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Why Ark is fundamentally flawed as a competitive game.


Octia

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14 hours ago, Nford said:

Yes, I'm a student of history, and castles became ineffective with the advent of gunpowder, at which point we switched to earth berms to absorb the impact from cannons. There's always new technology developing, followed by ways to counter it. But, throughout history it is consistently harder to attack than it is to defend.

Yet we don't have any of the options for higher tier defenses. We don't have missile defense systems(no, ATs don't count), we don't have camouflage, we don't have ways to effectively hold off attacking forces. It disproportionately stacks towards offensive strategies. The Japanese didn't have effective defense against a nuclear bomb...but we do now... Well, I hope they're effective, we've never had to use them. 

Edit: A lot of castles are still standing 

Valid points, but also keep in mind that the nature of the game can only take that sentiment so far.  Many castles fell even though their defenses were still intact.  The population inside were eventually starved out, or succumbed to disease (often aided by the attackers flinging filth or corpses over the walls).   None of those methods translates well into game mechanics, at least not in a game like this.  So more direct methods are allowed to be effective.

That being said, I do agree that there is a lot of room for ARKs combat and base attack/defense mechanics to grow and, well, evolve.

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Largest reason here why we started our own "unofficial" server and I have turned off coming in from other servers to our server cluster.

We're PVE/PVP so guild wars are allowed but there is challenge and acceptance so ev1 knows what they're getting themselves into, I've greatly increased the health of building materials, and tuned off offline raiding.  But this type of server isn't for ev1 just as full PVP servers aren't for ev1 either.

Not the devs fault or faulty design for alpha tribes ruling full PVP servers.  That is the design.  However, there are choices which developers have given for all types of players and play styles.  And at $14 per/mo to rent a server and no sub, it's not all that cost prohibitive either and a lot less expensive than other games I've been involved in.  Back in 03 to 11, I play SWG along with my wife and the both of us had 9 accounts in subscription.  Think of that at 14.99 per/mo.  A cluster here of 5 servers (includes the new one coming next month) is 1/2 that monthly cost.

Personally, I believe that WC has done a pretty decent job in this regard.

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Every day people go out of their way to get better gear for a sport they play or better training to increase their skills or anything really as long as it gives them the sharper edge.

Wether its in sports or video games or work.. we're all competing with eachother in a sense so asking for complete balance from a higher power is just pointless. 

There are ways to be successful here playing solo or in a small tribe without bending a knee to the alpha's. Plenty of people here have made good suggestions but I think at the base of it all you must have a realistic idea of what's accomplishable and what's inevitable. 

For me if there weren't the risk of losing it all at any given moment id just get bored and quit. But knowing i can still survive and exhist under their noses is a reward in itself.

I know I can't have all the bells and whistles (that's what my PVE server is for) but I also know where to go for some guaranteed PvP action. If you don't have much to loose then spending a night being the prey of an alpha tribe can be an intensely good time. 

Don't just sell yourself to one game type

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1 hour ago, Yster said:

Tribe size is the issue.. not the size of the map..

 

Honestly tribes shouldn't be more than 10 players. for PvP.. it a gamebreaker.. everyone knows it.. Alpha tribes knows this also.. thats why they are Alpha. 

If they reduce the tribe size... then you will complain about alliances... if they remove alliances, you will complain about people making VERBAL alliances (like I do on our server) and teamplaying that way. 

You want to complain about a fundamental truth, thats the problem. In a cooperative game, when some people decide they DONT WANT or they CANT cooperate, it is utterly stupid to ask for limitations like this. 

 

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On 9/13/2017 at 3:53 AM, Jostabeere said:

I miss the part where ARK was advertised as a competitive PvP game.

As far as I'm aware of it is advertised as a multiplayer survival game.

I think it was an implied aspect of the term survival, considering the very word in and of itself dictates a level of strict competition if everyone hasn't already spawned on the same team in the first place.

 

As for places to hide, I ponder if OP also realizes that even if you have the most perfectly hidden base, that the sluggish way the game renders allows everyone to momentarily gaze completely through the map as resources and tames hop out of "stasis" and begin to exist within the map as you approach.

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58 minutes ago, Masurao said:

I think it was an implied aspect of the term survival, considering the very word in and of itself dictates a level of strict competition if everyone hasn't already spawned on the same team in the first place.

