!  My only criticism is that it took you WAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYY to long to do this and as predicted you're now paying for it in negative reviews from players who got too used to easymode farming/taming.

[Probitas]

What was so difficult about picking players in PVP, can't you do the same thing back?

And I really do have a hard time believing that no one was using them the same way others were using them. This sounds like losers crying because they lose. If they can do it, you can do it. Fair is fair. And as a previous poster said, air superiority is the dominate form of warfare now. It would be like complaining that as a third world country you can't fight back against someone lobbing a missile at you when you continually try to run bombs at them on the ground - oh wait - aren't there a lot of real world similarities to this now?

[Smash]

5 minutes ago, Probitas said:

What was so difficult about picking players in PVP, can't you do the same thing back?

Who said it was difficult? 

Stop making assumptions about people's opinions.  It's boring and it makes land dinos redundant.  Everybody knows this and it didn't need to be said.

Quote

And as a previous poster said, air superiority is the dominate form or warfare now. It would be like complaining that as a third world country you can't fight back against someone lobbing a missile at you when you continually try to run bombs at them on the ground - oh wait - Israel has to deal with this complaint all the time.

If there's one thing that should trump every argument it's that a computer game about people living on an island with dinosaurs after being kidnapped by aliens it's that it should mimic the realities of modern warfare............................

[spacejam]

I think one of the biggest things over looked in this nerf, mainly to do with speed, I spotted a the new horse on my argy and tried to see what his deal was all about. the argy couldn't keep up with a fleeing horse, parasur  or basically anything on the ground. the birds are almost slower than everything that actually walks on the ground which I think is friggin stupid

[Ldante]

Official PVE is crippled because of the nerf and I will explain how.

There was never any ground game with all of the player structure, Player placed Dino gates removed all Dino spawns and blocked off high access points to metal/resources on higher ground especially on maps like The Center where I play. These dino gates are not connected to any bases just connected to each other to block off resources and high ground access points. There are no access points that are not blocked off with player structure to the resources which cripples all Land mounts to begin with. The only way to avoid the hassle was flying over the gates to get the resources. Now that it is too painful to do so in a timely manner without movement speed how else are you going to get around those gates?. You cannot on Official PVE. The equus and iguanadon will never matter and never will as long as all land access points are blocked by player structure. Also player structure = no dinos= no risk of dying anyways so in essence it is the same thing as flying. The major feature and most disappointing of all is that now with the actual nerf players know that it takes you longer to farm and are already placing more structure as means to make your gameplay much more frustrating so any existing access points along coastal areas are being blocked as well.

Not only did this nerf take away customizable features from the player with movement speed being thrown out, It also helped the community become a bit more selfish with land grab opportunities knowing that ground mounts are being forced on the community so the land grab allows them to have > "full control over where you can and cannot go now to farm time efficiently via structure". Honestly, I think that is the worst behavioral consequence of this nerf and was pretty common before the nerf but now it has even more of a purpose. I understand PVP needs constant change to evolve how tribes engage each other. But on PVE we cannot engage each other or destroy structure without war and both sides have to accept. The problem is one side which is usually the trolling side probably will not accept because they can get away with their behavior in that manner. Right now all the nerf did was add incredibly to the amount of time and frustration to farm because you still have to use flyers in order to get what you need as the structures render anything else useless.

Ptera's I agree were too fast but at least they were useable for just scouting. The stamina cut was way too much. Movement speed should have been just scaled back per points spent instead. Also removing imprinting for movement speed wouldn't have hurt for any flyer as long as we could still access the stat.

Tape's were already slow and weren't the most special but at least useable. They were more of a touring mount on PVE anyways or giving someone a ride. I felt they always were slow and had to land a lot.

Quetz, Only transport we actually had...since land dino's are not useable anyways. They were already slow, movement speed wasn't the biggest deal but at least it was an option. They could have easily taken a nerf to farming with the anky and still been fine. Draining stamina in the air is also expected. But the stamina stat shouldn't have been nerfed at all as they never land in the wild. Under load  like with a power generator /turrets/fridges I could understand extra stamina depletion.

Argy, weren't all that useful after wyverns came out anyways. They were slower than quetz even with movement speed cranked because you needed to buff some weight also.

Wyvern I agree were too fast after imprinting movement speed and shouldn't have been as high after imprinting, but all it really needed was normal stamina drain like that of an argy and it would have been fine. The stamina stat cut was wayyy too much to make them a 7 day no sleep end game mount. It should be OP with that requirement on its own. Lower movement speed scaling for this one could have worked.

Pelagornis should have been fine, not many people really use them since its hard to find some on land sometimes for taming again due to player structure.

I also 100% believe the actual problem with land dinos never being used is simply because of all the cloggage of player structure. No matter what is nerfed. They are still useless if you cannot take them anywhere. Also Lack of dino spawns when looking for dino's to tame sometimes forces you to travel around the map, Now you really cannot do that by land anyways due to structure and flight could take you all day. Way too tedious.

 

[chew0n1t]

7 minutes ago, spacejam said:

I hope everyone understands what might happen if they eventually undo the nerf. like most people all the points I was given i spent on stamina. If they change or revert the patch I no longer have these points to spend to regain some stamin or speed. I would expect another roll back.

As so many are not playing fully since the patch, many like me hoping something will be done to put the fun back into the flyers, a roll back might be acceptable - BUT only if done SOONER rather than later.

[Probitas]

6 minutes ago, Smash said:

Who said it was difficult? 

Stop making assumptions about people's opinions.  It's boring and it makes land dinos redundant.  Everybody knows this and it didn't need to be said.

