Re-balancing the Fliers, Mk. 2!

[Spyrho 1]

flyers need the nerf let people fight like real men and don't fly off on their pter with 550 movement speed buffed on it its pussie mode

kids always complain about each nerf any any other game there is because it was their only way to steal stuff raid people with and now they can't anymore cuz they suck as much in the sky as on the ground

Good nerf wildcard !

playing for 3 years was waiting for this

[GreenRoc 172]

1 hour ago, cokll said:

Please do not try too much to change, please give at least the right to choose

Please add a base attribute multiplier to the Dino.

Private server needs it

I agree completely! I'd give your post a rep, but I've reached my rep cap for the day.

Please give us single player and server owners the choice to apply these change in statistics. Better yet, let us have the ability to configure statistics, to have a base stat, and a stat cap (or no stat cap at all) and a stat multiplier. Fliers on my PvE server and single player are preferred to be extra speedy and carry a plethora of things, and zero stamina drain (whenever that old config is fixed). This nerf goes against that playstyle of my private server.

If I wanted to use land mounts, I WOULD (and do use, when I want to). Please let us non-official server players "choose" if we want to avoid the ground, or not. Some of us prefer to play that way! This is a sandbox game. Playstyles shouldn't be forced.

1 hour ago, TheRightHand said:

most people seem to agree with, is that "it had to happen"

"most"? I think you should have said "many". "Most" implies the majority, which requires a measurement of the whole, and counting actual numbers that show the majority in agreement. I know for sure I do not agree in certain context. Do I agree it had to happen to PvP, sure, but not to PvE, and I would NEVER voluntarily allow my server to be succumed to these changes... But at this point, my only choice is to have the server offline until configs are added to negate the effects of this nerf.

There are several things I would really like to know (which I have not yet heard any official word of...but I havent read everything so if I missed it, I do apologize!) 1.Will you be adding configs to allow us private servers to adjust these stats and the option to remove stat caps? 2. (If #1 is something like "we dont know yet") Has adding these configs been discussed? 3. Do you have "dinostaminadrainmultiplier=0.0" on a bug list of things you plan to fix? (it's been broken since feeding raid dino was added, there's plenty of posts out there on this bug, including my own). Fixing that config would help our server "adapt" to many of the changes that were added in your nerf patch.

The answers you have for these questions will help me make the decision on my private server, to put the server back online, or to close it forever. I have to pay rent for this server, so the sooner I can have these answers, the better for my finances. I'd hate to continue to waste rental funds if these configs will not be added.

[Probitas 139]

27 minutes ago, BulletForce said:

People are still missing the point that flyers are not meant to be superior just an alternative. The devs have said this numerous times.

 

The reason for the nerf was players were just using flyers and nothing but flyers to achieve 90% of the things they needed to do. That is bad for gameplay, bad for balance, bad for immersion and bad for the survival aspect of the game.

Show me the proof that players were only using flyers? Beyond the obvious PVP problems? There is none because it was not happening to the extent being claimed. People used other dinos as well. Unless WC can actually check ALL servers for dino usage stats no one can know the statistics, so you are basically making them up. Now if breeding was making flyers too powerful, I agree. Remove the breeding and leave all dinos alone, and your imbalance is gone by default.

[ncola7 55]

1 hour 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.

This is fantastic. "Interaction with your Community 101" material right here. Obviously people have more questions and some disagree with you. But at least we know. We know the point, we get the direction. We see, oh ok I should be using X flyer in this situation now Y flyer. And if we still have a problem with it we can say, "Hey X flyer isnt really doing what we and you think it should be doing." And as a math guy I love back end numbers, I can clearly see what it is youre changing and by how much and theres no surprise or "oh wait its really this, its worse then we thought."

However I still have 2 concerns, and maybe they'll be addressed once I use the live patch but for now:

1. Wyvern is defined as having low stam, but I mean it's got a monstrous wingspan and I feel like it should be able to fly a pretty good distance and effectively fight an alpha wyvern without using all of it's stam before end of the fight, either on it's breath attack or just flying around. It's the most difficult flyer to get in many ways, it should definitely feel like the best and very rewarding when you jump on the first time. But maybe giving speed back and small bump in stam will be enough.

