Re-balancing the Fliers, Mk. 2!

[iAmE]

1 minute ago, Lancelot said:

And no, the game is not ruined like so many players call it. If private servers choose to download the new mod, maybe it has something to do with the fact that most of those servers have increased rate(EZ MODE).

Private servers can also change dino stamina! There's an option for it, they act like theyre isn't.

You do realize that challenge =/= more time spent right?

Most of the PvP servers that are actually played in/on this game are Unofficial because Official PvP servers are broken three ways to sunday.

[nEUTRon]

8 hours ago, TheRightHand said:

If you want to skip the why, and just get to the WHAT, go ahead and skip to the bold text down the page.

Hey there friends! 

So, there's been a lot of controversy over this flier nerf, and we're glad to see that as always, our community is loud and engaging us in every way they know how-- including sending us image macros of a guy pooping on our names!

Let's get down to brass tacks on this one so I don't waste your time:

The big broad nerf hammer has been swung, and as the Senior Gameplay Designer on the project, it's my job to try and communicate as much and well as I can about what's going on with changes like these. I also have to make it a priority to iterate with you, the community, on stuff that impacts you, even if I'm not great at it all the time. That's part of our whole philosophy.

I think the discussion of "why did you do it" needs a moment to talk about, because there is a lot of assumptions about why we did it, and the posts I have made elsewhere haven't traveled everywhere they probably should have. So, let's start there.

We very much see fliers as needing to have distinct roles, and we feel this way about every dino, but each day only has so many hours in it, and there are a huge number of priorities that we have before we do a lot of balance stuff. In their state before this nerf bat, fliers were largely non-distinct, and speed was a critical issue across the board. The game had become largely "get a flier, rule the world", and this started as early as a Pteranadon. 

There were many PvP implications in flier speed, not only did it make snatching, C4 bombing, and Quetz Grenading huge, easy issues, but it had underlying repercussions in the overall pvp gameplay space with regards to trivializing the land dinos which we actually want to see in battle, and giving people the option to remain endlessly airborne with giant mobile chaingun/gatling/rocket platforms high above the world and out of range of any threats.

There were also PvE implications. The ground game was essentially trivialized. You could live on the back of a Quetz perpetually after getting one, never even having to land... ever, really. 80% of the game was easily ignored because the air is safer, more straightforward, etc.

Without taking forever to deep-dive into this stuff, the one thing that I think everyone can agree with, or that most people seem to agree with, is that "it had to happen", and "you guys should have just done it less".

Both of these statements are true, but in the long run, the way we choose to make these changes are with broad strokes, followed by incremental buffs. That's how we work. There are other companies that do it differently, and that's good. For an in-development product, however, this is how we chose to do it. The end result will be the same, the only difference is where the outrage is felt. Either you guys get furious at us over several weeks as we nerf your fliers again and again, making them weaker and weaker, and you hate us for that, or we do it all at once and buff them, and you hate us all at once and then things get better.

These are just two different design approaches. If this was a finished game, where right now we felt that creatures needed small incremental tweaks to get them to a place where we like them, we would probably have taken the Blizzard/Starcraft approach of little steps at a time. 

Now, let me take a moment out to address all of you on a very serious note:

Don't ever let anyone tell you not to express yourself.

If you have a feeling, if something we did made you feel a certain way, express it. You are not wrong to feel that way. It is your own feeling, and you have every right to express it. I've seen a LOT of people telling each other what is and is not okay to express, and I don't really like that. We have to have thick skin to be developers. We know sometimes you just need to say a string of expletives at us. That's fine. It's not CONSTRUCTIVE, but it's fine. 

Would we prefer constructive dialogue? Yes. We've used constructive feedback to shape the next balance pass on the fliers. But even just raw anger and frustration are fine to express, and we want you to. It lets us know what the general feeling and climate is, even if it doesn't help us move towards a solution for the problem.

With that out of the way, the meat.