 

As for places to hide, I ponder if OP also realizes that even if you have the most perfectly hidden base, that the sluggish way the game renders allows everyone to momentarily gaze completely through the map as resources and tames hop out of "stasis" and begin to exist within the map as you approach.

It's an implication, nothing more.

Games like Slenderman or stupid Unity "collect 4 trillion pieces of random items while getting jumpscare .pngs" are "survival games". But they aren't competitive.

ARK has a competitive Battle Royale spin-off, SotF. Which is advertised as competitive PvP.

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On 9/13/2017 at 5:05 AM, Arkasaurio said:

@Octia What platform are you on? I don't find it nearly so hard to hide as you make it sound on PC servers, nor quite as aggressive (especially right now). I haven't been raided once since I moved to my island server 5 days after launch, but maybe I'm just lucky.

Ark Official PvP is never going to be balanced in the way you're thinking. A huge part of the competitive aspect of the game is who can build, organize, and keep together the biggest team. Strength in number is a core mechanic to Ark. Even as a solo player I really like that aspect to the game; it's what provides the real survival challenge.

You have some good ideas in the initial post though. For instance, letting trees respawn everywhere but where they'd grow through buildings would be a welcome addition. Instead of re-refert I wish they'd gone the opposite direction and let players salt the ground to prevent respawns (within a short radius of structures).

The other part of hiding is that you need to adopt a multi-server approach. It's tough solo or as a small team, but spread out across several servers you become very difficult to wipe in short order.  Having a place to evacuate to if things get nasty is a huge advantage as well. In my experience you really have to PO an alpha for them to drop everything and spend the next 4 hours scouring the server of your every trace so there's generally some evac time.

PC.

And multi servers are the reason these megatribes are able to exploit such ridiculous numbers in the first place. They have thousands of people working together.. It is just exploitative and clearly not what was intended.

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23 hours ago, SmokeyB said:

That's just such loser talk,  YOU cannot build unless the alpha let's you.  Ark is a survival game,  you need to be able to adapt to survive. 

If your a solo or small tribe you have the advantage,  nothing to lose,  you can have a small footprint so none knows your there,  you can not worry about defences as they won't be enough and just concentrate on pvp,  farm flame arrows and metal arrows,  make a few c4 and go attack them,  blow a gate or two kill a few tames and run away,  you can cause hours of losses for an alpha and have no fear of come back. Foundation spam all around their Base and set ieds around to catch their farm tames,  pick em with your ptera and kill their beaver. There is loads you can do that will have them screaming in party chat. Most big tribes are just randoms that don't know each other,  a little bit of pressure and they will all fall out. Days of being trolled will take its toll on them and they will beg for peace. Especially on new servers where they are trying to build up,  the last thing they want is to constantly be attacked and their turrets drained.

Main thing to remember is Ark is all about time.  You need to put the same time in as them to match them. If you play 10 hours a day it is only like 5 people who play 2 hours a day. You need dedication to take down a dedicated tribe.

Well, i really mean megatribes, not the alpha of a server. I probably should have worded that better... I should probably edit it after this post actually..

Right, it is loser talk. So tell me, how do you defend against every inch of the island being covered by someone on a bird, or someone crashing a bronto through every tree on the map? Your fate is entirely in their hands. Either they don't look for you, or they do. If they look for you, they WILL find you. I don't know what alpha tribes you've been fighting, but i'd bet they didn't pillar an entire island so that the trees didn't grow anywhere, or have 100s of fully loaded turrets making the only means of attacking them a titanosaur. Sure, you kill a tame, but guess what? It is no loss because they have so many members.

Maybe if you're lucky things will all fall into place. But a tribe of thousands? Lets be serious here.

To say as a solo or small tribe you have "nothing to lose" is false. Infact, you have more to lose because you've had to work harder to get what you have. Each individual of a megatribe hardly has to work at all, they only need to put an hour in each and they'll still make massive progress beyond a solo due to sheer numbers. It is more frustrating to lose your stuff as a solo, because it is your responsibility to put it all back; with megatribes the frustration is dissolved among them because the work required to fix whatever was destroyed is shared.

You see, you say "blow up their gate" etc.. Turrets. Hundreds of fully loaded turrets. For me to get past that as a solo , i'd need to put in a ridiculous amount of hours. That means i'd have to survive under their watchful eye for a ridiculous amount of hours. With nowhere to hide, that just isn't happening. If you were able to hide long enough to hit a megatribe, they weren't looking for you in the first place. Don't look at it as what they might do, but what they could potentially do with their numbers; and what they can potentially do is make it impossible for you to hide by having someone constantly scout the island.

