In depth analysis of the flyer Blanace

[tidalblade]

1 hour ago, rororoxor said:

Well, ptera and others are decently fast now (except quetz) and overall, their stats have increased since the nerf. Did you see the spreadsheet?

Fair enough.

I don't see how this balances flyers though.  I mean I don't see the benefit in locking their speed, and raising all their other stats, when this was supposed to be a flyer nerf.  It doesn't address what the senior game designer mentioned as problems.

[Xeeta]

edit: double post.

[Xeeta]

55 minutes ago, Xenithar said:

They're still slow as hell. You may not need a 750% bird (somebody claimed to have had one on a Steam forum), but this is why Classic Flyers has had over 100k downloads. Flying things are normally faster than land-based things. This is true in both nature and mans machines. Sure, there are things which defy that basic fact such as a cheetah or an F1 race car, but those are not the norm. The fact is that people living farther from ores (metal, obsidian, etc) and crystal now have two choices. Spend an hour or more fighting your way on the ground up there to the mountains, OR attempt to fly a quetz up there, stopping every few minutes and praying nothing attacks.

The big problem was implementation. The devs did not do a normal implementation. Normally you reduce a bit and see. Reduce some more. And then again, until you get the sweet spot. This keeps players happy and ratings high. Going from where they were to nothing was too much. Think of it like this. You're doing 65mph in your car. The speed limit drops to 35 for a school zone. Do you slam on the brakes and completely stop, then slowly creep up to 35, or do you release your accelerator and possibly hit your brakes gently in advance? The devs pulled the freaking hand-brake on flying dinos, and that is what killed off a lot of players. It was too sudden.

Combine that with not only fixing the barrel roll via cooldown, but also by destroying speed so a damn dilo can catch your ptera and you have a big mess. I never tried numerous rolls back-to-back, but the CD is all that was needed there. Combining two things made an over-nerf.

Then there's the turret issue. This was so simple to fix I cannot believe they used an atomic bomb in place of a piece of tissue. The answer was to make turrets a tad faster. Hell, make it an upgrade for the turret. Make them more accurate. Give them more range. These could ALL have been upgrades. Every Play Unreal Fortress or TFC? The stock turret sucks. You upgrade them so they don't suck!

The biggest issue is that this was done ENTIRELY for PvP. Not all of us play PvP. It ruined PvE for about a day, then we got the Classic Flyers mod. If this was such a big deal in PvP then fix it in PvP! In WoW many spells and skills work one way in the overworld and another way in arenas and such. Same can be said for many other games. Why couldn't we do that here?

With that said I am not ENTIRELY against the patch. From what I read, there were some fairly stupid speeds being attained. I am all for caps, but reasonable caps. Ptera/Tapejara at 250% for example. Argent at whatever. Quetzal at 160% or so. Simple fix. What is so damn hard about introducing caps? You could even cap wild dinos lower and require breeding to attain higher caps, which would encourage players to check out the breeding functionality, thus making it more useful. This crap of "no matter how damn good you breed, your birds will always be slow" is too much of a cap. Let the players have the ability to adjust speed. Just cap it!

Fun fact: they already have caps in place for some of the land dinos.  Specifically took a max level 150 raptor and put every point into speed- it caps at 255% 

 

All they'd have had to do was implement dino-specific caps, but nope- too hard.

 

Cough cough, mods don't play their game.  Jat, Jen, and Panda log into the server just to spawn in the newest Tek stuff and feed dinosaurs.  Any experience they claim to have with the flyer nerf is null and void since they haven't been active in well over 6 months.  

To go back to the topic at hand, though- I see it as simple as this:

The claim you could live on the back of a quetzal forever- complete and absolute BS.  Literally have never seen or heard anyone doing this.  Might as well nerf rafts too since I have actually SEEN people do that.  Oh wait, their counter was to introduce the Leeds.

Flyers needed to be nerfed- yeah, maybe in PVP.  In PVE aside from their one fraudulent claim, has no other grounding.  There was literally no reason to crush the speed of every creature with functioning wings.  

They could have literally solved the problems in PVP with server settings- but no, they chose to screw over everyone who had a flying dinosaur.  

Wildcard, play your damn game and tell us how these changes are justified.