Our overall goal with this re-balance is to define roles specific to each of the fliers. This is a monumental task for land dinos, and that is why we didn't do that now. There are like a hundred land dinos, and not many fliers, comparatively.

The roles look something like this:

• Ptero - Fast, sprinting scout, with low hp/stamina, but quicker stamina recovery. Fastest flier in the game (except for wild wyverns).
• Argent - Tanky fighter, can scrap well and take some hits, high stamina/carry weight compared to all other fliers (except Quetz), while still maintaining some agility.
• Moth - "beginner" mount, lowest stats across the board for explicit travel or fighting, but a powerful special attack for specialized use.
• Pelagornis - Versatility flier with generally low stats, but unique functionality, and other special abilities to offset its lack of direct stat power.
• Quetz - Sky Bronto. Slow, extreme stamina, extreme weight capacity, good for prolonged sieges or for moving massive quantities of things to and fro. High health pool, but extremely poor maneuverability and very vulnerable.
• Tapejara - Tactical flier. Between the Argent and Ptero for overall stats, but with multi-mount support and latching abilities, it can carry well armed players in and out of the battlefield or to remote locations.
• Wyvern - Lord of the skies. Low stamina, moderate move speed, poor agility, but extreme power and versatility. 

This is how we see them conceptually, and the overall "feel" we want to aim for when we finally say "yeah, these are in a good spot".

In the spirit of that: 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hVE4Ub5ufePdkun4IYQf1oADPcvcfLx9IRpEbZVPLdc/edit#gid=160180008

This is a good look at the current values, the new values, and the deltas associated with the changes. Most of it is straightforward, but there are a few silly or convoluted variables in here:

Rider Extra Max Speed Multiplier is the most important one, it effectively gives the associated dino a change in its movement speed when it has someone riding it. You can see we've increased these values across the board for almost all of the fliers, making them simply faster when ridden.

So, all of the values shown here are essentially up for modification. This is a slightly trimmed version of the spreadsheet I use to calculate balance changes and overall impact and % deltas when making changes like these, I thought it would be cool to share it.

The "New Values" will be in your patch tomorrow*. Afterwards, we will be watching for a few more days, and seeing how these changes play out in my own gameplay, in the live game, in overall metrics on the back-end, etc. Then we will do another pass with the rest of the team, and we'll continue to iterate until we feel everything is in a good place.

Feedback us! If you have some thoughts on where these are going and want to take your own shot at proposing some values, go for it. I'm glad to look over anything that gets proposed, as long as you've got some reasoning behind it.

This is not the final pass! We're going to be iterating on this internally and want your input as we go forwards. I'll try to do more of this stuff when we bring out large balance changes in the future, and do them beforehand, not after. It's a process, so it doesn't just end here. 

- The Right Hand

*Wildcard Times are subject to change or horrible inaccuracies.

@TheRightHand I really "loved" this game and put so many hours or playing into it (like so many others), breeded and feeded wyverns in endless hours of no sleep and so on but you ruined it completely. There's no point on discussing anything at this point, revert the nerf completely and nerf in small doses (this is industry standard) while maintaining contact to your player base. Everything else will lead to the death of your game, really. I know it's your game and you make guys make it, but you make it for US, the players. You might have users online, but those will not be the first hour playerbase you had all the time. As someone in a other Post said, a mod to remove this nonsense was already downloaded so many thousand times, this alone should show you what's happening. Also, if i open up my smartphone, the news articles from gaming magazines all go "Wildcard ruined the game with the last changes, player base upset"..if you don't care about the public and your overall sales, just go on. Besides that, nothing more needs to be said, because all the other hundreds of posts here already do that. For me personally and so many others, if the flyers stay that way, the game is over, sad, but true.

[Spectre06]

You know what, I had a huge post put up, but since you guys don't give us the time of day when it comes to valid criticism (as shown in this whole debacle), I'll say this.

