Re-balancing the Fliers, Mk. 2!

[Magesw]

Just now, Twin said:

I don't play on a server unless I like/agree with their mod choices.  There are enough servers that one can pick and choose where they play.  The basic message is that a significant number of players have chosen to play on servers with this mod because they don't like the flying nerf.

 

No the message is maybe, lets say 400-500 servers chose to add this mod and all the players on that server now have it. If you were already established on a server and had been playing there a long time you are not just going to abandon it for this one particular mod.

Point still stands that the amount of people subscribed to it does NOT accurately determine it's popularity.

 

[ciabattaroll]

Just now, Twin said:

Jeremy just tweeted:

Will post the ARK Dev Kit update (v256) tomorrow, after tonight's PC rebalance / fixer-upper update. Next console patch is in the works too!

Yes, and "subject to change or horrible inaccuracies" does not go counter to saying that something is coming up.

[Bugg]

Just now, ciabattaroll said:

Yes, and "subject to change or horrible inaccuracies" does not go counter to saying that something is coming up.

It's just publicly admitting that you don't know DILO you are doing with this change instead, which is great for the company's image and totally a technicality worth defending.

[KatkillaNAC]

A steam Mod to revert the flyer nerf for unofficial servers has 40,000 subscribers already! Take the hint guys... revert this bullcrap nerf, it has fukd the game

[Chrisnuss]

On ‎4‎/‎4‎/‎2017 at 1:01 AM, TheRightHand said:

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.

- The Right Hand

*Wildcard Times are subject to change or horrible inaccuracies.

So this was posted yesterday and it's almost midnight here where I am and yet I don't' believe there has been anything posted on the final numbers.  In less then an hour it will be the day after tomorrow and I noticed .291 but see no patch notes and for sure nothing on the rebalance.

How about you just get a clue and revert the birds back to what they where cause personally I don't give a rats ass about PVP so please don't let the PVP players ruin yet another great game.

[TripleZero]

On 4/3/2017 at 10:01 PM, TheRightHand said:

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.

A smart action would have been to announce huge changes that would ruin peoples birds WAY ahead of time(Which I see you admit now), If I was pissed about a random prime tame bird I can't imagine how some people with perfect bread ones felt. But i'm glad you guys realize you need to communicate more.

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. 

Never once have I started on hardcore, reg pvppve, pgark, and felt "oh all I need is a pt to take over this ark and become the alpha" That statement is very false imo. Real alphas are very well defended and you would need considerable planning, resources and tactics to take them down, not just a damn bird.

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.

Speed honestly did not become an issue until flyers had about 250+ speed Which at that point it should have just been hard-capped to begin with, Never should have C4 been able to be placed on ANY dino, that just screams exploits and abuse I never would of allowed that if it were my game. Land dinos always have their place and honestly I would have taken a allo/spino/rex/wolf/bear into battle any day than a bird. But that's just me. As far as time efficiency goes for using a plane over a car, that's just common sense why would you do the obvious slower option?

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.

As before, I still feel many many land dinos were very useful over birds I don't think I've ever seen anyone living on a Quetz in my 2000+ hours played, and even if they did, it's not like they could have any eggers let alone more than about 10 med / small sized dinos on the platform, and of course some of the end-game industry could not be placed on it either, they would be inconveniencing themselves pretty harshly, Also you guys should play on PGarks more often and see just how the land and spawns work there, would make you reconsider some of those statements.

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.

People were mad mostly because that there was no information before hand just "Flyer Nerf" No details at all, and the fact that the changes only half way refunded your birds points meaning a lot of them became useless for example I had an battle PT prime tame which had about 1500 stam and 400 attack, nothing refunded for him since there was no points in speed, so with only 400 stam that battle PT was now useless. Ark needs a set of PTR's (Public Test Relm/server) to help compensate such things in the future

The roles look something like this:

• Ptero -Since their battle potential was killed off with the 3 sec delay on roll they need to be considerably fast to have a proper "use"....the spreadsheet kina looks as if they are slower than an argent? Not sure how the math is being done there.
• Argent - Argents need to have More damage and health if you're going to nerf their stam and and make them Air Snails, They should not be a slow as a Quetz or even close. or else we might as well call them Mini Quetz that you can find everywhere.