2. In my opinion you're missing a huge need in flyers when you define them the way you have. The personal transport. Something that can take you and maybe a friend, if its very high level, across the map in a quick amount of time. During my time on official PVE I'd often make trips to someones base to admire their new architecture, look at a cool mutation, maybe make a small trade or watch the newly bred gigas rip apart a titan. With the ptero having it's stam dropped and the quetz it's speed, idk if there's a quick way of getting myself to someone elses base, where I don't have a bed. Obviously if im trying to get to an enemy base this quickly on PVP this bird should have such low health that if I get in turret range I am almost guaranteed dead. Maybe the ptero stam breaks wont be that bad, and it will still fit this bill. Currently I'm skeptical though.

Last key point is mindlessly flying for a long time to get somewhere, or just sprinting down the beach on a land dino to get from A to B isn't the most fun this game has to offer or one of it's premier mechanics. This is proven by an endgame reward literally having it's only purpose being to cut travel out of the game. So in general, in my opinion, changes that make this longer and more of a process are not good changes.

[Probitas 139]

22 minutes ago, BulletForce said:

He means you get to level 35, tame a Pteradon and suddenly your in 5th gear.

You can't shoot from the back of a Ptero or any dino other than the Quetz on the platform, and then the quetz isn't moving (unless more than one player on it). You can from plenty of other dinos. Where is the 5th gear you speak of?

[Monkeypuzzle 72]

Right on. I'm very glad to see that the flyers aren't going to be made useless. Most of my servermates and I have been rolling with the changes because many of us were already trying to have the discipline to have no flyers on new servers for as long as possible. There is something much more immersive about being true to the ground game. With this last patch we just laughed at the salt, had a sad moment for our formerly amazing flyers, and jumped on our bears to find the new creatures. It's tough though because you've also been making the ground a much more annoying place to be with so many things now that can knock you off your mount, knock you out, or steal your stuff. You have to be really unattached to your precious things. It is a game after all, and you are doing a good job keeping things challenging.

I'm excited that you went with strengthening the roles of the flyers. I want to strongly encourage you to liberally buff some stats as much as you nerf others. The faster you make a ptera, the lower it's base hp should be. That way they can be really fast without being OP. But honestly with pteras I don't think you would have half the complaints with them without the out of place damage of the c roll or the unlikely ability to pick up a second player. Take those away and you can be more generous with their health and stam. In the same vein, the slower you make a quetz, the more weight it should carry, higher even than pre-nerf. If you halve the speed, double the weight. That way it will be a slow arduous journey, but with a big payload. In pvp, you'll be vulnerable and a tempting target for pirates and you'll have to be prepared to defend them. And so on with each of them. That way each flyer will have a prized trait for players, something they can breed for and make even more awesome. Yet each also comes with a glaring vulnerability, and you will have to be careful to keep them safe.

Keep on with the hard work and keep in mind that the more abuse a disgruntled player throws at you, the more your game meant to them. It is a compliment that people care that much.

[Isho 91]

34 minutes ago, BulletForce said:

People are still missing the point that flyers are not meant to be superior just an alternative. The devs have said this numerous times.

 

The reason for the nerf was players were just using flyers and nothing but flyers to achieve 90% of the things they needed to do. That is bad for gameplay, bad for balance, bad for immersion and bad for the survival aspect of the game.

Except they couldve easily split the roles between flyers and ground mounts more properly. Make them less invincible versus ground mounts by decreasing damage and not allowing certain structures on Q-Plat. That way people wouldnt be breeding insane Battle Quetzals that could demolish the entire island. 

Flyers are meant to scout and transportation and not a safe haven for everyone and I could bet that most people didnt use it primarily for the latter part.

[BulletForce 460]

Just now, Probitas said:

You can't shoot from the back of a Ptero or any dino other than the Quetz on the platform, and then the quetz isn't moving (unless more than one player on it). You can from plenty of other dinos. Where is the 5th gear you speak of?

Previously the way to advance on a server was to reach level 35, use a few cheap dodo eggs to get a 150 tame Pteradon then you were set. You were able to zip around the map in mere minutes and kill any wild dino you want otherwise you could just fly past it. As well as this it allowed the player to gather rare resources from from far off lands  in a quick and efficient manner. When it came to PVP it was unsurpassed being able to win any 1v1 PVP fight so along as the opponent wasn't surrounded by turrets in a base and if they were you'd just pump points into speed and you then could skip past turrets with a barrel roll.

