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Alpha Tribes and why they will eventually kill ark pvp


KarinFuto

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The concept of alpha is not something I disagree with. What I do disagree with is how little you can do against it, especially if you are new.

If you want to kill a game, make their introduction to the game raptoring horrible. And that is what you are succeeding with.

From spawn camping to spamming foundations. And everything in between.

 

Is there not a compromise that can be done so that A: The concept of alpha stays relevant along with the politics and B: They cannot troll endlessly, bully players off the server with no effort.

 

It's just not possible to do anything when they are ahead of you by months in resources and levels. It's not a question of "being ninja" when they have a dragon or any other high level flyer, and can roam trough the map with impunity. It's anti-social to the extreme and very toxic.

 

It would not be a problem if this did not happen in all of the official servers. But it essentially does. Rarely will you ever find a official server that is not ruled by a toxic alpha tribe who murder new players by the hundreds. What if you introduced servers that were level capped? To give new players a chance to gather resources. They would still be in danger as there would be other players around. But it would not be this "Fly around and roast every player encountered" thing where you can roam around and kill everything in sight. Perhaps 25/40/75/100? If you are above the level cap you simply cannot join the server.

 

There is a reason that new players are telling you about it. And I highly doubt all of us are complaining because "LOL IT's PVP".

We get that it's pvp, but it's just not balanced at all. It's also highly toxic as you are killing the chance for new players to actually join in on the game and participate if all they are going to get is getting wiped by a level 150 dragon around between stone and wood.

 

Another thing I am thinking about is if there was a nerf on tribes who go past 10 members. For every additional member total damage, (be it firing the dragons fire at someone while in the saddle or shooting with a shotgun) is lowered by 1%. Starting at 2% and maxes out at 20%. This nerf only comes on when a member of said tribe attacks first. Not if they get attacked first. And only applies towards buildings and players. Not dinos (you deal full damage to dinos). Because the more members the tribe has, the more ridicilous the bullying/roasting around becomes. Your own dinos only get the nerf if you are riding them and attacking, and the nerf is on a 3 minute cooldown for dinos.

 

Regardless of if you think my solutions are crap or not. One thing is for certain, most new players will leave on day 1 once they get a taste of this toxic behavior, and seeing as you have Mixed/negative on the steam reviews, can you really afford to raptor up a new players experience over and over? (While asking for 60 euros. Are you insane?)

 

67% of all the reviews are positive. and it has 126 530 reviews. Before you go cheering for it being above 50% (We got the majority wohoo, so there's no problems.), 41 764 players do give the game a negative review.

 

That is quite alot of players that think the game is either poop or some other negative aspect, no doubt this alpha toxic behavior being one of them. That's quite alot of players that can spread mouth to mouth.

Overall, if this continues you are going to have a small subset of groups playing PVP (The alphas), with the majority of new players leaving, refunding perhaps or just playing PVE, missing out on a game feature. Because they cannot get in on it, since they will be wiped. Just something as simple as building your first home will get you wiped. Some alphas have dedicated squads to kill new players and wipe the beaches regularly. What a great introduction!

 

Granted this is a hard subject to approach, but it is something that must be dealt with. If you get no new players the game will simply stagnate and not grow. And  the players who are still there will have no challenge at all.

"Why you just not get in tribe and kill the alpha".

Yes, because 4 new players are surely going to take down that 10 man tribe and above with stones and sticks while they have dragons and gigas. It does not make a difference to them. And even if the New Tribe had the same amount of members, the alpha has most likely months of resources and stats/level above the new tribe. That is a huge advantage to have.

"Lol it's pvp deal with it".

Okay you deal then with the player base slowly shrinking until the game becomes irrelevant. You would have even less fun then because now you got NO ONE to play against or with.

"Just hide good".

All the maps have poop hiding spots for new players. Especially on The Island. Hiding in Ark is hard if not outright impossible for a new player.

Also because low spec on ark removes the grass/clutter pretty much completely leaving flat textures, crouching or laying down on the ground is pointless unless you are behind a object.

 

On a side note: Asking for 60 euro for a game that releases early access "DLC" and that has this kind of toxic gameplay ingame is a rather tasteless joke Wildcard. Lower the price of the game, Ark is not worth 60 euro while riding with these kind of problems (not even counting the rubberbanding and lag on the official servers).

