Re-balancing the Fliers, Mk. 2!

[CyanicEmber]

Okay, two questions, will the Pteranodon still continue to have it's Flying Mega-Drill Attack? It doesn't seem to fit in with the scout role much... Just having barrel rolls and other non-damaging maneuvers similar to what we saw in the ARK's pre Early-Access trailer would be great...

Secondly, the Wyvern's strength lies primarily in it's breath attacks, but they eat up so much stamina that they aren't tactically feasible after the nerf... Any chance of further adjusting stamina consumption if not stamina pool?

[Slumnit]

Just now, Ashelia said:

Question is the change out? Cause if it is I barely notice any difference on my wyverns XD.....(speed & stam)

Are you playing on official or unofficial servers? Current server version (for unofficial at least) is 256.24
Not sure if Official will be on the same.

Also not sure if 256.24 has the "change" in it, as my server runs mod to restore pre-nerf stats

[Ashelia]

Just now, Slumnit said:

Are you playing on official or unofficial servers? Current server version (for unofficial at least) is 256.24
Not sure if Official will be on the same.

Also not sure if 256.24 has the "change" in it, as my server runs mod to restore pre-nerf stats

I only play official >.<

[Fatdog]

8 minutes ago, Porr said:

All I want is an unofficial sever option to be able to level our flyers in speed and have imprinting affect speed.  I saw in a post by TRH that it was just one simple value that a moder needs to change. In that same post he said he would look into it. Please do.

Please let us play how we want to play without having to go the moder route.

I am fine with the rest, even if I don't necessarily are with it.

I agree. Keep it on official, leave it an option for unofficial and single player.

If the point is apparently for the game to be grind and for devs to force their vision, then I admit I'm a bit concerned how customizable servers and SP instances will remain in the final product. 

[Twin]

Patch notes for 256.26?

 

[Shrekasaurus]

I don't care if flyers aren't made into the gods they once were. I just want the LAND creatures to be fixed Pronto.

[iAmE]

1 minute ago, Shrekasaurus said:

I don't care if flyers aren't made into the gods they once were. I just want the LAND creatures to be fixed Pronto.

I just want to not spend months farming to compete in PvP. 

If I have to sacrifice my level 411 hatch Ptera's to the Volcano gods to have a game that doesn't require you to play 15 hours a day and farm for months to compete in PvP, I would gladly do so. 

[Shrekasaurus]

Just now, iAmE said:

I just want to not spend months farming to compete in PvP. 

If I have to sacrifice my level 411 hatch Ptera's to the Volcano gods to have a game that doesn't require you to play 15 hours a day and farm for months to compete in PvP, I would gladly do so. 

Yeah farming is a pain. Better resource distribution would go a long way imo.

[TR-8R]

Hey dev , may be you could use some elements from S.E , like heavy rain that make all flyer fly much slower and lost more stamina to force everyone to land but not affect ground dino .

[Reaper86G]

Why not just set a max speed for flyers..  like 200 movement for everything maxed and wyvs have 150 max and say 2k stam max.. u shouldnt have to cut off a stat completely, create a max for that stat..   like with this u can attack with a wyv a few times and have to get stam kind of pathetic in battles (real king of the sky)..  plus how do people get eggs when ur wiki says u need a argy with 175 plus speed??  Really weird nerf kind of overkill tbh.  Fixing a problem by creating another isn't a fix sorry guys..   also fix the huge disconnect spots on scorch maybe a priority I dunno just my thought but hey u got your cash right

[Ryuk]

I understand why this was done and I think it's glorious. Thank you Wildcard. I'm happy you care for your game and you want to fix it.

[OnePotatoChip]

8 minutes ago, Shrekasaurus said:

Yeah farming is a pain. Better resource distribution would go a long way imo.

Nailed it. Farming and grind is at the heart of this issue, probably more than the flyers themselves. Get better resource distribution and/or cut resource costs on certain items and fix weird and annoying collision, speed and stamina on most land animals, and you'd be looking at something close to what they're hoping for.  

[iAmE]

Average Steam users playing Ark since the Patch, roughly 50k.
Classic Flyers has 28k (Almost 29k) subscribers.

I wonder what thoughts Wildcard has on those numbers. 

 

I find the numbers amusing, and kind of telling. 

[TripleBox]

I have over 7000 hours playing official servers 90% of that time has been spent pvping / raiding offline / online bases. I spend most of my days spawning into an enemy official servers with my 90%+ imprinted lvl 450+ Petra. Most of the time i can raid nearly all of the bases on the server solo with just a petra, i can fly into a base with a couple hundred turrets and find safe spots fairly easy. I hate to say this but this flier neft was needed. It has made the game more grindy in the farming & scouting (slow ms) aspect of the game but this is the way the game was intended. I have been pvping since the nerf and i actually like it more now than what it originally was. The game needed to buff onfoot player pvp / land dino pvp to match fliers and they have done a pretty good job at it. This would of been a hard decision for the development team to make but they have made the right choice. I will continue to keep on Wrecking them

 

Good Job

 

 

[Juparan]

9 minutes ago, Ryuk said:

I understand why this was done and I think it's glorious. Thank you Wildcard. I'm happy you care for your game and you want to fix it.

