Server Dino Cap Discussion

[Guest DJRone89]

27 minutes ago, Maedean Shepard said:

Seen a lot of tame cap during the sales. That combined with the release of Aberration didn't help at all. More dinos to tame and bring back unfortunatly...

On the 29th of December we've seen a peak in the amount of unique players connecting on our server (not survivors, but steam accounts connecting to the server). It was as high as 495 players connecting that day from which 344 were new players. Now even if a fraction of those new players stays for a while and tames (or tries anyway) a few dinos we'll have a hard time getting down to a "normal" level again. Spent 3 actual days last week trying to incubate my Rex eggs.

So my guess is that we really need more servers. Other solutions might alleviate the pain a bit but according to me won't make it go away completely.

Exactly. Doesn’t matter what caps/limitations they bring in, eventually a server will reach its limits. The only solution is to transfer to another server but there aren’t enough to spread the load.

Not sure why people believe any other solution is viable.

[iAmE]

40 minutes ago, DJRone89 said:

Exactly. Doesn’t matter what caps/limitations they bring in, eventually a server will reach its limits. The only solution is to transfer to another server but there aren’t enough to spread the load.

Not sure why people believe any other solution is viable.

There are other solutions. Such as re-purposing the transfer mechanic. 

 

Saving small bytes of data, such as a Dino uploaded to a cloud, or a item for that matter, is much more efficient then saving the animal as an actual entity generating thousands of possible interactions with various other entities and planes inside the game. They could easily simply create a "Vault" type mechanic in the upload terminal that allows players to store their dinos on, say, PvE servers, where this problem is most common. 

[NajaNivea]

1 hour ago, Maedean Shepard said:

Seen a lot of tame cap during the sales. That combined with the release of Aberration didn't help at all. More dinos to tame and bring back unfortunatly...

On the 29th of December we've seen a peak in the amount of unique players connecting on our server (not survivors, but steam accounts connecting to the server). It was as high as 495 players connecting that day from which 344 were new players. Now even if a fraction of those new players stays for a while and tames (or tries anyway) a few dinos we'll have a hard time getting down to a "normal" level again. Spent 3 actual days last week trying to incubate my Rex eggs.

So my guess is that we really need more servers. Other solutions might alleviate the pain a bit but according to me won't make it go away completely.

Every offcial servers need money for rent, month by month. But the ARK don't have any microtransactions (thank Goodness!), or advertising (thanks again!) for money-making. The only place from where the Wildcard get money is the game and dlc sales. Very hard to rent a lots of new offcial servers if you don't have unlimited background money. What will happen, when the WC run out of money? First: the WC close the offcial servers, and will tell: "sorry, we tried, go to unoffcials" ... not so many survivor games have offcial servers! RUST, 7DtD, etc.. thats have only unofficial servers.

The current server numbers are adequate (there is no 70/70 full servers, during the sale with new players our official server never grow above 45/70 or 50/70. The problem is: lots of big tribes STORAGE lots of unused dinos... 

[Ranger1]

Heya DJ!

3 hours ago, DJRone89 said:

Doesn’t matter what caps/limitations they bring in, eventually a server will reach its limits.

If cooperation with the other tribes isn't an option, this is correct.

3 hours ago, DJRone89 said:

The only solution is to transfer to another server but there aren’t enough to spread the load.

There is limitless room available on unofficial servers.  That's why they have been made an option to play ARK upon. 

Official servers support only a small fraction of the active player base, and they were never intended to do more than that.  So if you outgrow the niche environment of official PVE servers you have plenty of territory to move to, where you can expand to your hearts content.

3 hours ago, DJRone89 said:

Not sure why people believe any other solution is viable.

Because hosting an unlimited number of official PVE servers sufficient to allow all players to tame as much as they want isn't a viable solution.  I'm sure that ultimately everyone would love for WC to foot the bill for them to have an exclusive (or virtually exclusive) official PVE server that they can treat as their own with little regard for caps and other limitations... but that's not going to happen.  For obvious reasons.