 

 

 

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@KarinFuto You make some decent points. There's balancing that could be done, and actually I suggested the level cap server idea myself quite a while ago. However, WC doesn't really have enough servers period, let alone to start level capping them.

However, the most important thing to remember about Ark PvP is that the whole thing is geared to strength in numbers; it's been that way and it will always be that way on officials. Alphas, if they're any good, are going to adapt to the sort of restrictions that you mention much better than beta or gamma tribes.

Also, it's not impossible, just difficult, to succeed as a solo or small group, but you have 2 options. Either you play like a guerilla, hide, build small, raid on different servers than you live on, etc. OR you play a lot of politics.

Part of it is also about setting realistic goals for official PvP. Between the strength in numbers thing and the hyper competitive nature of the game, all the end game content isn't really achievable for the "average player," that's what single player and PvE is for. Unless you're in an alpha tribe success in PvP is a lot more about the complexity of keeping your stuff hidden and safe (as possible) and clubbing people for loot, and of course always looking for an opportunity to poke an Alpha in the eye xD.

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58 minutes ago, KarinFuto said:

 

All the maps have poop hiding spots for new players. Especially on The Island. Hiding in Ark is hard if not outright impossible for a new player.

Also because low spec on ark removes the grass/clutter pretty much completely leaving flat textures, crouching or laying down on the ground is pointless unless you are behind a object.

 

 

Ragnarok has tons of texture glitches to hide :ph34r::D
(i mean they should fix this cuz its really annoing)

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On my UO pvp we have a nice rule. Two weeks invincibility for new tribes, unless they engage in pvp before that. It gives tribe sneough time to build uo and properly defend themselves before they can get raided. It means that any raids are proper fights, because even if both of the sides arent equal both with almost always turrets, quetzals, wyverns, and the like.

while this is a nice concept on PvP offficial, its too exploitable as people can make new tribes and such.

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8 minutes ago, MrDynamicMan said:

Sur mon UO pvp, nous avons une bonne règle. Deux semaines d'invincibilité pour les nouvelles tribus, à moins qu'elles ne s'engagent dans le pvp avant cela. Cela donne à la tribu le temps de se construire et de se défendre correctement avant de pouvoir se faire attaquer. Cela signifie que tous les raids sont des combats appropriés, car même si les deux côtés sont égaux à la fois avec presque toujours des tourelles, quetzals, wyverns et autres.

Bien qu'il s'agisse d' un bon concept sur PvP offficial, il est trop exploitable car les gens peuvent créer de nouvelles tribus et autres.

With my 4000 hour game(only pvp official), experience I can say that if the tribe and 10 member ... I wipe it in one evening ... even if it has more tribe
vs 100 member in the same tribe it's another story

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The huge tribes have to feed all their dino's, so try and harass and kill them when they are on meat runs.  Harass them when they are farming wood, metal, stone, etc...  Pick them off when they are separated and kill them and their tames if possible.  Expecting this game to be balanced though is likely not realistic.  I do agree that it seems out of whack here and there and isn't perfect by any measure, but this isn't an esports game.  

The trick is in taking advantage of an alpha's weaknesses and violently exploiting them to gain an advantage.  Don't let them feel comfortable on their own servers, kill them when you can, snipe them every chance you get, and annoy the living hell out of them.  If they trap your character and put it in prison indefinitely, then go get another one you already leveled and bring it in to overwrite that character and begin again.  These people are going to be relentless so be relentless back!

The solution isn't in killing off these huge tribes with game balance, but in a players ability to adapt and come up with new ways to counter bigger tribes.  