If you didn't notice it was truly broken then what can I say..

[Probitas 139]

22 minutes ago, Lucian said:

Nice try. I run my own unofficial server since August of 2015. Its not all Official PVP problems. And one of the choices we should have as private server owners is to have it set to the same as official for the same experience.

And I never claimed to speak for everyone, only myself.

So, when you said the game was boring with flyers, you really meant to say boring for you. Thank you for the clarification. Now if WC intends to leave flyers permanently gimped (the minor adjustments in the table do just that for the most part), I don't think people who play the game in PVE will be using them for anything anymore. And I'm sorry you disagree with the statement that it was mainly a PVP issue, but all the video and forum evidence you can search for, most defenders of the nerf, are using PVP examples to explain why the nerf was needed, but all of them leave out that main culprit - unrestrained breeding mechanics. Remove that mechanic entirely and all those problems go away. I am of the opinion that more people would prefer to lose breeding than lose flyer speed and the ability to train all stats up normally.

[Ranger1 1056]

It will be interesting to see how this plays out, although I'm a little concerned about the Quetz weight capacity.  It may be tricky to find the sweet spot on that one.

Hopefully this isn't a distraction from this very necessary discussion, but I believe there is a separate issue that needs to be addressed that might have a significant impact on where these numbers need to ultimately land.  To be honest, it's not going to be an easy issue to address.

Land travel is so incredibly unpopular due primarily to ongoing issues with pathfinding and collision box issues.  It's frustratingly difficult to travel in large area's of the map because of issues with getting stuck on rocks and/or trees.  With some creatures this isn't a huge problem, but with many (especially the ones that can carry a lot) it's a fairly serious issue that forces flight to be the superior choice in most circumstances even if it were to have serious drawbacks.

Preferably getting stuck would simply be fixed (I know, easier said than done), but if that can't be done perhaps an option would be to make it easier and/or quicker for moderate to large size creatures to knock over trees and get over rocks.  It's a bit of a shortcut, but it might solve the issue of getting stuck all the time (especially in thick jungle or forest).  Right now palm trees in particular are a problem because even if you can knock them over they hold you up for several seconds for each tree, which can be a problem when there are a lot to try and get through.  

This is especially true for animals following you, thus making caravans even more impractical in comparison to fliers.  A slower movement speed is understandable, but needing to stop every few feet to unstick one of your group can get maddening.

Again, hopefully this isn't a distraction from current issues... but I feel it's an important and closely related problem has a bearing on the balancing pass.

 

[ncola7 55]

39 minutes ago, BulletForce said:

People are still missing the point that flyers are not meant to be superior just an alternative. The devs have said this numerous times.

 

The reason for the nerf was players were just using flyers and nothing but flyers to achieve 90% of the things they needed to do. That is bad for gameplay, bad for balance, bad for immersion and bad for the survival aspect of the game.

Land dino or flying dino, it does not matter. I am never threatened when on or above the surface of the map by any dino that I can't kill or run from depending on which mount I'm on. Plenty of players have even shown that they can kill almost anything on the map without a map. For a large chuck of the player base survival aspect doesnt play a part in the game anymore.

9 minutes ago, straafe said:

This isn't a re-balance at all, and disregards the biggest part of the problem: speed and speed per level. 

Thought for a second I was going to log on again, now I just feel stupid. 

Biggest part of the problem in which way? I think this is fairly in the middle. Base flyer speed has been nerfed by 10% to 30% for each flyer but they allow you to put points into speed levels now. 

[OnePotatoChip 642]

I thought I was done with this whole conversation as both sides keep parroting the same things repeatedly, and some don't even seem interested in discourse, but I'll bite. 

You guys did things fundamentally backwards with this patch. It's not the patch ARK was ready for, even if it was the one that it needed. And it wasn't ready for this patch, because what you're pushing for, more ground interaction, isn't where it needs to be. Players feel as if they need to travel to the other ends of the map to get acceptable amounts of metal that they feel is sequestered on the mountaintops. Anks are far too slow, as clumsy as most other land animals in term of interacting with world geometry and don't have the weight to haul their loads -- it's not exactly feasible to take a train of Anks into the mountains, guys.