Let me remind you, we're talking about tribes actively looking to hog an entire server to themselves. And using steam as a means to see if any of their own are logged onto the server. They know you're their, and they look for you, and they root you out.

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6 hours ago, Teddansen said:

Every day people go out of their way to get better gear for a sport they play or better training to increase their skills or anything really as long as it gives them the sharper edge.

Wether its in sports or video games or work.. we're all competing with eachother in a sense so asking for complete balance from a higher power is just pointless. 

There are ways to be successful here playing solo or in a small tribe without bending a knee to the alpha's. Plenty of people here have made good suggestions but I think at the base of it all you must have a realistic idea of what's accomplishable and what's inevitable. 

For me if there weren't the risk of losing it all at any given moment id just get bored and quit. But knowing i can still survive and exhist under their noses is a reward in itself.

I know I can't have all the bells and whistles (that's what my PVE server is for) but I also know where to go for some guaranteed PvP action. If you don't have much to loose then spending a night being the prey of an alpha tribe can be an intensely good time. 

Don't just sell yourself to one game type

Yes, except to translate this to ark. Imagine football where one team has 11 players, and the other has 1. Imagine boxing with 20 people vs 1.. See the difference? There is balance in the sport, certain rules that keep it competitive. You see, for competition to exist, there has to be a chance for the other side to win; without that? There is no competition.

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6 hours ago, NickSmith76 said:

10 > 1

If a game tries to alter this, that would be the fundamentally flawed one. 

Then it'd be trading one flaw for another. A fairer flaw that will please more people, and stop megatribe exploitation.

 

It must be balanced by team vs team, and not numbers vs numbers. That, or have some real way for solos to hide from megatribes.

You can't have a game that you can't play simply because a bunch of, lets face it, cowardly players band together and attack solos repeatedly.

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On 13/09/2017 at 10:01 AM, Mendoza said:

...And this is why I want to see a new game mode!

  • Isolated cluster server or Isolated single map.
  • Server forces everyone joining to pick 1 of 3 tribes (or server makes the choice for you).
  • Objective of game is to capture all the artifacts or first team to ascend or SOTF style deathmatch or whatever etc.... (once objective is met, a tribe Is declared the winner and the server is reset).
  • No tribe is allowed to have more than one third of the total number of people allowed at one time on the server.
  • The game is fair (No mega tribes vs solo/small tribes) - Each tribe has it's share of casual / no life / hard core type players.

 

I'd play this. Only issues I could see with it is infighting between people wanting to rule one of the 3 tribes, and when one tribe has clearly lost and give up, their members wouldn't join, so let's say the server limit is 100 an no tribe is allowed more than 1/3 of the total population at one time wouldn't that mean with all 3 tribes active 33 players max per tribe, but if one tribe has 0 members online then the others would be restricted to 0 too right? Or have I mistook what you said and you meant no more than 1/3 of the server pop, not what's on at a given time?

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I completely agree with you, OP! You read my mind. I've been wanting to make a topic about this ever since the new servers and Ragnarok was released on PS4. If I wanted to explain the flaw with PvP on officials, it's exactly what you've already said. 

Me and a friend have tried to play on 8+ different Ragnarok servers (official PvP) for a few days in each one, and it hasn't gone well, at all.

(Keep in mind that we've came from legacy servers after having a base for 7+ months with 300 odd turrets, 180+ high lvl tames and some tek, as a 3 man tribe, so we weren't newbs.)

For example, we were peacefully playing in this one server for 5 days from scratch, even leveled our characters up and we built 2 rafts covered in stone structures with the usual stuff. We're not hostile, we live by natural law/karma. We only attack when attacked. So anyway, we tamed 3 dodos, 1 dilo and a Jerboa! we put them inside the raft and sailed towards Redwood (Ragnarok) where we parked in between two big rocks to stay sort of hidden, while we went AFK for 15 mins to eat our food IRL. Came back to see a tribe of 5 players beating our raft up, dropping all of our stuff, keeping us knocked out and killing our tames. I asked them in the chat "Why? we're not hostile, we were just stopping here for a short time." No response, probably because they were all Spanish. I then said "Why are you so aggressive towards small tribes?" and quite a few different players from other tribes responded with "lol" and the classic "this is pvp, go play pve" which was to be expected, but it turned out that those players were in an alpha alliance and made it their priority to wipe out every red target and base, so.... 

