Evidence of unfair level spread (x7 times more likey for 150 on rag)

[Bradley1928]

Title says it all. If you play on Island or SE. You are LESS likely to find higher level dinos. PERIOD.

 

Why is this allowed? How could you have released the game with such a clear disadvantage?

 

All credit to this reddit page...

 

 

 

 

 

[Voidstar]

35 minutes ago, Bradley1928 said:

Title says it all. If you play on Island or SE. You are LESS likely to find higher level dinos. PERIOD.

 

Why is this allowed? How could you have released the game with such a clear disadvantage?

 

All credit to this reddit page...

 

 

 

 

 

Maybe because the map is bigger? Maybe because the map is bigger, spawns don t compete with eachother, resulting in more individuals of the same species, resulting indirectly in higher chances for higher levels?

[Lancelot]

Stats are clearly made up, I have seen dinos spawn in the level represented as 0% on the chart.

It does seem to me that I find higher spawns on ragnarok, but it's not unfair, everyone can play on Ragnarok.

Now if this was true for SE or any other paid DLC I would tend to agree with you. 

[PuffyPony]

Some of those "non-existent" levels on Ragnarok and the Center definitely do exist there. I might try some testing later on, but I'm don't really trust this data

[NathanAndDaddy]

I think the island is supposed to be a starter place, as you progress move to other maps and face harder dinos. That is exactly why we started on the island... moving to scorched next week if all goes well this weekend, then Ragnarok!

[BrownieShytles]

having played alot on both maps i can support his claim, in my eyes the island map is totally unbalanced in terms of dinolevels as well as ressources. i´d love to see a buff for dinolevels on island, especially when the servers are capped and 10 people have to compete for the only highlvl rex available...while on ragnarok, which is on top of that a bigger map with the same playercap, you got many of those spawning frequently.

island might be easier to get started, but also your progress is hindered alot if you have to transfer to other maps for every highlvl tame

[Pappy]

1 hour ago, NathanAndDaddy said:

I think the island is supposed to be a starter place, as you progress move to other maps and face harder dinos. That is exactly why we started on the island... moving to scorched next week if all goes well this weekend, then Ragnarok!

Exactly. The island is like a beginner level map. As you progress and ascend you go to other maps as more advanced levels will spawn. If you read all the explorer notes you'll see how this follows the storyline of ark. That's also why you have to ascend in order to unlock these maps in some game types. At least this is how I've interpreted some of the things I've read about it. No matter what, you can play any map. If you prefer the Island you can stay there and just temporarily go to Ragnarok and collect any dinos you want.

[Dreadnaught]

Could it be that since you have to progress through the ascension of the maps to play on Ragnarok that it stands to reason by the time you get there you will not be interested in lower level dinos.  Its a progression thing, people who have played all the maps and done most everything in the game are less interested in searching for hours for the high level dinos, witch would take even longer on ragnarok due to the maps size and geography.  Just my 2 cents

[Ulta]

I still stand by my theory that it's not the map that's making this happen. It's just the difficulty offset.

Like for instance, I have an island server, unofficial. When I made it, it was default Difficulty 4, which is a max wild dino level of 120. But before it, I had a Center server, which obviously defaulted to difficulty 5, aka. max 150 dino wild level.

When the Island was at Difficulty 4, finding a 116 or 120 dino was difficult and rare.

When I had my Center server, finding a 150 was pretty easy, especially after a fresh dino wipe.

So why do I think the way I do? It's because I did end up force changing my Island server to Difficulty 5 to mirror the Center's dino cap. And guess what happened? Finding 150's on the island soon became just as easy as when I was on the Center, if only a bit less so because the map is much tinier.

So yeah...I think it's just the spawn weights of the Difficulty offset...not the maps. And given last I checked, all official servers (except maybe Scorched? someone please correct me, I don't have SE) have Difficulty 5 as their setting now.

So...I don't see how anything is unfair.

[Shoosty]

The Island and SE have actual farmable bosses, and The Island has Ascension, both of which are arguably more important at end game than high level dino distributions.  If you want to get the best tames though, keep a character and base on Rag or The Center for that purpose.

[Joanna]

I don't really see the issue even if the metrics are correct.  Each map is unique in it's own way and each has different features.

[Sphere]

Isn't Ragnarok and The Center considered much larger maps than The Island and Scorched Earth? Even if 7x, you're traveling around much more area to find that few more.

[Gafgarion]

The Reason is Simple. Island and SE (both from WC) have balanced Spawn and Wild Dino Level and Center and Ragnarok (both Mods) not. I just glad i play PVE so it dont bother me to lot.

[Lewiatan]

High level animals do spawn more often on Ragnarok, making exploring quite dangerous which I like.