 

[Khadez]

1 hour ago, ciabattaroll said:

 

That's still the word for it, unfortunately.

Thanks! Well i guess it will be tomorrow!

 

[Cliston]

About the classic flyers mod. It does not properly represent the amount of people that dislike the nerf. I dislike the nerf, but havnt subscribed to the mod as our private PVE server is kept mod free to avoid corrupted mods and such that might lead to a server wipe. I might subscribe anyway, just to show support.

[nEUTRon]

And no one of them cares..no reaction from @TheRightHand or @Jat or anyone else.

[Spaceace49]

This "big broad nerf hammer" is a joke. I understand the need to align stats according to the type of flier, but there are way more creative ways to go about it than just locking out upgrade categories entirely. Why limit the choices available instead of going about it a different way? Have weight and speed be directly affected by each other for instance, or just limit the amount of weight upgrades that can be spent on fliers depending on the class (smaller birds can have less weight upgrades). This would affect speed as well since becoming overburdened will cause them to slow down. Not being able to upgrade speed at all is ridiculous. At the very least, let us upgrade speed but lower the amount of speed per level upgraded. 

Another idea would be to just lower the beginning stats when tamed and then allow the same upgrades again based on the class of the flier. At least this would allow some type of choice in upgrades and would eliminate the need to close out a category altogether. Choice is good and when you take it away it eliminates the creativity we have in upgrading our mounts. If the category is there, why would it not be available to upgrade? It makes no sense at all.

I play on Scorched Earth, and I'm unsure how Wyvern eggs or Wyvern milk farming will even be possible with the limited air mount choices since it takes a lot of upgrades in speed currently to even be able to do this without dying. If speed is limited then this won't be possible at all from what I can tell. I'd like the developers to attempt stealing Wyvern eggs with this patch in place and tell us if it is indeed possible without dying on mounts after the no speed upgrade is in place. I can't see how it will be possible. This map is unique in that the scar is frequently visited and the Wyverns there are unforgiving. Argys and Pteras are most commonly used and with Argys especially, they require heavy upgrading in speed to be able to outrun a wild Wyvern. I enjoy being able to choose my upgrades currently though to be able to use this bird as an egg stealer. Pteras require a little less upgrading, but I don't see how it'll be possible to use either one if the speed upgrades are completely removed as a choice in level upgrading.

The idea of lowering Stamina so much also seems pretty insane to me. Especially for Wyverns, and I expect this will make me the most upset since I just spent 4 days of my life near death with no sleep trying to get 100% imprint. Now I won't even be able to use the mounts as effectively as I have been since they can't even do much without getting tired. What fun is this? I might as well have pissed away 4 days instead. If I put this amount of time into something I should be rewarded with a mount that does what is expected of it. Wyverns are very powerful as you stated, but the low stamina idea doesn't seem to line up with the idea of "power" to me. I agree with previous posts in that the breath attacks and bites should take less stamina if the stamina stat is needing to be decreased at all. I want to be able to kill other creatures, including Wyverns, without needing to land every few minutes to regain stamina. Will the wild Wyverns have the same handicap as me? I highly doubt it which makes it stupid to have to land my 100% imprinted Wyvern to kill a wild Wyvern that won't tire at all. I also agree that my imprinted Wyvern should easily outpace wild Wyverns. I don't understand why I would be imprinting a creature and taking so much of my time only to be given a mount that's subpar compared to the wild counterpart. The same goes for all other mounts.

Please reconsider the changes in place in favor of a more creative approach. There has to be better options available other than just locking out categories as I stated. The Stamina and speed nerfs seem far too heavy overall (Stamina especially). I really think weight should've been considered instead of these categories since weight would affect fliers in reality and should tie directly to speed and stamina. The heavy handed approach with these ideas was way overdone and needs to be backed off of quite a bit as well in order for anyone to be totally happy with any changes made I feel. I don't want to see these changes made on the consoles until the rebalance is totally worked out for PC first. What's the point of bringing it to the console if it's just going to be changed again in the near future?

Bring back speed upgrades in some form!

[1david25]

1 minute ago, nEUTRon said:

And no one of them cares..no reaction from @TheRightHand or @Jat or anyone else.