Resource distribution. If you want these animals trains you've talked about to be a reality, then we're going to have to talk either resource distribution or item costs. It's all entrenched in need. If a player doesn't need to fly laps around the Island to gather materials, then they won't. Make metal and obsidian more available at lower altitudes and make it so that land animals are able to reach it in a timely fashion. Yeah, I'm talking about speed, stamina and weight increases for the Ank. And for land animals across the board, if we're being honest. I mean, look at the popularity of land animals like the Dire Bear, Thylacoleo and Equus. They've got stamina, speed and at least decent weight (respectively, of course. For an animal that doesn't need a saddle/available at level 25, the Equus' weight isn't terrible). They're not a chore to use. Whereas animals like the Allosaurus, on top of not functioning well within their given role due to collision issues, regain stamina so terribly slowly that many would rather just take their Battle Ptera. 

I'll agree with the direction of for flyers that you've specified, though; they seem about right, but it's not what's being reflected now. Not that you need me to tell you that; you're probably aware. @TheRightHand

[Emmant 3]

Why remove the option to allocate points in speed at the expense of other area's though, are you going to give land animals that same treatment?

[Lucian 7]

12 minutes ago, Probitas said:

Granted, but it's only been 4 days and there is such a thing as a casual player, and they don't game everyday. When they get to the game they'll see the issue and then decide what to do. It could take them a while as well as they may have guildies doing food runs. So it will take a few weeks for all the tumult to die down, and WC should be very grateful that people have made mods than can allow players to return to what the game was before p256 dropped. It takes much of the sting out of the nerf.

Don't get me wrong I actually support the idea of the mod.  I personally won't use it even though I am a casual player with kids because I like the idea of the point of the nerf.  

And I can see why WC wouldn't release an option immediately. If they want feedback from the whole community this is the way to get it. When they asked about it back in February there were not a whole lot of replies. 

[monomania 44]

Unless at the end of these changes the game starts to make sense again expect to see the approval rating on steam hit 40%, these seem like such tiny changes that I have issues seeing the point of them entirely.

If by the ground game you mean having to kill your way through massive amounts of dinos to get from A to B, I think you guys need to readjust your idea of the game. Because turning it into Dayz with dinos is not the way to go.

PS! I have heard rumors that some developers have mentioned wiping servers to accomplish a proper re-balance, I would like to have a warning on that change in policy as soon as its been decided. So I do not have to waste any more time playing ARK.

[shikamaru 7]

1 hour ago, Jat said:

Just wanted to say to this that we'll be carrying out a pass on our Dossiers at final release to make sure they're accurate to the game. Some should have had some updates as we've gone through development too, so we will be staying accurate to the lore of the game.

These are some good suggestions, and we did deliberate quite heavily on the Quetz and their stamina usage. Right now we're going to see how the current changes play out, as well as a slight tweak of how much stamina they use to see what players think. The values you see above aren't finalized, they're just what we're going with in the upcoming update and I expect us to make some more changes following feedback and seeing how it plays out.

Actually a very fair point, there are improvements coming to Wyverns with this patch in terms of their stamina and regeneration but decreasing the amount use for a bite seems inline with our thoughts on its role.

Certainly not a weird suggestion at all and a fair one to make. Not sure whether it's technically easy to achieve but will bring it up to the team regardless to see what their thoughts are.

We'll be making some adjustments in that patch (or possibly one the next day, depending on when the changes are committed to our SVN by the relevant teams) which should help tackle a number of problems raised by the players with the new UI. We'll also be looking into the colour scheme/transparency stuff and some other options to ensure that players don't find it as much as an eye-sore. We do enjoy the TEKKY feel and think it's right for how we see the game and its story, we've just got to get it right ;).

In regards to the crafting station comment, we should have a button that looks like engrams. If you click on that, it'll show the engrams in the inventory part of your station. It's called 'Show Engrams', 2nd from the right.

Finally I see that u guys started to communicate.

a few points I like to bring forwards.

1)those existing flyers stamina who were nerfed and the lvl dropped from initial tame. can u guys at least make a reset to all those stats so at least we can allocate the points else where. (eg. Mindwipe for dino becoz now the lvl doesn't tally to the point loss in stamina nerf)

2) do you know PVE and PVP environment is totally different. PVE u have bases build all over the area and a lot of place is impassable on land. that's why most of us prefer flying becoz its a pain in the butt when u realized ur land mount can pass over certain area to get to our destination.

