Re-balancing the Fliers, Mk. 2!

[Extraterrestrial]

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 & Inclemental 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. 

[queenwefe]

I feel the nerf is too much for pve players. I've never bothered with pvp so I can't comment on that. 

The general idea is OK, just maybe not so severe please. The huge stamina nerf caught  me by surprise!

The main issue I have is the inability to deal with Wyverns now. They were really  tough before and end game material, but now my small tribe of 5 can't go near the wyvern scar on fliers, so can't gather eggs or collect milk. Can't survive long enough on a bird to bait the wyverns outside to waiting land dinos. 

Other than that, I'm happy to give the nerf a go for a bit.

[Fabulicous]

Quote

Wyvern - Lord of the skies. Low stamina

Lord of the Skies???!? With Low Stamina? Are you stupid? HOW THE HELL CAN IT BE Lord of the skies WHEN IT HAS TO LAND AFTER A COUPLE OF ATTACKS?

Omfg

[Extraterrestrial]

1 minute ago, Fabulicous said:

Lord of the Skies???!? With Low Stamina? Are you stupid? HOW THE HELL CAN IT BE Lord of the skies WHEN IT HAS TO LAND AFTER A HAND-FULL OF ATTACKS?

Omfg

King Henry 8 was a mighty monarch. He was also fat as raptor and winded easy.

[WolfasaurusRex]

4 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.

I love the new values, can't wait to try them out!

[DarthaNyan]

4 hours ago, TheRightHand said:

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.

Instead of directly buffing stats - make achieving faster mounts a gameplay mechanic.

[FurryFerret]

Hey there!

I would be very very happy, if you give us the possibility to choose whether we want to be able to skill our flyers' speed or not.

So how about a serversetting that enables or disables that? So you could disable it on pvp server and enable it on pve. Because as far as I understood, this "can't skill movement speed"-thing is mostly because of pvp.

I think it's just not reasonable, that you can speed up a turtle to be faster on land than your flyers in the air

So I really hope for that option for my private server, because flying with that speed on center, or also in general.. it's really no fun anymore I think ^^;

The nerf hammer really was a shock, but I hope you guys will find a good way to handle all this, I appreciate your hard work!

[DissuXx]

4 hours ago, TheRightHand said:

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.

I didn't use my wyvern to get around safely, I just did it because it was the fastest way across the map. I play on the center, and as you know it's a humongous map which takes a long time to fly around. My main base is on Tropical North and my other base is at the western cliffs. Having to fly for 15 minutes to get from 1 base to the other is BORING. For all I care I have to land 20 times if that makes you feel better about "my Ark experience", but I just don't want to take 15 minutes, or when I'm transporting stuff with a Quetzal, 30 minutes to simply move stuff between bases. I think 10 minutes is the max it should take no matter what flyer I'm using. 

Now it just feels like you want me to waste time flying instead of actually enjoying the game. I have left my base only once since the update, because I just can't find the will to spend 50% of my time playing Ark flying.

[DissuXx]

.

[BossFi]

 I understand the designated flying roles but without versatility the game becomes just rock,paper,scissors. This also  kills any solo game as you will be on the wrong mount without any backup.

The core base stats should already be enough to designate flyers to their roles already. But let a flyer within a role be different to the one in the same role, otherwise pvp is too predictable and Rock Paper Scissors is boring game mechanics.

 

[BobRoss]

thanks for taking the time to communicate this to us. I've always had faith in you guys as devs and this will continue.

A flier nerf was definitely needed both in PVE and PVP, we got pampered too much and the flier vs all the other creatures balance was waaay off. I fully agree with the way you handled the nerf aswell, its better to hit us hard 1 time and then heal the wounds with some small buffs here and there until you hit that sweet spot.

what i do think is that you should take more time or assign/hire someone specifically to give us a heads up on these things. Have someone suggest stuff to us, gather feedback, discuss things with the community and form a communication channel between you guys and us. right now we were kind of in the dark on the whole situation and therefor alot of people overreacted.

Keep up the good work.

[Tohrazer]

I think you should seriously consider some map variables, the current stamina values on the Center are laughable and make it incredibly frustrating to get around, especially considering not just the size, but the geography of the map, there are some gaps that you literally have to fly without shift held to cross without stamina depleting, that takes sooooo long I'd rather just not log on, as a parent my gaming time is precious and I simply cannot justify spending half of my free time slowly transversing maps.

Also overall I feel the fliers should get some of their sta back, maybe a 30% buff compared to current values.

Also please reconsider the amount of stamina used by wyvern breath attacks, it's iconic to be airbourne and breathing fire etc, however once you have used your breath attack just once or twice you have to land 'Lord of the skies?' it has to land after 2 attacks, lord of nothing... The sta decrease was far too heavy handed in my opinion.