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@Chewytowel It's really pointless to do that against a tribe with 20+ members. The rate at which they tame/breed will surpass any kind of griefing 1-4 players can do without another farming server. They will get found on the alphas sever and wiped daily. The real options are 1. find an unofficial that is fun, or 2. server hop until you find one of the few servers that dont have a massive alpha tribe. There are a lot of servers... not every single one of them is ruled with an iron fist by a massive group. (unless you are trying to play on a ragnarok like all the other retarded noobs... stupid idea)

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26 minutes ago, JenBeam said:

@Chewytowel It's really pointless to do that against a tribe with 20+ members. The rate at which they tame/breed will surpass any kind of griefing 1-4 players can do without another farming server. They will get found on the alphas sever and wiped daily. The real options are 1. find an unofficial that is fun, or 2. server hop until you find one of the few servers that dont have a massive alpha tribe. There are a lot of servers... not every single one of them is ruled with an iron fist by a massive group. (unless you are trying to play on a ragnarok like all the other retarded noobs... stupid idea)

I personally don't think it is pointless.  There are a lot of players out there that do enjoy this type of play style.  I do think though that the tribe that does this should have a base with necessary farming dino's on some random server.  They likely will also need to use hidden vaults, rafts with crafting stations sitting inside a rock to hide them, purlovia's, and various tricks of the trade to pull it off.  Also, they opposing tribe might have lots of tames and bred dino's, but that is awesome as it provides the 'griefer' tribe (AKA PvP guerrilla tribe) with pleny of PvP content.  Not to mention that all it takes is one wrong move of the 20+ member tribe to potentially lose plenty of their precious dino's.  

It's really all about playing it smart in pvp, adapting, and having fun working with those you play with while fighting these bigger tribes.  And dying and losing things is pretty much part of the process, as any time you log on you should consider the dino's you have and the character as potentially lost already.  

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6 hours ago, Chewytowel said:

I personally don't think it is pointless.  There are a lot of players out there that do enjoy this type of play style.  I do think though that the tribe that does this should have a base with necessary farming dino's on some random server.  They likely will also need to use hidden vaults, rafts with crafting stations sitting inside a rock to hide them, purlovia's, and various tricks of the trade to pull it off.  Also, they opposing tribe might have lots of tames and bred dino's, but that is awesome as it provides the 'griefer' tribe (AKA PvP guerrilla tribe) with pleny of PvP content.  Not to mention that all it takes is one wrong move of the 20+ member tribe to potentially lose plenty of their precious dino's.  

It's really all about playing it smart in pvp, adapting, and having fun working with those you play with while fighting these bigger tribes.  And dying and losing things is pretty much part of the process, as any time you log on you should consider the dino's you have and the character as potentially lost already.  

^ This. What the heck else is there to do in PvP anyway?

It's also as much about the psychological impact on the alpha. Whether you're doing real damage or not, the fact that you're messing with them usually leads to time and resources dedicated to eliminating you because they're the alpha and don't want to be messed with on premise.

It's also totally a patience game. Playing Ark for just over a year (solo/small tribe) I've had 2 opportunities to do "real" damage to an alpha tribe (and countless other opportunities to be a nuisance). In both cases they should have been able recoup everything in a couple days if not less, but the hours of rage that ensued and wasted resources trying to wipe me from the server (which they eventually did) were so worth it. Toxic alphas rain on many parades, if you can even make it sprinkle at theirs it's soooo worth it.

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This isn't a problem that is unique to ARK, its most survival games. the concept that the more people you have, and the more time those people play, the more they will accomplish over smaller numbers and hours. 

The reason they are able to thrive is because the public servers are not moderated. It's a play style choice you are making when you join a public server on any survival game. 

You'll notice the vast majority of people complaining about the alpha tribe problem are on public servers. Unofficial servers don't run into that problem nearly as often due to the presence of admins who will get involved when bullys try to break the game.  (Obviously not all unofficial servers provide this but, it's at least possible as opposed to official)

I'm not saying Alphas are not a problem, but it's not because of ARK, meaning the game itself, but its because of the play style you have chosen.

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Play extinction or play dedicated then. 'Nerfing' Alpha tribes is a terrible concept because the more vulnerable you make them feel the more aggressive towards smaller tribes they'll likely be. We're already back into the triple digit turrets on the new servers which makes us more or less invulnerable to the smaller tribes. This allows me to extend a helping hand to others considerably more due to no fear of competition. Brutal dictator Alphas have been diminishing in number since Cross-Server, as if they eliminate all other tribes on their server or keep them suppressed then they are drastically more vulnerable to Cross-Server attacks vs Alphas that, even if not directly allied, helped unify and foster growth on the server.