We then hid deep in RW between a bunch of large trees, in the shade, away from resources and attractive building locations. We built as small as possible to fit a smithy, 2 forges and a few boxes in, etc. We turned all lights off at dark and never spoke in chat, then hours later the base was spotted and flattened, and I got handcuffed and thrown into a cage surrounded by wooden structures for 2 hours until I managed to punch the air with my handcuffs on for about 30 mins, draining my stamina, hunger and thirst until I eventually died to escape. I left that server ASAP!

Got talking to an old ally from the old servers and so we joined his server. He had a small metal base with 12 turrets and loads of plant X so we felt safe there, but... the alpha alliance of that server did not like us because we were outsiders, so they kept stalking us (even my ally) whenever we left the base to kill wild animals for meat, hide, chitin, etc. Whenever we went near resources, we had to watch our back. I built another raft and searched for crystal, barely made it back because 2 guys on griffins were landing on the roof, spamming attacks to try and intimidate me until I sailed back to my ally's base down south at the pier. It got worse, because we started to question them in general chat. They were mostly Spanish once again! (No, I'm not a xenophobe nor a nationalist, but the majority of the EU servers are filled with Spanish tribes who're usually super aggressive and undiplomatic. That is a fact.) even though most of them spoke English. I go offline to sleep, wake up with no more raft and my allys are saying that they're fleeing the server because they can't get anything done, and people on flyers are constantly stalking them no matter where they go and build. 

We tried to escape later that day with our belongings (a few BPs, metal tools, flak, longnecks and a tamed ptera) by quickly building a new raft with basic stone structures covering it and 4 plant X on top. We sailed to blue OB, when a wyvern spotted us, stopped to spyglass us and flew off. Minutes later, 7 players turned up at blue ob and directly attacked our raft and then us, while we tried sailing away. They strapped c4 to their naked guy and picked him up with a griffin, dropping him ontop of our moving raft to blow it up.

Moved to another server... this one had yet another aggressive Spanish tribe which kept boomerang-K.Oing us and picking us up near the spawns. We continued on, gathered the usual tools and resources then started to advanced up to a place where we could build hidden, but got spotted early by players on a griffin. We died, lost our stuff that we gathered over the few hours of non-stop playing and then pressed options > exit game > close application and turned off our PS4's. We then asked ourselves, what is the point anymore? it's addictive to play from scratch and build your way up, but there's really no point in trying because the more advanced tribes will flatten you with minimal effort, even if you kill them, K.O them and kill their flyers, they come back until you're dust. 

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28 minutes ago, YUSHOETMI said:

I'd play this. Only issues I could see with it is infighting between people wanting to rule one of the 3 tribes, and when one tribe has clearly lost and give up, their members wouldn't join, so let's say the server limit is 100 an no tribe is allowed more than 1/3 of the total population at one time wouldn't that mean with all 3 tribes active 33 players max per tribe, but if one tribe has 0 members online then the others would be restricted to 0 too right? Or have I mistook what you said and you meant no more than 1/3 of the server pop, not what's on at a given time?

If one of the 3 tribes has 0 playing - the other tribes would only be allowed to have up to 33 each...    

  If a particular tribe has given up, then the game will probably finish and reset, so I don't see a problem there... besides, new players can join at any point in a game, they don't have to wait for a server to reset.

If there were default tribe manager settings that couldn't be altered and were part of the server settings and in essence no actual tribe leader...All in-fighting would do would cause that tribe to lose. Alternatively a player could be given the tribe leaders role automatically depending on a server preset (examples could be, a person playing the longest amount of time, or the one with the most XP, or most number of enemy kills) Any in-fighting for leadership would then fall to the players with more dedication or skill ect...

The reason in having 3 tribes, would be so that it is more difficult to gain a foot hold to dominate a server to win...  If you fight one tribe, you leave yourself vulnerable to attack from the other tribe... This would promote better PvP, with more skirmishes as tribes try to dominate key resources, while defending their turf...

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49 minutes ago, Octia said:

Then it'd be trading one flaw for another. A fairer flaw that will please more people, and stop megatribe exploitation.

 

It must be balanced by team vs team, and not numbers vs numbers. That, or have some real way for solos to hide from megatribes.

