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Re-balancing the Fliers, Mk. 2!


TheRightHand

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Hello Guys,

 

this thread is really HUGE. So I'm very sorry if I have to say: tl;dr, because I had a lot of work these days. But for what I've read from the community, I agree with nearly 100% of that what PvE'lers did say.

I'd like to see my old flyers back. I'm a true PvE player, I don't like PvP and dismiss it even so. To me, a honor to PvP fraction like the Flyer Nerf is a hit against every PvE player if it affects both parties.

I still have my score from the latest game BEFORE the Flyer Nerf has become active. I'm willing to keep it unless this kind of problem is solved, hoping I'd need it again.

Every larger un-versioned update, I update my server as well as my client and logged in to see if the Nerf has been reverted. I'm doing this because the patch notes do not comment every patch. This is a lack what needs to be solved, IMHO. Especially for server administrators, it's important to know if a patch is recent to client only or to the server as well. And, I'd like to know what exactly has been changed.

I'm watching this Flyer Nerf and its discussion here in the official ARK forum very well in the Bug Section. My hope is that the devs will revert the mess they've done. It's not meant negative...they sure have their reasons and I even understand them. If I'd love to play PvP, then I'd also dislike the current flyer's ability. But I'm waiting for the final distinction between those two variants. In spite of other games which can't disable Friendly Fire, ARK has the possibility to do so. This can even be settings-related, eg. if a server configuration has activated PvP Friendly Fire but deactived it on PvE, then you can be sure that this is a PvE server. If that's not fitting due to tribe management, then implement a clear setting to distinct between those two modi -- or make a setting for Flyer Nerf at all.

If a server is PvP, then the Flyer Nerf is active. if it's PvE, it's not -- that's as simple to implement. Or do it with a special server setting.

I'm pretty sure that the devs are working like hell, but I don't know if they're working on a solution for the PvE fraction, so I'm honestly asking if this will be taken into consideration at all. A short feedback is much appreciated. I don't like to hang into the air, not knowing if hoping for a revert is a waste of time or having some more patience. The game is fun, but not without the ability the flyers had once.
 

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On 4/4/2017 at 0:01 AM, TheRightHand said:

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

so much so you posted stats and then nerfed them again, the buff is so minor it might as well be the same as it was..

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3 minutes ago, Taylos said:

Balance ? Disabling flying Dinos is not balancing :) Well with every patch I log in check my wyverns and well every time I am disappointed yet again. Still no Change still useless. I wonder how Long it will take till I just don't care anymore.

do what i did a crocs gotta eat after all.

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Cause thread "Anyone else notice the nerf in the flyers v2 fix" was closed and I would like to continue in more precise discussion, 2 quotes:

Quote

DarthaNyan

Actually if i read numbers correctly, then devs listed absolute numbers change. That means that Relative change to what we have now is much different.

For example:

Ptera - they upped rider speed mutiplier from 0.75 to 1.0817 and listed it as a 33.17% increase. In absolute numbers, yes. In relative: 1.0817/0.75 = 1.4422 or44.22% increase of non-sprint speed.

Then they raised sprint multiplier from 0.85 to 1, but have a mistake in spreadsheet formula that lists it as negative change (-0.15). Relatively to current situationPtera will sprint 17.6% (1/0.85) faster.

BUT (we are entering a theoretical field here) if these 2 figures are multiplicative to each other, then the absolute increase of Pteras sprint speed will be 1.4422*1.1764=1.69677 or a bit more than 69.67% increase over current sprint speed.

Ptera's stamina regen change from 0.1 to 0.13 is a 30% increase. While stamina consumption (not sprinting) got raised only by 18.18% which translates to 15.4% less flight time which, when not sprinting, is quite long already.

Ptera got nerfed? dont think so. Although decreases to per-level increase amounts will surely be felt (you'll need more domesticated levels to get to previous stat amounts).

 

Quote

ncola7

These are 5% or 1% changes to the per level increase.

They are are increasing the stamina use by 5% but increasing the stamina regen by 3%. 

They are increasing the base speed by 33%. and Giving back leveling speed.

I probably missed something else.

Yes this is nothing compared to the original, but the original was ok. This in my opinion is not more of a nerf. Ptero shouldn't have high weight or health. And I'm happy to have it get the speed increase. That's it's main role IMO.

