Egg farms, afk bitter vet tribes, and server tame limits.

[DankestKhan]

Wildcard, you really need to revisit the whole system relating to eggs, kibble, and breeding dinos. It's pretty much ruined official PVE servers along with pillar claiming and transferring off server tames.

All it does is encourage hoarding behavior. Join any PVE server and fly around while your computer lags as it tries to load massive bases filled with row after row of idle tames whose only purpose is to produce egg for kibble. Vets then get upset when they get called out for their ridiculously huge afk egg fortresses which are blocking new players from being able to tame, along with blocking the 'best' spots.

While one could easily go down a rabbithole discussing the 'F you, got mine' mentality displayed by some of the more toxic vets in this game, the fact is that the game systems encourage this kind of behavior and even if a vet tribe decides to help out and cull their herd the server can instantly fill up again from a transfer, so why bother keeping your tames at a reasonable level? (Apparently there already is a limit on server transfers so hoarders are just exaggerating the transfer problem to justify not cutting down on their herds)

This is still an early access alpha so it's not too late to reconsider these core systems, hopefully. But as it stands entire egg/kibble/breeding system is inherently flawed and need to be rebuilt from the ground up.

[ducttapefixeseverything]

Heh. Or initiate a 12 hour "Purge". Simply give 12 hours warning, then change the whole server to pvp. Once a month. Heh.

[DeZiLL313]

41 minutes ago, DankestKhan said:

A good place to start would be to put a limit on how often you can transfer tames cross server. Maybe once per day or something, I don't know.

There is a cooldown a transferring tames. If its not a full 24 hours I know its atleast 12+ hours before you can transfer it again.

[tidalblade]

I have seen this happen, however I was lucky enough to choose a not-to-packed server, so it wasn't as terrible as I imagine it can be.

I just found my own spot(still using it, I've come to like it, south side of crags), and then kept to myself.  After 3 months, 3-5 of the huge egg farm/vet players went inactive long enough for their tames to be taken over and bases cleared away.  I would claim and purge any dinos I didn't want/need, because I like having a high amount of wild spawns, also a lot of the bases were built in a way that just made the area laggy.

I also made my egg farm public, even though where I am is fairly lightly traveled.  Private egg farms are silly, and add to the amount of unneeded tames on a server.

As for the vets that are constantly toxic toward new players, I usually ignore them, or told them how cancerous they are and that if they want to own the whole map, they can play solo.  unfortunately you can't do anything about them cept let them go inactive then dismantle their junk.

[DankestKhan]

13 minutes ago, DeZiLL313 said:

There is a cooldown a transferring tames. If its not a full 24 hours I know its atleast 12+ hours before you can transfer it again.

Ok I stand corrected, I got into an argument with a vet about this before posting and this individual made it sound like being nice can get instantly punished by off server transfers so I'll edit my op.

[FiSh250505]

I'd like to see the kibble system reversed, instead of a specific egg with generic meat/prime jerky (or in the odd case cooked prime fish) use any egg with meat/prime/fish from a specific dino, would cut down on the need for massive egg farms as a few dodo's will keep you in eggs but you'd also have to go out and hunt for the type of meat you need.

Same goes for imprinting, let the baby want a nice juicy slab of prime spino (or some rare plant for herbies) instead of a random kibble that forces hoarders to keep a minimum of 2 or 3 of every egg laying dino for just in case.

[Loui]

I know technically it's majority of the vet tribes who's been there, which is self explanatory, but you can't just hold them accountable. Like you said how does a game have something like this implemented without any thought of the future. It's the game/game makers fault in my eyes. You could also blame the new people for building 50 rafts and not deleting them, and just because they are arrogant and say it's theirs, not knowing that it takes up tame limit. Or simply because they are 10000 days late to a server anyway. But, it's all of our fault I guess lol but majority wildcards in my opinion for a poorly thought out implementation.

