Server Dino Cap Discussion

[JetJaguar]

So not having been able to play Ark since 10/27 due to their rollback on Rag server 81 which wiped my character, I see more and more servers hitting cap (Including my server now as well which isnt a Rag one) with no solutions in sight. I checked dev tracker and see 0 responses addressing the issue from WC at all; did I miss something?

So whats the point of the game now with dino caps? Just build endlessly like Minecraft? Pray on a day off from work or school you might be able to tame something or breed something? Move servers/store dinos elsewhere? Just sit with thumb up rear until the xpac releases and hope for the best? Have an army or 50 dodos you can kill as you please so you can breed/tame when you want?

Has any and all communication regarding serious issues like this gone out the window completely that everyone is kept in the dark? What about that kibble rework we heard about last year? hmm..

[Critter]

Im under the assumption that a servers dino cap includes those uploaded in the obelisks right? Not transferred, just uploaded. So if I upload a Rex into the obelisk right before server cap, and a tribe tames the last dino, will I or will I NOT be able to download my Rex from the oby?

[Melcreif]

It is a good point about cap, but an easy fix. Just move ;-)...  OOORRRRR create a new character on a different server.  This cap issue is it already creeping in to the new official PVE servers? Boy that didn't take long!

[Lurtz]

27 minutes ago, Dylan1602 said:

There should be a PvE server tournament. Everyone competes in wars and the winner gets to chose how much land they want and get half of the sever tame limit. That would be hilarious. I'm PvP so I just wanna see PvE people engage in war with their sentimental dinos. I'd pay to watch it!

I wasn't aware we were allowed to be trolls in these post. 

[CobraD]

I'm just gonna point it redoing the kibble tree won't help out, I mean it will but for like the first few weeks(being generous). The reason for this is the same reason why we have kibble farms In the first place which is to raise babies/tame dinos, sure you'll get rid of all the kibble Dino's but they'll just end up being replaced by bred and newly tamed Dino's. Not saying it's a bad idea nor that it wouldn't help to do but just reminding people it's not a magical solution.

[MandaBear]

I don't play pve, but do have a question based off of the other comments in this thread. Is there actually any solution other than causing a mass killing of dinos every so often through whatever means? If they rework the kibble and imprinting, everyone will fill it with more of (x) dinos. If they add more servers, those will fill as well.  If they lower tribe limit, everyone will split into multiple tribe alliances. If they lower the server tame limit, then that makes the problem worse. As bad as it sounds, unless the dinos start dying then all Wildcard will be doing is throwing more money to servers that will fill up again without fixing the core issue. I wonder if dino age on pve, like mentioned earlier, would work to give people more to work towards? 

[xDarKStaRx616]

We gotta be close on our Official Rag server as well.. I'm sure it doesn't help that their are large tribes broken into alliances that mass breed dinos for the only purpose of selling them on E-Bay, cross server etc. And unfortunately no matter what they will incorporate to "fix" the caps idiots will find some way to exploit it and ruin the game. 

[JetJaguar]

See heres the thing. This issue was raised in beta way, way, way back in 2015. You dont have to believe me: I'd urge people on the forum to goto the Ark Steam forums and look at old threads. Search for "Tamed Dino Cap" and look at warnings and suggestions from years ago. None of which were ever implemented. Now here you are, 2+ years later with official release and running into the same problem people talked about ages ago.

The kibble re-work was brought up just as long ago and nothing was ever mentioned about it. "storing" dinos to help save space was mentioned, etc. Lots of good ideas; nothing ever coming to pass.

There is no good "fix" right now because the "fix" and solutions should have been implemented before the official servers/release went live. Did everyone think tamed dino cap wouldnt ever appear again? lol Now its what, a big social experiment where people can argue in chat who should delete dinos or which tribe has too many dinos? Come on..

 

 

 

 

 

[JetJaguar]

4 minutes ago, LittleRedReaper said:

An official WC employee's solution was the "Whittle down your menageries". That was AN OFFICIAL WILDCARD EMPLOYEE. So this is where they stand.  THAT is how much they care. That is how many sh*ts are given to money you spent, your support and your thousands of hours. So, breathe that in and think about it. I have and I won't be purchasing ANYTHING else from WC. There is no easy solution, but you know what??? The devs could chime in and let the player base know they are thinking about it... they haven't.. 

new WoW xpac announced today so I know at least what Ill be doing later on. To each his own I guess.

[Eli]

9 minutes ago, LittleRedReaper said:

An official WC employee's solution was the "Whittle down your menageries". That was AN OFFICIAL WILDCARD EMPLOYEE. So this is where they stand.  THAT is how much they care. That is how many sh*ts are given to money you spent, your support and your thousands of hours. So, breathe that in and think about it. I have and I won't be purchasing ANYTHING else from WC.

Please don't take words out of context. What I said was that while I hope that changes to implement will help with overcrowding, it's still going to be up to people to whittle down their collection of creatues. Revamping things to require less of an "egg farm" will do us naught if you just keep on holding on to your creatures for sentimental/vanity/etc. purposes.

