[PVE] Wildcard destroys the endgame content on purpose

[Sky.NET]

Disclaimer for the trolls:

1. i play officials because i play MMOs the MMO way: with MASSIVE amounts of players.
   Private servers dont have massive amount of players and will never have (massive = sth. like 2000 ppl at once online, or more, the more the better)
2. I play PVE simply because i have a job and i cant commit myself often enough to please ppl inside a active PVP tribe, they would kick me for "being not active enough" and "not being there at raid times"
   i played many PVP games before, also that ones where you have to stay ingame forever or you get rekt, i can remember the time last year, had no job, when i played reign of kings and for 2 weeks only slept 3 nights in total to get rid of some digusting idiots infesting our home-server (they also used hacks and item duping, soooo, we got rid of them but it nearly screwed me),
   me and my guild showed them the exit and it was pretty fun and intense (and fair balanced, after the hackusers got banned by the devs)

This topic is purely about PVE on official servers.
If you dont play on official servers, if you dont care about PVE, if you have no idea what "endgame" means bec. you lack hours played:

• I respect ppl playing on private servers
• I respect ppl prefering PVP mode for their own resons
• I respect beginners in this game, i know its harsh and hard to make progress
• I respect ppl saying TEK does not fit into the game at all

So please dont even consider judging me based on the way i play, this happens too often and always ends up in stupid flamewars.
Before you answer: please consider, based on your prefered playstyle and your experience in this game, if you are even able to contribute anything to my topic.

@Jen, @Jat, @1david25, @ciabattaroll, @lilpanda

 

On 6.4.2017 at 9:49 PM, LE4SoDeadly said:

I came to the conclusion they don't want us farming bosses, cuz yano...that might be fun.

They screw us all (official pve players at least).

To get to tek you have to breed insane values
~~> horrible Timesink, no skill needed at all, just time

To get the Mats beside Element for Tek you need Black pearls (Swimmer nerf), Polymer (Flyer/Wyvern nerf), Metal/Crystal (Flyer/Quetz nerf)
~~> horrible Timesink, no skill needed at all, just time

To get a resonable amount of Element, you need to beat the bosses (i put it into a quote for readability):
 

Quote

 

Broodmother Today ~> Can be stucked on every mode (unintended ofc, so it will get fixed)
Broodmother Fixed ~> Unbeatable

Megapithecus ~> Easy/Medium are doable if you have said ultra bred rex and insane saddles
Megapithecus ~> Hard ~> Impossible now (bp-nerf, rl-nerf, c4 nerf)

Dragon ~> Easy ~> Doable with a good strat and insane weapon Bps (bp-nerf, c4 nerf, rl-nerf)
Dragon ~> Medium~> Extremely hard to kill (Medium is maybe doable with a good strat, max possible dino and player slots and a very good strat, same nerfs like easy one apply)
Dragon ~> Hard ~> Straight impossible at all if there is no glitch to do it the "dirty" way

Manticore Today ~> Can be stucked on every mode (unintended ofc, so it will get fixed)
Manticore Fixed ~> Unbeatable

Targets of high interest:
Hard Broodmother, Hard Dragon, Hard Ape
Guess what? Besides Broodmother you will never learn any tek engram of the hard bosses, and after they fix it, it will be flat out impossible to get the engrams.

 

If you have been lucky to get a ticket to a bossfight before the patch and you have learned the transmitter engram already, you 'just' need to kill the broodmother on easy 4 times to get the element.
With the new feed-nerf, you wont be able to do that as long as you dont have at least 80 low/mid-range rex or 40 high/mid-range rex or 20 extreme high-range rex.
Because after one fight you will have to heal.
You will have to heal 30 minutes.
30 Minutes * 4 = 2h
Plus the fights of ~15 min = 1h
3h time investment to get enough element for 1 transmitter (IF YOU HAVE THE ENGRAM!!!)

So, okay, a transmitter is a special item, you only need ~10 of them at all i think, so 30h are needed to get 400 element.
That was relatively fine for me (relativeley, because i already HAVE the tekgrams from the last patch before 256).