[DankestKhan]

11 minutes ago, FiSh250505 said:

I'd like to see the kibble system reversed, instead of a specific egg with generic meat/prime jerky (or in the odd case cooked prime fish) use any egg with meat/prime/fish from a specific dino, would cut down on the need for massive egg farms as a few dodo's will keep you in eggs but you'd also have to go out and hunt for the type of meat you need.

Same goes for imprinting, let the baby want a nice juicy slab of prime spino (or some rare plant for herbies) instead of a random kibble that forces hoarders to keep a minimum of 2 or 3 of every egg laying dino for just in case.

I like this idea a lot. If there was also a distinction between wild and farmed meat being used for in kibble then it would totally end the gigantic dino farms. People would value wild spawns and be forced to hunt for their kibble instead of it lazily dropping out of the butts of a pack of rexes or whatever. The only people who would continue to farm idle dinos would be breeders then which isn't really the problem here.

[DankestKhan]

20 minutes ago, Loui said:

I know technically it's majority of the vet tribes who's been there, which is self explanatory, but you can't just hold them accountable. Like you said how does a game have something like this implemented without any thought of the future. It's the game/game makers fault in my eyes. You could also blame the new people for building 50 rafts and not deleting them, and just because they are arrogant and say it's theirs, not knowing that it takes up tame limit. Or simply because they are 10000 days late to a server anyway. But, it's all of our fault I guess lol but majority wildcards in my opinion for a poorly thought out implementation.

I am not specifically blaming vet tribes because the game system rewards and arguably requires these egg farms to some level if you want to imprint and breed. But its undeniable that people are selfish by nature whether vet or noob.

Since the game basically requires you to have tons of different eggs for kibble, people would rather just farm it themselves rather than rely on others and trade for it as the devs were probably imagining when they first drafted the current egg/kibble system. So human nature and the game itself brings out this negative behavior in vets.

Also the '10000 days late' thing is a pretty selfish and shortsighted mindset to have especially since wildcard dosen't exactly advertise how long a server has been running, and it's not like there are tons of empty servers or new ones being opened all the time. Yes, we can run our own servers but wildcard heavily pushes play on officials.

[Kaoslion]

2 hours ago, ducttapefixeseverything said:

Heh. Or initiate a 12 hour "Purge". Simply give 12 hours warning, then change the whole server to pvp. Once a month. Heh.

hahaha, already suggest this and said it could even be an event every 4 months. I'm still dusting myself off from all the flamers qqing about it. 

[Kaoslion]

4 minutes ago, DankestKhan said:

I am not specifically blaming vet tribes because the game system rewards and arguably requires these egg farms to some level if you want to imprint and breed. But its undeniable that people are selfish by nature whether vet or noob.

Since the game basically requires you to have tons of different eggs for kibble, people would rather just farm it themselves rather than rely on others and trade for it as the devs were probably imagining when they first drafted the current egg/kibble system. So human nature and the game itself brings out this negative behavior in vets.

Also the '10000 days late' thing is a pretty selfish and shortsighted mindset to have especially since wildcard dosen't exactly advertise how long a server has been running, and it's not like there are tons of empty servers or new ones being opened all the time. Yes, we can run our own servers but wildcard heavily pushes play on officials.

The Vet tribes should bolster much of the blame though. That is with me being a vet tribe owner. Also with me being a Tribe owner on different servers. There is actually another side to this issue. People can have multiple tribes with one copy of the game under differnt xboxlive ID's. Now this isn't so bad if it is actually two people in one family having two different tribes. But under this scenario because I own 3 xbox1's (i'm a good husband and father) legitimately I could lock a server down for 600 tames towards cap for anyone server. If i was being a jerk and used multiple xboxlive and also the nifty Home function on my xbox1 I could easily double that count to 1200 tames towards server cap.   

[Loui]

1 minute ago, DankestKhan said:

I am not specifically blaming vet tribes because the game system rewards and arguably requires these egg farms to some level if you want to imprint and breed. But its undeniable that people are selfish by nature whether vet or noob.