[InfernoRodan]

Honestly, I think the part of this whole flyer nerf thing that baffles me the most is the fact that they didn't reinstate the damage multiplier that flyers had from projectiles in the early days of the game.  Simply doing that would have gone a looooong way in reducing the power of flyers in PvP, which is where the balance really matters.  For the PvE side, saying flyers trivialized the majority of the content is pretty much nonsense.  If you tame a high-level Carno and get a few levels into HP and melee damage, you've already "trivialized" the majority of the content because you're safe from like 90% of what you'll encounter in the wild anyway.

I've been playing with the nerfed flyers for a month now, resisting the urge to DL the Classic Flyers mod.  The only flyers I've bothered using since a couple days after the update are my Wyverns because they're the only flyers that can cover a decent amount of ground at a reasonable pace while still being able to actually do anything when I get wherever it was that I was going.  The nerf hasn't made me use my land mounts any more often than I did previously, and really all it's accomplished is make me hate my Wyverns because they have all the maneuverability of an 18-wheeler yet I'm still "forced" to use them.  I use my land mounts when I want to harvest stuff, kill an Alpha, or just go on a joyride.  I use my flyers when I want to get things done (i.e: look for new tames or transport my harvesting mounts).  All the nerf has done is make it take longer to do things.  As someone else in this thread so aptly put it, it's basically just lengthened what amounts to a loading screen.  I was really hoping the devs were going to release an .ini option in patch 257 to allow for putting points into flyers' speed, but I guess it's not gonna happen.

[TheBanditKing]

Flyer nerf is still garbage. Will never agree with a locked stat nerf but its not up to me. Fix the customization on the flyers and allow us to level speed at very very small increments. Where is the harm in that?

Everyone is jumping ship from officials to play classic flyers, maybe thats what they want. Silence on the flyer nerf for a month now...

[Volcano637]

8 hours ago, Xenithar said:

They're still slow as hell. You may not need a 750% bird (somebody claimed to have had one on a Steam forum), but this is why Classic Flyers has had over 100k downloads. Flying things are normally faster than land-based things. This is true in both nature and mans machines. Sure, there are things which defy that basic fact such as a cheetah or an F1 race car, but those are not the norm. The fact is that people living farther from ores (metal, obsidian, etc) and crystal now have two choices. Spend an hour or more fighting your way on the ground up there to the mountains, OR attempt to fly a quetz up there, stopping every few minutes and praying nothing attacks.

The big problem was implementation. The devs did not do a normal implementation. Normally you reduce a bit and see. Reduce some more. And then again, until you get the sweet spot. This keeps players happy and ratings high. Going from where they were to nothing was too much. Think of it like this. You're doing 65mph in your car. The speed limit drops to 35 for a school zone. Do you slam on the brakes and completely stop, then slowly creep up to 35, or do you release your accelerator and possibly hit your brakes gently in advance? The devs pulled the freaking hand-brake on flying dinos, and that is what killed off a lot of players. It was too sudden.

Combine that with not only fixing the barrel roll via cooldown, but also by destroying speed so a damn dilo can catch your ptera and you have a big mess. I never tried numerous rolls back-to-back, but the CD is all that was needed there. Combining two things made an over-nerf.

Then there's the turret issue. This was so simple to fix I cannot believe they used an atomic bomb in place of a piece of tissue. The answer was to make turrets a tad faster. Hell, make it an upgrade for the turret. Make them more accurate. Give them more range. These could ALL have been upgrades. Every Play Unreal Fortress or TFC? The stock turret sucks. You upgrade them so they don't suck!

The biggest issue is that this was done ENTIRELY for PvP. Not all of us play PvP. It ruined PvE for about a day, then we got the Classic Flyers mod. If this was such a big deal in PvP then fix it in PvP! In WoW many spells and skills work one way in the overworld and another way in arenas and such. Same can be said for many other games. Why couldn't we do that here?

With that said I am not ENTIRELY against the patch. From what I read, there were some fairly stupid speeds being attained. I am all for caps, but reasonable caps. Ptera/Tapejara at 250% for example. Argent at whatever. Quetzal at 160% or so. Simple fix. What is so damn hard about introducing caps? You could even cap wild dinos lower and require breeding to attain higher caps, which would encourage players to check out the breeding functionality, thus making it more useful. This crap of "no matter how damn good you breed, your birds will always be slow" is too much of a cap. Let the players have the ability to adjust speed. Just cap it!