Stop being freaking lazy, put out ACTUAL GODDAMNED PATCH NOTES (not more of this "More Notes To Come!" BS), actually WARN THE PLAYERS, WHO ARE  YOUR UNPAID GAME TESTERS of the nerfs incoming (don't be cryptic like you were with this, give us the nerfs that are coming), and actually ENGAGE with the players rather than hide from the general anger we feel towards you.  We are the ones doing the work for you, unpaid.  In fact, we paid YOU to do this, so maybe, just maybe, you should give us some common courtesy.

The game's gone on my computer.  Until such time as you keep to your word, and treat the players like players rather than chattel, I will not put it back on, nor will I recommend the game to any of my viewers, readers, or friends.

[iAmE]

Just now, Qu33n0f1c3 said:

I don't understand your logic or why you're so intent on bothering me about my opinion. I'm not going to change my mind on it.

Nothing, you're just PvE Player #123481234123481234 whining about how these nerfs are brought about by PvP, and quite frankly, as a PvP player, I'm tired of people blaming my game mode for the Developers hamfisting a change no one wants through. It's not the first time, won't be the last time. 

[JaHakk]

Hey why don't you developers make it where you cant offline raid if you are so intent on making things fair?

[princessoferised]

12 minutes ago, Sigin said:

and that where you are horribly wrong ... if some game mechanic is so OP that it makes every other mechanics useless then it needs to be nerfed, not just let be for everyone to use ... let your quetz castle be example ... ofc i can build one of my own if enemy has them ... but how does it help me when enemy offline raids me? i cant mount any automatic defense on it, but enemy can use their quetz while destroying my base when i am offline ... thats exactly mechanic that should be changed, not left alone for everyone to use

How about you recruit tribe members so you cover other time zones? or you build your base hidden? or you have more than one base? or you make alliances with other tribes to protect your base and you theirs when each is offline? how about you mount a pre-emptive strike before they attack you? how about you build a better or bigger base with a better design? Or go play on a server that isn't so unfair to you? or have your own server? Instead of using some strategy in the games, your answer is to make bases that cannot be destroyed while you are offline. That little benefit for you, wrecked the entire flying community, Wyvern raising and just about everything else that made this game amazing. So if you want my sympathy, forget it.

[Qu33n0f1c3]

Just now, iAmE said:

Nothing, you're just PvE Player #123481234123481234 whining about how these nerfs are brought about by PvP, and quite frankly, as a PvP player, I'm tired of people blaming my game mode for the Developers hamfisting a change no one wants through. It's not the first time, won't be the last time. 

Sorry, I have no idea what you're talking about. Dev asked for opinions, so I gave mine.Thats all there is to it.

[Bolty]

@TheRightHand

Stop with this DMG control post.

ppl are not stupid, that you can just fool them with stupid post like this. Well most of the ppl are not but 2% are stupid which can agree to dumb thing this.

Best way to DMG control is to admit that you were wrong and won't do something as stupid like this and revert back the nerf.

This is only way to do DMG control at this point not the 75points u adding wyvern stam, which will give 0 effect ingame.

[gigamonster]

2 minutes ago, Sigin said:

yes ... tactic to kill someoen when he cant defend himself ... exactly reason why i play this game ... if hurting someone while he cant defend is your goto tactic then you are person i dont want to have anything to do because you are below me ... and i hope that this game will see offline raiding gone ASAP because there are also playing ppl who has real life with job, family and friends ...

I dont raid anybody online or offline but was saying nerfing of anything is stupid.  Add to something else to balance as nobody can be happy with reduced anything on thier game..

[Necro89]

4 hours ago, Extraterrestrial said:

First and foremost, might I suggest better communication with your community?
A LOT of vitriol and hostility would have been avoided if you had just communicated with us better.

