Jump to content

Server Dino Cap Discussion


HeatherJo
Message added by Joebl0w13

This is the place to discuss the per server dino cap mechanic. It's platform independent, anybody can post here. Feel free to talk about your particular server but lists of capped servers will stay maintained in their proper platform subforums.

Recommended Posts

  • Replies 560
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Need to be patient. The kibble system is being re-worked and that's going to hit hard once it's implemented. Legacy servers have been saved and open to download. Eventually legacy will be removed and space for newer servers will be opened up. 

Rome wasn't built in a day. Certainly you don't expect a solution by tomorrow? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, DomeBlue said:

Need to be patient. The kibble system is being re-worked and that's going to hit hard once it's implemented. Legacy servers have been saved and open to download. Eventually legacy will be removed and space for newer servers will be opened up. 

Rome wasn't built in a day. Certainly you don't expect a solution by tomorrow? 

3 weeks after launch we saw the first caps on servers....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, DomeBlue said:

Need to be patient. The kibble system is being re-worked and that's going to hit hard once it's implemented. Legacy servers have been saved and open to download. Eventually legacy will be removed and space for newer servers will be opened up. 

Rome wasn't built in a day. Certainly you don't expect a solution by tomorrow? 

Also, there was talk of a kibble rework in 2016. Nothing really since then other than a confirmation the middle of this year that something was going on with experimental servers. Which has no timeline. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 hours ago, DomeBlue said:

Need to be patient. The kibble system is being re-worked and that's going to hit hard once it's implemented. Legacy servers have been saved and open to download. Eventually legacy will be removed and space for newer servers will be opened up. 

Rome wasn't built in a day. Certainly you don't expect a solution by tomorrow? 

Can you please let us know exactly how that will have any impact at all on the dino cap issue. 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 hours ago, Palenor said:

Server cap, or Platform Structure cap?

I am heading to EU 44 this week to see.

Still waiting on your sources, Palenor.  :)  Plenty of people said their servers are capped, now where did you come up with the idea that Ragnarok and the other OFFICIAL supported maps have a different tamecap?  Or as I mentioned, are you making it up friend?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have also thought about this and I believe I have a fairly viable solution. Allocate say 20 or so dinos per person so that new players are still able to tame etc.. also, to assist with the total limit cap:

Its as simple as W/C creating a type of storage box / engram in which dinos can be stored in stasis mode. So although you can say hold 20 (example) dinos out and about at a time, they can be interchanged at any point in the "storage box" as they are needed.

By doing this you can satisfy:

-  The breeder - Storing dinos he/she needs to breed later on

- PVP player - creating more waves of dinos to be used in battle / store some dinos at a secure location to avoid losing them when your base is raided

What do you guys / gals think?

 

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, Nova76 said:

I have also thought about this and I believe I have a fairly viable solution. Allocate say 20 or so dinos per person so that new players are still able to tame etc.. also, to assist with the total limit cap:

Its as simple as W/C creating a type of storage box / engram in which dinos can be stored in stasis mode. So although you can say hold 20 (example) dinos out and about at a time, they can be interchanged at any point in the "storage box" as they are needed.

By doing this you can satisfy:

-  The breeder - Storing dinos he/she needs to breed later on

- PVP player - creating more waves of dinos to be used in battle / store some dinos at a secure location to avoid losing them when your base is raided

What do you guys / gals think?

 

 

 

 

This would slow down breeding extremely since you can only have 20 out any time.
Meaning I'd need to have my 20 top breeders out, and have absolutely nothing else outside to defend myself or collect resources since I need to maximize the breeding time with those 20 dinosaurs.

Limiting the amount of dinosaurs per tribe/player/game is simply a band-aid and punishes smaller tribes/solo players compared to larger tribes.
And no, you cannot force people to join larger tribes.
The problem simply lies in the servers. I run an unofficial cluster with a dinosaur cap of 5000! And we have no resource issues whatsoever.
I honestly don't know why the official servers suffer this much from it.
Cheap hardware? poop configuration? no idea, but implementing these kind of limits takes the fun away for a lot of players.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 12/9/2017 at 11:50 PM, Ranger1 said:

The problem is PVE game play can cover a lot more ground than just that, and the game needs to be flexible enough to handle a more competitive atmosphere in PVE play... which can lead to issues if some of the population wants that and the rest don't.  There is also the issue (that you have already acknowledged) of keeping the environment / creatures at least somewhat dangerous, which opens the door to using them in clever (and sometimes infuriating) ways.  The only way to curtail that behavior would be by direct GM intervention, and I think it's pretty fair to say that WC doesn't have the manpower that would require.