[Ranger1]

3 hours ago, iAmE said:

Saving small bytes of data, such as a Dino uploaded to a cloud, or a item for that matter, is much more efficient then saving the animal as an actual entity generating thousands of possible interactions with various other entities and planes inside the game. They could easily simply create a "Vault" type mechanic in the upload terminal that allows players to store their dinos on, say, PvE servers, where this problem is most common. 

I'm reasonably certain you are quite correct, it is technically possible.  However it is highly unlikely that creating a risk free way to store an unlimited number of tames is a design path that WC wants to explore.

[iAmE]

6 hours ago, Ranger1 said:

I'm reasonably certain you are quite correct, it is technically possible.  However it is highly unlikely that creating a risk free way to store an unlimited number of tames is a design path that WC wants to explore.

Considering on PvE, that path is already possible due to the fact that the environment is a literal non-challenge, it's a valid possibility for PvE where these problems mainly exist. Imo. 

[Ranger1]

1 hour ago, iAmE said:

Considering on PvE, that path is already possible due to the fact that the environment is a literal non-challenge, it's a valid possibility for PvE where these problems mainly exist. Imo. 

The two key points were "risk free" AND "unlimited".  Currently there is a limit, your proposal would remove it as well as provide a way to avoid all potential risk that might be introduced in the future.

 

[iAmE]

Just now, Ranger1 said:

The two key points were "risk free" AND "unlimited".  Currently there is a limit, your proposal would remove it as well as provide a way to avoid all potential risk that might be introduced in the future.

 

I'll certainly give that to you, but at this point, for stuff like Island PvE servers, I doubt any new mechanics will be added in. They might, but I doubt it. However it remains a possible work around to the current tame-limit caps. To be frank, if people are hitting the tame limit cap, the "Danger" mechanic probably doesn't exist to a meaningful degree, and if it doesn't play a part in meaningful gameplay currently, I just don't see a reason not to allow it as storage. At least until such a time as a danger mechanic is added. 

[Guest DJRone89]

45 minutes ago, iAmE said:

I'll certainly give that to you, but at this point, for stuff like Island PvE servers, I doubt any new mechanics will be added in. They might, but I doubt it. However it remains a possible work around to the current tame-limit caps. To be frank, if people are hitting the tame limit cap, the "Danger" mechanic probably doesn't exist to a meaningful degree, and if it doesn't play a part in meaningful gameplay currently, I just don't see a reason not to allow it as storage. At least until such a time as a danger mechanic is added. 

I don’t think they can implement a danger mechanic to PvE without affecting PvP due to the many changes in the past that have come because of PvP and carried over to PvE. The 2 modes are the same in that sense.

I think they would need to redesign PvE from the ground up or seperate PvP and PvE so that changes don’t take effect on both game modes when mechanics are amended.

[iAmE]

2 minutes ago, DJRone89 said:

I don’t think they can implement a danger mechanic to PvE without affecting PvP due to the many changes in the past that have come because of PvP and carried over to PvE. The 2 modes are the same in that sense.

I think they would need to redesign PvE from the ground up or seperate PvP and PvE so that changes don’t take effect on both game modes when mechanics are amended.

Yeah. To be frank I have never understood why PvE and PvP never got separate conversions. It would have made a lot of things easier on everyone, such as the flyer nerf they came out with for PvE, really didn't need to be implemented in PvP, where Flyers were already fairly easy to counter. All it did was delete flyers from the PvP meta, and I'm sure there are other examples. 

[thirty1mortis]

Joined NA Rag 81 server a couple weeks ago, just before 3x started for the holiday tame cap hit and hardly dissipated. One tribe moved most of their dinos out so for the last couple days it was fine. Then it caps again while others are taming (swearing in chat about the notification that pops up on the food bar).

Then some dude in the chat with no tribe name is trolling about he is transferring dinos in from his Aberration server. Meanwhile in chat people are asking others to kill of dodos and dinos, while he thanks everyone for doing so while he spams the download button.

There are many small bases with dinos in them by the blue ob from tribes we don't typically see in chat, which could mean they aren't social, are from another country and play while we're asleep, or are storing dinos on the server. Its impossible to play a game when the main purpose of taming dinos can't be completed because alpha tribes store their dinos on servers. A lot of people actually play on 81 making it extremely undesirable and irritating to see trolls doing this when all the rest of want t actually play on the server.