If a kid walks out into the street you better slam your brakes or you are going to jail for the rest of your life. So many analogies.

i think the fliers are fine now. Yeah they are a little slow but that's completely fine. The devs did what they planned to do and now everything is fine

[Xenithar]

No, it is not fine. Quetzals should not have to land every sixty seconds to recharge. Caps would have fixed this. I was unaware land dinos had caps since I would never dream of doing max speed like that. I play PvE, a point everybody counter to this thing overlooks. I have NEVER seen a 500% or more speed bird in PvE. Not once. In PvE we use our land dinos as well. I mean how the heck else would you do the caves? Land your ptera outside and pray something doesn't eat it while you do the cave? I bring raptors and rexes when I do caves so they're safe outside while I delve.

Again, you overlook every valid point made here (dinos can be capped, things like turrets can be fixed, etc) and simply say "it's fine". It may be fine on your end but PvE is a damn grind. I have tried twice now to use flying dinos without the mod and it SUCKS. F*** PvP, I want to play with my friends in the very short amount of time I have. I have an infant at home, a full-time career which goes over 40hrs a week, and then there's things like mowing the lawn, caring for real pets, car maintenance, etc. I don't have an entire day to fight my way to a mountain to mine with land dinos and then fight my way back. I have two gigas and two rexes and still it takes time.

This is killing those of us who have actual lives. If you live in your parents' basement and play a hundred hours a week this probably isn't too bad. For the rest of us, what do we do? We download the mod. You'd think the devs would wake up and smell the coffee on this one. I'd still request a refund if I hadn't had the game so long.

Also, when the heck did the thylacoleo become a glider? I liked watching them on trees from a flying dino and I like the fact that they can now jump onto you and knock you off, but I have watched them launch from a tree and turn 90deg, then glide towards me. I backed up with my tapejara and eventually he just fell, but still, DILO?

[Naerah(Qc)]

2 hours ago, Volcano637 said:

If a kid walks out into the street you better slam your brakes or you are going to jail for the rest of your life. So many analogies.

i think the fliers are fine now. Yeah they are a little slow but that's completely fine. The devs did what they planned to do and now everything is fine

By yourself you account for 50% of the support the nerf has on the entire forum. By no mean you saying you like it is making the nerf less broken. A very minority support the nerf but are so vocal and flooding every thread that you make the illusion of being more. It's easy to check, you just need to look at the amount of post the small pro nerf team as together compared to the rest of the forum. Having most of the mods team on your side further the illusion of weight you have. If you open the game on steam and look at  POPULATED official servers, there's not 2 full pages, used to be 4-5 pages. This show something is not fine. No i don't think that many people has quit, they just went to modded unofficials.

[Slash78]

This thread is definitely not an "In depth analysis of the flyer Balance."  It's a very long way of saying you don't like the nerf and you try to throw out enough stuff to make it sound like your position is reasonable.

Being Pro-Flyer and never wanting them nerfed is 100% unreasonable.  Flying is such a huge ability.  It's incredibly difficult to balance.  I like to use Blizzard as an example.  They don't allow flying mounts in newly released areas because they know they would completely negate the majority of the content they created.   

The only way to truly balance flyers is make them disproportionately weak or have severe drawbacks versus land or sea creatures.  This isn't something that should be done.  This is something that has to be done for game play and balancing.  Otherwise there is nothing remotely balanced and flyers will be by far the most effective mounts, simply because the ability to fly.

I've never heard a Pro-Flyer player come up with any way effective way to balance flyers.  Nor have I ever heard a Pro-Flyer player explain WHY they need Flyers to be like they were without it sounding like "me, me, me".

[rororoxor]

14 hours ago, tidalblade said:

Fair enough.

I don't see how this balances flyers though.  I mean I don't see the benefit in locking their speed, and raising all their other stats, when this was supposed to be a flyer nerf.  It doesn't address what the senior game designer mentioned as problems.

Ya, they definitely shouldn't have locked speed. That's my main problem with the rebalance. But the rebuff after the nerf helped a lot otherwise.