So there are postive changes and there are negative changes but - unfortunatelly, @ncola7 - there is no change in speed levelling (no matter of exact meaning of given non zero values, it is the same before and after).

I reformat the table with coloring of changes for better orientation:

Ark - Flyer Rebalance Data (2017-04-05).png

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1 minute ago, Griffin1984 said:

I'm wondering, is that spreadsheet live or is it a moment snapshot from the changes? This because i haven't seen it change at all since The Hand wrote his post...

We have 50+ pages of responses now, any news from the devs? 

no, it hasn't changed at all. I doubt much of anything will change

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1 minute ago, Griffin1984 said:

We have 50+ pages of responses now, any news from the devs? 

They are not active on their own forums, if you want to be updated, check twitter or reddit. The patch is scheduled in approx 35 minutes (also displayed on the in-game main menu).

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10 hours ago, LilNastyGurl said:

A casual player will NEVER be on the same level as a hardcore 8hr player, doesn't matter what you do to the game. Unless they put upper limit restrictions (only 2 rexes, only 20% imprint, no tames that a 2hr player couldn't tame etc.), the person with the most time will always be better off than the one with less. Tame numbers, tame levels, amount of materials, amount of PvE skill, PvP skill, recovery from wipes, imprint schedules, all that jazz. 

I could see how they could make a 2 hour session in ARK way more meaningful (most tames with base materials like meat and berries shouldn't take 2 hours anyway) but unless they are going to put an upper limit restriction on things, yeah the 8hr player > 2hr casual player. Not a "get gud" speech, just the way it is.

Problem is most PvE players don't want balance. If you gave them a flyingTitano with 60,000 weight, 3,000 base speed that collects metal they would be like "Hell Yeah!" and use that for the rest of their lives. Some don't want that, but they're kind of a minority. PvE players just want to satisfy their desires to acquire insane amounts of materials and kill everything (with no risk of being killed because that baby was hard to raise), building ludicrous super structures for aesthetics, not function.

Which is why I was just suggesting that the team make a "Creative" mode for these types so they wouldn't HAVE to play the original PvE or PvP modes.

these people can play single player. you can change everything you want to your hears desire. Official PVE should not cater to these types of players and should focus on making the environment more challenging. this is what they have done with the flier nerf.

i play PVE and a couple days ago i had to land my quetzal because i was out of stam and when i landed i got attacked by troodons. they kept draining my quetzal's stamina so it couldnt even regen any of it. i had to get off it and lure them away on foot. this was a challenge, these are the PVE encounters im looking for. i nearly lost my 262 quetz to 3 lvl 30 troodons. No longer can you just blindly land everywhere and anywhere or fly everywhere without worrying about ' where will i land to regain stam' it feels alot more natural and thrilling now.

 

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6 minutes ago, BobRoss said:

it feels alot more natural and thrilling now.

 

First I gotta say, it feels like they pay you to write what you write. It is not normal for a Player to write oh I nearly lost my good/best Quetz but well that is life. Usualy People hate it when that happens. Also Trodons are no Problem for any dino they are only annoying for Players. But back to the Quote,.. natural ? What Kind of natural, I don't think life any other game has ever been the way you describe it there. So there is nothing natural about it. And if I want to Play something thrilling I won't Play ark.

Also how even cares about Quetzals, those are heavy Transport Mounts and I don't really ever care about them. As for Pteranodon or what they are called they have been nothing but fast, which they aren't anymore. And then the Wyvern the endgame "birds" they are literaly unusable as of the patch on april first. Taking away the Speed would be one Thing we could have coped  with it but taking away Stamina as well was the most stupid Thing they could have done. Besides taking away Speed means no more new wyverns in the future. Even if you genuinely Thing that was good,.. it wasn't and in all honesty I Thing the steam Reviews to that game will shift to negative in the next 2 days and will go back up not the way we Players are treated.

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@Jat @TheRightHand

(sorry if this double posts, i hit submit and waited and it didnt show up in the thread or in my profile activity, hopefully this isnt a double.)

I appreciate your consideration of the feedback in this thread and I think I'm finally past the extreme feelings I've had similar to being betrayed in a sense because of the amount of time I've spent playing the game (which i recognize is pale by consideration to some players so dont flame me guys) and these changes are like being handed almost an entirely different game.  There are a few things now that I feel I need to say and hope it is constructive for your team.