Maybe a few rules could be put in place? Such as, once a tame cap hits in the servers no dinos can be downloaded into it, ever, only uploaded out. That way if a tribe has dinos sitting and waiting to store their dinos on a server they lose them and penalized. Or perhaps a minimum amount of harvesting, building, and killing must be done by a tribe in a week, more than what an inactive tribe would need to do to only feed stored dinos. Inactive tribes storing dinos on a server would get penalized by losing a day on their decay timer.

These are just some ideas to prevent the storage of dinos on servers. We plan on going to other maps to  beat the bosses so I support being able to transfer to another map, but with the tame cap locked because of this guy spamming the download button its going to take a long time just to get the dinos to fight the Rag boss.

[X111]

probably been said before but what about a structure that stores Dino's as a DNA recipe?

so far the game already lightly delves into genetics, why not a method of extracting the genes of a dino and storing it in a vault (the donor creature then has a spoil time of 7 days) allowing you to obtain an egg for example. and if you want that particular animal back you simply put its code into an incubation chamber, receive a egg that has all the hatched stats from the genetic donor and you just have to hatch and raise again?

it sounds complicated but if we can create complex recipes in a cooking pot then cannot it be implemented as above?

I just found it strange with all the tech engrams and possibilities that genetic storing at the very least hasn't been considered as part of the base game

[DarthaNyan]

9 hours ago, DJRone89 said:

I don’t think they can implement a danger mechanic to PvE without affecting PvP due to the many changes in the past that have come because of PvP and carried over to PvE. The 2 modes are the same in that sense.

I think they would need to redesign PvE from the ground up or seperate PvP and PvE so that changes don’t take effect on both game modes when mechanics are amended.

https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/forums/topic/290381-please-i-need-s/&do=findComment&comment=1695449

On 12/31/2017 at 5:40 AM, Ranger1 said:

I'm wondering why there is an assumption in the OP that if PVP and PVE had separate mechanics for more things, that PVE would be LESS restrictive.  If anything, it would likely be the opposite.

PVE is supposed to be "primarily" player vs. the environment... with the environment largely taking the place of other players when it comes to the level of danger and difficulty present.  Yes, there is still intense competition possible between players on a PVE server, but that's a whole separate conversation.

So while I don't see it happening, if PVP and PVE mechanics became more specialized and seperated I would expect things to get much more difficult and dangerous on PVE servers.  One of the main issues plaguing official PVE servers is the general lack of attrition and destruction of player bases and tames.  Tame caps are quickly reached, player bases become sprawling complexes far larger than is necessary for the size of the owning tribe... and the existing natural hazards presently do little to curb this.

So the moral of this story is a simple one... be careful what you wish for.  You may get it.

And i agree with him because it makes sense and logical.

 

9 hours ago, iAmE said:

To be frank I have never understood why PvE and PvP never got separate conversions.

Twice the amount of work and twice the amount of bugs to fix

[iAmE]

7 minutes ago, DarthaNyan said:

Twice the amount of work and twice the amount of bugs to fix

I'm not sure about that. They make a multitude of fixes to both game modes, and then have to rescale and redo those changes to fix for unintended changes for the other game mode. Flyer change, again, is a pretty good example. They made their nerf, but literally deleted non-griffin flyers from PvP. They really should go back and change that. If they just hadn't touched it, they would have had to do significantly less work. 

 

To be honest, now that I have had time to think on it, I believe the reason they never got separated is because they don't have anyone who plays the PvP side of the game, so separating it makes no sense due to lacking the experience to capitalize on the split. 

[DarthaNyan]

11 minutes ago, iAmE said:

They made their nerf, but literally deleted non-griffin flyers from PvP.

As for flyers nerf for PvP - it was necessary because they were just too fast for game to properly render the assets which lead to many unwanted and unintended ways of using them.

Griffins got their nerf as well.

[iAmE]

2 minutes ago, DarthaNyan said:

As for flyers nerf for PvP - it was necessary because they were just too fast for game to properly render the assets which lead to many unwanted ways of using them.

Griffins got their nerf as well.

