[PVE] Wildcard destroys the endgame content on purpose

[rororoxor]

I think the bosses were intended to be fought by at least a dozen tribe members-there is no room for solo players. How about the difficulty of the boss gets scaled depending on the amount of people entering the arena?

[Wazzamaniac]

47 minutes ago, rororoxor said:

I think the bosses were intended to be fought by at least a dozen tribe members-there is no room for solo players. How about the difficulty of the boss gets scaled depending on the amount of people entering the arena?

That would be good but eventually people will figure out that it might not be worth the resources to kit out 10 people with gear when you can beat the boss alone and get the element anyway.

One more idea: make the arenas bigger. It would give wiggle room to move around and not get killed by the bosses which are pretty quick. (Except maybe broodmother)

[rororoxor]

1 hour ago, Wazzamaniac said:

That would be good but eventually people will figure out that it might not be worth the resources to kit out 10 people with gear when you can beat the boss alone and get the element anyway

True true...maybe the amount of element received should be nerfed slightly? Idk.

[Ellentro]

32 minutes ago, rororoxor said:

True true...maybe the amount of element received should be nerfed slightly? Idk.

Just a thought, could just make the bosses not do so much damage. The Health is fine. The damage is what's ridiculous. Particularly on the Monkey/Dragon. They have projectiles which ignore mounts and hit the player, which isn't bad, exactly, but the amount is absurd to the point where it's not feasible to tank it. I would be curious what would happen if they blanket reduced the damage of all damage the bosses dealt by ~30%, and then reduced the Fireball/Rock from Monkey by a further 90% (Which would only apply to humans, because then it would only be dealing around 50-100 damage, instead of dealing over a thousand). 

[rororoxor]

1 hour ago, Ellentro said:

Just a thought, could just make the bosses not do so much damage. The Health is fine. The damage is what's ridiculous. Particularly on the Monkey/Dragon. They have projectiles which ignore mounts and hit the player, which isn't bad, exactly, but the amount is absurd to the point where it's not feasible to tank it. I would be curious what would happen if they blanket reduced the damage of all damage the bosses dealt by ~30%, and then reduced the Fireball/Rock from Monkey by a further 90% (Which would only apply to humans, because then it would only be dealing around 50-100 damage, instead of dealing over a thousand). 

Sounds nice, though i don't think any human should survive a 10 ton rock to the face :\. And aren't the fireballs pretty easy to avoid?

[Ellentro]

Just now, rororoxor said:

Sounds nice, though i don't think any human should survive a 10 ton rock to the face :\. And aren't the fireballs pretty easy to avoid?

I don't think humans should be outrunning rexes or one shotting them either, but that's the world we live in. As for the fireballs, they're easy to avoid *if* the server isn't lagging and it actually shows the projectile. The Fireballs are the buggiest of all the projectiles, I've been killed by literal "Invisible" fireballs, as well as gotten trapped on Pteras(They spawn at the same time) glitching inside my body to the point where I couldn't move. 

[rororoxor]

1 hour ago, Ellentro said:

I don't think humans should be outrunning rexes or one shotting them either, but that's the world we live in. As for the fireballs, they're easy to avoid *if* the server isn't lagging and it actually shows the projectile. The Fireballs are the buggiest of all the projectiles, I've been killed by literal "Invisible" fireballs, as well as gotten trapped on Pteras(They spawn at the same time) glitching inside my body to the point where I couldn't move. 

Well then, its the bugs that should be fixed, not the values, right?

[Nachomasterx]

2 hours ago, PuffyPony said:

The weakpoints, Tek usage, and timer increase all sound really fair to me. Also, the difficulty scale from Easy -> Medium -> Hard should be mechanic-based, not just stat based. I'd say keep damage more-or-less even as you go up in difficulty, but increase HP and introduce new mechanics to deal with. Instead of increasing the Element earned, I'd just make items charged using Element Shards, so it's effectively doing the same thing.