(i number things so people dont need to quote the whole line to reply to a part of this, its a weird habit)

1. I can appreciate that changes needed to be made and i can understand the one big step instead of slowly nerfing things however it feels like you pulled off skin when you ripped the bandaid off, a little over aggressively. Based on the reactions from everyone and my own reaction, however well thought out it seemed to your team, we were somewhat blind sided with a nerf that wouldnt have made it past a "beta test group" of actual end user players if it had gone to one. Maybe you do have some beta servers out there that you try these things out on with a test group, I dont know. What i do know though is, not being able to out run a rhino on my ptera is just wrong.

2.  I've always felt that a guiding philosophy in balancing/tuning a game should more often than not include adding something to the game as opposed to taking something away. Granted that isnt always possible and im sure it can get out of control if things are always added so the approach itself also needs to be employed in a balanced manner but it seems to me that when developers start "taking things away from players" things get bitter and participation starts to die off.  So if something is overpowered, does it need rival or countermeasure added or maybe a specific weakness added, i'll clarify that when i offer some alternative solutions below. Taking away the ability to level speed across the board for flyers though doesnt seem consistent with the dynamics of the rest of the dinos in the game.

 3.  One thing I think that is important to consider is that the maps are all very different while land dinos work great in some areas they simply dont on others. So trying to get people to use land dinos more shouldnt be attained by nerfing the air. If you want those land dinos to get used more, make them more useful. Give strategic perks to using them. For example, let us build real armor and different armors for land dinos since weight is less critical to them than a flyer, let us bulk them up with heavy duty gear (and i dont mean tek stuff, i mean chain-mail or something). Maybe have an armor for a wolf that lets it share damage if its attacking in a pack or gear for a rhino that lets it do some damage to metal when its at full speed. Maybe you could have armor for a sabertooth that makes it harder for turrets to hit it when its running or makes it more stealthy. I know these suggestions are a huge mechanic to add to the game, but the overall idea is, land dinos are not used as much because they simply arent as useful for attacking bases they are bullet sponges. Granted my perspective is from PvP not PvE so my arguments here dont all apply to PvE.

4. DONT REMOVE LEVELING SPEED ON FLYERS PLEASE!  ------ yes there are issues with server sync and how defenses work and all that fun pvp stuff and game world rendering when flyers get tooo fast, so find out where that speed becomes a problem and cap top speed for anything there. I like how you described how you wanted the flyers to be used in your description in the beginning of this thread it makes sense. I've always thought of my birds like this: Ptera is my sports car, Argy is my full size truck and my Quetz is my big rig/18wheeler/tractor whatever you want to call it.  If i want to max the speed on my ptera at the cost of weight or hp or stamina or melee that should be fine. Just change the multiplier for the stat per type of bird based on how you intend it to be used. If a ptera is the hot rod of the skies then (random numbers here) each level point in speed should add 5% while on the other end, each level point in speed for a Quetz would be 1%. Flip those values for weight, the quetz would get more weight per point and the ptera much less. Isnt that mechanic in there already to some degree? If i really want to put all my points into speed on my quetz and have a quetz with low hp and weight how does that put it outside the mold of your descriptions above? My quetz will go faster than another quetz but will have a glass jaw ;) You could go a step farther for the quetz where any point put into speed will lower its weight capacity a little bit, not the same mechanic as just having too much weight slowing you down, but an actual 'static' value that changes specifically when you apply a point into speed.

To conclude this novel...

We all like to play this game thats why we are here. Before the nerf, the game was time consuming. Enough so that its hard enough to validate your time spent in a game with people out in the real world who dont play it. Now with the speed nerf, I cant even afford the time to play the game and get any joy out of it let alone ask my kid to wait 20 mins while i park my ptera in a safe spot. Today I got on to check generators and move a couple things around (light things on my ptera) it took 10 times longer than before and my ptera didnt have more than 220 speed on it before the nerf. Maybe the nerf would be better on a hardcore server or a new type of server thats a major time suck but many of us cant afford that amount of time and we would rather not play on an unofficial server that can be wiped at any time just so we can play ark. I hope speed training comes back to ark flyers (granted, balanced) otherwise the game will have suddenly and abruptly become way too time consuming for a non-career player like myself to continue playing and i would rather not quit my ark addiction.