Might be because they are working. And I do believe they care very much about what you the players think.

[Gizardpuke]

here's an idea. 

make another flying creature. make it have a torpor effect like troodons, make it attack nothing but players like the dimophs, make them untamable, and make them fly 2x as fast as pteranadons, let them fly to any height, and let them hunt in packs. that should sufficiently upset people enough to forget about the flyer nerfs.

[HalfSlabBacon]

19 minutes ago, Khadez said:

Thanks! Well i guess it will be tomorrow!

 

Jat said it is coming when I asked. Just no eta on exact hour yet. Can't wait. I'll take even the smallest improvement over current stats. Although really, I'm hoping we see some ini options.

 

 

[SusanCS]

1 hour ago, HalfSlabBacon said:

Jat said it is coming when I asked. Just no eta on exact hour yet. Can't wait. I'll take even the smallest improvement over current stats. Although really, I'm hoping we see some ini options.

 

 

It might be a few hours still... Here is Jat's latest reddit post I saw. https://www.reddit.com/r/playark/comments/63qina/nerf_the_leedsichthys/dfw9vnp/ "They're getting a fix to a scaling issue and that should be today (in the next 2 hrs or so!). You also won't see them on the shorelines (unless lured by a player)."

[Gizardpuke]

also, what was the 350-oddmeg patch that was about 10 hours ago?

[SusanCS]

1 hour ago, Gizardpuke said:

also, what was the 350-oddmeg patch that was about 10 hours ago?

Here are all the updates since the nerf.. mostly fixes for stuff

Current Version: v256.29
* Fixed resource issue. Server Upgrade Highly Recommended!
v256.28
* Fishing rods (BP and item) show effectiveness again.
* Hyperthermic insulation on armor now displayed properly in UI.
* Name of the dino now displays in inventory UI.
* Fixed an additional weight calculation/updating issue. Requires Server Update.
v256.22
* Fixed a crash on client associated with display overstocked inventories.
v256.22
* Fixed a crash associated with updating Weight on platforns. Requires Server Update.
* Made Inventory UI display the empty slots on structures more clearly. Eliminated needless display of extra empty slots on the Craftables panel.
v256.2
* Fixed various weight calculation/updating issues. Requires Server Update.
* Fixed inability to drag equip Weapons onto Mantis on new Inventory UI.
* Fixed new Inventory UI ctrl/shift drag and single-click transfer operations not working on remote inventories.
* Maturation Bar now also displays the numerical progress percent.
* Made item tooltip overlays slightly translucent.
v256.1
* Fixed a common server crash associated with harvesting. Servers should urgently upgrade to this version to avoid crashes!
* Fixed not being able to craft Tributes, and not being able to "Transfer All" from Supply Crates.

[Jtmorris]

Thank you for choosing to communicate on your Official Forums instead of continuing to make us run around the Internet, pulling snippets together from all over. I really appreciate that. 

I also appreciate your communication on this issue and your heart that we can clearly see in your post. We'll done. 

I like what's going on. Keep it up. 

[GipsyDanger]

Stupid there  have been half a dozen ghost patches with ZERO info about them. I got two today alone and one yesterday. 

 

Funny how they were suppose to roll out a flier buff days ago and have yet to communicate to the players who support their salary one word about it. 

[Irkalla]

50 minutes ago, Cliston said:

About the classic flyers mod. It does not properly represent the amount of people that dislike the nerf. I dislike the nerf, but havnt subscribed to the mod as our private PVE server is kept mod free to avoid corrupted mods and such that might lead to a server wipe. I might subscribe anyway, just to show support.

It also doesn't represent the amount of suspicious accounts suddenly advertising it on the steam forums.  Nor the servers like mine that have mods that already apply to the flyers and refuse to remove those mods.