Since the game basically requires you to have tons of different eggs for kibble, people would rather just farm it themselves rather than rely on others and trade for it as the devs were probably imagining when they first drafted the current egg/kibble system. So human nature and the game itself brings out this negative behavior in vets.

Also the '10000 days late' thing is a pretty selfish and shortsighted mindset to have especially since wildcard dosen't exactly advertise how long a server has been running, and it's not like there are tons of empty servers or new ones being opened all the time. Yes, we can run our own servers but wildcard heavily pushes play on officials.

My server is literally past day 10000 and what I meant is how new players come in expecting the prime spots to be open and Dino limit to be tolerable, but they get a huge smack in the face and get angry towards the bigger vet tribes. Then they retaliate by building rafts or on my server, writing their names in Dino gates across the land just to be "funny"  It's all one big mess it has been for awhile on pve it's just getting worse and worse. i agree this whole system is flawed but I seen it coming to be honest. I mean it's pve, tames rarely die, unless everyone just doesn't play well, or if people would actually have war with one another. So I expected it to be capped at some point on every server, especially if they keep adding new Dino's lol. And I was just commenting from the "vet" tribes point of view. It hurts us too, trust me. We can't tame either. It has made every good tribe go at each other's throats "you have too many of this and too many of that". The server limit for Xbox is terrible too, 5000? That's like 25 tribes with max tame limit, it's really not that much, especially on a map like the center. So it really all falls on the creators hopefully they have some kind of turn around that won't affect to many players. 

[DankestKhan]

6 minutes ago, Kaoslion said:

The Vet tribes should bolster much of the blame though. That is with me being a vet tribe owner. Also with me being a Tribe owner on different servers. There is actually another side to this issue. People can have multiple tribes with one copy of the game under differnt xboxlive ID's. Now this isn't so bad if it is actually two people in one family having two different tribes. But under this scenario because I own 3 xbox1's (i'm a good husband and father) legitimately I could lock a server down for 600 tames towards cap for anyone server. If i was being a jerk and used multiple xboxlive and also the nifty Home function on my xbox1 I could easily double that count to 1200 tames towards server cap.   

Wow, that's legitimately disgusting.

Wildcard made the first mistake of game development which was assuming people would be kind to each other and cooperate in a zero consequence environment I guess. I mean it's not like it was a secret how greedy and spiteful gamers will be when allowed to over the years of people playing Ultima, EVE, DayZ, etc  

[Loui]

13 minutes ago, Kaoslion said:

The Vet tribes should bolster much of the blame though. That is with me being a vet tribe owner. Also with me being a Tribe owner on different servers. There is actually another side to this issue. People can have multiple tribes with one copy of the game under differnt xboxlive ID's. Now this isn't so bad if it is actually two people in one family having two different tribes. But under this scenario because I own 3 xbox1's (i'm a good husband and father) legitimately I could lock a server down for 600 tames towards cap for anyone server. If i was being a jerk and used multiple xboxlive and also the nifty Home function on my xbox1 I could easily double that count to 1200 tames towards server cap.   

Kao?!?! What's your ass doing on here?! Lol i see you became a forum man, like myself. 

[Kaoslion]

2 minutes ago, DankestKhan said:

Wow, that's legitimately disgusting.

Wildcard made the first mistake of game development which was assuming people would be kind to each other and cooperate in a zero consequence environment I guess. I mean it's not like it was a secret how greedy and spiteful gamers will be when allowed to over the years of people playing Ultima, EVE, DayZ, etc  

I agree, but yah kinda crazy how easy the official servers get packed out with new people playing. Much less when you have the ability to soak up that many tame slots near cap. It isn't a little known fact either. People have known about the ability for multi tribes on the same server for a long time. We have a person on our server there third tribe is actually names Xtra. Haha

[Kaoslion]

Just now, Loui said:

Kao?!?! What's your ass doing on here?! Lol i see you became a forum man, like myself. 

Whats up man, oh just talk the short coming of the game! hahaha Won't make some people happy. 

[Loui]

1 minute ago, Kaoslion said:

Whats up man, oh just talk the short coming of the game! hahaha Won't make some people happy. 