(this is a crazy number, add the 4 days of breeding and imprinting the rex, most likely not all at once so add 12 days for 3 batches, 288h needed before you are 'allowed' to invest the additional 30h to get this stuff)

Now, we have a teleporter that needs element-shards.
Now, we have a generator, that needs element to run.
 

Quote

 

1 Element = 10 Elementshards = 125 weight you can teleport ONCE
(this also takes drag-weight into account ~> http://ark.gamepedia.com/Drag_Weight)
The Mantis itself has a drag-weight of 200 weight.
It has a saddle and a Pick, what makes it 22 more weight
If you have equip like 100 weight (thats no exaggerated or unusual)

Okay, thats you, your equip, the mantis and its equip = 322 weight = 25.76 shards = 2,5 Element.
For a one-way Teleport of a Dino without any stuff in the inventory.

Now imagine you have 1500 Metal on the Mantis you want to bring home:
Flying with a slow quetz and a coin in your keyboard?
Or investing 14 Element (thats 2 Broodmother fights) to use that new shiny TEK Equip ONCE?

 

Its useless, no one will EVER use it or grind for it.
Same with the transmitters as soon as they enable element usage on it (you can turn it on and off, guess why?).

Especially on PVE everything else beside the doors and the transmitter is completely overpriced, worthless and no one even THINKS about crafting anything from the TEK Tier except those (yet, like i said, they will enable element costs on transmitters too, then it will just be the doors left).

 

Conclusion

Maybe beginners/mid-game are fine with all those nerfs, but for me, after 3500h ARK, already in the end-game phase, they litterally stopped any possibility for me to make progress.
My willingness to grind, to do tasks like pick up stone from the beach for 8 hours to build 10 stone foundations i had when the game came out is gone.
My Base is half TEK, i have Transmitters everywhere i need them, but thats it, i will not be able to get more TEK and im not willing to grind element on a regular basis.
Its just not worth it.
And despite im a solo player, i always gather with my allies on their or my server to beat the boss.
And additionally we meet up on my PRIVATE dedicated server, just for one reason: to TRAIN for the bosses.
Thats why we have been able to progress at all, i dont even wanna think about 'just trying' different strats on a hard boss on official, that would be insane, you will lose more than 2000 dinos + equip etc. until you maybe finally kill the boss.
If this is the intetion of the devs, to kill the endgame, then i accept it, then i consider ark as "played through" and put it aside, i dont want to do that tho, i like the game, and i want to continue playing it, and i will for a bit, but if it stays like this, and im stucked in a progression-phase without ANY hope to get further, why should i play ark at all?

It was hard to play and progress without the flyer-nerf, without the blueprint-nerf, without the feeding-nerf, without the farming-nerf, without the c4-nerf, without the rocketlauncher-nerf and without the swimming-nerf, but now its just crazy, its not worth it, you play a game to make progress by time and skill investment, skill in ark is pure brainpower used on optimizing daily workflows, 'gamer skill' you dont need anywhere, and the time investment seems to be the compensation for that lack of needed "gamer-skill" (reaction time, consciousness, good strategizing etc.).
Recently the needed time-investment just completely exploded.

If you want your players to enjoy all content on your official servers, then give em a balancing that makes it possible to do so.

Mind = Blown

Why do they give us 3x the ressources at harvesting, but then make it 10x slower to get anywhere to do something with them?

[Chris]

Your biggest mistake is that we haven't even added our end-game content yet.

[Sky.NET]

3 minutes ago, Casanova said:

Your biggest mistake is that we haven't even added our end-game content yet.

Very good. A wildcard employee who answers only based on the headline of a topic (and purposely missing the whole point of the topic).
That means much to me, shows how much you really care.
If you dont have this endgame content in the game, and the current endgame content (current, magic word, was it so hard to understand that im talking about the current stuff???) is like i said in my post, how should we ever get THERE then? I cant see any way to get there, not now, not later, and even if i thought "it will get better, they will balance it out" i have yet to see any balancing that influences players at CURRENT engame content in a positive way, the opposite is the case, you just make it harder until its impossible.

[Chris]

We have A LOT of stuff to work on before release and our complete end-game content is added. Everything will get balanced out. Time and time again we've publicly said that we are in the stage of adding the final base content and then starting to work on the balancing and "re-do" of things we aren't quite happy with.