I agree. Bosses having so much damage they can kill you with a sneeze off of a tame wearing the best armor in the game isn't a fun or interesting game mechanic. Sure they should hurt you more than most wild Dinos, but damage does not equal difficulty.

I really like the idea of mechanic based difficulty increases. Like easy is just fighting the boss, medium maybe adds some new mechanic like a shield or random environment changes. The "moar damage moar HP" thing is uninteresting and puts the hard bosses outside what can even be done in this game legitimately. 

[PuffyPony]

1 minute ago, Nachomasterx said:

I agree. Bosses having so much damage they can kill you with a sneeze off of a tame wearing the best armor in the game isn't a fun or interesting game mechanic. Sure they should hurt you more than most wild Dinos, but damage does not equal difficulty.

I really like the idea of mechanic based difficulty increases. Like easy is just fighting the boss, medium maybe adds some new mechanic like a shield or random environment changes. The "moar damage moar HP" thing is uninteresting and puts the hard bosses outside what can even be done in this game legitimately. 

Right. Like, just off the top of my head (I don't know hard numbers, and this would be entirely unbalanced taken at face value), here'd be a way to do Broodmother:

1- Normal fight (200k HP) with minions
2- Normal fight (240k HP), some minions replaced by scorpions, poisonous gas in chamber (so you need to wear Ghillie/SCUBA/Gas Mask)
3- Normal fight (300k HP), some minions replaced by scorpions and Arthropleura, poisonous gas in chamber, and Broodmother occasionally forms a chitin-shell that must be destroyed (deals damage to her and makes her vulnerable again).
--- Also, Broodmother takes bonus damage at leg joints and to a lesser extent at eyes

Like I said, that's a very off-the-cuff version, but it gets the idea of what I mean

[Wazzamaniac]

43 minutes ago, PuffyPony said:

Right. Like, just off the top of my head (I don't know hard numbers, and this would be entirely unbalanced taken at face value), here'd be a way to do Broodmother:

1- Normal fight (200k HP) with minions
2- Normal fight (240k HP), some minions replaced by scorpions, poisonous gas in chamber (so you need to wear Ghillie/SCUBA/Gas Mask)
3- Normal fight (300k HP), some minions replaced by scorpions and Arthropleura, poisonous gas in chamber, and Broodmother occasionally forms a chitin-shell that must be destroyed (deals damage to her and makes her vulnerable again).
--- Also, Broodmother takes bonus damage at leg joints and to a lesser extent at eyes

Like I said, that's a very off-the-cuff version, but it gets the idea of what I mean

Now we're talking! Let's expand on that.

Megapithecus: 

1- Normal fight (180k hp) with minions

2- Normal fight (220k hp) with minions. Some minions replaced by chalicotheriums (or possibly the upcoming megatherium?), temperature drops tremendously, forcing you to wear better-than primitive fur gear.

3- Normal fight (280k hp) with minions. Some minions replaced by chalicotheriums/megatheriums, temperature drop, megapithecus can charge, grab and throw a player in one attack, causing a very large amount of damage, similar to a pachy charge (avoidable and no navigation allowed but requires a good reaction time as it is very fast)

---Also, Megapithecus takes slight bonus explosive damage on it's scarred area and has a "blind spot" because of it's foggy eye which reduces aggro to players coming from that side.

 

(if anyone suggests a new dragon build I nominate angry megalosaurus as new minions )

[PuffyPony]

2 hours ago, Wazzamaniac said:

Now we're talking! Let's expand on that.

I may actually sit on this stuff for a while and see if I can think of a real, bonafide suggestion for this!

[spacejam]

6 hours ago, rororoxor said:

I think the bosses were intended to be fought by at least a dozen tribe members-there is no room for solo players. How about the difficulty of the boss gets scaled depending on the amount of people entering the arena?

Don't be bring logic and common sense here this is the Forum for ark

[Sh4rk]

On 4/6/2017 at 6:53 PM, Kaoslion said:

Anyone who has played this game for over 200 hours has already gotten their monies worth.