[Grayroad]

Map comparison:

Ragnarok +/-

+Most animals present on one map

+high levels 

+Ice Vywern

-quite hard to find alpha rex, carno, raptor

-quite a bit lower number of animals spawns

-hard to find rex,

-very hard to find Titan, Giga and Spino

-Ragnarok has only a Hard dual spawn boss battle where as on island you have many boss challenge options.  

-no explorer notes (upcoming likely)

-servers capped to 70 players

 

Center +/-

+best place for Rex, Titan, Giga spawns.

+ easy for Argie, Rex, Titan, Giga and pretty good for finding spino

+lots of interesting base spots 

+high level animal spawns

+Huge underwater world

-No special animal spawn

-Graphics bug in Redwood  running GTX1080 (pink/purple graphic bug last time I was there about 01.09.2017)

-buggy ground surface on some places of the map

-no explorer notes

-certain resources are plentifull, 

 

Island

+Very good caves for cave loot

+Most varied boss battles available

+Asccension

+easy access for low level starter tames + kibble tames

+ explorer notes (levelling up)

+Titans and Gigas are quite common and easy to find

+quite easy to find alpha rex, carno, raptor 

-poor animal spawn levels (harder to find 150)

-not so interesting base spots tho not poor 

 

SE

its hot and stuff. 

 

So id say the maps are quite nice mix of special key features and resources. 

 

[PuffyPony]

I'm still skeptical of this data, even if I think the finding is correct, so I decided to do some testing of my own.

Hypotheses:
- The average spawn level of creatures between maps is different.
- The average spawn level of different creatures is different (i.e. A Rex will have an average spawn level some amount greater than that of a Dodo).
- The average spawn level of creatures differs by regional difficulty.

Method:
I gathered level data from a total of 300 creatures. 150 of these were Dodos, and 150 were Rexes. Of the three hundred, creatures were evenly split such that 100 were spawned in an Easy region on the Island Map, 100 were spawned in a Hard region on the Island Map, and 100 were spawned in an Easy region on the Center map, with equal partitioning given to Dodos and Rexes at each location. I did not collect data from Ragnarok so as to avoid interfering with an active playthrough on the map.

I provided myself with max melee damage, several ascendant pikes, god mode, and infinite stats through console commands. I then proceeded to spawn Dodos and Rexes using the SDF command, which summons a creature of the target type at a random level. In doing so, I assumed that the SDF command would fairly represent normal spawning, and I had no reason to believe otherwise. I then recorded the level of the spawned creature before killing it.

Results:

I won't report the levels of every single creature, but the mean and standard deviation is as follows (written as Mean Value +/- SD). For those unfamiliar, the standard deviation is a measure of the typical amount of spread from the average value and can be added incrementally. For example, one standard deviation from the mean accounts for 67% of the population.

• Dodo (Easy Region Island): 34.9 +/- 33.02
• Dodo (Hard Region Island): 47.3 +/- 36.95
• Dodo (Easy Region Center): 63.8 +/- 46.50
• Rex (Easy Region Island): 41.3 +/- 35.84
• Rex (Hard Region Island): 41.5 +/- 37.97
• Rex (Easy Region Center): 64.0 +/- 44.03

I then compared the aggregate data using a one-tailed Student T test and the resulting P values. For those unfamiliar with these tests, the Student T is a statistical measure of the "distance" between data sets, so large T values indicate greater distinction between data. The P value is a measure of the probability that two sets of data differ only because of random variation, so low P values indicate greater likelihood that there is a significant and meaningful difference between sets. This data is reported as "Dino (Map-Difficulty) vs Dino (Map-Difficulty): T, P"

• Dodo (Island-Easy) vs Dodo (Island-Hard): 1.77, 0.04
• Rex (Island-Easy) vs Rex (Island-Hard): 0.027, 0.489
• Dodo (Island-Easy) vs Rex (Island-Easy): 0.9286, 0.178
• Dodo (Island-Hard) vs Rex (Island-Hard): 0.7741, 0.22
• Dodo (Center-Easy) vs Rex (Center-Easy): 0.0221, 0.491
• Dodo (Island-Easy) vs Dodo (Center-Easy): 3.583, 0.000266
• Rex (Island-Easy) vs Rex (Center-Easy): 2.827, 0.00285

The findings comparing the Hard vs Easy region Dodo and the two comparisons of creatures in the Island vs the Center show significance at p<0.05, while the remaining findings do not. This level of significance suggests a non-random difference between these data sets.

Discussion:

The least support appears for the hypothesis that different creatures have different average spawn levels. While the Rex does superficially appear to differ from the Dodo, running the data through a Student T and P value analysis indicates that this difference is probably the result of chance (P-values 0.178, 0.22, and 0.491), so these findings suggest that spawning between different species (barring special cases such as the Leedsichthys or Wyvern) uses a similar distribution, at least within map and within region. We therefore accept that the data supports the null hypothesis that different creatures do not have different spawn averages.