[Volcano637]

2 hours ago, Naerah(Qc) said:

By yourself you account for 50% of the support the nerf has on the entire forum. By no mean you saying you like it is making the nerf less broken. A very minority support the nerf but are so vocal and flooding every thread that you make the illusion of being more. It's easy to check, you just need to look at the amount of post the small pro nerf team as together compared to the rest of the forum. Having most of the mods team on your side further the illusion of weight you have. If you open the game on steam and look at  POPULATED official servers, there's not 2 full pages, used to be 4-5 pages. This show something is not fine. No i don't think that many people has quit, they just went to modded unofficials.

I wouldn't say I was 50% even though I probably am that important. The thing is me saying I like it is the same as saying it is not broken. Which would make it less broken. I haven't seen all that many people complaining anymore which means they are getting used to it. Pretty soon the anti nerf people will be less and less.

[Naerah(Qc)]

1 hour ago, Slash78 said:

The only way to truly balance flyers is make them disproportionately weak or have severe drawbacks versus land or sea creatures.  This isn't something that should be done.  This is something that has to be done for game play and balancing.  Otherwise there is nothing remotely balanced and flyers will be by far the most effective mounts, simply because the ability to fly.

I've never heard a Pro-Flyer player come up with any way effective way to balance flyers.  Nor have I ever heard a Pro-Flyer player explain WHY they need Flyers to be like they were without it sounding like "me, me, me".

This is no true at all, there was multiple ways they could have balanced the flying aspect, they just took the easy and laziest way to do it. Many have brought very valid point at to why the nerf was not needed to the extend they did it. Most against it have pointed out that capping the maximum of point you can put in speed and reducing the amount of bonus speed each point give was one very valid way of balancing them, another would have been to add danger in the void that is the sky right now. Those are very valid ways they could have used to balance things out. You just conveniently choose to disregard those. 

Plus the devs litterally lied about the reason to do it :"people could live in the sky never ever landing" which is pure BS, ive yet to see someone fly underwater for pearls, or simply not fall through his saddle when logging off.

[Naerah(Qc)]

9 minutes ago, Volcano637 said:

I wouldn't say I was 50% even though I probably am that important. The thing is me saying I like it is the same as saying it is not broken. Which would make it less broken. I haven't seen all that many people complaining anymore which means they are getting used to it. Pretty soon the anti nerf people will be less and less.

They're not getting used to it, they move to modded servers so of course people are talking less. Not because they adapt as you wanna beleive. After a while of seeing devs listen only to their important few, people move away understanding how feedback are useless really.

[Volcano637]

5 minutes ago, Naerah(Qc) said:

They're not getting used to it, they move to modded servers so of course people are talking less. Not because they adapt as you wanna beleive. After a while of seeing devs listen only to their important few, people move away understanding how feedback are useless really.

I wouldn't say feedback is useless. If that were the case then v2 never would have came about. Just because v3 might not be on the top of the priority list still doesnt mean that feedback is useless. Too many people on here you the word useless. For feedback, bird, and so on.

[Slash78]

58 minutes ago, Naerah(Qc) said:

This is no true at all, there was multiple ways they could have balanced the flying aspect, they just took the easy and laziest way to do it. Many have brought very valid point at to why the nerf was not needed to the extend they did it. Most against it have pointed out that capping the maximum of point you can put in speed and reducing the amount of bonus speed each point give was one very valid way of balancing them, another would have been to add danger in the void that is the sky right now. Those are very valid ways they could have used to balance things out. You just conveniently choose to disregard those. 

Plus the devs litterally lied about the reason to do it :"people could live in the sky never ever landing" which is pure BS, ive yet to see someone fly underwater for pearls, or simply not fall through his saddle when logging off.

It is true.  Aggressive Quetz?  That will make taming them easier as you will be able to kite them.  Fast Dimorphodons?  Unless there is a huge speed nerf for tamed ones that will greatly effect both PvP and PvE.  Getting away from one you've accidentally hit will be hard.  They'll be that much better for PvP and you'll be able to fly around with a cloud of them.  You can't do the latter as they fly so slow.  Alpha Argent?  (Something the devs talked about a while back).  They would be worse for ground mounts to deal with.