[Chair Breaker]

3 minutes ago, BobRoss said:

thanks for taking the time to communicate this to us. I've always had faith in you guys as devs and this will continue.

A flier nerf was definitely needed both in PVE and PVP, we got pampered too much and the flier vs all the other creatures balance was waaay off. I fully agree with the way you handled the nerf aswell, its better to hit us hard 1 time and then heal the wounds with some small buffs here and there until you hit that sweet spot.

what i do think is that you should take more time or assign/hire someone specifically to give us a heads up on these things. Have someone suggest stuff to us, gather feedback, discuss things with the community and form a communication channel between you guys and us. right now we were kind of in the dark on the whole situation and therefor alot of people overreacted.

Keep up the good work.

I just wonder how many community managers it takes to change a light bulb or actually deliver effective communication between the community and WC. I know they already have community managers, I'm just not sure what they actually do, as it doesn't seem much community managing gets done.

[MissG]

Another game devs who forcing you to play how they want, not how you want. Classic. Great. It's ok, it's your game, but don't pretend that community voice matters for you. You guys will do this on your way anyway, because you thinking "this is the best!". No it's not.

 

And i just wondering, why flyer nerf is so important, and was so rushed, when meanwhile there's a many other things, much more important to do in the first place?

PS. Sorry for my eng.

[[EG] Comdriver W31]

4 hours ago, Maxanto said:

and in 3 days it has 21k subscribers

it is 22.5k now

[Bugg]

1 minute ago, Chair Breaker said:

I just wonder how many community managers it takes to change a light bulb or actually deliver effective communication between the community and WC. I know they already have community managers, I'm just not sure what they actually do, as it doesn't seem much community managing gets done.

LOL this, apart from tweeting way too late and showing up in obscure steam forum threads to drop info that should've gone out to everyone I don't see what they actually do.

[Ormagodon]

Changes were needed, little extreme.. but flyers were super over powered. 

[Massmerize]

first of all: thanks for the update and clarifying the approach.

But
in my humble opinion though you are trying an approach that is a bit to easy:
as many people on steam/reddit already mentioned you are trying to fix different illnesses (flyers to strong fighting wise in pvp / flyers make content trivial in pve with the same medication (same flyer stat nerf [+slightly buffing them again]).

i know it's more work for you but you can't, well technically you can but you shouldn't, trivialize this illnesses the way you do

You have to take into consideration that there is a different flyer usage necessity in the multiple different playmodes of ark, namely:

PVE: Scorched Earth / The Island / The Center
PVP: Scorched Earth / The Island / The Center
and though I haven't played it yet I'd guess the same goes for Primitive+
not to mention unofficial servers as well...

• the resource nodes (like obsidian, metal) are in different altitudes and locations on Scorched Earth/The Island/The Center and are not always accessible without flyers
• the travel distance between the regions (snow/caves/redwood/volcano/center/the world scar/ etc...) varies on each map and has different difficulty levels on traveling in between them (from "easy to ride to" to "impossible to reach with a land dino")
• also please take the average gaming time of a gamer into account, as you are working as well give it a shot and play on the evening for 2 hours for a few weeks on one of your official servers and set up a nice base. you should notice that you rethink your choices of what you want to do, depending on how much time you have when playing with a time constraint.
• the intention for using a certain flyers varies often (painting a tall building / trading with somebody / helping somebody who is stuck, dragged away, disconnected during flight, and many others/ taming a useless dino / retrieving lost inventories / fighting environment because it looks cool / admiring the scenery etc.) "Just to give an example here out of my personal experience: I wouldn't help a stranger being stuck between to rocks on the top of "the center's center" if it takes ages to get there and the risk is extreme." What I try to explain is: Please be aware that you are heavily influencing way of how the game is experienced by simple "stat changes" and that it flying is not always used for the sake of progress.
• there are probably people out there who want to play solo/in small groups/huge tribes -  make flyers viable for all of those types
• Increasing difficulty curve on the ground/water in the last patches while leaving it easy in the skies. I'd just guess some players don't wanna be grindy hardcore Dark Souls Survivers who fight of Eels, while their unconsious lvl 150 Thylocaleo tame is getting robbed your precious Titanoboa Kibble by an Ichthyornis, on a raft that is getting munched on by a Leedsychtis, next to the beach where your house is getting smashed by a lvl 5 Giga... (dear community feel free to complete this story)

Therefore I'd like to take the various multitude of great ideas from the community which I've read here/reddit/steam into account:

• weather effects to influence the usage of flyers and land dino's
• buff land dino's instead
• make land dino trains easier to use
• adjust the mapS(!) to make land dino's more viable
• (untameable) arrial threats
• change kibble so that it (also?) needs resources which are obtained by killing different dinos (prime bronto meat was one example given i think) instead of making everyone wanting and waiting around dino eggfarms, if certain resources can only be farmed by certain dino's / are easier to obtain with certain dino's it would make them obiously more interesting, same goes for ressources like (onions, caveberries, and other unaccessible/unharvestable by flyer objectives)
• create different survival difficulties instead of making the game more difficult with each patch. the learning curve is not bad for "older playerss" but for new players i'd guess the learning curve is getting way to steep.