I hear ya, yeah it's a short coming alright lol 

[Kaoslion]

Just now, Loui said:

I hear ya, yeah it's a short coming alright lol 

I was telling them how if I wanted to I could lock down a server tame cap for 1200 tames. Because I own 3 copies of Ark. 

[Loui]

1 minute ago, Kaoslion said:

I was telling them how if I wanted to I could lock down a server tame cap for 1200 tames. Because I own 3 copies of Ark. 

Yeah pretty much, you don't even need more copies just more gamer tags lol it all fallls on to the games fault. Like first breeding event, lots more tames, then they add the sheep, ok cool, everyone's tribe is gonna have at least 2 sheep. Then WHAM 8 new Dino's which most take kibble you need from previous new Dino's. Ok..ummm...cool? Then boss fights. Now everyone is breeding the hell out of rexes for boss fights. Talk about Dino overload.

[Kaoslion]

Just now, Loui said:

Yeah pretty much, you don't even need more copies just more gamer tags lol it all fallls on to the games fault. Like first breeding event, lots more tames, then they add the sheep, ok cool, everyone's tribe is gonna have at least 2 sheep. Then WHAM 8 new Dino's which most take kibble you need from previous new Dino's. Ok..ummm...cool? Then boss fights. Now everyone is breeding the hell out of rexes for boss fights. Talk about Dino overload.

Yah, there are people crunching numbers even with perfectly bred Rex's. The boss's under their current state can not be beaten on Hard mode with out glitching them. Its funny there are still duping glitches too. Gotta love Ark. 

[Nim]

I agree that a lot of things need to change, but I've actually seen a different side of things recently on my official Island server.

The newer players are actually worse than the older ones.

We definitely have older players taking up space, hoarding dinos, bad attitude, etc but the noobs are getting out of hand. With the recent update that disabled auto-demolishing and once again allowed claiming, 2 old players with lots of dinos got claimed and looted. One specific tribe comprised mostly if not entirely of hostile noobs got almost all of the dinos and loot from both players. They are now attempting to lord it over the rest of us. One guy got called out the other day for thatching volcano and refused to remove it until an older player gave up their bed/vault/whatever spot on the rim and pretty much begged him. I don't care much for the tribe of that older player as they own an insane amount of land with tons of bases (most of which are empty or superficially used), but all the members of the tribe were behaving very nicely towards this guy to save the volcano.

The other noobs are not much better. A big part of Cragg's Island is totally blocked off (if you spawn there you can't escape, and it's covered in foundations), several important pathways and rivers are blocked by various people, a noob spiked off a safe beach that I watch over for new players, and another noob yelled at me and disrespected me for pillaring too much land when I only have pillars in my front yard and a public water inlet (she just wanted the land for herself).

 

My point is, our server is in somewhat of a new and unique situation right now, where the new players are actually doing worse things than the old players. They don't quite have as many dinos as the largest tribes/worst hoarders, but they are getting there fast due to claiming and the help given to them by older players (free/cheap kibble, gifted dinos, etc). So watch the situation on your servers. Don't always be so quick to think that noob in chat is right when shouting about too much pillared land. The argument about older players being the problem is starting to be used falsely for purposes of greed and deflection from the real problems. A new player can be just as bad as an old player when it comes to hoarding and building like an ass.

[Kaoslion]

24 minutes ago, Nim said:

I agree that a lot of things need to change, but I've actually seen a different side of things recently on my official Island server.

The newer players are actually worse than the older ones.

We definitely have older players taking up space, hoarding dinos, bad attitude, etc but the noobs are getting out of hand. With the recent update that disabled auto-demolishing and once again allowed claiming, 2 old players with lots of dinos got claimed and looted. One specific tribe comprised mostly if not entirely of hostile noobs got almost all of the dinos and loot from both players. They are now attempting to lord it over the rest of us. One guy got called out the other day for thatching volcano and refused to remove it until an older player gave up their bed/vault/whatever spot on the rim and pretty much begged him. I don't care much for the tribe of that older player as they own an insane amount of land with tons of bases (most of which are empty or superficially used), but all the members of the tribe were behaving very nicely towards this guy to save the volcano.