Right??? It makes me laugh when I see someone say something like, "i have over 4000 hours and i cant take this anymore..." or "i have 4000 hours and this makes me want my money back".

Gamers are too needy these days, nobody is happy with what they have and act like developers owe them their lives. The devs could quit working on Ark today, and run off with the money, and theres nothing anyone could do about that.

The fact that they continue developing Ark despite knowing full well that they could do that, shows that they do care. It just isn't apparent for some, or for others, not enough.

[Sky.NET]

On 4/11/2017 at 5:59 AM, Sh4rk said:

Right??? It makes me laugh when I see someone say something like, "i have over 4000 hours and i cant take this anymore..." or "i have 4000 hours and this makes me want my money back".

Gamers are too needy these days, nobody is happy with what they have and act like developers owe them their lives. The devs could quit working on Ark today, and run off with the money, and theres nothing anyone could do about that.

The fact that they continue developing Ark despite knowing full well that they could do that, shows that they do care. It just isn't apparent for some, or for others, not enough.

It makes me laugh when someone completely misses a topic.
The devs want feedback, we give them feedback. Easy as that. No one here talks about the hours played, the money, if devs will quit tomorrow or basically anything you mentioned in your post.

So far, this thread is about the bosses and the so far implemented end-game content, what do you have to contribute to the discussion?
Im keen for your opinion about the actual topic, your turn.

[AngryMan]

On 07/04/2017 at 9:10 AM, Joebl0w13 said:

Alpha and Beta weren't open to the general public. Just a few playtesters. This game is open to the public. SInce you played alpha and beta you know as well as I do how broken the game was in that state.

That doesn't change the fact that a few of the bosses (clearly not ones you fought) were released in a unbeatable state until patched.

The devs stated they still may wipe when this game is fully released.

ive read multiple statements they WONT wipe the servers so they mor than likely will

[AngryMan]

On 11/04/2017 at 7:59 PM, Sh4rk said:

Right??? It makes me laugh when I see someone say something like, "i have over 4000 hours and i cant take this anymore..." or "i have 4000 hours and this makes me want my money back".

Gamers are too needy these days, nobody is happy with what they have and act like developers owe them their lives. The devs could quit working on Ark today, and run off with the money, and theres nothing anyone could do about that.

The fact that they continue developing Ark despite knowing full well that they could do that, shows that they do care. It just isn't apparent for some, or for others, not enough.

yeah except for wildcard would never have a game bought from them again but sound logic there.........

[Cronogenvic]

 

On ‎4‎/‎11‎/‎2017 at 2:59 AM, Sh4rk said:

Gamers are too needy these days, nobody is happy with what they have and act like developers owe them their lives. The devs could quit working on Ark today, and run off with the money, and theres nothing anyone could do about that.

The fact that they continue developing Ark despite knowing full well that they could do that, shows that they do care. It just isn't apparent for some, or for others, not enough.

Improvements to technology made video games of this era vastly different from the days of Atari and NES. Developers probably love what they do: make video games. It's also part of their job to take feedback and use it to improve their games.

I heard that WC is fairly young company. Do you think simply running "off with the money" would help their future? A smart company would see that there's likely more benefits in becoming an established  game developer instead of a flake who bails when things become a bit challenging.

[SexyBeast]

On 4/6/2017 at 5:06 PM, Sky.NET said:

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

 

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):
 

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.
 

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

Honestly why would someone sabotage their own piece of art. Why would they want to do that? To ruin their reputation? To piss off some people who pay them? Does not make sense to me. UNLESS THEY AREN'T

[Ulta]

Man there's some awesome boss improvement talk going on in here. I wish this topic was more about that than the OP's complaint. Sure our current endgame is quite lackluster and needs improvement to really wow us (sometimes broken even. Still waiting for that element increase for The Center), but if a dev already said we can expect more end game things soon, then it's time to have some patience.

For now, someone should make a new thread suggesting these boss improvements if one doesn't exist yet.