I know that those mentioned points are more work for the WildCard Dev's than just adjusting stats, but if you expect this game to be a grind for us, make it a grind for yourself as well please.

Thank you for reading this.
Thank this community for it's great ideas.
Excuse me for not providing you with sources because I'm a lazy raptor and i hope somebody else can take care of this.
Excuse my wording as English is not my native language.
Excuse my needs for fast and viable fliers as i am a sloppy, lazy, pve, the center, casual, scrub and really happy with the way it was before 256.

BR.
Massmerize

P.s: Why exactly did you put the game on sale just before this patch? Was it really a try to cover up the player numbers? I think the community would be quite unhappy if the true story behind this would be revealed... just guessing here though...

Edit: thank you guys'n'girls for the upvotes / quotes and comments - please take into account that 90% of the ideas are "borrowed" from the community and i just summerized them in my post. They are not my own ideas even if I'd wish so

Edit 2: if you are interested in the results in player numbers i found this very interesting page here - feel free to quote it to others - and please be aware that there was a sale just before the patch which should have led to a massive increase in numbers i'd guess: http://steamcharts.com/app/346110

Edit 3: I am now, since short after my post unable to comment / reply to anybody else. I wrote a ticket to WC already. So if you want my feedback feel free to add me on steam. In case my post might "disappear" because it is "too offensive!?" or i didn't put in sources feel free to copy & paste it to where ever you see fit.

[UBinator]

For me as Dedicated Server Admin, the current changes a horror!

With my speeded Flyers, i can quickly move from one to other point.

With Spectator this isn’t makable.

With current changes my server lost 20-40% players

 

they want to reduce the stats, and why no ini Params for this?

e.g.

ARRAY {
 0 = QUETZ,
 1 = PTE,
 ...
}
[SECTION]
EnableFlyerBalance=True
SetMaxFlyerHealt[0]=2.5
SetMaxFlyerSpeed[0]=2.0

 

[BobRoss]

6 minutes ago, Chair Breaker said:

I just wonder how many community managers it takes to change a light bulb or actually deliver effective communication between the community and WC. I know they already have community managers, I'm just not sure what they actually do, as it doesn't seem much community managing gets done.

i just dont like the fact that they seem alot more active on their other social media sources like twitter/reddit/steam. this should be their priority with links to the other paltforms not vice versa.

i dont have twitter and im always late on the info as it only gets posted here after X ammount of time and mostly by someone of the community.

 

[catnip]

@Jat One of the reasons I use my flyers a lot is due to the lag on all three of the official servers I'm on. It's very frustrating to be out on your raptor scouting for a new base only to have a lag spike, then find yourself either dead or in a heated battle. That's one of the reason I use my flyers to get around. This is especially true on Scorched Earth where you literally run into elementals. Boom, you're dead.. One of my tribemates was on yesterday trying to tame horses. He lost two of his three tames yesterday to lag and glitching into things. He was heading back to base-not a far distance I might add-there is a lag spike. The next thing he knows both he and the new tame were dead. At least when you are in the air when these hit you have a much better chance for survival. Yesterday when I was flying around Cragg's Island and that area with my wyvern I was running into repeated instances of lag and rubberbanding. This was both while flying and gamboling around on the ground.

I would love to use my raptors more for exploring, or my Rex for meat collecting and my bronto for berries, but I'm not willing to risk my hard earned tames due to these issues. I do use my land animals on a regular basis so the only use flyers argument I see floating around the forums doesn't fly with me (pun intended).

As a geologist I have a professional interest (aka rabid obsession) with dinosaurs. Being able to ride around on a Rex or Ptera is a dream come true. I enjoy the game but the current changes to flyers make it very difficult to enjoy the gameplay. As a working mother of two teenaged girls I have a limited amount of time I can play. Right now I'm basically in maintenance mode due to the latest changes. I should also add that my perspective is from a PVE point of view of a casual player (see previous statement about mommy status).

Suggestions: My poison wyvern's original speed was 135%. Not excessive, and got me from base to base in a decent amount of time. I agree with the 150% cap I've seen suggested. That would allow them to keep up with wild ones but not make them too fast. I'd also like to ask for some of my stamina back please. Poor Malachite  gets out of breath too quickly.?