15 minutes ago, Sky.NET said:

If this is the intetion of the devs, to kill the endgame, then i accept it, then i consider ark as "played through" and put it aside

Things like this just shouldn't be discussed as we haven't finished the game yet. 

Of course we want you guys to enjoy our game and continue playing it, so we listen to feedback and will continue to make changes before release to make ARK the final product that we (us and our players) truly want it to be.

[MrDynamicMan]

14 minutes ago, Casanova said:

Your biggest mistake is that we haven't even added our end-game content yet.

So it's going to be even more meaningless grind with a distinct lack of mechanical or technical challenge? 

[Sky.NET]

9 hours ago, Casanova said:

We have A LOT of stuff to work on before release and our complete end-game content is added. Everything will get balanced out. Time and time again we've publicly said that we are in the stage of adding the final base content and then starting to work on the balancing and "re-do" of things we aren't quite happy with.

Things like this just shouldn't be discussed as we haven't finished the game yet. 

Of course we want you guys to enjoy our game and continue playing it, so we listen to feedback and will continue to make changes before release to make ARK the final product that we (us and our players) truly want it to be.

So many words just to say "wait for it, we dont know how long, but you have to wait" aka. "accept being stuck or get rekt".
Guess what? I was okay with being stucked, i had plenty other things besides bosses and pure progression that have been fun for me.
You nerfed them out of the game. Entirely.

My point is: if you guys dont reconsider the amount of damage you do to your long-term players, you will lose them, and many of them will close this book named "ark", because it will not get easier if you restart without anything and you remember the time investment to get anywhere near endgame.
Those ppl are gone, and the pity is those ppl are the potentially most faithful players you have. I mean, look at me, i still play, i "ignore" the chore, i have hopes, very little, but i have them, i come here and wall-of-text you with feedback, why would i do that if ark wouldnt already be more than a game for me?

But im just an exception, i have ppl in my friendlist with 8000 hours played, overall they average at 3000h, who dont have my patience, they quit, and it wasnt a minority of those ~100 ark PVE players i have in my friendlist.
Im losing my ingame mates, this game isn't designed to be played solo, i got that, but if you make my friends quit the game, who i call for bossfights? For tame-support? For cave-adventures or adventures at all?
You see what side-effects your behaviour causes?

Maybe you have your reasons to rush, to not think about changes of the game too long before just pushing them out, maybe you have internal problems causing that and you cannot quickly solve those problems, so maybe its not directly your fault at all, but as i can only sit here and try to play your game, i cannot have regards for that, you are the company, i am the player. I have to deal with what you give me, and if it doesnt fit my taste, i give you feedback.
If my feedback is answered with stuff like "calm down dude, give us some time" when you just nullified a couple of hundret hours i put into your game per point in your patchnote-list, i can only call this a joke, add the handcuffs on gameprogression, the lost mates and the cluelessness about what even to do when i login and maybe you will understand why i am posting such stuff.

You should not ask me to give you time, you should TAKE your time:

1. to push out better quality updates
2. to think about changes way more than you seem to do now
3. to develop ways to be able to cater all 3 groups of player-types (beginners, mid, endgame players) on both of the big game modes

How you can archieve that? I dont know, i have faith that you are able to, but also the fear that you wont even try.

[LE4SoDeadly]

im very torn on this, I think the lazy part of me wants it to be cheaper, wants it to be easier, but if it was. what would my tribe have left to grind for. it triggers me immensely my tribe have to move from the center to the island to get it but other then that the costs its self seem about right. The bosses though there aimed at the best of the best alphas.,the hardcores. I kind of respect that but also, I hate it. with work and life we just don't have the time to breed the tames required, 50k hp rexes? man we are at 25 lol.

[iAmE]

29 minutes ago, Casanova said:

We have A LOT of stuff to work on before release and our complete end-game content is added. Everything will get balanced out. Time and time again we've publicly said that we are in the stage of adding the final base content and then starting to work on the balancing and "re-do" of things we aren't quite happy with.

Things like this just shouldn't be discussed as we haven't finished the game yet. 