I bring this up because it relates to the tame cap.  Ideally, on a server such as the one you are playing on, the cap would be acknowledged as a necessary evil (to preserve server performance) and cooperation would ensue to keep the server below the cap.  This certainly can be accomplished on an official PVE server, but there is always the very real possibility that someone will arrive on the server with a very different agenda in mind.  There are a lot of folks out there (and I do mean a LOT) that have found ways to at least partially circumvent ARKS necessary restrictions for their personal advantage... and I'm not just talking about using them as an opportunity to troll their fellow players.  

Ironically this makes restrictions like the cap even more necessary, as this type of player would happily flood the server with tames until everyone's frame rate ground to a halt if they were gone... and still try to do the same even with them in place (with varying degrees of success).

So while I fully agree that the suggestion that PVE servers should have PVP periods isn't sound (beyond the already existing option to wage war on occasion), there are really only two ways to deal with this issue.  Either you move your community to an unofficial server that you trust (or one that your players chip in on hosting themselves)... or your players take every opportunity to use the aggressive options we talked about earlier to kill off some of the offending player's excessive amount of tames.

Obviously the former is preferable in almost all ways, as you have complete control over who and what is allowed on that unofficial PVE server.  However if trade with the larger community is an absolutely necessity (restricting you to an official server, and ironically being one of the main reasons why some players selfishly seek to break the dino cap), you are left with either just living with it, or using the very methods you have come to dislike so much to your advantage.

Personally I've never kited wild creatures to another's base on official PVE unless the same was done to me, I restrict destructive game play to PVP environments.  However, if I had caught someone pointedly ignoring cooperation with the rest of the server while they employed tricks to abuse the cap, I would absolutely take the steps necessary to make that enterprise a complete waste of their time.

I need to be transparent about this part though.  Currently, for what I do, I do not play on official servers.  I need a controlled environment for the videos I create.  For other players that are simply seeking to enjoy playing ARK PVE my advice (in all sincerity) is this.

Seriously consider setting up shop on your own or a friendly non-official PVE server.  More specifically, while I personally am not currently offering this option, many YouTube creators in this community offer access to their long running PVE servers in exchange for a small monthly Patreon donation.  These servers tend to be around a long time, are well run, and packed full of creative people looking to help each other with wildly imaginative projects.  Some are pure vanilla, some allow certain handy building mods, and many have a strong emphasis on creative breeding.  These are ideal environments for the type of game play you seem to enjoy, and many have server wide projects or competitions... some of which end up being popularized on YouTube.

With official PVE servers needing to allow for such a wide variety of preferences, and also needing to keep some fairly restrictive mechanics in place to prevent abuse (both unintentional and intentional), unofficial servers should be strongly considered as a viable alternative.  This is especially true if your current official PVE servers population can't agree on how to cooperatively stay under the necessary dino cap, because if folks refuse to work together in this regard the only other option is that some form of attrition has to occur.

So I'm late to your conversation and all the possible dino-kiters that chipped in to the thread, but seems like you are explaining to us how things work on official and then saying you play on unofficial.  So I guess I don't get it.

REGARDLESS:  I and no one who has been kited agrees with the assessment that it is OK, and will thus submit to chalking it up to random uncontrollable dino aggression.  I didn't bring it up for all of you to validate the behavior of dino-kiter-griefers (keep your strictly-legal-definition, it is exactly griefing), I brought it up to illustrate that this kind of bullsh*t is what the tamecap is doing.

And no matter how many times you quote the exact guidelines (which do not condone dino-kiting as a defensible action on PvE servers by the way), it is not OK that it happens.  And some of the occurrences of dino-kiting-griefing is because of the tamecap. 

So it is causing more than just breeding/taming stallups on servers.  And that was the only point.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Olivar said:

This would slow down breeding extremely since you can only have 20 out any time.
Meaning I'd need to have my 20 top breeders out, and have absolutely nothing else outside to defend myself or collect resources since I need to maximize the breeding time with those 20 dinosaurs.