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16 hours ago, KarinFuto said:

The concept of alpha is not something I disagree with. What I do disagree with is how little you can do against it, especially if you are new.

If you want to kill a game, make their introduction to the game raptoring horrible. And that is what you are succeeding with.

From spawn camping to spamming foundations. And everything in between.

 

Is there not a compromise that can be done so that A: The concept of alpha stays relevant along with the politics and B: They cannot troll endlessly, bully players off the server with no effort.

 

It's just not possible to do anything when they are ahead of you by months in resources and levels. It's not a question of "being ninja" when they have a dragon or any other high level flyer, and can roam trough the map with impunity. It's anti-social to the extreme and very toxic.

 

It would not be a problem if this did not happen in all of the official servers. But it essentially does. Rarely will you ever find a official server that is not ruled by a toxic alpha tribe who murder new players by the hundreds. What if you introduced servers that were level capped? To give new players a chance to gather resources. They would still be in danger as there would be other players around. But it would not be this "Fly around and roast every player encountered" thing where you can roam around and kill everything in sight. Perhaps 25/40/75/100? If you are above the level cap you simply cannot join the server.

 

There is a reason that new players are telling you about it. And I highly doubt all of us are complaining because "LOL IT's PVP".

We get that it's pvp, but it's just not balanced at all. It's also highly toxic as you are killing the chance for new players to actually join in on the game and participate if all they are going to get is getting wiped by a level 150 dragon around between stone and wood.

 

Another thing I am thinking about is if there was a nerf on tribes who go past 10 members. For every additional member total damage, (be it firing the dragons fire at someone while in the saddle or shooting with a shotgun) is lowered by 1%. Starting at 2% and maxes out at 20%. This nerf only comes on when a member of said tribe attacks first. Not if they get attacked first. And only applies towards buildings and players. Not dinos (you deal full damage to dinos). Because the more members the tribe has, the more ridicilous the bullying/roasting around becomes. Your own dinos only get the nerf if you are riding them and attacking, and the nerf is on a 3 minute cooldown for dinos.

 

Regardless of if you think my solutions are crap or not. One thing is for certain, most new players will leave on day 1 once they get a taste of this toxic behavior, and seeing as you have Mixed/negative on the steam reviews, can you really afford to raptor up a new players experience over and over? (While asking for 60 euros. Are you insane?)

 

67% of all the reviews are positive. and it has 126 530 reviews. Before you go cheering for it being above 50% (We got the majority wohoo, so there's no problems.), 41 764 players do give the game a negative review.

 

That is quite alot of players that think the game is either poop or some other negative aspect, no doubt this alpha toxic behavior being one of them. That's quite alot of players that can spread mouth to mouth.

Overall, if this continues you are going to have a small subset of groups playing PVP (The alphas), with the majority of new players leaving, refunding perhaps or just playing PVE, missing out on a game feature. Because they cannot get in on it, since they will be wiped. Just something as simple as building your first home will get you wiped. Some alphas have dedicated squads to kill new players and wipe the beaches regularly. What a great introduction!

 

Granted this is a hard subject to approach, but it is something that must be dealt with. If you get no new players the game will simply stagnate and not grow. And  the players who are still there will have no challenge at all.

"Why you just not get in tribe and kill the alpha".

Yes, because 4 new players are surely going to take down that 10 man tribe and above with stones and sticks while they have dragons and gigas. It does not make a difference to them. And even if the New Tribe had the same amount of members, the alpha has most likely months of resources and stats/level above the new tribe. That is a huge advantage to have.

"Lol it's pvp deal with it".

Okay you deal then with the player base slowly shrinking until the game becomes irrelevant. You would have even less fun then because now you got NO ONE to play against or with.

"Just hide good".

All the maps have poop hiding spots for new players. Especially on The Island. Hiding in Ark is hard if not outright impossible for a new player.

Also because low spec on ark removes the grass/clutter pretty much completely leaving flat textures, crouching or laying down on the ground is pointless unless you are behind a object.

 

On a side note: Asking for 60 euro for a game that releases early access "DLC" and that has this kind of toxic gameplay ingame is a rather tasteless joke Wildcard. Lower the price of the game, Ark is not worth 60 euro while riding with these kind of problems (not even counting the rubberbanding and lag on the official servers).