I really would love see some streams from people that hate the flyers playing.

[Rofelo]

44 minutes ago, CyanicEmber said:

Okay, two questions, will the Pteranodon still continue to have it's Flying Mega-Drill Attack? It doesn't seem to fit in with the scout role much... Just having barrel rolls and other non-damaging maneuvers similar to what we saw in the ARK's pre Early-Access trailer would be great...

Secondly, the Wyvern's strength lies primarily in it's breath attacks, but they eat up so much stamina that they aren't tactically feasible after the nerf... Any chance of further adjusting stamina consumption if not stamina pool?

I think the barrel roll is fine, its the picking that brings an instant imbalance to the game when they are the fastest mount, not the barrel roll.

[beeauu]

This post is for The Right Hand.

Thank you for finally posting the rationale for the Flyer nerfs. It is difficult to comment intelligently when one is unsure what the reasons were for the change. I also commend you for stepping up and accepting responsibility for the changes.

I believe both praise and constructive criticism should be given where due.

The praise

Ark was the best game I have ever played, and I have been playing games on various platforms since the early 80s. I had not bought a PC game in years, primarily because one couldn’t host a private game or to do so required renting a server. I now host my own Ark server on my I3 home server.  I, and the few individuals I have invited, play PVE. You have created a game where one can do pretty much whatever they want within a vast and fascinating realm. I have some experience as a development lead, although not in the gaming industry, so I understand at least in part the issues you have to manage. Until this latest change, you have done a very good job.

The criticism

For the most part I will be quoting and responding to your rationale for the changes. This is primarily from the PVE point of view.  I don’t pretend to speak for all, but I think my play style is generally representative of the PVE population

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.

As stated, I don’t play PVP, but I think I understand the issue. Certainly you could think of better ways to solve that issue. SAM sites, stinger missiles, etc. immediately come to mind. I might as well point out here that you have a vast user base many of whom are more than willing to offer potential solutions to issues and likely far better ones than I have suggested. Yet, you have failed to utilize them.

Did I really just read that, WE want to see more land dinos in battle? Perhaps your success to date has clouded your reasoning to a degree.  As a developer it shouldn’t be about what YOUR (you and the dev team) want to see, should it?  There is already an option for those that want to play without Flyers.

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.

There is absolutely nothing preventing PVE players from spending time on the ground. What possible concern is it to you, me, or anyone else if a player wants to live on their Quetz? This appears to be related to YOUR desire to force more of a ground game. The PVE population is the one you angered the most with Flyer nerf.  Let people play the way THEY want to play.  There is a lot of grind in the game. After I gather resources I want to be able to move them back to base as quickly and safely as possible. When I scout I want a Flyer that is quick and doesn’t have to constantly land. 

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".

Not true for me and judging by the reaction, not for most of the PVE population.  Here again, why not query the player population rather than basing decisions on what you think?  A straw poll is one simple means that you could utilize to gauge player reaction or gather player input.  For example,  http://www.strawpoll.me/12654429/r

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.

In my opinion this reasoning is flawed. If you believe people are going to get over this as you slowly buff the Flyers back up, I think you are in for a rude awakening. The player population is not that shallow. You basically pulled the wings off, and now want to slowly glue pieces of the wings back on until players stop complaining. That is not going to fly and is a really unwise thing to do to the player population. Further, I don’t believe you can successfully balance PVP and PVE needs.  For example, PVE players moving resources back to base want a flyer that can carry a lot of weight, move fast, and have plenty of stamina. That was the Quetz. Yet you want to make it some incredibly slow flyer that has to land to regenerate stamina to satisfy some of the PVP population.

While I grant you this is not a production release, you also do a great disservice to those who have a lot of time and effort invested in breeding their flyers, especially when there other ways to meet your goals. The outcome you are shooting for is called win-win by optimists and lose-lose by realists.

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".

Your fix has broken something that didn’t need fixing in the first place, at least for me. I was quite happy with Flyers as they were and I think that was the case for most of the PVE population. And again YOUR vision is not what this should be about, should it?  It shouldn’t be when you have a huge player base whose opinions can and should be taken into account.

It is clear to me the path you are on is a mistake. The fact that you opened this thread, the large numbers of negative posts, Steam ratings dropping, people leaving or not playing because you have made PVE game play so onerous. Most telling of all perhaps if you have any doubts is the subscriber count for the Classic Flyer mod, 28,468.  As a developer I would find it extremely embarrassing to see that many customers downloading what is essentially a patch someone else has written to fix my application.  The best possible outcome I can see at this point is you needlessly put players through a long and painful iterative process that ultimately ends up in a compromise very few in either the PVE or the PVP camp find very satisfactory.