Now I'm not gonna say the Devs aren't lazy and have only a vague concept of what "balance" is (the stat/level bloat caused by "increased difficulty" that doesn't greatly increase difficulty, magic gifting of 50% levels for a perfect tame, breeding/imprinting buffs, etc, etc).  What I'm saying is you people go way out of your way to dream up non-nerfs in an effort to avoid any real negative effects to flyers.  

[Naerah(Qc)]

2 hours ago, Slash78 said:

 What I'm saying is you people go way out of your way to dream up non-nerfs in an effort to avoid any real negative effects to flyers.  

This is a lie, we said numerous time we don't want them where they were, they obviously needed tweeks here and there, like removing the possibility to raise speed of a ptera up to 600%(this is obviously ridiculous). If you fail to see any negative effect in capping speed (for pteras as they were the one mostly targeted) to somewhere 175%-200%, or taking twice as much point in speed to reach 175%, then it's you turning a blind eye on it.

This is called giving ideas and propositions to achieve the result they wanted. By no mean this does mean they didn't need some nerfs but locking the speed was not needed and a badly thought move in general.

[YUSHOETMI]

7 hours ago, Naerah(Qc) said:

By yourself you account for 50% of the support the nerf has on the entire forum. By no mean you saying you like it is making the nerf less broken. A very minority support the nerf but are so vocal and flooding every thread that you make the illusion of being more. It's easy to check, you just need to look at the amount of post the small pro nerf team as together compared to the rest of the forum. Having most of the mods team on your side further the illusion of weight you have. If you open the game on steam and look at  POPULATED official servers, there's not 2 full pages, used to be 4-5 pages. This show something is not fine. No i don't think that many people has quit, they just went to modded unofficials.

Guess I'm the other 50% then  wow that is one of the dumbest statements I've ever read, and I re read all my own comments before posting. 

Minority? What makes you say that the pro nerf camp is the minority? Or the most vocal, infact take the numbers of those actually playing the game and not complaining (by default pro nerf) then I wouldn't lump us as the minority. Delusional role reversal at its best. 

But what do I know, you clearly know better and have a better understand of the games best direction than the people who built it from scatch after many years of vision and dreams. How dare they go against your beliefs on whats best for its future. 

Oh and for those who truly do believe the nerf shouldn't have affected PvE, please stop kidding yourself. 

[Ep1cM0nk3y]

4 hours ago, Naerah(Qc) said:

This is no true at all, there was multiple ways they could have balanced the flying aspect, they just took the easy and laziest way to do it. Many have brought very valid point at to why the nerf was not needed to the extend they did it. Most against it have pointed out that capping the maximum of point you can put in speed and reducing the amount of bonus speed each point give was one very valid way of balancing them, another would have been to add danger in the void that is the sky right now. Those are very valid ways they could have used to balance things out. You just conveniently choose to disregard those. 

Plus the devs litterally lied about the reason to do it :"people could live in the sky never ever landing" which is pure BS, ive yet to see someone fly underwater for pearls, or simply not fall through his saddle when logging off.

The problem was the speed, adding speed back in, even at a reduced rate per level or capping it at a certain level would undo the very thing the nerf meant to accomplish, therefore it is not a valid example of how you would have balanced then differently, it's merely just more qq about your lost speed..

And I'd agree with adding more aggressive dangers in the sky but then we'd have a leed/raft situation and I'm willing to bet most of you antinerfers would again be complaining because your prize, bred flyers were killed because of your lack of adapting..

Your hyperbole about using flyers for everything is ridiculous.. anyone who plays ark knows that flyers were used for most everything they could possibly be used for not including caves/water (which are a very small part of the island).. 

[YUSHOETMI]

3 minutes ago, Ep1cM0nk3y said:

The problem was the speed, adding speed back in, even at a reduced rate per level or capping it at a certain level would undo the very thing the nerf meant to accomplish, therefore it is not a valid example of how you would have balanced then differently, it's merely just more qq about your lost speed..

And I'd agree with adding more aggressive dangers in the sky but then we'd have a leed/raft situation and I'm willing to bet most of you antinerfers would again be complaining because your prize, bred flyers were killed because of your lack of adapting..

Your hyperbole about using flyers for everything is ridiculous.. anyone who plays ark knows that flyers were used for most everything they could possibly be used for not including caves/water (which are a very small part of the island).. 

Just to be that guy, I used to use my Ptera for water based stuff all the time when I played on the centre. 