Next, we find differing results for our hypothesis of variable level average by difficulty region. Using the example of the Rex, we find a non-significant difference between the Easy and Hard regions, which would support the null hypothesis. The Dodo data, however, suggests that there is in fact a meaningful difference between Easy and Hard region spawning. This particular finding is problematic. While it is entirely possible that it is due to random chance (4% possibility), we also must consider that it is not random. If it is not, this finding would seem to contradict the inter-species finding, since it conceivably shows that different species must differ by region. In simplified format, this finding basically would state A=B, B=C, A=D, but C =/= D if we assume that the Dodo data indeed reports a significant difference.

However, we can consider the fact that the difference between Dodos and Rexes in the Easy region appears marginally more significant in the Hard region. First, let us assume that spawn region does have an effect on average level, but also that creatures are "tied" to their spawn region difficulty. That is to say, a creature able to spawn in Easy and Hard zones has spawn mechanics that accommodates both, but a creature that normally only spawns in Hard zones would not be able to accommodate the Easy zone and therefore default to spawning as if it were in a Hard zone. If this were true, then it could explain the surprising data for the Dodo, which spawns fairly ubiquitously around the map. It may be true, then, that Hard Region Dodos tend to be higher in level than their Easy Region counterparts. The Rex, on the other hand, only normally spawns in Hard zones and would therefore show no perceptible difference between Easy and Hard regions because it always defaults to Hard Region spawning. The precise likelihood of this mechanic isn't clear, but it's a possibility we must consider.

Finally, the question of the thread: do spawn levels differ by map? In a word: yes. In a few more word: yes, very significantly. In a few more words than that, we find that not only is the difference around 20-25 levels between the two maps for both species, it is so significant that even with a fairly small sample size of 50 creatures per data set, we receive an exorbitantly small P value. Therefore, without almost any doubt at all, we can conclude that the Island and Center, at least in Easy regions, have different spawn averages.

 

Further Study:

A few items present topics for further research (that means if you really want to be a doll and PM me data sets of ~50 creature levels collected in the respective environments, I can report it):
1- Data collected from an "easy" region in Ragnarok to compare to the Center and the Island to determine if the elevated spawn average is a result of map-specific settings.
2- Further data collected comparing Easy Region and Hard region creatures. For this research, I would suggest a data set of at least 100 of each creature in each zone. I would also suggest collecting this data with the aforementioned Rex and Dodo, as well as other creatures that tend to favor one spawn difficulty over another (i.e. Yuty spawns only in Hard zones, but the Raptor spawns ubiquitously)
3- Easy vs Hard region data collected for maps other than the Island to see if the discrepancy in creature level persists across maps, or if this is unique to the Island.
4- Levels of a single creature species in the same map and region but on different difficulty offsets (i.e. Difficulty 4 vs Difficulty 5)

[Victor117]

MAKE THE ISLAND GREAT AGAIN

[Thorium]

You don't actually need any math to notice it. It's very obvious. But yeah, good math backup there.

On one of the streams the Ragnarok devs do, one asked them about this. If i remember correctly they answered that the level balance of wild dinos is a change that wildcard wanted.

[Taconite]

As I'm sure people have stated above, you obviously don't understand the progression of the game. Island is considered easy ark, then scorched, then center, then rag. Why do you think you have to ascend to beta before entering ragnarok and gamma before center?

[Dreads]

4 minutes ago, Taconite said:

As I'm sure people have stated above, you obviously don't understand the progression of the game. Island is considered easy ark, then scorched, then center, then rag. Why do you think you have to ascend to beta before entering ragnarok and gamma before center?

What are you talking about? Every player no matter if he has ascended or not can play on any of the official maps.

[Taconite]

That's on official but the difficulty map level is taken from single player

[Taconite]

10 minutes ago, Dreads said:

What are you talking about? Every player no matter if he has ascended or not can play on any of the official maps.

My point is that they basically kept the map difficulty that they have in single player but got rid of the need of ascension to access the harder maps

[Dreads]

3 minutes ago, Taconite said:

My point is that they basically kept the map difficulty that they have in single player but got rid of the need of ascension to access the harder maps

I can access the Ragnarok map without ascending in singleplayer. 

There is no "map ranking" in ark.

[Taconite]

When did you last try this because when they released ragnarok they even said to play it on single player you either needed to have beta ascention or put in the command for it

[Taconite]

When did you last try this because when they released ragnarok they even said to play it on single player you either needed to have beta ascention or put in the command for it

2 minutes ago, Dreads said:

I can access the Ragnarok map without ascending in singleplayer. 

There is no "map difficulty" in ark.

• Click to choose files 
  Max total size 0.39MB
•  
• Insert other media