The other noobs are not much better. A big part of Cragg's Island is totally blocked off (if you spawn there you can't escape, and it's covered in foundations), several important pathways and rivers are blocked by various people, a noob spiked off a safe beach that I watch over for new players, and another noob yelled at me and disrespected me for pillaring too much land when I only have pillars in my front yard and a public water inlet (she just wanted the land for herself).

 

My point is, our server is in somewhat of a new and unique situation right now, where the new players are actually doing worse things than the old players. They don't quite have as many dinos as the largest tribes/worst hoarders, but they are getting there fast due to claiming and the help given to them by older players (free/cheap kibble, gifted dinos, etc). So watch the situation on your servers. Don't always be so quick to think that noob in chat is right when shouting about too much pillared land. The argument about older players being the problem is starting to be used falsely for purposes of greed and deflection from the real problems. A new player can be just as bad as an old player when it comes to hoarding and building like an ass.

lol agreed all the new players i've seen are wiped beta's from PVP servers. little cuck's that couldn't handle a alpha so they come in and make things worse. But all of these are design flaws in the game. That hopefully will be address and fixed. 

[DankestKhan]

35 minutes ago, Nim said:

I agree that a lot of things need to change, but I've actually seen a different side of things recently on my official Island server.

The newer players are actually worse than the older ones.

We definitely have older players taking up space, hoarding dinos, bad attitude, etc but the noobs are getting out of hand. With the recent update that disabled auto-demolishing and once again allowed claiming, 2 old players with lots of dinos got claimed and looted. One specific tribe comprised mostly if not entirely of hostile noobs got almost all of the dinos and loot from both players. They are now attempting to lord it over the rest of us. One guy got called out the other day for thatching volcano and refused to remove it until an older player gave up their bed/vault/whatever spot on the rim and pretty much begged him. I don't care much for the tribe of that older player as they own an insane amount of land with tons of bases (most of which are empty or superficially used), but all the members of the tribe were behaving very nicely towards this guy to save the volcano.

The other noobs are not much better. A big part of Cragg's Island is totally blocked off (if you spawn there you can't escape, and it's covered in foundations), several important pathways and rivers are blocked by various people, a noob spiked off a safe beach that I watch over for new players, and another noob yelled at me and disrespected me for pillaring too much land when I only have pillars in my front yard and a public water inlet (she just wanted the land for herself).

 

My point is, our server is in somewhat of a new and unique situation right now, where the new players are actually doing worse things than the old players. They don't quite have as many dinos as the largest tribes/worst hoarders, but they are getting there fast due to claiming and the help given to them by older players (free/cheap kibble, gifted dinos, etc). So watch the situation on your servers. Don't always be so quick to think that noob in chat is right when shouting about too much pillared land. The argument about older players being the problem is starting to be used falsely for purposes of greed and deflection from the real problems. A new player can be just as bad as an old player when it comes to hoarding and building like an ass.

Thanks for the post. You're right that toxic antisocial behavior is not limited to vets, and that noobs can grief vets out of being able to play just as easily as vets can to noobs. Personally I have no pity for a vet egg farm that becomes reclaimable. If someone is gone for a week and didn't make arrangements for the tribe to maintain the herd while they were gone I have zero pity. That level of egg farming shouldn't be done by one or two people to begin with, but this goes back to the core game system of egg farming being a mandatory endgame activity being problematic.

I think that for issues regarding land claiming and the spam of garbage structures and rafts that toxic noobs (and vets) are using to grief with could be resolved with a simple rework of the claim system. Instead of pillars and foundations being limitless and blocking other structures, move the block function to a new foundation or pillar called a 'claim pillar' or 'claim foundation'. Each player should get a personal limit to how many claims they can place, and if you join a tribe you would forfeit your personal claim limit and add to the tribes total claim limit. And as for rafts tbh there should be a limit of one per player. There's no good reason for more than one raft sorry lads.