You can't have a game that you can't play simply because a bunch of, lets face it, cowardly players band together and attack solos repeatedly.

What would be the point to play with friends in a team, when someone else just achieve the same ALONE in another team... it would make the whole teamplay pointless... 

It's like the "one man tribe player" with superhero skills, while people playing as a team are nerfed to "thrash mobs", to make sure the 2 teams are BALANCED. 

The only solution what is fair is the SOTF way.. no tribes, so 1vs1vs1 all the time... no tribe, no alliance, no chat, no coordination allowed. 

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1 hour ago, Octia said:

Yes, except to translate this to ark. Imagine football where one team has 11 players, and the other has 1. Imagine boxing with 20 people vs 1.. See the difference? There is balance in the sport, certain rules that keep it competitive. You see, for competition to exist, there has to be a chance for the other side to win; without that? There is no competition.

Again, I understand your point, but your analogy is extremely flawed.

I would fully expect a football team of 11 players to trash a solo opponent, but then again I would expect the solo opponent to put together a team of 11  before challenging to begin with.

By the same token 20 vs 1 boxing is silly, but 20 vs 20 boxing would be phenomenal!

We have the Cross Ark Strategy section of the forums for just this very purpose, so that solo or smaller groups of people can link up to challenge or raid often times much larger entities.  The tools are there for official PVP, you just have to use them.

Or, conversely, go to the servers where stricter rules are in place.  That being PVE servers where PVP requires mutual consent via a war declaration, or a private server that has their own rules on the matter.

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I don't see it as giving the small tribe/solo player the same power advantage as the larger/established tribe. I see it as making it more defensively fair for the solo/small tribe to survive, not to necessarily give them the power to wipe out a larger/established tribe.

Defense is at a disadvantage. 

  • Thatch, Wood and Stone is completely useless against a tribe that has access to explosives such as Grenades, Rockets and C4, even metal without enough turrets placed correctly.  
  • Plant X is too weak, easily avoidable and easily destroyed, plus harder to maintain for solo/small tribes who're being hunted anyway because of fertilizer up-keep, and toilets are easily destroyed if one manages to craft it.
  • Auto-Turrets aren't reasonable to craft, hence why most tribes are usually wiped out before they can even manage to get a fabricator up in their base.
  • Spike Walls are too easy to bypass, and are weak defense and attack-wise.
  • Explosives (C4) are too easy to obtain and craft. I personally didn't like the damage buff to C4 to compensate for the rocket launcher quality nerf, but whatever.
  • Narcotic Traps and IED's (Trip-Wire) aren't exactly viable. Their wires disconnect on server restarts, they're easy to see and avoid, and they barely set attackers back who come prepared with sleeping bags/beds.
  • The health of structures need a large increase overall, in my opinion. Even wooden rafts.
  • There's not really any easily-obtainable defensive dinos that can make an impact against such prepared attackers, especially while you're offline/not at your base. Yes there are Dilos, Troodons, etc - but they are easy to avoid and take out, and like I sad, raiders will come with beds anyway.
  • There needs to be more defensive structures! And no, not Tek. There's too much focus on end-game. I'm talking about primitive - stone/metal quality type of defensive structures which can include Land Mines, Electric barbed-wire, Giant Venus Trap plants(?), Flame-thrower wall traps[/color] , etc etc - not too much focus on dinos such as Purlovias which can be kited and killed with ease, anyway. 

They're all I can think of at the moment.

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On ‎13‎/‎09‎/‎2017 at 0:37 PM, Octia said:

You can't win at Ark unless the mega tribe lets you.

 

Allow me to elaborate:

You can't "hide away" and attack a mega tribe as a solo or small tribe, they will ALWAYS find you. ALWAYS. It is very important to stress that there is NOWHERE to hide. You see, this is what the devs think balances the game, they think you can hide away from megatribes until you're leveled enough to fight back. Anyone who has played on a server where the megatribe are trying to claim the entire official server to themselves will know that you simply can't hide. This leaves anyone not in the megatribe at the mercy of the megatribe; you exist by their whims. Competitively the game is completely flawed for this reason. It boils down to the power of persuasion, which just doesn't work because it is still THEIR CHOICE, and they still hold all the cards. 