3) Could you go through the utility of certain dinos like squid and Kapro and Baronyx and megalosaurus. the grabbing supposed to be helpful in tamng and least impact on trolling. I hope u can enable it for PVE environement as that the key utility of them and don't punish the PVE player by disabling them due to some unsubstantiated complaints.

 

1 hour ago, Jat said:

 

 

[DocHolliday13 3]

2 hours ago, TheRightHand said:

The game had become largely "get a flier, rule the world", and this started as early as a Pteranadon. 

Yeah, I think everyone can agree that Pteranadons were too strong overall, although only part of that was due to their stats. Another large part is how early they can be tamed, and how easily and quickly they can be bred compared to other dinos. My personal take is that instead of such heavy nerfs on speed and stamina, a moderate nerf on all stats would have served a lot better to fit the Ptera to the role you outline below.

Quote

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.

But none of that required speed or stamina nerfs to address. Literally, none of it. You fixed the C4 bombing by limiting C4 on tames. Snatching could have been solved by simply not allowing Pteras to snatch non-allied players. All the PvP issues with Quetzes and Wyverns could have been addressed simply with large health nerfs. It's not like they're small, hard-to-hit targets like a Ptera.

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You could live on the back of a Quetz perpetually after getting one, never even having to land... ever, really.

Yeah, that's just not true. You can't fit nearly enough structures on a Quetz platform saddle to make it an actual base.

Quote

80% of the game was easily ignored because the air is safer, more straightforward, etc.

Sure, but there were far better solutions. Even just heavily nerfing HP and carry weight of flyers would have gone a long ways towards making land dinos a lot more necessary.

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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.

Yeah, this is where you really screwed up. If you'd gone the incremental route from the outset, a lot of players would have stuck it out and seen it through, giving you guys a chance to get to your desired result. But instead, with the route you took, many of those players just said "eff this, I'm out", and the negative repercussions and fallout from something like this will have far larger and more long-term effects than you seem to realize. Word-of-mouth goes a long way, both positive and negative, but especially negative.

Quote

• Ptero - Fast, sprinting scout, with low hp/stamina, but quicker stamina recovery. Fastest flier in the game (except for wild wyverns).

For that to be even remotely true from a player's perspective, they're going to have to be noticeably faster than any tamed land dino. It's really that simple. Sure, the Ptera needed some speed and stamina nerfs, but not even remotely like what you did. And looking at the spreadsheet numbers, if you're really going to make your iterations that small, you've got a long, long way and lots of iterations to go before they're even remotely going to fill the role you say you have in mind. Not to mention, that you've done nothing at all with movement speed, which basically makes the whole premise null and void. No one's going to go do some fast recon on a Ptera with 135% move speed. 

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• 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.

Well first off, it's not going to be usable for a prolonged anything with no stamina regen in midair. That alone prevents it from filling the perceived "sky bronto" role. I mean, a bronto is slow, and its bad stamina sucks, but you're not just SOL if it runs out. Not to mention that from any kind of realism standpoint it seems pretty ridiculous for a flyer of any kind to be compared to a bronto. As for moving large quantities of things, I honestly don't expect it to see much use in that role, except in cases where players insist on building bases accessible only by flyer, which is pretty much not possible on The Island anyway. Otherwise, land transport will simply be faster (Direbears, Procoptodons, even Rexes). Which then leaves us with the question of exactly what a quetz will really be useful for, other than specific extreme scenarios on The Center.

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• Wyvern - Lord of the skies. Low stamina, moderate move speed, poor agility, but extreme power and versatility. 

For that to work, you're either going to have to greatly reduce or completely remove the stamina cost for attacks. There's nothing powerful or versatile about a Wyvern that can attack 2-3 times before it has to land.

Also, none of this addresses the fact that the flyer nerfs were only compounded with other issues introduced in the patch, such as the new fish that basically makes rafts pointless, the swim speed nerfs, and even undocumented nerfs to land dinos.

Honestly, what you guys should have done before even considering releasing nerfs of this scale was making some no-flyer official servers. It would have been the most honest way to really find out if any significant number of your players was interested in having the role of flyers greatly reduced. In fact, I'd probably recommend doing that even now. I mean really, this is precisely one of the strengths of having your game on many servers that can be easily customized to fill certain roles. 