The most common reasons for this nerf that I keep hearing from the forums, besides "it needed to happen",
and "fliers are op" and "this makes land dinos a viable option now". I'll always argue that this nerf wasn't needed,
because in my opinion, you're looking at the problem in the wrong way. You and others keep telling us that if you
get a flier, then you rule the world, that we "ignore" 80% of the ground based game. The answer to this shouldn't
be to force us to the ground to experience that content, it should be to add content to the air so that we can make
the decision ourselves whether or not that its better to go by land see or air. 

Look at it this way: You say that by flying we miss 80% of the games content, why is this so disproportionate then?
if we never go in the ocean, we miss 100% of all ocean-based content, and I hear no one complaining about that.
Well, except for the whales now, but I digress. Even it out man, give aerial content more love, rather than just snipping
what little content for it there is. Here are a few ideas I have for the flier re balance that doesn't fall on statistics alone.

• Environmental Hazards & Incremental Weather: As rich as the world of ark is, there's no real content for flying.
  There's no real skill to using them effectively. There are no aerial threats that can't be easily dealt with. Lets change
  that. The first and obvious solution is to make more threatening aerial beasts. You did this with wild wyverns, beasts
  that can't be tamed, and serve 2 functions: to be a threat to people and to produce milk for tamed wyverns. Include
  more animals like this, who's only purpose is to make aerial travel more exciting and challenging.
  
  Don't wanna do that? Fine, how about environmental hazards and bad weather? If it's raining, increase stamina drain
  as if in a sand storm, or reduce speed due to wind buffer. If you're in the snow regions and a blizzard rolls in, have it
  hailing so it deals damage to the flier until the pilot shelters it properly. If there is a lightning storm, have the player
  risk getting struck by lightning, just like aeroplanes do. If you're flying through the swamps, have plant species x aggro
  on the player as they would if they were tamed. If you're flying through the mountains, make rock slides an issue to look
  out for, or if you're near an active volcano, have it erupt and send fireballs streaking through the air.
  
  You already utilize wind in the game as a glorified switch for your windmill generators, why not make it so that players have
  to watch out for turbulence while flying? Imagine getting hit by a gust of wind that either knocks you off your bird or sends you
  both careening to the ground.
   
• Add debuffs to breeding: Lets be real here. The only reason fliers are overpowered in PVP is because of meta-breeding. It may
  not be fair to penalize people for spending a lot of time breeding their dinos to perfection, but it's not necessarily fair to punish
  everyone else in the game who didn't do this either. Fact of the matter is, breeding is broken, simply because there is no real
  negative mutations while breeding. If you're inbreeding your dinos, then they should have a higher risk of developing negative
  mutations. Thorough Breeding is necessary for people to reach end-game. I realize this, but thorough breeding in itself should
  be more challenging than just "make lots of babies". Getting the best dinosaurs in the game should NEVER be as easy, there
  should be a lot of trial and error, and breeding as it is does not reflect that. Or as some have suggested, put a cap on breeding
  stats.

These are my two major contributions to the whole nerf debate.. I honestly feel that a statistical nerf wasn't necessary, nor that it was
the only option that could have been explored in regards to this issue. My opinion is that we should not be penalized for how we choose
to play this game, PVP"ers should be allowed to play in a way that suits their favor with out detriment to their enjoyment of the game. In
that regard, PVE players shouldn't be forced to play in a manner in which we do not like or approve of.

It really, really shocks and bothers me, some of the things I've had said to me, and that I've seen said to other people during the past few
days. I know I'm not the only one, and I know that it extends to both camps on this matter. I've had enough arguing from the elections, and
im sick of seeing it here because I have a different opinion on what makes ark enjoyable. 

this guy right here is 100% spot on the nerf was never needed more content more dangers, i do go deep see diving i spent hours taming a good sea dino and now love deep see diving dont get me wrong as strong as my dino is i still avoid the squids and mosa cause well ill die. why cant they be a quezt like dino of the skies that cant be tamed, but also cant come to low to the ground either, or can be just means we have to find ways to defeat it or run. you brough out micro raptors purlovas all which make farming more challenging. but when everyone whines about op flyiers you take away peoples efforts instead of just creating a challenge. why not add a new turret which aims at fliers only or have an option for current turrets to aim specifically at fliers

[Ogedai]

so When is this actually dropping?