[WhiteyJ]

Though I agree fliers do have a lot of power over land animals in terms of combat/mobility and they need a small change, what had happened really just put them in a huge disadvantage. As far as fliers being "all use" per-say is completely off. Not a singe animal can do all jobs well, even within fliers alone. Mainly we need our land animals for early mobility, carrying capacity, gathering, and combat, but of course later on people will graduate to fliers for certain jobs. We still need land animals for gathering and utility no matter what, since no flyer can do so aside from a few (wyvern thatch gathering with the wing flap while landed as an example). Not even within fliers alone do they have the same utility, as you've stated in this explanation. Moths: Low level early fliers with the benefit of silk and the slowing attack. Pteras: Fastest animal in the air used for quick trips or pick ups of light duty. Tapes: Very high mobility especially in combat with the added bonuses of wall clinging and two extra people on the saddle. Argies: High weight, stam early on for gathering trips or long flights with the added combat bonuses. Quetz: Natural upgrade to the argy in terms of weight and stam, with the added platform for building, but terrible for combat. Wyverns: Aerial combat powerhouses with special breath attacks (but please with the stamina to use it more than once without having to land), but poor maneuverability. Just for an example on ground animals that goes in line with the argy and quetz: The doed is great for stone (or sand on SE) and defense early on, but the Rock Elemental is a large upgrade to it in nearly every way later on in the game, but they shouldnt be nerfed for it in the same way. Perhaps small tweaks to let them fall more in line with their roles, but to have the hammer fall this hard where I don't even want to get on my wyvern to fight (mainly because of the point brought up that one or two breath attacks or some bites and you're out of stamina, which makes fighting other wyverns a terror and The Scar runs impossible) or collect meat, and using a Thyla is so much faster now for travel of any distance with low stamina consumption and the ability to climb over obstacles/up cliff or mountain faces. I've heard of many moving to private servers or not playing at all because of the hard work put into perfecting these animals either through breeding, or in wyverns cases pure raising if you can find a good egg, just to see them crawl pitifully now through the air and get out of breath way too quickly. I do know that they needed a change, but I do honestly hope it goes back closer to what it was, just with smaller, more task specialized tweaks. Every animal has its place in the ARK, from resource collecting to utility to general or specialized combat. I can get that nearly no flyer can be as alarming as getting ko'd off your mount by a Microraptor and being at the mercy of anything for 5 seconds, having your items stolen by a Pegomastax at a critical moment, or getting scared poopless and dragged away and/or munched on by a pouncing Thyla or Kaprosuchus. All of our lovable animals have their own special place and role, and I was very much enjoying the place they were at, with a few tweaks needed, and I'm sure many can agree on that. 

[IdreamofZombie]

I am one of those who are very upset about this nerf.  And I do not think a specific time should be given unless it can be guaranteed.  But I am trying to be positive...I would rather they spend an extra day or two working out bugs or other issues, rather than dumping Flyer Nerf MKII, just to have it blow up in our already scalded faces.  So hopefully they needed to go back and fix a few things, and if that is true, then a day longer wait is totally worth it.

 

Why the hell dont they just add more of this as server options rather than killing stats in order to prevent specific things?  There are already a number of server options differing PVP and PVE.  Why not add server options versus killing flyers.  Not everybody is raiding with flyers, some people just like to fly around and enjoy the game.  All this did (for many players) is kill some enjoyment of the game.

[baddimsim]

12 hours ago, Milsurp said:

Being on the ground is not cool, because follow is so incredibly badly broken it's unplayable. It's still so busted you cannot get animals to follow you through terrain, and you will be attacked while dismounted when trying to free them from obstacles. Which will tangle more of them up until you have a frustrating mess. I recently was buried beneath a pile of dire bears attacking a carno stuck between rocks, and we all turned into a stuck mess. I had to kill the carno then chop the rock out, all while looking at a bear from the inside of the bear. 

That's yet another part of the game that is still in a first-effort alpha state and should have been reworked to beta by now. I would count that a FAR higher priority than any balance passes.

You can minimise the clustering by setting their follow distance to high and make them follow one another by using the group/class assignment, a bit tedious but can be done.

Anyway, I've moved on with the flyer nerf and start using my Paracer platform for farming metal again, like you said, it is tedious as hell if your base is far away from rich metal nodes and need to cross dense forest and swamp land to get to it. Beside fighting off wild dinos and insects, unblocking stuck tames from tree and rock, you also need to stop and remove leeches, my dire bears escort nearly die from those blood suckers. I've since modified my Paracer platform to carry my farming dinos in the front with door frame "cage", set them to aggressive and wonder so I can mow through the forest and swamp faster, breadcrumb some foundations along the way to create an open path for the trip home. It was a very laborious day for me, can't see myself doing that again for another mining site.