My advice, for whatever it is worth, is for you to rollback the Flyer nerfs. It is difficult for many of us to admit we may have made a mistake. I know it is for me. However, we all make mistakes and I think most people are willing to forgive and forget.  What is not forgivable is to continue down a path because we don’t want to acknowledge the mistake.

If you are really intent on pursuing this course of action, then I suggest doing it by attempting to get a consensus outside the game.  In the meantime, please at least give those of us who host our own servers a way to adjust (fix) the Flyer stats.

I hope I’m wrong, but my guess is I’ll be shortly downloading the mod as well.

Judging from the continuous flow of replies coming into this thread you may not even get to this one.  If you do, I hope you are not offended by what I have said. I do tend to be blunt in my assessments.  I know this was long and not pleasant for you to read, but I felt obligated to at least try to help resolve this situation. I am certain some if not all of what I am saying has already been posted in this thread. Sorry, but I don’t have the time, patience, or inclination to wade through all the needless bickering and arguing to pick out the meaningful posts.  I leave that to you.  If it is any consolation, this is the only game I have ever cared enough about to even provide comments.  Thank you for your time.

 

[Irkalla]

15 hours ago, Mythos said:

I'm sorry i cant agree, Pve is too easy as is. You need some threats in the wild. I've been having a blast using land Dinos to explore.

 

I used land dinos to explore from day one.   Birds aren't for exploration,  saying that the flyer nerf was necessary to get people onto the land in PVE isn't accurate,   we have had and always will have a choice.   Just because you chose not to do that until they nerfed the birds does not make this heavy handed slam to flyers a necessity.  

[Phoenixbeast]

so the problem i have (lets say Quetz for now). all the Quetz have the same speed, so when i tame one and try to get it to follow, while i'm also riding a Quetz, i'm unable to move coz the following Quetz has flown straight into me. there needs to b some sort of lvling with movement speed, so we can get these flyers home.  

Yes i could of flown back to base and got a smaller faster flyer, but the round long trip would have taken for ever.

[invincibleqc]

24 minutes ago, iAmE said:

Average Steam users playing Ark since the Patch, roughly 50k.
Classic Flyers has 28k (Almost 29k) subscribers.

I wonder what thoughts Wildcard has on those numbers. 

 

I find the numbers amusing, and kind of telling. 

It means nothing. Players are auto-subscribing installed mods on the server they join so 99% of those subscriptions has been forced by server owners and doesn't count as "vote" to accurately know if they are all for, or against the nerfs. We all know that the majority are against, but I'm just saying that your counter cannot be taken seriously.

[Occamz_razer]

Thank you for the explanation! Can you elaborate on if there will be allowed changes to be made on unofficial servers? That was honestly the biggest frustration for me was that as an admin I had zero control of turning the speed levels back on or tweaking the UI to change the text, color, or opacity. Our server doesn't play like the vanilla officials so we would very much like the ability to put a hard cap on certain attributes or at least turn them back on to suit the servers playerbase preference.

[Zederia]

1 minute ago, invincibleqc said:

Players are auto-subscribing installed mods on the server they join so 99% of those subscriptions has been forced by server owners

you don't have to subscribe to mods to use the server with it, the mods will update when you join the server

[shinooni]

What has been done to fliers was very much needed but I think a large part of the problem when it comes to the skies making the ground game trivial is that there are no constantly airborne enemies above the tree line. What I mean by this is there are no threats when it comes to going to skies. Hostile flying dinos need to spawn at several levels in the air and be "patrolling" to remove airborne activities as being an instant immunity to ground warfare. By several levels I mean some need to saturate above the tree line some need to be even higher than that and also needs to be some above that so at any height in the air there is a chance to be attacked. The quick fix is to make a line of dinos that are untamable and have infinite flight time OR tameable with infinite flight time IN THE wild but when tamed have flight restrictions. I have been working on a mod to test my theory - spawning infinite air time dinos (I have just set ridiculous amount of stamina and placing spawn boxes(spawn bounding area) in the air - which doesn't do exactly what I want but it does the job partially by putting stuff in the air patrolling until something aggros them to ground - probably have to edit the dino ai to keep them in the air - was thinking about deconstructing the quetzal and finding its ai to put on them and give them high aggression)  initial tests prove this method to be quite effective to removing the air immunity problem. Further testing will be required but it is definitely food for thought.  Some ideas as to whether people think this is good idea wouldn't go a miss.

Regards,

your friendly neighborhood modder

Ted

[Pilate72]

[invincibleqc]

6 minutes ago, Zederia said:

you don't have to subscribe to mods to use the server with it, the mods will update when you join the server

When you join a modded server, you automatically subscribe to all the mods that are installed. I never manually clicked on subscribe on any mod and I have a bunch of subscriptions.