Limiting the amount of dinosaurs per tribe/player/game is simply a band-aid and punishes smaller tribes/solo players compared to larger tribes.
And no, you cannot force people to join larger tribes.
The problem simply lies in the servers. I run an unofficial cluster with a dinosaur cap of 5000! And we have no resource issues whatsoever.
I honestly don't know why the official servers suffer this much from it.
Cheap hardware? poop configuration? no idea, but implementing these kind of limits takes the fun away for a lot of players.

Fair enough, the 20 was merely an example. I still think that storage / stasis box is a viable idea

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Olivar said:

Limiting the amount of dinosaurs per tribe/player/game is simply a band-aid and punishes smaller tribes/solo players compared to larger tribes.
And no, you cannot force people to join larger tribes.
The problem simply lies in the servers. I run an unofficial cluster with a dinosaur cap of 5000! And we have no resource issues whatsoever.
I honestly don't know why the official servers suffer this much from it.
Cheap hardware? poop configuration? no idea, but implementing these kind of limits takes the fun away for a lot of players.

The dino cap being hit sadly has nothing at all to do with server hardware, not a thing.  It has to do with the wild popularity of official servers, the limited amount of available official servers, constant login queues (before the servers hit cap), and the allure of taming dinos in general.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, TheDonn said:

The dino cap being hit sadly has nothing at all to do with server hardware, not a thing.  It has to do with the wild popularity of official servers, the limited amount of available official servers, constant login queues (before the servers hit cap), and the allure of taming dinos in general.

It very much does.
The cap is there to prevent the servers from grinding to a halt, as every dinosaur needs to be calculated/maintained by the server.
Hence why Wildcard limited it to 400 per tribe, cause apparently their servers cannot handle it.

As I said, our cap is 5000, and the server runs just fine.
So unless Wildcard can tell us/figure out why on official these limits don't work the problem will not be solved.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Olivar said:

It very much does.
The cap is there to prevent the servers from grinding to a halt, as every dinosaur needs to be calculated/maintained by the server.
Hence why Wildcard limited it to 400 per tribe, cause apparently their servers cannot handle it.

As I said, our cap is 5000, and the server runs just fine.
So unless Wildcard can tell us/figure out why on official these limits don't work the problem will not be solved.

Official servers, as per the update history, are capped at 5500.  And the tribe limit is 500, not 400.

So, no.  It has nothing to do with hardware man.

What is the traffic on your unofficial server?  Do you think that people tame more dinosaurs because the hardware runs poorly?

If the hardware was bad, it would affect server stability.  It would frequently crash and drop you and glitch out tames and such.  But the hardware being bad wouldn't directly affect the tamecap.

Have you ever waited a half-hour trying to log into your unofficial?  Most on the new official server clusters have.  It was common, before the servers capped.  Now, we can log in, but can't tame anything.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, TheDonn said:

Official servers, as per the update history, are capped at 5500.  And the tribe limit is 500, not 400.

So, no.  It has nothing to do with hardware man.

What is the traffic on your unofficial server?  Do you think that people tame more dinosaurs because the hardware runs poorly?

If the hardware was bad, it would affect server stability.  It would frequently crash and drop you and glitch out tames and such.  But the hardware being bad wouldn't directly affect the tamecap.

Have you ever waited a half-hour trying to log into your unofficial?  Most on the new official server clusters have.  It was common, before the servers capped.  Now, we can log in, but can't tame anything.

Don't have any of those problems. Main reason I stopped playing on official in the first place.
Cause I want to play you know :)
Do you have a link to the specific patch note or version where these limits where raised?
Want to dive deeper into this actually.

As for the crashing, when I see the posts on reddit/forums, official servers tend to disappear now and then.
So stable isn't exactly true either. Ruling out DDOS attacks ofcourse.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 minutes ago, Olivar said:

Don't have any of those problems. Main reason I stopped playing on official in the first place.
Cause I want to play you know :)
Do you have a link to the specific patch note or version where these limits where raised?
Want to dive deeper into this actually.

As for the crashing, when I see the posts on reddit/forums, official servers tend to disappear now and then.
So stable isn't exactly true either. Ruling out DDOS attacks ofcourse.

 

It's a simple line in a patchnote from the arkpedia...  That's all we got hahaha.  https://ark.gamepedia.com/204.0

And you are right about them not really being stable. 