[Lucian]

3 hours ago, powerstuck said:

What it really means it's that about roughly 1/3rd of Ark players are subscribed to the mod.

@Valentinez

I hope for the love of god they don't put "flyer buffs'' in the "A Little Further Out'' category. 9 out of 10 items there are 1 year or older. 

No it doesn't

https://steamdb.com

There were over 600,000 players in the last two weeks. And nearly 5 million owners of ark. 

Don't confuse the number of active players with the number of total players. 

[Set777]

2 hours ago, Spaceace49 said:

This "big broad nerf hammer" is a joke. I understand the need to align stats according to the type of flier, but there are way more creative ways to go about it than just locking out upgrade categories entirely. Why limit the choices available instead of going about it a different way? Have weight and speed be directly affected by each other for instance, or just limit the amount of weight upgrades that can be spent on fliers depending on the class (smaller birds can have less weight upgrades). This would affect speed as well since becoming overburdened will cause them to slow down. Not being able to upgrade speed at all is ridiculous. At the very least, let us upgrade speed but lower the amount of speed per level upgraded. 

Another idea would be to just lower the beginning stats when tamed and then allow the same upgrades again based on the class of the flier. At least this would allow some type of choice in upgrades and would eliminate the need to close out a category altogether. Choice is good and when you take it away it eliminates the creativity we have in upgrading our mounts. If the category is there, why would it not be available to upgrade? It makes no sense at all.

I play on Scorched Earth, and I'm unsure how Wyvern eggs or Wyvern milk farming will even be possible with the limited air mount choices since it takes a lot of upgrades in speed currently to even be able to do this without dying. If speed is limited then this won't be possible at all from what I can tell. I'd like the developers to attempt stealing Wyvern eggs with this patch in place and tell us if it is indeed possible without dying on mounts after the no speed upgrade is in place. I can't see how it will be possible. This map is unique in that the scar is frequently visited and the Wyverns there are unforgiving. Argys and Pteras are most commonly used and with Argys especially, they require heavy upgrading in speed to be able to outrun a wild Wyvern. I enjoy being able to choose my upgrades currently though to be able to use this bird as an egg stealer. Pteras require a little less upgrading, but I don't see how it'll be possible to use either one if the speed upgrades are completely removed as a choice in level upgrading.

The idea of lowering Stamina so much also seems pretty insane to me. Especially for Wyverns, and I expect this will make me the most upset since I just spent 4 days of my life near death with no sleep trying to get 100% imprint. Now I won't even be able to use the mounts as effectively as I have been since they can't even do much without getting tired. What fun is this? I might as well have pissed away 4 days instead. If I put this amount of time into something I should be rewarded with a mount that does what is expected of it. Wyverns are very powerful as you stated, but the low stamina idea doesn't seem to line up with the idea of "power" to me. I agree with previous posts in that the breath attacks and bites should take less stamina if the stamina stat is needing to be decreased at all. I want to be able to kill other creatures, including Wyverns, without needing to land every few minutes to regain stamina. Will the wild Wyverns have the same handicap as me? I highly doubt it which makes it stupid to have to land my 100% imprinted Wyvern to kill a wild Wyvern that won't tire at all. I also agree that my imprinted Wyvern should easily outpace wild Wyverns. I don't understand why I would be imprinting a creature and taking so much of my time only to be given a mount that's subpar compared to the wild counterpart. The same goes for all other mounts.

Please reconsider the changes in place in favor of a more creative approach. There has to be better options available other than just locking out categories as I stated. The Stamina and speed nerfs seem far too heavy overall (Stamina especially). I really think weight should've been considered instead of these categories since weight would affect fliers in reality and should tie directly to speed and stamina. The heavy handed approach with these ideas was way overdone and needs to be backed off of quite a bit as well in order for anyone to be totally happy with any changes made I feel. I don't want to see these changes made on the consoles until the rebalance is totally worked out for PC first. What's the point of bringing it to the console if it's just going to be changed again in the near future?

Bring back speed upgrades in some form!

This ! this soooo much

[Chronosphere]

what are thoe ghost patches? 50 54 54 354 354 ?