 

This leaves the player three options, leave the server (an option which is diminishing as these tribes are becoming a thousand strong, and spanning all official servers), or persuade them not to destroy you. These are the options anyone not in a megatribe have. In terms of gameplay, you have no form of defense against it; a game you paid for, and you can't fight back because the system is rigged from the start to support those who have the numbers, and those who started first. The third option? Try and join a megatribe. Another element that relies on persuasion, and is completely outside of your direct control.

 

Why can't you hide? Everyone knows all the hiding spots, and the map really isn't that big, all they need is a bronto to stomp through all the trees and it is GG, or just a bird to fly through the forest and over the map. Secondly, the refertilizer DOES NOT WORK. Sometimes it does regrow trees, sometimes it doesn't, the complete mechanic needs an overhaul, or just outright remove it and let trees grow back on their own. This would go a long way in helping smaller tribes hide, yet as is, if a diplo strays through leaving your base in the open, say goodbye to your base, looks like you'll be starting again. How fun. On top of that? Pillars... Pillars everywhere... Really guys? These tribes will pillar the entire map so you can't build anywhere good. It is like you're allowing people to cheat within the rules, where the slimiest lowest players win by being as shameless as possible, exploiting every loophole and flaw in the game.

 

If you can't hide, you can't survive, and right now, you can't hide. The game as is, is flawed. As a simulation of survival ? It fails even in that regard; you see, in real life you only get ONE LIFE, but in ark; you kill them? They come right back, how is survival the main focus when death has no consequence? So unless you're playing hardcore, the megatribe will stay ontop even if you kill them. You can't remove them from their perch without complete annihilation of their bases across all servers.. Now tell me, how is a solo player or small tribe meant to do that?

 

You can't have a game like this where people band together in the thousands without selling short everyone who can't play like that, or doesn't want to play like that.. You're forcing people to play a certain way, a way that is entirely outside of their control and at the whims of the other players; because they don't have the numbers supporting them, or they joined the game later. You've essentially put the success of your game in the hands of the megatribes; right now, they decide who plays the game, and who doesn't; and you're fine with that?..

 

The saddest part is, those in megatribes are usually the worst type of people, and the worst at the game, the type too afraid to face the challenge of playing solo, or in a small tribe...You'll get lots of people defending megatribes, but these people haven't tried the game from the perspective of someone NOT in a megatribe, because if they had, they would know that in it's current state it is unplayable. And lets be honest, impossible.

 

How can you have a competitive game when your opponent decides the outcome? You can't.

 

 

Excellent thread but let me elaborate on one of your points. You said you can't hide because everyone knows the hiding spots. That is true but what I would say is actually more significant is the small map combined with graphic exploits. Currently if you want to PVP properly in this game you MUST run your graphics on ultra low. Not many know about this but there is a code you can enter which tells the game your PC is total garbage (when it isn't) which forces the game to be nice to you and render less stuff. As a result what was once a thick jungle on very high will turn into a bunch of green painted trees with green painted ground. All the vegetation in between will be stripped as will the leaves and branches. Now if you combine this with a small map and the ability to do some aerial recon (trees missing in the jungle=base) its very easy to zip around the map in 10mintues or less and find the majority of bases.

Even if you don't have a flyer you can go on foot using the graphics trick and nothing will be hidden. I laugh when I see noobs running around with torches on at night while I'm standing 20m away and can see almost perfectly (game looks similar to a very overcast day). Now if you think free night vision is OP then there is the 'rendering structures' issue. Using the same graphic settings you can stare at someone base from a certain range and the walls and most structures won't render. What will render is the players and dinos inside. As a result you can see people walking around inside, seemingly standing on thin air. This is extremely handy for raiding, in fact just last week I watched some fellow in a large stone hut run around his base accessing the smith and stuff. He then stopped and stood still looking in his inventory. I gave him a minute then pounced. Sure enough he'd conveniently gone AFK. I went in there killed all his stuff, took the good stuff, dumped the rest then C4ed his foundations. 5 minutes later he was back singing in global.

The devs are pretty much all PVE players as are most if not all the moderators including Ciabatta Roll. As a result they are very out of touch with the reality on the ground for PVP. This trick has been around since 2015 and I don't think I've ever seen anyone ever hardly mention it and yet any respectable tribe that knows anything about PVP in this game is using it.

As to the question of mega tribes the elephant in the room that few want to acknowledge on here is tribe size. Why is the current tribe size 'capped' by Wildcard at 70 players. That is a number well beyond a reasonable amount. There is no legitimate reason why a tribe would need so many players other then to gain an advantage over others through pure weight of numbers. The only reason mega tribes rule the roost in this game currently is because the game allows them to through their sheer numbers. It's certainly not because of their skill.