You are making an assumption about how people game. You find it boring, others do not. If you don't like them go game on a no flyer server. That is also very obvious. You are also only you, not everybody. I base my claim on the posts I'm seeing, for every pro nerf post there are about 30 or more neg nerf posts.

[green13]

Lol this right here! Quick history lesson once upon a time there was dinosaurs. Then came mass extinction... Most noted winners of the late cretaceous period were the birds or dinos that had adapted wings and feathers to FLY. Runners up included the megalodon and crocodile... All three of these are (currently)some of the weakest offerings in this game... Hobbeling fliers punishes people who picked the best logical and biological choice...

[Probitas]

4 minutes ago, green13 said:

Lol this right here! Quick history lesson once upon a time there was dinosaurs. Then came mass extinction... Most noted winners of the late cretaceous period were the birds or dinos that had adapted wings and feathers to FLY. Runners up included the megalodon and crocodile... All three of these are (currently)some of the weakest offerings in this game... Hobbeling fliers punishes people who picked the best logical and biological choice...

Lol. Made me chuckle at this obvious connection......if the large land dinos had survived humans would be extinct, not the dino.

[Valentinez]

I will admit, Flyers needed a Limit, I was able to get 400+% on an Argy, was super fast, kinda Glitchy: Too Fast.

I don't mind the Stamina Limits, I can spend points if I need more.
Not gaining Stamina in the Air makes Total Sense. It's Still Flying!

Overall:
Still be able to spend points on Speed, but Cap it at levels that make sense.
Also, limit the amount it levels up. Like only +1.5% speed per point or something.

[I can really only think of this Example, because I play Scorched Earth]
Argys: ~200-225% MAX
We need at least 200% to safely outrun the Wyverns, plus it's not CRAZY fast [like my 400+% Argy]

These next ones are based on what I've been hearing.
[I haven't played ARK that long, never used a Quetzal.]

For those Quetzals: They Need Stamina more than Speed,
So ~115-125% MAX Speed, but give them A TON of Stamina+Health

Petradons: Low Health, but Fast! [maybe like MAX 250%] Medium Stamina.

I'm sure you guys will find a balance, of course these are just suggestions, but I guess my main thing is:

We need Argys to be able to get to at Least 200% speed to safely outrun Wyverns on Scorched Earth;
To Steal the Eggs and Collect Milk.

*MAX Includes all Imprint & Other Bonuses you can get

Also, when I spent all my points I got back that I put into Speed, I dumped into Damage... my Argys @ 4000% Damage lol

[Malorne]

2 hours ago, Jat said:

Just wanted to create a mega thread to help centralise the feedback for flyers. I've gone ahead and locked the prior patch discussion thread (as there were quite a lot of replies) and I am going to be reading through all the responses to that, as well as anything else I've been tagged in over the few days. The team have had a few discussions regarding the patch so far based on the feedback, I would also like to get my bearings to see where everyone's at, what the primary concerns are, etc.

As I mentioned in the other thread: please try and stick to that topic and let's not be so hostile towards one another. Everyone is going to have an opinion, and they're allowed to! Don't give someone a hard time just because you disagree with what they think. If you have a post that you'd like to do separately because you feel it's an alternative approach that may derail current discussion, by all means go for it, we'll check it out but our mods will be redirecting discussion to this thread.

When the update was released, Jen had created a post for players so they could learn more about it, if you haven't had a chance to read it yet you can do so here:

 

I too agree on mimicing dino dossiers on how to re-balance dinos. Allowing them to be used on their respective purposes.

Pteradons :
Low weight
Increased Speed
Increased Stamina
Low Health
Low & Locked damage
Remove carry (right click) ability

Argentavis :
Increased Weight
Increased Stamina
Re-scaled Speed
Re-scaled Health

Quetzal : 
Increase stamina
Increased weight
Increased base-speed
Allow to regain stamina while in mid-air only on casual flight mode (without shift)

Add additional saddle options on land dinos (giga's, rex's etc.) to have an umbrella option on saddles so that riders wont get so easily picked off off saddles. This will also support land dinos being overshadowed by fliers since a rider could get picked, making ground dinos useless against aerial combat.

Panic mode on quetzals and pteradons : much like their natural behaviour patterns, once a ptera or a quetzal has taken damage, they will go into a panic mode and start flying franticaly, making them unusable to rush into bases or tank them to their hearts content. Meanwhile leaving the only usable aerial battle mount argentavis ( or another flying dino being introduced for the future (gib phoenix))

Those are my two cents, if it helps re-scaling the overwhelming advantage of fliers without completely trashing their purpose of existance.
 

[spacejam]

If the flying animals in the world as of right now couldn't fly faster than 98% of the animals in the world that walk on 2 feet or 4  Birds would of been extinct millions of years ago. Birds are faster for a reason and making them slower than everything they hunt/eat  or even flee is Ludacris. Birds by design of natures and evolution are superior to us that dwell on the ground. this needs to be reflected in game.

[GaymerTrav]

I'm a bit calmer. Had some time to think. (This is all related to pve btw. PVP doesn't apply to this post)

So I keep hearing "we want to add more to the survival aspect of the game". I get that, we're supposed to be learning to survive on the island. But that's just it, we've learned to do that. That's why it seems so easy when you look at a seasoned ark player playing the game. We rarely die, because we know not to land in the swamp, we know where animals live, what time it gets dark, what to bring on a trip, what to expect, how to deal with a pack of raptors, etc. 

So now that we know how to live in peace on a hostile island you want to take things away that we found resourceful. Why not add survival elements to the game? Much like you did in scorched earth with heat, and water scarcity. There are many things that can be considered when it comes to surviving, this way you can leave the wits to your players. See what creative things they can come up with to endure harsh conditions.