Of course we want you guys to enjoy our game and continue playing it, so we listen to feedback and will continue to make changes before release to make ARK the final product that we (us and our players) truly want it to be.

What's the point of releasing Content for testing that is only doable via exploiting the game?

No, seriously. Why even implement it?

[spacejam]

3 hours ago, Casanova said:

Your biggest mistake is that we haven't even added our end-game content yet.

This was very well written and provided you lot with a great bit of feedback a lot different to all the hate you get from so many people and that was your reply That is plain disrespect.  I am very disappointed.

 

I would like @Casanova to apologise for his original remark as it was against the community standards.

[Harrist14]

Just now, spacejam said:

This was very well written and provided you lot with a great bit of feedback a lot different to all the hate you get from so many people and that was your reply That is plain disrespect.  I am very disappointed.

I agree. He spent all of 10 seconds responding to some legitimate points, with a borderline trolling response lol. Very cool @Casanova

[Chris]

4 minutes ago, spacejam said:

This was very well written and provided you lot with a great bit of feedback a lot different to all the hate you get from so many people and that was your reply That is plain disrespect.  I am very disappointed.

 

2 minutes ago, Harrist14 said:

I agree. He spent all of 10 seconds responding to some legitimate points, with a borderline trolling response lol. Very cool @Casanova

The reason I said that is because the OP talks about this very much being the end-game content, he also shows that in the headline of this thread and I don't want people thinking that our end-game content is already in the game, which it's not. 

Please read my second reply as I elaborate more on my thoughts on the OP's post.

This is a great discussion and I'm glad you brought this up as all feedback gives us food for thought, so please continue the discussion on this topic.

[Kman03]

@Casanova Hey man, I really do appreciate your attempts at trying to explain things to people. It is obviously very frustrating to read these kneejerk reactions of people who blow everything out of proportion. The self-entitlement is very strong in this community.

The "I decided to invest thousands of hours in this game even though it is EA and was informed beforehand that anything and everything is subject to change, but, but....but I invested thousands of hours in this EA game and my "opinion" is of course the same as everyone else who invested a lot of time in this EA game and YOU OWE US because we invested thousands of hours in the EA game where everything and everything is subject to change. SCREW your vision of the game, It's your self-entitled players needs that are most important. So what we were told BEFORE we paid money that anything and everything is subject to change. YOU OWE US DAMMIT cuz.....uhm cuz.....uhm....WE INVESTED THOUSANDS OF HOURS in your EA game and....and...blah blah blah."

Seriously Casanova........I cant imagine the tough skin and patience needed to do what you all do.

[LE4SoDeadly]

the devs cannot win lol, but on serious note the cost isn't the issue it what it takes to kill the bosses its simple to hard for the majority of the player base on official servers alpha or not.

[spacejam]

1 minute ago, Casanova said:

 

The reason I said that is because the OP talks about this very much being the end-game content, he also shows that in the headline of this thread and I don't want people thinking that our end-game content is already in the game, which it's not. 

Please read my second reply as I elaborate more on my thoughts on the OP's post.

This is a great discussion and I'm glad you brought this up as all feedback gives us food for thought, so please continue the discussion on this topic.

if there is more content to come then maybe its time to let the player base in on some info, give them some more information on what to actually expect not just the few generic lines saying a little further out.  Show us some models of the new stuff, tell us where you think they will fit into the game. Elaborate more to your gamers your view of the game and where you want it to end up.

 

Give us more information and you'll probably stem the tide of long term gamers leaving and slow down the hate mail from every idiot with an opinion

[Sky.NET]

2 minutes ago, Kman03 said:

@Casanova Hey man, I really do appreciate your attempts at trying to explain things to people. It is obviously very frustrating to read these kneeejerk reactions of people who blow everything out of proportion. The self-entitlement is very strong in this community.

The "I decided to invest thousands of hours in this game even though it is EA and was informed beforehand that anything and everything is subject to change, but, but....but I invested thousands of hours in this EA game and my "opinion" is of course the same as everyone else who invested a lot of time in this EA game and YOU OWE US because we invested thousands of hours in the EA game where everything and everything is subject to change. SCREW your vision of the game, Its your self-entitled players needs that are most important. So what we were told BEFORE we paid money that anything and everything is subject to change. YOU OWE US DAMMIT cuz.....uhm cuz.....uhm....WE INVESTED THOUSANDS OF HOURS in your EA game and....and...blah blah blah."