[Vrallox]

I've been testing the bosses in singleplayer with official settings and I've been making some progress but it's frustrating to say the least. These bosses are just sad at the moment. I like the idea of decreasing their damage output a bit. Would make them less pathetic. Sure it'd be a bandaid but Wildcard's apparently planning on fixing them at a later date so a bandaid, being a temporary solution, would be welcome at this point.

Quite a few of the ideas mentioned in this thread are vastly superior to what we have now. They're also vastly superior to what the devs said they have planned for the bosses. The joke being that they've said nothing.

[Sky.NET]

9 hours ago, AngryMan said:

ive read multiple statements they WONT wipe the servers so they mor than likely will

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1024229/-ARK-Survival-Evolved-Lessons

56:50 ~~~> "Will you wipe the servers after EA Phase?" ---> "We are still considering what the best options are"

[Nachomasterx]

Devs official response on the current state of the bosses;

WildcardTheRightHand   Senior Technical and Gameplay Designer • 23h

Just going to come out and say it,

We do test them, and we test them with a couple of different mechanics, and the players are free to come up with whatever else they want to do to beat them.

We make sure that a group of 10 people with access to whatever dinos they want can go into each fight, and defeat the boss, using whatever techniques they want, but we ABSOLUTELY make sure that "bring 20 max stat rexes" is viable.

AI in ARK is extremely expensive. Like, really, really expensive. It's also extremely hard to develop good AI, it takes a lot of time and iteration, finding edge cases, solving edge cases, etc.

AI in ARK is also NOT robust. Which means that to develop better AI is even more time, and more iteration, and more testing, and more edge cases, etc.

You can take the shot and call it "lazy", but without completely re-designing the entirety of how we do the boss fights, how dinos behave, how the abstract idea of a "creature" behaves, more gameplay programmers, an AI programmer, serverside AI optimizations, and more time, boss fights will never have "good" AI or fights like WoW raids.

Here's the crux of the issue: For every extra step of complexity in AI, we open up a HUGE pool of potential ways to exploit that AI. Our game doesn't have a confined set of rules for engagement, it has completely free and open engagement. The player can do nearly ANYTHING they want to. So how do you plan for that?

Players will ALWAYS find the LEAST expensive and MOST efficient way of defeating ANY obstacle in ANY game, and in the end it comes down to us deciding if we think that a specific strategy undermines the point of the boss fight, or if it's simply very clever, and fine, the players are clever.

I would posit a challenge to any aspiring modders out there: Write a clean boss fight with one of our bosses in one of our arenas entirely in even semi-optimized blueprint, and make that fight match the criteria of "not just a slugfest".

Make that mod, and release it, and then send me a message here on Reddit, and if it's good, and players really think it's super compelling and way better than our fights and not just a cheese-fest/glitch-fest, I will bring your mod directly to the studio leads and suggest you be put in our modding program myself.

Making a boss fight that is "awesome" with ARK's mechanics is a nightmare of complexity and a nonstop battle against millions of clever players.

Are we super happy with how the fights play out? Often times, no. Are we going to just give up and ignore them? Almost certainly not. Are we hiring and working really hard to make future fights much more interesting? Absolutely.

tl;dr, AI is complicated and expensive, players are clever, we have limited time and resources, make me a really awesome mod with a boss fight and I will make sure the people with money are well aware of you.

• The Right Hand

Link to the Reddit post 

 

[Wazzamaniac]

9 minutes ago, Nachomasterx said:

Devs official response on the current state of the bosses;

WildcardTheRightHand   Senior Technical and Gameplay Designer • 23h

Just going to come out and say it,

We do test them, and we test them with a couple of different mechanics, and the players are free to come up with whatever else they want to do to beat them.

We make sure that a group of 10 people with access to whatever dinos they want can go into each fight, and defeat the boss, using whatever techniques they want, but we ABSOLUTELY make sure that "bring 20 max stat rexes" is viable.