[Blank3k]

4 minutes ago, JaHakk said:

Hey why don't you developers make it where you cant offline raid if you are so intent on making things fair?

Official Offline Raid Protection servers exist, though as I play on them they are quite good but in recent months The Island servers have become unplayable due to the massive lag spikes (even killing 1 dino for meat is a ball ache) or dominated by alpha tribes who raid anyone who plays without permission.

They really need to put up some more ORP Servers, and preferably some ORP-Centric patches just to improve quality of life.

[nEUTRon]

10 minutes ago, Lancelot said:

I love what you guys are trying to accomplish with the patch. Here are some notes I have to let you get to what you are looking for.

Ptera: Put the speed a bit Higher

Quetz: Raise the stam ALOT, but have quetz lose stam when players standing on it fire, recoil is a thing and should influence the mount.

Argys are fine, maybe a bit higher speed.

Tapaj! I'm glad tapaj will be more useful now, they are harder to catch then the ptera and IMO should be viewed like his upgrade.

 

And no, the game is not ruined like so many players call it. If private servers choose to download the new mod, maybe it has something to do with the fact that most of those servers have increased rate(EZ MODE).

Private servers can also change dino stamina! There's an option for it, they act like theyre isn't.

On official servers it IS ruined, whatever you say.

[Chronosphere]

7 minutes ago, Sigin said:

yes ... tactic to kill someoen when he cant defend himself ... exactly reason why i play this game ... if hurting someone while he cant defend is your goto tactic then you are person i dont want to have anything to do because you are below me ... and i hope that this game will see offline raiding gone ASAP because there are also playing ppl who has real life with job, family and friends ...

agree its just lowlife too be the alpha and terroring other players becus "theycan" reason and poking at them for fun  its a game and rules cant be implemented but if i could i raptoring put them in jail for time being an asshole just becus hes the first on the server and played 72 marathon and beat everyone in dinos buildings, also hes spent all hes money on  prob a rig that is so beast it needs severa titans just too put it in aspect and hes not lagging around hes 10000 metal walls fortress with 100 turrents on it,..  meanwhile someone can build a 10 by 10 and feel the rendering fps drops issues this game has.. the bigger you get the more poop too render can almost DC from the getcho from loggin 

[DattoSSS]

I have mentioned this numerous times, so please @Jat and @TheRightHand feel free to review my posts if you like.

Every change you have made to the game has resulted in increased time wastage, to the point that the game is not enjoyable anymore to those of us with careers and families.

It all started with imprinting, having to wake up every 3 hours to imprint is unhealthy.  Now the only way of quickly transporting around the map is gone.

There is no insta-fun in this game anymore, nothing can be achieved quickly or efficiently.

I have loved the game since it first came out, but I have to walk away as I just can't justify the time it now demands.  I have a good income and a large social network, I would have thought that I was an example of the demographic you would want to keep for the word of mouth marketing of your game.

You haven't killed the game with this nerf, but you have killed it for me. 

I wish you all the best for the future of Ark, but I won't be part of it.

[Bolty]

7 minutes ago, iAmE said:

Nothing, you're just PvE Player #123481234123481234 whining about how these nerfs are brought about by PvP, and quite frankly, as a PvP player, I'm tired of people blaming my game mode for the Developers hamfisting a change no one wants through. It's not the first time, won't be the last time. 

PVP is the mode to be blamed here. Bcs of PvP PVE players have to go through this. WC team is just too lazzy to work balance on 2 different modes of the game. So PVP and WC Team shares the blame of this update 50-50.