If I seen a drop land in the ocean I'd fly out there gain height and dive bomb ontop of the drop, the speed of which it hurls you off when you touched the water meant I didn't have to bother with oxygen or scuba as I was at the ocean floor in a blink, the same could be done with diving for pearls. All you had to do after, was surface and hop straight back onto the Ptera as it waited for you like a good pet. 

So really their only argument is you couldn't use them for caves, which again, being that guy, is actually possible on the centre again, the cave on lava island, has a small area just before you hit the lava, below the first opening and two pools of lava, where a lot of cave dwellers spawn, flyers are allowed in that area before the bridge, can farm enough mats there in seconds with a decent Ptera. 

I was probably more guilty than most for overusing flyers, yet I love the nerf, strange that. 

[BulletForce]

16 hours ago, TheBanditKing said:

Everyone is jumping ship from officials to play classic flyers, maybe thats what they want. Silence on the flyer nerf for a month now...

Wrong. A small minority of players have download that pointless mod and an even smaller amount actually play on servers using it. The majority like the changes and the refreshing new gameplay it has created. They value an ARK that is fair and balanced where all dinos are useful.

[Ep1cM0nk3y]

1 minute ago, YUSHOETMI said:

Just to be that guy, I used to use my Ptera for water based stuff all the time when I played on the centre. 

If I seen a drop land in the ocean I'd fly out there gain height and dive bomb ontop of the drop, the speed of which it hurls you off when you touched the water meant I didn't have to bother with oxygen or scuba as I was at the ocean floor in a blink, the same could be done with diving for pearls. All you had to do after, was surface and hop straight back onto the Ptera as it waited for you like a good pet. 

So really their only argument is you couldn't use them for caves, which again, being that guy, is actually possible on the centre again, the cave on lava island, has a small area just before you hit the lava, below the first opening and two pools of lava, where a lot of cave dwellers spawn, flyers are allowed in that area before the bridge, can farm enough mats there in seconds with a decent Ptera. 

I was probably more guilty than most for overusing flyers, yet I love the nerf, strange that. 

I like the challenge this will bring,  plus I get to go out and tame more and I really enjoy taming.. (I'm by blue ob so high lol argies and quetz spawn on me).. I'm also thinking I could make a taming platform with a bronto or para and just bring a bird with me to drop whatever on the platform for mobile taming since i can't fly across map now.. should be fun ?

[stargatedalek]

Peregrine falcons are faster than cheetahs actually

[BulletForce]

8 hours ago, Naerah(Qc) said:

By yourself you account for 50% of the support the nerf has on the entire forum. By no mean you saying you like it is making the nerf less broken. A very minority support the nerf but are so vocal and flooding every thread that you make the illusion of being more. It's easy to check, you just need to look at the amount of post the small pro nerf team as together compared to the rest of the forum. Having most of the mods team on your side further the illusion of weight you have. If you open the game on steam and look at  POPULATED official servers, there's not 2 full pages, used to be 4-5 pages. This show something is not fine. No i don't think that many people has quit, they just went to modded unofficials.

You have quite a penchant for misinformation there Naerah. The facts in this case are quite evident, the majority of players are happily enjoying the changes to flyers on Official Servers. According to Stem Charts player numbers for ARK remain very steady with no change in the figures post nerf which is far from the narrative about the 'Death of Ark' that the Jurassic Wings crowd has been trying to sell on here for the last month of which you are part of.

ARK has a bright future ahead thanks to the foresight and wisdom of the developers who have made quite a remarkable and groundbreaking game. A leading game of its genre that has raised the bar significantly for future survival games.

[CobraD]

11 hours ago, Volcano637 said:

If a kid walks out into the street you better slam your brakes or you are going to jail for the rest of your life. So many analogies.

i think the fliers are fine now. Yeah they are a little slow but that's completely fine. The devs did what they planned to do and now everything is fine

Are you sure it's fine? I'm just asking cause you used the word "fine" a tad to many times.

[YUSHOETMI]

8 minutes ago, CobraD said:

Are you sure it's fine? I'm just asking cause you used the word "fine" a tad too many times.

Somebody has a hang up on the word fine it seems. 

Guess the "how was it for you" question didn't pan out so well in the past eh?

also. You're welcome.