I've been in two mega tribes, one of which was Chinese and fought them many times on many servers over the years and I can say without a shadow of a doubt that the average mega tribe member is a fairly low skilled inexperienced PVP noob. The bulk of players of players in these tribes don't like PVP and avoid it as much as they can. That's why they joined a mega tribe in the first place, its so they can avoid PVP and basically sit around and farm. There will be a few quality PVP players in each mega tribe (typically the top leadership) but the majority are honestly nothing more then farming grunts that might fire their rifle once a month as an extra for some raid. 

Cap the tribes at 10 players each, limit them to 2 allies (*not alliances) that are publically listed (each server should have a list of who is allied with who) and this game will rapidly transform into the exciting adventure it was back in 2015 when the average "large" tribe size was around 5-10 and there was no alliances of several thousand players engaged in a pact not to fight each other. I don't recall ever fighting a tribe size larger then 14 players and I played on a lot of servers and had a lot of hours. It was great skilled based gameplay. Lets bring it back.

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On ‎13‎/‎09‎/‎2017 at 6:48 AM, ranger1presents said:

This is going to sound snarky, but it is absolutely not intended that way... you should seriously consider a PVE server.  In PVE wars are mutually consented to, which generally means some external balance and ground rules are applied to the conflict.

Official PVP in ARK is hyper competitive, and the majority of players on those servers do not want any additional restrictions.  That's also not everybodies cup of tea, which is why there are official PVE servers, as well as an incredibly large number of unofficial servers with every imaginable set of "home rules" to choose from.

There are actually viable ways to damage or even destroy an alpha or mega tribe, but it's not easy and requires a fairly high level of experience in the game.  Again, that playstyle isn't for everyone.

Okay, now for a very small piece of legitimate snark.  :)

I hope you just got a little carried away on this point, because reality just doesn't work that way.  Armies have a chain of command, partially to ensure that the death of whomever is in charge doesn't disrupt the army or keep it from pursuing its mandate.  I do understand the point you are trying to make, but the measures you've suggested wouldn't stop people from moving their organizational structure to their favorite flavor of voice coms and 3rd party apps and continuing to do exactly what they have been doing, albeit they'd be pretty salty about the changes.

You never can tell what changes the future may bring, but for now you might consider the other options I mentioned.  You may very well find that despite your current mindset they might actually be the key to providing you with the gaming experience you're looking for.

it worked with Alexander the Great

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50 minutes ago, Crows said:

I don't see it as giving the small tribe/solo player the same power advantage as the larger/established tribe. I see it as making it more defensively fair for the solo/small tribe to survive, not to necessarily give them the power to wipe out a larger/established tribe.

Defense is at a disadvantage. 

  • Thatch, Wood and Stone is completely useless against a tribe that has access to explosives such as Grenades, Rockets and C4, even metal without enough turrets placed correctly.  
  • Plant X is too weak, easily avoidable and easily destroyed, plus harder to maintain for solo/small tribes who're being hunted anyway because of fertilizer up-keep, and toilets are easily destroyed if one manages to craft it.
  • Auto-Turrets aren't reasonable to craft, hence why most tribes are usually wiped out before they can even manage to get a fabricator up in their base.
  • Spike Walls are too easy to bypass, and are weak defense and attack-wise.
  • Explosives (C4) are too easy to obtain and craft. I personally didn't like the damage buff to C4 to compensate for the rocket launcher quality nerf, but whatever.
  • Narcotic Traps and IED's (Trip-Wire) aren't exactly viable. Their wires disconnect on server restarts, they're easy to see and avoid, and they barely set attackers back who come prepared with sleeping bags/beds.
  • The health of structures need a large increase overall, in my opinion. Even wooden rafts.
  • There's not really any easily-obtainable defensive dinos that can make an impact against such prepared attackers, especially while you're offline/not at your base. Yes there are Dilos, Troodons, etc - but they are easy to avoid and take out, and like I sad, raiders will come with beds anyway.
  • There needs to be more defensive structures! And no, not Tek. There's too much focus on end-game. I'm talking about primitive - stone/metal quality type of defensive structures which can include Land Mines, Electric barbed-wire, Giant Venus Trap plants(?), Flame-thrower wall traps[/color] , etc etc - not too much focus on dinos such as Purlovias which can be kited and killed with ease, anyway. 