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1 hour ago, invincibleqc said:

They are not active on their own forums, if you want to be updated, check twitter or reddit. The patch is scheduled in approx 35 minutes (also displayed on the in-game main menu).

Well.... it wasn't part of the patch we just got. 

 

whatever happened to....

 

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.

 

That was back on Sunday, and it's now Thursday.

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2 minutes ago, Taylos said:

First I gotta say, it feels like they pay you to write what you write. It is not normal for a Player to write oh I nearly lost my good/best Quetz but well that is life. Usualy People hate it when that happens. Also Trodons are no Problem for any dino they are only annoying for Players. But back to the Quote,.. natural ? What Kind of natural, I don't think life any other game has ever been the way you describe it there. So there is nothing natural about it. And if I want to Play something thrilling I won't Play ark

they dont pay me, i enjoy their product nothing more nothing less. and why would it be not normal for me to like a challenge PVE forces onto me? i dont have players to worry about so i want the environment to make it as hard as possible for me to survive. i like facing challenges and overcoming them. And troodons most certainly are a problem for a dino if they cannot attack because they are out of stam, they pack quite a punch for their size. :) and what I mean by natural is that i felt PVE was more of a 'do everything you want without a challenge' mode and not a Player vs the Environment mode. You are playing a survival game, it should be thrilling, if you want to build play the sims or minecraft, if you want to farm there is a farming simulator out there. Ark Survival Evolved should in all game modes be about survival and trying to cope with challenges.

2 minutes ago, Taylos said:

Also how even cares about Quetzals, those are heavy Transport Mounts and I don't really ever care about them. As for Pteranodon or what they are called they have been nothing but fast, which they aren't anymore. And then the Wyvern the endgame "birds" they are literaly unusable as of the patch on april first. Taking away the Speed would be one Thing we could have coped  with it but taking away Stamina as well was the most stupid Thing they could have done. Besides taking away Speed means no more new wyverns in the future. Even if you genuinely Thing that was good,.. it wasn't and in all honesty I Thing the steam Reviews to that game will shift to negative in the next 2 days and will go back up not the way we Players are treated.

who cares about quetzals? have you been living under a rock since their release? EVERYONE used quetzals for almost everything. up until the platform nerf you could mine 25k metal in 1 trip and fly home without a problem. they were used in PVE, in PVP for farming/fighting/transporting/. it was the GOD dino of ARK. 

Same goes for the ptera, they did way more that they should, they had a dmg output higher than a rex with practically unlimited stamina, speed faster than the speed of sound making auto turrets useless.  They could even kill Alphas, quite strong for a bird that is 'nothing but fast' as you put it.

I havent used wyvers since the patch so i wont argue over them, i used them before tho and i found there damage to be a bit over the top, but their lack of armor (no saddle) compensated for that.

I agree they did an overkill with the nerf but i'd rather have them nerf everything in 1 go and slightly buff certain aspects, which they will be doing shortly, than having them nerf flier after flier over the course of a month or 2. 

fliers right now are closer to where they should be than before the nerf.

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8 minutes ago, Xphere said:

@Jat @TheRightHand

(sorry if this double posts, i hit submit and waited and it didnt show up in the thread or in my profile activity, hopefully this isnt a double.)

I appreciate your consideration of the feedback in this thread and I think I'm finally past the extreme feelings I've had similar to being betrayed in a sense because of the amount of time I've spent playing the game (which i recognize is pale by consideration to some players so dont flame me guys) and these changes are like being handed almost an entirely different game.  There are a few things now that I feel I need to say and hope it is constructive for your team.

(i number things so people dont need to quote the whole line to reply to a part of this, its a weird habit)

1. I can appreciate that changes needed to be made and i can understand the one big step instead of slowly nerfing things however it feels like you pulled off skin when you ripped the bandaid off, a little over aggressively. Based on the reactions from everyone and my own reaction, however well thought out it seemed to your team, we were somewhat blind sided with a nerf that wouldnt have made it past a "beta test group" of actual end user players if it had gone to one. Maybe you do have some beta servers out there that you try these things out on with a test group, I dont know. What i do know though is, not being able to out run a rhino on my ptera is just wrong.