Seriously Casanova........I cant imagine the tough skin and patience needed to do what you all do.

I never said anything like that in my post. I gave proper and polite feedback about what i think is going on. Directed to WC and partly to the community to refine and discuss it.
Please reconsider adding value to the discussion or let other discuss valid points undistracted.

[Joebl0w13]

1 minute ago, LE4SoDeadly said:

the devs cannot win lol, but on serious note the cost isn't the issue it what it takes to kill the bosses its simple to hard for the majority of the player base on official servers alpha or not.

This brings up an interesting look into how the devs see the endgame content in the grand scheme of things.

Taking a look at World of Warcraft as the best example. Back during the Burning Crusade days the endgame content was designed to be very difficult and only to be seen by the players that put in tremendous effort to see and beat it.

In the next expansion Blizzard changed paths and decided that the entire player base should be able to see all the endgame content (but the best weapons, armor and achievements were still gated behind the harder versions of that same content).

It will be interesting to see how WC sees where Arks endgame content sits within those to two paradigms.

[spacejam]

 Star Citizen, Early access game funded by the player send an email out every week stating what they are working on, why they are working on it, shows progress models of what they are working on. They keep some things secret to surprise the gamer base every know and then but over all they communicate with the players and have a terrific road map of where they want and feel the game should go.

It is a great example of what a lot more communication can do for you. if the every day player knew that in 6 months time Tek tier wasn't going to be the end of equipment or that maybe you have special plans to make obtaining it a lot easier. A little bit of communication and I believe you would see a dramatic drop in the hate you see on this forum aimed at the dev team. 

I would love to have discussion about the model for the tek cave, and how the cave is going to work, what we will find in it and all that jazz. getting real life updates on how its traveling and maybe even what issues as the creators are having with designing it

 

Simple stuff done right

[LE4SoDeadly]

11 minutes ago, Joebl0w13 said:

This brings up an interesting look into how the devs see the endgame content in the grand scheme of things.

Taking a look at World of Warcraft as the best example. Back during the Burning Crusade days the endgame content was designed to be very difficult and only to be seen by the players that put in tremendous effort to see and beat it.

In the next expansion Blizzard changed paths and decided that the entire player base should be able to see all the endgame content (but the best weapons, armor and achievements were still gated behind the harder versions of that same content).

It will be interesting to see how WC sees where Arks endgame content sits within those to two paradigms.

I'm glad you posted this as I was thinking along these lines my self recently. as an hardcore MMOhead theres so many options they could go for. the current bosses lack any character or purpose you sort of click go tele in you win or you die.     we play on fixed servers which reminds of a game called the ledgend of mir, which was fixed (you played with the same people/ tribes etc)

 

they had a boss that spawned in a specific spot every 2 hours and the fights outside the boss room where intense (fighting off enemy tribes while a part of your force try to kill it in time)

I don't know what the answer is but I think the bosses needed a drastic overhaul there to pve for starters there to niche and they have no character or fun value.   ADD dungeons stick the boss at the end off each dung make it a grind to get to and the reward awesome.

 

[ExcessEvil]

1 hour ago, Sky.NET said:

i play officials because i play MMOs the MMO way: with MASSIVE amounts of players.
Private servers dont have massive amount of players and will never have (massive = sth. like 2000 ppl at once online, or more, the more the better)

 

1: ARK is not an MMO, it's an online multiplayer survival game.

 

2: Neither does the official servers. No ARK server holds 2000 people at once.

 

MMO doesn't mean the total amount of people playing it. It means a massive amount of people playing on the same server at the same time. That's the true definition of 'MMO'. 100 is far from massive.

 

Official servers are plagued with griefers and unwanted stress caused by said griefers.

 

Unofficial aka player dedis doesn't, since they are being monitored by the server owner, who can take action immediately. To my knowledge, officials aren't being monitored in such a way.