If we didn't have so few official servers, that would help.  I mean, OBVIOUSLY they don't want the number of servers they had before full launch.....  But there has to be a middle ground where we have more than 8 Island map PvE servers (edit: NA servers) for all of official ARK.  Long-term, I know they can't have 50 servers with Island PvE.  So what is their idea for making a lasting change that will help us be able to enjoy the game?  I am so curious to find out...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Volunteer Moderator
6 minutes ago, TheDonn said:

It's a simple line in a patchnote from the arkpedia...  That's all we got hahaha.  https://ark.gamepedia.com/204.0

The limit server-wide on PC is 9,500 and 5,000 on consoles.

6 minutes ago, TheDonn said:

 I mean, OBVIOUSLY they don't want the number of servers they had before full launch.....

Well, I'd say that they didn't re-purpose some of the servers in preparation to Aberration and probably the third DLC. How everyone would have felt if, back in September they opened more servers and today they closed a bunch to host Aberration?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, invincibleqc said:

The limit server-wide on PC is 9,500 and 5,000 on consoles.

Well, I'd say that they didn't re-purpose some of the servers in preparation to Aberration and probably the third DLC. How everyone would have felt if, back in September they opened more servers and today they closed a bunch to host Aberration?

Just saying the limit is 9500 doesn't mean it's 9500.  I understand you think it is that, you said it earlier.  Where is the proof that the tamecap is that high?  Is there any?  People said 5000 for a while.  Then the patch-notes from way back say 5500.  Now you say 9500.  I'm just looking for some evidence instead of just, "Yeah it's this."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Volunteer Moderator
2 minutes ago, TheDonn said:

Just saying the limit is 9500 doesn't mean it's 9500.  I understand you think it is that, you said it earlier.  Where is the proof that the tamecap is that high?  Is there any?  People said 5000 for a while.  Then the patch-notes from way back say 5500.  Now you say 9500.  I'm just looking for some evidence instead of just, "Yeah it's this."

If you want to trust a patch notes from August 2015 that's on you. I tell you that in December 2017 this is 9,500. But hey, just because you asked official proof, there you are:

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, invincibleqc said:

If you want to trust a patch notes from August 2015 that's on you.

I trust things backed by evidence.  You provided evidence.  Before, the best evidence I had that had really any validation to it was the patch notes.  Thank you.

EDIT:  Jen's post is over 1.5 years old.  Just saw that.  Nice...  It -IS- newer information than the '15 patch-notes, but only by about 8 months, so I guess I don't get what you are going on about with the whole "If you want to trust..." bit.  Either way, I certainly need to look in patch-notes for that change, to see if it is recorded.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Volunteer Moderator
28 minutes ago, TheDonn said:

EDIT:  Jen's post is over 1.5 years old.  Just saw that.  Nice...  It -IS- newer information than the '15 patch-notes

The initial cap was 3,500. Then in v204 it was raised to 5,500:

Quote

v204.0
* Max Tamed Dino cap on Official Servers properly raised to 5500

Then it was raised to unknown:

Quote

v219.5
* Raised Official Server Tame caps

And then it was confirmed to be 9,500 and didn't change since.

32 minutes ago, TheDonn said:

so I guess I don't get what you are going on about with the whole "If you want to trust..." bit.

The cap was raised throughout the entire development along with the optimizations and improvements they were making. If you absolutely want to believe it is still 5,500 then go for it. Just don't spread that number around because it is not accurate. 9,500 is the current limit on official PC servers, even if you don't like it. :P

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Midnight_ No one can predict the outcome 100% but if you want me to take a gander I'll give it a go. Anyone can point out effects like I did and I'll give reasons for my brief points. I work around the idea that several changes added together have more of a consequence. The introduction of a kibble system won't have an immediate effect on the cap but removing the rest of the legacy servers causes a ripple. Although the removal of legacy servers has been discussed it has not yet been announced and made certain. It may be that not all are removed and another list will be created like the Devs have stated survivors should be aware of being a possibility. 