AI in ARK is extremely expensive. Like, really, really expensive. It's also extremely hard to develop good AI, it takes a lot of time and iteration, finding edge cases, solving edge cases, etc.

AI in ARK is also NOT robust. Which means that to develop better AI is even more time, and more iteration, and more testing, and more edge cases, etc.

You can take the shot and call it "lazy", but without completely re-designing the entirety of how we do the boss fights, how dinos behave, how the abstract idea of a "creature" behaves, more gameplay programmers, an AI programmer, serverside AI optimizations, and more time, boss fights will never have "good" AI or fights like WoW raids.

Here's the crux of the issue: For every extra step of complexity in AI, we open up a HUGE pool of potential ways to exploit that AI. Our game doesn't have a confined set of rules for engagement, it has completely free and open engagement. The player can do nearly ANYTHING they want to. So how do you plan for that?

Players will ALWAYS find the LEAST expensive and MOST efficient way of defeating ANY obstacle in ANY game, and in the end it comes down to us deciding if we think that a specific strategy undermines the point of the boss fight, or if it's simply very clever, and fine, the players are clever.

I would posit a challenge to any aspiring modders out there: Write a clean boss fight with one of our bosses in one of our arenas entirely in even semi-optimized blueprint, and make that fight match the criteria of "not just a slugfest".

Make that mod, and release it, and then send me a message here on Reddit, and if it's good, and players really think it's super compelling and way better than our fights and not just a cheese-fest/glitch-fest, I will bring your mod directly to the studio leads and suggest you be put in our modding program myself.

Making a boss fight that is "awesome" with ARK's mechanics is a nightmare of complexity and a nonstop battle against millions of clever players.

Are we super happy with how the fights play out? Often times, no. Are we going to just give up and ignore them? Almost certainly not. Are we hiring and working really hard to make future fights much more interesting? Absolutely.

tl;dr, AI is complicated and expensive, players are clever, we have limited time and resources, make me a really awesome mod with a boss fight and I will make sure the people with money are well aware of you.

• The Right Hand

Link to the Reddit post 

 

Tbh they could just scale down hp and damage of the bosses but I assume that's extremely challenging to do, I mean just opening some sort of notepad, deleting said values and replacing them with a different set of numbers is more than likely excrutiatingly difficult.

 

No but seriously. I'm fine if they leave the bossfight mechanics as they are. But they have to be legitimately winnable. As in, a balanced bossfight. So it's all good if the 20 rex strat works. But having them die nearly instantly, or not be able to win in time, when you know THERE IS NO BETTER STRATEGY, is very, very unfair.

[Nachomasterx]

11 minutes ago, Wazzamaniac said:

 

No but seriously. I'm fine if they leave the bossfight mechanics as they are. But they have to be legitimately winnable. As in, a balanced bossfight. So it's all good if the 20 rex strat works. But having them die nearly instantly, or not be able to win in time, when you know THERE IS NO BETTER STRATEGY, is very, very unfair.

This^^

Even if making the boss fights more interesting is too difficult, they could at least scale down the damage.

[Vrallox]

"I would posit a challenge to any aspiring modders out there: Write a clean boss fight with one of our bosses in one of our arenas entirely in even semi-optimized blueprint, and make that fight match the criteria of "not just a slugfest"."

Took me less than a minute to come up with how to accomplish that. Too bad I'm not a modder.

Spider boss: Boss spends most of the fight on a huge web on the ceiling. It continually pops out minions that need to be taken care of while spitting poison at players that forms pools of poison on the ground that need to be avoided. Meanwhile, others go after the strands holding the web up with ranged attacks while still others attack the strands close to the ground with melee. Once all the strands are destroyed the boss falls to the ground, takes a massive amount of fall damage, is stunned for a bit which allows a bit of damage to be done to her, and then the fight proceeds like the devs designed it albeit with far less health during the slugfest phase.

As far as I can tell the only major change to the AI is that the boss wanders around on the web for a bit while spitting poison and then falls down once the web breaks. If any modder wants to use that to get a job at Wildcard then feel free.