Unless of course you want us to just systematically cull random creatures in your collection without your permission or input. I'm sure that will go over swimmingly.

As hard as this may be to fathom for people, the limitations we put aren't there for some sadistic whim, or for some social experiment. They are there because ARK very handily pushes hardware limitations. We still iterate and optimize where we can, but until new technologies or better methods come up that we can use to further improve the overall gaming experience, we have to adapt where we can.

[JetJaguar]

3 minutes ago, Eli said:

Please don't take words out of context. What I said was that while I hope that changes to implement will help with overcrowding, it's still going to be up to people to whittle down their collection of creatues. Revamping things to require less of an "egg farm" will do us naught if you just keep on holding on to your creatures for sentimental/vanity/etc. purposes.

Unless of course you want us to just systematically cull random creatures in your collection without your permission or input. I'm sure that will go over swimmingly.

As hard as this may be to fathom for people, the limitations we put aren't there for some sadistic whim, or for some social experiment. They are there because ARK very handily pushes hardware limitations. We still iterate and optimize where we can, but until new technologies or better methods come up that we can use to further improve the overall gaming experience, we have to adapt where we can.

Understood however, going back to 2015, people were suggesting part of if not a large portion of the overcrowding was simply due to the kibble process and "egg farms" which added to the mess. Couple that with how breeding works, and the weekly boosted 2x events, no limitations of any kind on official servers with who can join/how many players can join, and you have just mixed everything together for a perfect storm to add to the tamed cap issue. This isnt something new; its something people raised concerns about soon after Ark went up on Steam as something people could download..

[Herbapou]

That cap is per tribe right?

How many dino per tribes are allowed?

[JetJaguar]

1 minute ago, Herbapou said:

That cap is per tribe right?

How many dino per tribes are allowed?

There is a 500 dino limit per tribe but there is also a limit to how many tamed dinos can be on a server period.

[Herbapou]

18 minutes ago, JetJaguar said:

There is a 500 dino limit per tribe but there is also a limit to how many tamed dinos can be on a server period.

If a server hits his cap then the limit per tribe is too high.  Seriously 500 per tribe should be more than enough. People need to manage there dinos for crying out loud.... You dont need kibbles for all of the dinos out there and once you are breeding whats of point of keeping the kibble dinos?  cheese people pick and choose.

[GoodOmenz]

There are three things I have to say on the cap matter in principle 

1. This is a dino taming game, that is what it is sold as I we cant tame dinos. Its like buying a car with no engine. 

2. New players will not play and quit the game as they cant do anything apart from farm on a server - they cant even tame dodos 

3. Older players again cant play half the game and just use servers for storage while they hop around other server taming and breeding till it reaches cap. 

It feels to me that WC want players to rent private servers. 

I understand they want us to self manage and cull etc however with so many people on server with eggs ready to hatch at zero the second you kill a dino 

to try and tame something ... out pops a baby dino for someone else and again you are at server cap. 

Fundamentally broken mechanics and limitations. 

 

[Herbapou]

9 minutes ago, LittleRedReaper said:

It's REALLY easy to hit when the servers are capped at 70/70 and you have big tribes with 500 and a bunch of small tribes with maybe like 20 dinos. It adds up.  I only have 96 dinos and 85% of those are eggers.

like I said, reduce the tribe cap or reduce the max players to 50...  My server is at 25/70 at peak and I am already annoy by all the tribes blocking rivers, blocking beaches and overtaking space with dino gates. People just cant behaved... Not to mention ppl not looting everything in the beaver dams.  Maybe I should go to private server actually, and it has nothing to do with caps.

imo the mats requirement of stone dinos gates should be triple.

[dunkah]

23 minutes ago, Eli said:

Please don't take words out of context. What I said was that while I hope that changes to implement will help with overcrowding, it's still going to be up to people to whittle down their collection of creatues. Revamping things to require less of an "egg farm" will do us naught if you just keep on holding on to your creatures for sentimental/vanity/etc. purposes.

Unless of course you want us to just systematically cull random creatures in your collection without your permission or input. I'm sure that will go over swimmingly.

As hard as this may be to fathom for people, the limitations we put aren't there for some sadistic whim, or for some social experiment. They are there because ARK very handily pushes hardware limitations. We still iterate and optimize where we can, but until new technologies or better methods come up that we can use to further improve the overall gaming experience, we have to adapt where we can.

It would be cool to make in game solutions to this. Changing kibble to not need so many egg laying dinos is one example, that is brought up a lot.

Another idea would be a "Tek Gene Storage" type structure. You take the concepts of a teleporter and a Cloning chamber and combine them. Let tribes upload their dinos into the gene bank, and pull them back out as needed. Require tek generator to run etc. That way people don't have dozens of Rex/Bronto/Para chilling just for when they are needed. I think the bulk of the problems really stem from the big "alpha" tribes that have hundreds of dinos and nobody to really stop them from making more.

I'm sure you could take the idea even further will all kinds of breeding/genetic gameplay options along the same theme.