 

As for the point about PVE being ruined, yes, i do agree to some extent. It is being ruined by poor design and management choices.

 

However, the game is more than likely to change, the closer it gets to release. For now, if anything doesn't work, i go play other games.

 

26 minutes ago, Joebl0w13 said:

This brings up an interesting look into how the devs see the endgame content in the grand scheme of things.

Taking a look at World of Warcraft as the best example. Back during the Burning Crusade days the endgame content was designed to be very difficult and only to be seen by the players that put in tremendous effort to see and beat it.

In the next expansion Blizzard changed paths and decided that the entire player base should be able to see all the endgame content (but the best weapons, armor and achievements were still gated behind the harder versions of that same content).

It will be interesting to see how WC sees where Arks endgame content sits within those to two paradigms.

 

Again, this point is moot.

 

You can't compare an online multiplayer survival game to a full blown MMORPG as they are two completely different genres all together, and an MMORPG is designed to be different from the bottom up.

 

The only games you can compare an online multiplayer survival game to, are other games of the same genre.

 

It's like comparing a tractor to a tank. Both designed for completely different things.

[powerstuck]

27 minutes ago, Joebl0w13 said:

This brings up an interesting look into how the devs see the endgame content in the grand scheme of things.

Taking a look at World of Warcraft as the best example. Back during the Burning Crusade days the endgame content was designed to be very difficult and only to be seen by the players that put in tremendous effort to see and beat it.

In the next expansion Blizzard changed paths and decided that the entire player base should be able to see all the endgame content (but the best weapons, armor and achievements were still gated behind the harder versions of that same content).

It will be interesting to see how WC sees where Arks endgame content sits within those to two paradigms.

Of course. Blizzards one argument was why spend millions on best art graphic artists and best game designers in the world so their work is seen and enjoyed by like 1000 players out of 11 millions. 

I hope Ark devs realize that as well. Games are supposed to be for entertainment. Not a full time job. Only a select few live off gaming 24/7. 

[Joebl0w13]

2 minutes ago, ExcessEvil said:

You can't compare an online multiplayer survival game to a full blown MMORPG as they are two completely different genres all together, and an MMORPG is designed to be different from the bottom up.

No difference whatsoever.

Both games need a group of people to band together to beat endgame content. Period.

Ark is no different.

[LE4SoDeadly]

4 minutes ago, powerstuck said:

Of course. Blizzards one argument was why spend millions on best art graphic artists and best game designers in the world so their work is seen and enjoyed by like 1000 players out of 11 millions. 

I hope Ark devs realize that as well. Games are supposed to be for entertainment. Not a full time job. Only a select few live off gaming 24/7. 

exactly this

[Sky.NET]

@ExcessEvil

To make a linebreak instead of a full new paragraph after each sentence press and hold shift and hit return.
That makes your post a bit well more formatted.

And since transfers are in the game, there is no "server" for me, there is the PVE-Community, i can reach everyone in seconds of realtime.
In MMOs you speak of there is also in no way 2000 players in one instance at once, no software or hardware could handle that.
So the instances there is what are ark servers for me are in ark (except ark servers are permanently and instances arent).

[DankestKhan]

4 minutes ago, powerstuck said:

Of course. Blizzards one argument was why spend millions on best art graphic artists and best game designers in the world so their work is seen and enjoyed by like 1000 players out of 11 millions. 

I hope Ark devs realize that as well. Games are supposed to be for entertainment. Not a full time job. Only a select few live off gaming 24/7. 

/thread

[iAmE]

1 minute ago, Joebl0w13 said:

No difference whatsoever.

Both games need a group of people to band together to beat endgame content. Period.

Ark is no different.

Except for the fundamental fact that most MMORPGs have endgame that is actually completable without Exploiting. That hasn't been the case in Ark since the bosses came out. There's a fundamental difference there.

40 minutes ago, LE4SoDeadly said:

the devs cannot win lol, but on serious note the cost isn't the issue it what it takes to kill the bosses its simple to hard for the majority of the player base on official servers alpha or not.

No. It's too hard for anyone. At all. Most of the bosses are literally impossible to do if you don't exploit the boss.