Survivors still playing on the legacy servers have the choice to continue playing ark on the new servers and they will just add to the cap issues in the short term. But then there's all that space created for new servers to be opened. They won't be opened immediately but there is a possibility they will be up in large groups. I'd rather new servers be opened all at once rather than gradually to stop the wave of players moving from a capped server to the newest one available. Many options at once spreads out the survivors more and reduces the rate at which a server reaches cap. I'm counting on the Devs being interested in their player statistics and I hope they are able to calculate how many servers are needed. (One of the main reasons why I'm not making a fuss about the cap despite it being a dampener on my game play is that the Devs have all the statistics that we don't have. They are the game specialists. Any other developer can look at ark and say it has this issue and that problem but they don't have the knowledge the developers have of their own game.) 

There is a theory (not my own but was witness to the discussion and thought it to be accurate) that letting go of the legacy servers will mean that the cap limit can be raised. They had knowledge of servers (you can see I'm no tech person with my lack of it) and predicted that the decision of the cap limit is linked to the number of servers held. For the developers to maintain two sets of servers they had to limit the stress on their systems another way. That's pretty self explanatory so I wont go into data and storage. 

The change in the kibble system will be a big unknown. I cannot predict if it'll be bad or good. I can guess that the imprinting kibble list will be reduced and I'm certain the difficulty level of tames will alter both ways. Dinos will become easier to tame or they will be tougher. Since it appears unbalanced at the moment, changes will be made to the number of kibble needed for a tame. Changes in the kibble system can possibly lead to changes in the rate of eggs. 

How does that effect cap? Yeah so initially no one is going to remove their now useless imprinting eggers. Sure they won't when its capped but timing the kibble change to occur when servers are not at risk from cap will impact positively. Now that links in to the introduction of aberration and removal of the legacy servers and it shouldn't be a problem. Know that while I mention the change in the kibble system I don't believe it to remove cap but to act as a moderator to cap levels... Hopefully If the Devs have their mathematics and research precise. I'll stop there since its long enough. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@flamronalmost missed your post so I apologise for only replying now. I'm aware of when the cap hit on the new servers but it's not the first time cap has struck. I don't know how many were affected by cap on the legacy servers when they were ordinary official but I can say with certainty that there are survivors from before the release who are no strangers to cap. In fact cap has made an appearance throughout arks lifetime. So perhaps this time it's bigger than before and it's lasted longer. The bigger the problem the more steps needed to be taken. Most of you just lack patience. 

I also suggest you read my post to midnight on kibble ect. No timeline doesn't mean it won't happen. After all it was confirmed. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, TheDonn said:

So I'm late to your conversation and all the possible dino-kiters that chipped in to the thread, but seems like you are explaining to us how things work on official and then saying you play on unofficial.  So I guess I don't get it.

No Donn, I said I don't currently play on official, big difference.  It's not exactly a difficult concept to grasp either. 

 

5 hours ago, TheDonn said:

I and no one who has been kited agrees with the assessment that it is OK, and will thus submit to chalking it up to random uncontrollable dino aggression.  I didn't bring it up for all of you to validate the behavior of dino-kiter-griefers (keep your strictly-legal-definition, it is exactly griefing), I brought it up to illustrate that this kind of bullsh*t is what the tamecap is doing.

I understand you don't like it when someone uses the environment against you, but that doesn't change the fact that it is well within the rules.  Those are the same rules that everyone plays by if they choose to play on official PVE servers.

Kiting has been commonly done throughout the games history, on official PVE servers that have hit their tame cap and just as commonly on servers that have not.  This isn't something new.  The fact that it often frees up the tame cap is just a happy byproduct.

6 hours ago, TheDonn said:

And no matter how many times you quote the exact guidelines (which do not condone dino-kiting as a defensible action on PvE servers by the way), it is not OK that it happens.  And some of the occurrences of dino-kiting-griefing is because of the tamecap. 

For clarification griefing in online game play is considered to be when one player or group of players singles out an individual for repeated attacks beyond the scope of regular competitive game play... and follows them wherever they go (from server to server in most cases) with the explicit purpose of driving them from the game.  Having a dino kited to your base on occasion doesn't fall into anything remotely resembling this.

WC's stance on dino-kiting has been quite clear from day one.  Obviously you don't like it, but that's not going to change their stance.  That being, if you choose to play on official PVE servers dino-kiting is ABSOLUTELY OK, and is not considered griefing in any way.  If you personally consider it griefing that is perfectly fine, you have other options readily available where you can play by your own set of rules.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.


×
×
  • Create New...