[Herbapou]

10 minutes ago, LittleRedReaper said:

But you are forgetting how little servers there are now. People can't go anywhere, if the max players were 50, tons of people wouldn't even be able to get on a server. Lots of people want to play Ragnarok and those are capped. Island is starting to get capped. When they officially released Ark, they took away A LOT of severs, and now people are left scrambling to even get spaces on PvE.

Well if wildcard cant provide enough servers that another problem. But there sure have a broken system with the tribe cap VS server cap here... nothing can be done by a player for the server cap if every dino you get rid of is taken by another tribe.  Tribe cap is too high and server pop is also too high.  Solution, reduce both and add more servers.  

They could rework kibbles, but that wont solved breeding and DNA management. Why not add a DNA storage system.

[JetJaguar]

16 minutes ago, Herbapou said:

If a server hits his cap then the limit per tribe is too high.  Seriously 500 per tribe should be more than enough. People need to manage there dinos for crying out loud.... You dont need kibbles for all of the dinos out there and once you are breeding whats of point of keeping the kibble dinos?  cheese people pick and choose.

Yeah sounds simple but it doesnt quite work like that. It also depends upon the type of player you are. If you're solo or two or three people in your tribe, hitting 500 dinos wont happen most likely.

If you're a breeder, hitting 500 dinos is simple. Blame the mechanics and gameplay, not the player. You need to keep breeding offspring and getting other tames to improve the quality of your bloodline. You could have dozens of ONE type of dino alone just to produce new colors or better stats.

if you're doing bosses then you need to do breeding to aquire really good rexes with decent stats. THEN you need to get a number of tribemates and/or rexes to actually do the bosses. Again, blame the mechanics and gameplay, not the players.

The servers have:

• No region locks. European, Oceanic, S. American, and Asian players can all play on NA servers.
• No limit on the amount of players. 70/70 is the limit for currently active players online. You could essentially have hundreds of players on your server with a few tames per tribe. Nowhere close to the 500 tribe limit yet, due to the sheer volume of players vs amount of servers, you can easily hit the server dino cap because there are 100 Human Tribes with 30 or so dinos each. Couple that with breeders on the server, large tribes close to the 500 tamed dino cap, etc.

Remember, your server is players FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD with varying size tribes. There is absolutely NO RHYME OR REASON to how many people and dinos can be on a server.

[Lewiatan]

ARK core gameplay design caused this problem which is ridiculous dependency on taming animals and breeding.  I assume WC gameplay designers did know people would stress that to its limits and it has severe flaw by default, but they implemented that anyway. Currently it backfires and they have no idea how to deal with. What I learnt after 2,5 years WC  releases half-polished gameplay mechanics quite often and then leave then it after 2 weeks in whatever state they were, then they move on another shiny feature. 

This issue wouldn't be such a problem if game wasn't bloated with redundant dinosaurs and adding their eggs to the kibble tree obligatory forcing players to tame a lot of dinos, which just rot in stables. People have to tame them if they want to speed up their progression, because game is awfully grindy and doesn't respect players' time. 

This problem requires serious gameplay overhaul. As for the start I suggest removing kibble tree that depends on eggs. It will eliminate kibble farms at once. In place of eggs, add unique meat that drops from killed wild animals. Each wild animal will have its own droppable meat and to not bloat this system as egg based one,  the prey meat should be groupped. For example raptor and carno like parasaur and galli meat. 

What should be done with unferitalized eggs after removing them from kibble tree? In my opinion they can be removed or do not include them in any mechanics that involve taming, breeding or imprinting dinosaurs at least. What's more do not create mechanics that require overtaming to progress. 

Ps: WC ought to provide easy way to kill your own dinosaurs in wheel menu tied with tribe settings, so trolls wouldn't kill all tribe's dino population. People are lazy and don't feel like doing it manually. 

[Lewiatan]

24 minutes ago, Herbapou said:

Well if wildcard cant provide enough servers that another problem. But there sure have a broken system with the tribe cap VS server cap here... nothing can be done by a player for the server cap if every dino you get rid of is taken by another tribe.  Tribe cap is too high and server pop is also too high.  Solution, reduce both and add more servers.  

They could rework kibbles, but that wont solved breeding and DNA management. Why not add a DNA storage system.

They did mention they wanted to use Steam inventory as a place to store your dinosaurs after uploading them in obelisks, but Valve did not feel like to add such feature to its platform. So I don't think we will get such DNA storage system. 

[shadowkyuubi]

there needs to be a way to at least see what the tamed count of dinos is on a server at anytime, and a NON TEK way to store dinos so they dont count towards the dino cap number

 

[JetJaguar]

1 minute ago, shadowkyuubi said:

there needs to be a way to at least see what the tamed count of dinos is on a server at anytime, and a NON TEK way to store dinos so they dont count towards the dino cap number

 

Would 100% be against this: Allowing people to see tamed count of a server would encourage Tribes to use that server to "store" dinos on then. Would serve more nefarious purposes then a good one.

[shadowkyuubi]

then limit tribes to 200-250 per tribe

[shadowkyuubi]

fine then turn dino cap off and let the servers end up where ever they end up