[gigamonster]

2 minutes ago, Necro89 said:

this guy right here is 100% spot on the nerf was never needed more content more dangers, i do go deep see diving i spent hours taming a good sea dino and now love deep see diving dont get me wrong as strong as my dino is i still avoid the squids and mosa cause well ill die. why cant they be a quezt like dino of the skies that cant be tamed, but also cant come to low to the ground either, or can be just means we have to find ways to defeat it or run. you brough out micro raptors purlovas all which make farming more challenging. but when everyone whines about op flyiers you take away peoples efforts instead of just creating a challenge. why not add a new turret which aims at fliers only or have an option for current turrets to aim specifically at fliers

Never nerf but add to something else to counteract it.  Nobody will ever be happy when you reduce your animals.  Hey I had a lvl 280 Giga but this new lvl 80 is just as good said nobody ever.

[Chronosphere]

4 minutes ago, Ogedai said:

so When is this actually dropping?

if you read the post? you would know.

[Lancelot]

5 minutes ago, iAmE said:

You do realize that challenge =/= more time spent right?

Most of the PvP servers that are actually played in/on this game are Unofficial because Official PvP servers are broken three ways to sunday.

I don't understand how, in a game that takes 1 FULL WEEK to breed a giga, or 5 full hours to hand feed a ptera, that players complain about time lost. IF YOU HAVE TIME TO BREED SAID FLYERS, you have time to spend twice the time to farm metal.

PVP is not broken, ITS DIFFERENT. Start breeding some Thlya, rexes, mammoths, purlovias, the game is full of land dinos that can change PVP dynamics.

[iAmE]

Just now, Bolty said:

PVP is the mode to be blamed here. Bcs of PvP PVE players have to go through this. WC team is just too lazzy to work balance on 2 different modes of the game. So PVP and WV Team shares the blame of this update 50-50

Uh. No. The WC team made this change, as they've said about 5 different times, because they felt that, in PvE, players were trivializing "80% of the content".

Flyers in PvP had exactly one problem. Picking. That's about it. All the reasons that they nerfed Flyers are PvE reasons. Sorry to burst your bubble. 

[Vairent]

@TheRightHand is it possible to add this into the .ini file so custom server admins can adjust it to fit their own servers? Right now the only way is using "yellow puzzle piece" mods which can be risky. But if WC uses the .ini file to allow server owners management of the settings then that will solve the issues on the custom side of things.

[nEUTRon]

1 minute ago, Bolty said:

PVP is the mode to be blamed here. Bcs of PvP PVE players have to go through this. WC team is just too lazzy to work balance on 2 different modes of the game. So PVP and WV Team shares the blame of this update 50-50

I even go so far that this nerf ONLY should affect PvP. This is completely without any sense in PVe

[Chronosphere]

2 minutes ago, Bolty said:

PVP is the mode to be blamed here. Bcs of PvP PVE players have to go through this. WC team is just too lazzy to work balance on 2 different modes of the game. So PVP and WC Team shares the blame of this update 50-50.

Meh  i would say the devs didnt think about how clever some players are, building metal shields on a qeutzal why is it allowed too build on it in the first place? beside a ramp for anky tooo farm how come its allowed? did they think about this? this alone makes turrents useless and you know it everytime you place a turret down IF  You are ALLOWED too before getting smacked! raided.

[Lancelot]

4 minutes ago, nEUTRon said:

On official servers it IS ruined, whatever you say.

I play on official, I don't think it's ruined. I spend some more time to gather metal with my quetz(I think stam should be improved). When I go out to breed I take my ptera, It's not that long to fly to find a tame.

 

I still use my flyers like I did before! I just land from time to time!

[Chronosphere]

1 minute ago, nEUTRon said:

I even go so far that this nerf ONLY should affect PvP. This is completely without any sense in PVe

meh i think its ok tbh for both modes.. what i read here is arguement of a spoiled kid nothing else.. comfort breeds weakness.