2.  I've always felt that a guiding philosophy in balancing/tuning a game should more often than not include adding something to the game as opposed to taking something away. Granted that isnt always possible and im sure it can get out of control if things are always added so the approach itself also needs to be employed in a balanced manner but it seems to me that when developers start "taking things away from players" things get bitter and participation starts to die off.  So if something is overpowered, does it need rival or countermeasure added or maybe a specific weakness added, i'll clarify that when i offer some alternative solutions below. Taking away the ability to level speed across the board for flyers though doesnt seem consistent with the dynamics of the rest of the dinos in the game.

 3.  One thing I think that is important to consider is that the maps are all very different while land dinos work great in some areas they simply dont on others. So trying to get people to use land dinos more shouldnt be attained by nerfing the air. If you want those land dinos to get used more, make them more useful. Give strategic perks to using them. For example, let us build real armor and different armors for land dinos since weight is less critical to them than a flyer, let us bulk them up with heavy duty gear (and i dont mean tek stuff, i mean chain-mail or something). Maybe have an armor for a wolf that lets it share damage if its attacking in a pack or gear for a rhino that lets it do some damage to metal when its at full speed. Maybe you could have armor for a sabertooth that makes it harder for turrets to hit it when its running or makes it more stealthy. I know these suggestions are a huge mechanic to add to the game, but the overall idea is, land dinos are not used as much because they simply arent as useful for attacking bases they are bullet sponges. Granted my perspective is from PvP not PvE so my arguments here dont all apply to PvE.

4. DONT REMOVE LEVELING SPEED ON FLYERS PLEASE!  ------ yes there are issues with server sync and how defenses work and all that fun pvp stuff and game world rendering when flyers get tooo fast, so find out where that speed becomes a problem and cap top speed for anything there. I like how you described how you wanted the flyers to be used in your description in the beginning of this thread it makes sense. I've always thought of my birds like this: Ptera is my sports car, Argy is my full size truck and my Quetz is my big rig/18wheeler/tractor whatever you want to call it.  If i want to max the speed on my ptera at the cost of weight or hp or stamina or melee that should be fine. Just change the multiplier for the stat per type of bird based on how you intend it to be used. If a ptera is the hot rod of the skies then (random numbers here) each level point in speed should add 5% while on the other end, each level point in speed for a Quetz would be 1%. Flip those values for weight, the quetz would get more weight per point and the ptera much less. Isnt that mechanic in there already to some degree? If i really want to put all my points into speed on my quetz and have a quetz with low hp and weight how does that put it outside the mold of your descriptions above? My quetz will go faster than another quetz but will have a glass jaw ;) You could go a step farther for the quetz where any point put into speed will lower its weight capacity a little bit, not the same mechanic as just having too much weight slowing you down, but an actual 'static' value that changes specifically when you apply a point into speed.

To conclude this novel...

We all like to play this game thats why we are here. Before the nerf, the game was time consuming. Enough so that its hard enough to validate your time spent in a game with people out in the real world who dont play it. Now with the speed nerf, I cant even afford the time to play the game and get any joy out of it let alone ask my kid to wait 20 mins while i park my ptera in a safe spot. Today I got on to check generators and move a couple things around (light things on my ptera) it took 10 times longer than before and my ptera didnt have more than 220 speed on it before the nerf. Maybe the nerf would be better on a hardcore server or a new type of server thats a major time suck but many of us cant afford that amount of time and we would rather not play on an unofficial server that can be wiped at any time just so we can play ark. I hope speed training comes back to ark flyers (granted, balanced) otherwise the game will have suddenly and abruptly become way too time consuming for a non-career player like myself to continue playing and i would rather not quit my ark addiction.

i dont agree with all of it but i think this is an example of a well thought out and well structured post that WC can work with, people should take this as an example when offering critique to a dev, atleast they can work with things you put in this post, +1

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Hey guys!

Thanks for all the feedback. We've made the changes live, you can check the notes for the information. I am going to be taking this thread down, locking it, and giving it the once over with the guys again. 

We want to see how the new changes feel for a few days and start collecting feedback so we can begin our next pass of changes. Thank you for being so patient and we hope you like this latest update! 

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