[Cors1 2]

{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}

Well if you can not address the monumental tasks of the land dinos now, I have to ask why do you keep adding new dinos?

You need to stop with all bs talk and start re balancing all the way around. If you  can not handle doing all the dinos why should we believe that you can handle doing the flyers correctly at all. 

If you invested in a test server session and invited a mixed group of players to actually test your animals before dropping them into main game you would have the chance to balance them before introduction but all you guys are doing is pumping out the animals like bunny rabbit have babies. 

Also if you do start undoing the nerf when? 

My guess its like all the other dinos that need fix probably never. 

At the rate you are going this game will never make to retail. if it does make it to retail it be along the line of 2025 at this rate. by than no one will want to play it anymore or someone else will beat you to a full release with their version. 

[Monkeypuzzle 72]

This

5 minutes ago, OnePotatoChip said:

it's not exactly feasible to take a train of Anks into the mountains, guys.

Resource distribution. If you want these animals trains you've talked about to be a reality, then we're going to have to talk either resource distribution or item costs. It's all entrenched in need. If a player doesn't need to fly laps around the Island to gather materials, then they won't. Make metal and obsidian more available at lower altitudes and make it so that land animals are able to reach it in a timely fashion.

and this
 

8 minutes ago, ranger1presents said:

Land travel is so incredibly unpopular due primarily to ongoing issues with pathfinding and collision box issues.  It's frustratingly difficult to travel in large area's of the map because of issues with getting stuck on rocks and/or trees.  With some creatures this isn't a huge problem, but with many (especially the ones that can carry a lot) it's a fairly serious issue that forces flight to be the superior choice in most circumstances even if it were to have serious drawbacks.

are the elephant in the room when it comes to nerfing flyers. Hopefully these things, collision, pathfinding, resource distribution, item costs, and the mobility of utility dinos can be a real focus in the next round of development. I love the ground game, but often won't even bring a second dino with me for the mate boost, because of the number of times I'll have to get off my mount to lead them apart or go back and break a tree or rock.

 

[Probitas 139]

I think WC needs to update patch notes considering all the minor updates getting pushed lately. Particularly now.

[invincibleqc 910]

2 hours ago, TheRightHand said:

• 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.

@TheRightHand Wait, does that means you will change its turn radius, etc?

[Cucharon 90]

Being honest I got used to slow fliers. I didn't feel they needed to be faster.

Devs, don't yield to the pressure!

[GreenRoc 172]

24 minutes ago, Probitas said:

And if you happen to game on Unofficial and the admin decides he likes to play the game with fast flyers, that means because it's his server he can do what he wants to it, just like WC can do what they like to their servers. The whole point of private servers and INI options was to let us play the way we want, as WC stated when they created server hosting tools. I don't want to think this next point, but it sounds as though some players are attempting to indirectly control Unofficials in a way that they wish even if the admins may not like it - which could cause an admin to simply shut down the server because he's not having fun anymore so why should anyone else ride his server anymore?

It feels like Wildcard's visions for what the game should and shouldn't be, goes against the kind of game I enjoy. Instead of giving us the option if unofficial want the nerf or not, they went ahead and added it. I really do hope they add the ability to configure the stats, so unofficial server owners can have the game that they want.

2 hours ago, TheRightHand said:

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.

And some of us LIKE the game like that. The way that this has been stated in your post (context etc), seems like you feel that (what I quoted above) is a bad thing. For me and my server mates, the above quote is NOT a bad thing, it is what we want! It is a good thing, what we enjoy. Take that away from us, you make us very unhappy. Please consider allowing unofficial servers and single players to allow such gameplay to be possible again! If you refuse, you are killing the joy of a chunk of your playerbase. Please reconsider this manditory change, make it optional via configs. Obviously, many of us don't like the nerf.

[Nui 7]

I can't deny that fliers did indeed need to be nerfed somewhat but I think just simply making it so that one couldn't point more points into speed would have sufficed to make each one unique. As for stamina perhaps adjust it slightly but not nearly to the level it is now which at present in my opinion makes Wyverns totally worthless. Also I find it completely unfair to remove the imprinting speed buff that many of us spent many hours spoon feeding baby dinos to achieve. I feel that you guys have become far to concerned with trying to make every single creature in the game completely unique and that in your persistence of this goal you have neglected to take into consideration whether the gimmick or uniqueness you're trying to achieve destroys the animals usefulness as a whole.  