Anyways in my case the server I am on is not super covered with pillars so I was able to find a nice spot, but then after a day of building I find that the tame limit has been reached and I only have an argentavis and a raptor, so I can either stay on the server and be unable to tame because of some vet tribes with giant egg farms, or I can transfer my few tames off lose my modest base and try to find another server where the same thing can happen all over again because there's no way of knowing how close the server is to tame limit.

And obviously it's beyond toxic to reclaim someones base and gloat when they come back the next day- a decent person would try and help out the returning player, but when your servers at tame limit something's gotta give.

 

 

[Kaoslion]

6 minutes ago, DankestKhan said:

Thanks for the post. You're right that toxic antisocial behavior is not limited to vets, and that noobs can grief vets out of being able to play just as easily as vets can to noobs. Personally I have no pity for a vet egg farm that becomes reclaimable. If someone is gone for a week and didn't make arrangements for the tribe to maintain the herd while they were gone I have zero pity. That level of egg farming shouldn't be done by one or two people to begin with, but this goes back to the core game system of egg farming being a mandatory endgame activity being problematic.

I think that for issues regarding land claiming and the spam of garbage structures and rafts that toxic noobs (and vets) are using to grief with could be resolved with a simple rework of the claim system. Instead of pillars and foundations being limitless and blocking other structures, move the block function to a new foundation or pillar called a 'claim pillar' or 'claim foundation'. Each player should get a personal limit to how many claims they can place, and if you join a tribe you would forfeit your personal claim limit and add to the tribes total claim limit. And as for rafts tbh there should be a limit of one per player. There's no good reason for more than one raft sorry lads.

Anyways in my case the server I am on is not super covered with pillars so I was able to find a nice spot, but then after a day of building I find that the tame limit has been reached and I only have an argentavis and a raptor, so I can either stay on the server and be unable to tame because of some vet tribes with giant egg farms, or I can transfer my few tames off lose my modest base and try to find another server where the same thing can happen all over again because there's no way of knowing how close the server is to tame limit.

And obviously it's beyond toxic to reclaim someones base and gloat when they come back the next day- a decent person would try and help out the returning player, but when your servers at tame limit something's gotta give.

 

 

Agreed, the main issue why people pillar is needing space to work in. Because not only do you not want people building right on top of you. You also need space for doing meat runs for breeding. I'll be honest i'm a pillaring acehole. But it is because the game forces me to be. If not you have people building right up to your boundries especially on a busy server. Everyone wants beach front proprty or super close to metal resources. Whether that space works or not people will plop down a base and make it work disregarding the people that were there before them. If they can't build out then they will build up. creating huge towers of lag and stupidness. That might even be a suggestion to the dev's to put a set limit on how tall structures can be on a Offical server. That would open a whole new can of worms though. 

[Ballmann]

In my opinion the official pve servers need to be wiped. Almost every server is covered with bases and buildings that arent used but reseted by the owner who has stopped playing ark (except logging in every 5 days to feed and reset) months ago. The number of players online is decreasing at our server every month and we still remain at the tamelimit. I know a rework of the current kibble system will take time and isnt top priority (the system works its the players who hoard the creatures) but without the ability to farm and breed pve lacks the majority of content. Thats why we need changes as fast as possible and u can buy some time by wiping all the servers.

Also the tame limit of 500 creatures per tribe hadn't the desired effect. Large tribes found ways to ignore the limit while smaller tribes arent effected by it. The problem is not a 10 player tribe owning 700 creatures but 10 soloplayer tribes each owning 200 creatures. And yes 700 creatures is an unnecessary amount of mainly decorative and unused creatures even for 10 players. Official PvE-players need to wake up, playing solo or with ur best friend (husband/wife whoever) and owning multiple of each tameable creature isnt consistent with good server performance. If u want every creature to ride it, breed it or simply cuddle with it, u need to band together with other players and share stuff. Unfortunatly a lot of players aren't about to do this, so we need some changes game mechanic wise.