Argents and Pelagornis need more speed and stamina. Right now they are practically useless. A 175-200% speed cap would make argys sufficiently useful, especially for hunting eggs and transporting milk back to base for the babies. Ptera also need a boost in both areas. Haven't taken our Quetz up so can't really comment on that.

 

 

[Nagell]

I understand the nerf for official servers. However, private server owners should have the option to control their environment.

[efFDee]

What happened to the speed change that were in the table initially? Wyvern went from new value 790 back to 690... what gives? Wyverns should be the fastest thing in the sky, period. and OF COURSE they should outrun wild wyverns. Any tamed dino should outrun its wild counterpart.

[Tohrazer]

6 minutes ago, Massmerize said:

first of all: thanks for the update and clarifying the approach.

But
in my humble opinion though you are trying an approach that is a bit to easy:
as many people on steam/reddit already mentioned you are trying to fix different illnesses (flyers to strong fighting wise in pvp / flyers make content trivial in pve with the same medication (same flyer stat nerf [+slightly buffing them again]).

i know it's more work for you but you can't, well technically you can but you shouldn't, trivialize this illnesses the way you do

You have to take into consideration that there is a different flyer usage necessity in the multiple different playmodes of ark, namely:

PVE: Scorched Earth / The Island / The Center
PVP: Scorched Earth / The Island / The Center
and though I haven't played it yet I'd guess the same goes for Primitive+
not to mention unofficial servers as well...

• the resource nodes (like obsidian, metal) are in different altitudes and locations on Scorched Earth/The Island/The Center and are not always accessible without flyers
• the travel distance between the regions (snow/caves/redwood/volcano/center/the world scar/ etc...) varies on each map and has different difficulty levels on traveling in between them (from "easy to ride to" to "impossible to reach with a land dino")
• also please take the average gaming time of a gamer into account, as you are working as well give it a shot and play on the evening for 2 hours for a few weeks on one of your official servers and set up a nice base. you should notice that you rethink your choices of what you want to do, depending on how much time you have when playing with a time constraint.
• the intention for using a certain flyers varies often (painting a tall building / trading with somebody / helping somebody who is stuck, dragged away, disconnected during flight, and many others/ taming a useless dino / retrieving lost inventories / fighting environment because it looks cool / admiring the scenery etc.) "Just to give an example here out of my personal experience: I wouldn't help a stranger being stuck between to rocks on the top of "the center's center" if it takes ages to get there and the risk is extreme." What I try to explain is: Please be aware that you are heavily influencing way of how the game is experienced by simple "stat changes" and that it flying is not always used for the sake of progress.
• there are probably people out there who want to play solo/in small groups/huge tribes -  make flyers viable for all of those types
• Increasing difficulty curve on the ground/water in the last patches while leaving it easy in the skies. I'd just guess some players don't wanna be grindy hardcore Dark Souls Survivers who fight of Eels, while their unconsious lvl 150 Thylocaleo tame is getting robbed your precious Titanoboa Kibble by an Ichthyornis, on a raft that is getting munched on by a Leedsychtis, next to the beach where your house is getting smashed by a lvl 5 Giga... (dear community feel free to complete this story)

Therefore I'd like to take the various multitude of great ideas from the community which I've read here/reddit/steam into account:

• weather effects to influence the usage of flyers and land dino's
• buff land dino's instead
• make land dino trains easier to use
• adjust the mapS(!) to make land dino's more viable
• (untameable) arrial threats
• change kibble so that it (also?) needs resources which are obtained by killing different dinos (prime bronto meat was one example given i think) instead of making everyone wanting and waiting around dino eggfarms, if certain resources can only be farmed by certain dino's / are easier to obtain with certain dino's it would make them obiously more interesting, same goes for ressources like (onions, caveberries, and other unaccessible/unharvestable by flyer objectives)
• create different survival difficulties instead of making the game more difficult with each patch. the learning curve is not bad for "older playerss" but for new players i'd guess the learning curve is getting way to steep.

I know that those mentioned points are more work for the WildCard Dev's than just adjusting stats, but if you expect this game to be a grind for us, make it a grind for yourself as well please.

Thank you for reading this.
Thank this community for it's great ideas.
Excuse me for not providing you with sources because I'm a lazy raptor and i hope somebody else can take care of this.
Excuse my wording as English is not my native language.
Excuse my needs for fast and viable fliers as i am a sloppy, lazy, pve, the center, casual, scrub and really happy with the way it was before 256.

BR.
Massmerize

P.s: Why exactly did you put the game on sale just before this patch? Was it really a try to cover up the player numbers? I think the community would be quite unhappy if the true story behind this would be revealed... just guessing here though...

 

This is a good post.

[assassin12573]

atleast make the pteras on the pve servers the old speed cause wyvern egg hunting is now impossible whitout dying