For example Diplodocus' gimmick which does not allow it to deal direct damage makes it useless to all but a VERY specific role. I sincerely believe this kind of thing needs to be avoided at all cost. I love Ark most of any game I have ever played and I especially love dragons so getting to have Wyverns was the epitome of gameplay for me and although there have been updates that I was disappointed with in the past this is the first time I find myself so disheartened that I simply don't even want to play anymore. I'm aware this nerf will get better over a bit but even so, I spent many hours stealing Wyvern eggs so to have my beloved Wyverns reduced to what I consider useless is in my opinion, utterly unacceptable.

[Grimwood2365 3]

There's really no reason the fliers can't be "as intended". The nerf was needed for sure, although not to the extent it was done, and certainly not as back-handed with zero info about it before hand. To me, that was the worst part of many of the changes...felt like so many things were simply hidden. That being said, basic thoughts on the birds and possible "fixes"

Pteras - should be fast flying scouts. Have no issue at all with speed being reduced and speed per level amount also reduced, but should not be removed. If people want to breed birds for speed, they can; however, the speeds will be nowhere near what they were previously. You want 200%? You will most like be breeding a while to get that. Focus points into speed solely, sure, but they can barely take a hit from a spitball.  Remove the ability for them to "pick" people and limit it to very small creatures (ex. dodos etc) Remove the barrel roll as well, or at least the damage of it. Could leave it in as a way to escape a situation via a knockback or short stun, but would do little to no damage. Stam can also remain reduced so you cant sprint across the map in on shot, but not to the point of having to stop every 20 seconds.

Argents - Designed as a "utility" bird. Speed increases reduced, stam reduced from previous levels, but increased from current. They should be able to fly long distances, but sprinting can definitely take its toll on stamina. Again, if you want to focus on making a fast bird, you gimp its real usefulness.  Really for all flyers, why not make speed one of the stats that come in various numbers like the rest of the stats. Maybe you find a fast wild bird, maybe this one is gimped a bit and is slower but can carry more. If speed is allowed to be increased, people will still be able to and sprinting will take a heavier toll. This will still slow birds down, but let you sprint in case a need to escape should arise.

Quetzals - "The bronto of the sky". Should have decent health, stamina, weight. It doesnt need to be a fast bird, but should be able to fly ceaselessly if so desired. They do in the wild, they shouldn't lose that ability once tamed. The speed of stam regen when hovering (dismounted) could be reduced, but should not be removed. Again, speed could be added per level, but it would really be a wasted stat, so no reason to take it out. If someone wants to make it a bit faster, so be it, they lose out on the stats that really count. If all flyers speed/ level were reduced, it still gives that option. The weight/level could be lower than previously, but really that is what they are used for.

Tapejara - More of a tactic flyer. Should be able to fly for long periods of time, with short bursts of sprinting which take a toll on stamina. Perhaps a stamina drain, or possibly a "sprint" stat which drains quickly on any flyer using a special ability that will not recharge without landing and resting. This would be independent of stamina regen, but could be linked to stamina for how much "sprint" is available.

Wyvers - I don't have a lot of experience with them, but from what i;ve seen most of their main abilities are stam based? If so, you really can't just cut out all stam. Perhaps again a special ability meter that slowly recharges? Or have those abilities use less stam while keeping the amount reduced. They should still keep decent flying speed, but specially trained birds should be able to outrun them. If people want to use their points on their birds for speed to outrun things like wyverns, they can at the expense of health/stam. You want to swoop in to steal an egg and get out, go for it, just make damn sure you don't get caught, because you won't take more than a hit or two. You want a more standardized bird to take the egg? Sure, you probably won't outrun the wyvern, but you can handle a few hits.

Overall really, birds should not receive a "gimp" in their stats or abilities simply for taming them. Wild dinos could be tweaked lower to match whatever changes come so that it doesn't feel like a penalty. Wild flyers are as slow as tamed flyers, or if speed is added to the possibly leveled stats of wild dinos, there will be faster/slower ones in the wild.

Sorry, long babbling rant, but trying to be more constructive about ideas instead of focusing on the negative. Any constructive thoughts are welcomed imo.