 

 

 

I like it how they show PVP in trailer videos as some amazing siege with dinos catapults, coordination and stuff, when in fact it s just a lagfest of dupes, crashes and more dupes and people killing passive herbivore dinos sitting in the base

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2 hours ago, Voidstar said:

I like it how they show PVP in trailer videos as some amazing siege with dinos catapults, coordination and stuff, when in fact it s just a lagfest of dupes, crashes and more dupes and people killing passive herbivore dinos sitting in the base

Saw an advertisement for a car once. Had hot girls, a beach, hugging exotic coastal highways at top speed... So I bought it and now it is just driving back and forth to work in traffic. Doesn't false advertising suck?

A designer can build anything with a certain intended use only to have the public use it a completely different way. Not their fault a lot of the player base is exploiting and griefing. The game 'could' be like the video. People are just shmucks and will tend to find the path of least resistance to Shmuckdom.

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The answer to toxic alpha tribes seems to be pve or unofficial. 

I was thinking, how can one set up an unofficial server for solo players where ganking is prevented?
Max tribe of one and no alliances is a given, but it still does not prevent ganking.
So how would you setup a justice system so a ganked player has some recourse?
In other words, there will be acusations of ganking but there will hardly be any proof.
Say any player can chalenge any other 1 vs 1 for any stake at any moment in some arena,
so the ganked player gets to fight the atackers individually?
Not sure it is possible to set up.

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7 hours ago, Shadex said:

Saw an advertisement for a car once. Had hot girls, a beach, hugging exotic coastal highways at top speed... So I bought it and now it is just driving back and forth to work in traffic. Doesn't false advertising suck?

A designer can build anything with a certain intended use only to have the public use it a completely different way. Not their fault a lot of the player base is exploiting and griefing. The game 'could' be like the video. People are just shmucks and will tend to find the path of least resistance to Shmuckdom.

that is completely true. The devs though gotta work on reducing the number of possible exploits...

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  • 10 months later...

Fun discusion. Everybody makes good point's. 

 

Heres mine:

Stop whining. The game is amazing to it's fair extent and most, if not all knowlage can be found on the wiki or on youtube.

 

Now comes the question who are YOU? If one like pvp then play it. I prefer it since stuff happens in pvp and I don't even pvp. I'm a trader, politics.

If the alpa raptors with me then i have 4-5 other tribes who might ow me and vice versa if any of the clans would attack me then I have the alpa at my back.

 

I started as a noob. I got killed, I stopt playing becaus of it. BUT i still got back. 

Games are ment to teach you hardship and how to overcome it with your own power. Learn from it. You won't be a kid forever who can enjoy games and complains everytime you hit a wall. 

 

You: "Remove the wall" 

Me: "No! Climb it. " 

 

 

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23 minutes ago, DemosMios said:

Games are meant to teach you hardship and how to overcome it with your own power.

Not sure I agree with this. First and foremost, games are meant to be fun. If you're suffering hardship as a result of playing then it's either a bad game or you're doing it wrong. Mild irritation and temporary frustration is the worst it should get and those feelings should be fleeting and irregular.

On 9/11/2017 at 5:04 AM, KarinFuto said:

.........some interesting stuff........

I agree with a lot of what you say. There's nothing wrong with the concept of Alpha tribes but there needs to be some legitimate way for new guys to survive long enough to become established when the Alphas are terrible excuses for human beings. Just leaving the server means they'll be left alone to grow huge and then spread to other servers. I started on PvP and, just like the OP, I didn't like the constant harassment so I did as many on here suggest. I switched to PvE and I enjoy it but I still would rather play PvP.

The server cap idea seems interesting although I suggest either not allowing any items that break the cap to even be transferred to the server or prevent anyone who's been to a higher capped server from joining.

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There has always always been people to cry and whinge about alpha tribes on official servers. But why should Wildcard make changes to alpha tribes and restrict them? Just because they was on the server before you and levelled up before you why should they suffer? If you was in their shoes would you still moan about your tribe killing new players? No. Exactly. You wouldn’t no matter how many times you say you would. This is apart of the game and it’s PVP. Don’t like it leave the server simple as 

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