They're all I can think of at the moment.

Good points. Also the new turret setting that lets turrets target players is really a stealth nerf to smaller tribes. Most smaller tribes don't have the room to fit a giant Bronto in their base and protect it. All they had to use was turtles now that has been taken away from them too. Previously you could get away with sneaking a few turtles onto a mega tribe server and if you hid them well you could do some decent damage. Now that is out of the question since you can't exactly sneak Brontos onto a server without someone noticing.

I find it quite incredible that the devs can nerf turtles yet keep the horribly OP nonsense that allows players to build over the driver on platform dinos. That is pure broken gameplay.

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6 hours ago, NickSmith76 said:

If they reduce the tribe size... then you will complain about alliances... if they remove alliances, you will complain about people making VERBAL alliances (like I do on our server) and teamplaying that way. 

You want to complain about a fundamental truth, thats the problem. In a cooperative game, when some people decide they DONT WANT or they CANT cooperate, it is utterly stupid to ask for limitations like this. 

 

While you can't stop someone doing verbal alliances without the alliance mechanism things are a lot harder. Verbal alliances for instance can't come and defend your base because your turrets will kill them equally as good as the enemy. Without alliance chat the only way to communicate really is in global and the enemy can read that. I don't know about you but I played this game back in 2015 - 2 weeks after launch. There was none of this coward alliance crap back then. If you were being attacked and you wanted outside help you had to sing in global. That in itself evened things up since everyone could read it and take advantage of it.

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1 hour ago, ranger1presents said:

Again, I understand your point, but your analogy is extremely flawed.

I would fully expect a football team of 11 players to trash a solo opponent, but then again I would expect the solo opponent to put together a team of 11  before challenging to begin with.

By the same token 20 vs 1 boxing is silly, but 20 vs 20 boxing would be phenomenal!

We have the Cross Ark Strategy section of the forums for just this very purpose, so that solo or smaller groups of people can link up to challenge or raid often times much larger entities.  The tools are there for official PVP, you just have to use them.

Or, conversely, go to the servers where stricter rules are in place.  That being PVE servers where PVP requires mutual consent via a war declaration, or a private server that has their own rules on the matter.

If we were to apply the game's idea of "balance" to a real world scenario it would be along the lines of: A football team can have no more then 165 players even though the average size for a team in the league is 11. (165 players is 15x the average. The average tribe size in ARK is around 5, the max allowed by WC being the completely balanced figure of 70).

 

Do you see a slight issue there? I do. Basically a bunch of average players are going to get together and form a massive strong team and be "winners" because they can.

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5 hours ago, Masurao said:

I think it was an implied aspect of the term survival, considering the very word in and of itself dictates a level of strict competition if everyone hasn't already spawned on the same team in the first place.

 

As for places to hide, I ponder if OP also realizes that even if you have the most perfectly hidden base, that the sluggish way the game renders allows everyone to momentarily gaze completely through the map as resources and tames hop out of "stasis" and begin to exist within the map as you approach.

If you know what you are doing you can completely legitimately have that sluggish mode enabled 24/7. I can be standing in the middle of what is meant to be thick jungle and yet on my screen it looks like its autumn and all the trees have no leaves and someone has taken a lawn mower to the ground vegetation very recently.

The best way I can describe the end result is imagine tall slender bits of wood painted green erected on soil painted green. That's it. That's my ARK "jungle".

Does that give me a massive advantage vs someone that isn't using those settings. Absolutely.

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18 minutes ago, ForzaProiettile said:

If we were to apply the game's idea of "balance" to a real world scenario it would be along the lines of: A football team can have no more then 165 players even though the average size for a team in the league is 11. (165 players is 15x the average. The average tribe size in ARK is around 5, the max allowed by WC being the completely balanced figure of 70).

 

Do you see a slight issue there? I do. Basically a bunch of average players are going to get together and form a massive strong team and be "winners" because they can.

Now you're reaching... a LOT.

If you prefer smaller tribes and more restrictive rules for combat there are plenty of options for you that do NOT involved changing the entire game for everyone else to match your preference.

Quote

Without alliance chat the only way to communicate really is in global and the enemy can read that.

I'm not sure why you keep clinging to this idea, as it has been pointed out countless times that it is blatantly untrue.  if you think that any Mega tribe communicates primarily with global chat I don't know what to say.

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