Yeah but that's not what they did. They literally nerfed everything about flyers to the point that even wyverns can't sufficiently fulfill their intended role as an aerial threat. It either has the stamina and damage to do it, but gets killed in a single clip by anyone with a gun, the stamina and health to do it, but doesn't do any damage, or the health and damage to do it, but not the stamina to kill anyone/thing. 

Pteras are similar. They relied on their speed as an active form of defense, but instead of giving them health to compensate for that failing, they lowered it. Reducing Ptera's to flying suicide bombs with no possible application in PvP because they get one shot by metal arrows, or by a clip from a fabbie rifle. 

Overall, while a flyer change was certainly needed in PvP, what they did actively destroyed the ability to use flyers in serious PvP. Those changes were, almost certainly, aimed at the PvE scene, as were many destructive changes to the general PvP meta (Such as the stat compression change). These changes warrant much more work being done to "Fix" Dinos/PvP afterwards which the devs seem to be incapable of. 

[Ranger1]

5 hours ago, iAmE said:

If they just hadn't touched it, they would have had to do significantly less work. 

Well no, instead of making tweaks they would have had much more work invested in developing and testing separate systems for each mode.  Not to mention other problems inherent with going down that path from a game development point of view.

5 hours ago, iAmE said:

To be honest, now that I have had time to think on it, I believe the reason they never got separated is because they don't have anyone who plays the PvP side of the game, so separating it makes no sense due to lacking the experience to capitalize on the split. 

No offense, but seriously, you undermine any good points you may make when you say hilariously wrong things like this.  It takes you out of the realm of "experienced gamer voicing a reasonably well informed opinion" and puts you in with the useless "they don't do things the way I would prefer, so they obviously don't know how to play" crowd.  You're doing yourself a disservice.

[iAmE]

56 minutes ago, Ranger1 said:

Well no, instead of making tweaks they would have had much more work invested in developing and testing separate systems for each mode.  Not to mention other problems inherent with going down that path from a game development point of view.

Ah. Yes. I see. The ever ambigious, but completely unknown to any party but the one mentioning them "Problems" that are completely unequalled by any problems posed by the path/choices made because the path/choices made were obviously and completely correct. After all. They were made. Weren't they? 

I would argue this. They had to make the tweaks, regardless of mode. The work invested in developing each mode would be minimal, as the two modes are nearly identical. Testing for Ark is mainly done after the patch is pushed to live servers, and fixes are deployed after the player population has discovered the flaws in the game/code. 

As to the problems inherent to that from a game development point of view, there are some. I won't deny that. I would, however, argue, quite heavily, using the current state of Ark, that the problems for not going it not only heavily outweigh the alternative, but in fact, already do. 

 

56 minutes ago, Ranger1 said:

No offense, but seriously, you undermine any good points you may make when you say hilariously wrong things like this.  It takes you out of the realm of "experienced gamer voicing a reasonably well informed opinion" and puts you in with the useless "they don't do things the way I would prefer, so they obviously don't know how to play" crowd.  You're doing yourself a disservice.

It's not a disservice, and my observation is of the former. You just disagree with it, but can't deny the logic of it. 

After ten thousand hours of official PvP. Dozens. If not hundreds of servers. More play time in the game interacting with more testers (Or if you'd prefer, players) of ARK then the developers, likely, have ever had to deal with. That is my honest opinion. 

I do not believe the developers have any solid grasp on the practicalities of the PvP meta they have created, nor the PvP game they created. I fully believe in the competency of the developers to recognize this shortfall, and decide not to split the game, as they do not have the expertise to capitalize on it. Even if that reason is/was not fully realized by the developer team itself. 

By no means do I care in the slightest that they "Don't do things the way I prefer". The way they handle PvP, in this game, shows a complete and marked lack in experience with it. Not that they don't care. Not that they don't spend the time trying. Not even that they don't try. That they fundamentally do not understand neither the nature of gamer that plays this type of PvP game, nor that they fundamentally understand the changes they make, and the impact they have in that ecosystem.

By all means. Please explain why I am wrong in this regard, because I just don't see it. Every time they make major changes, even for purportedly PvP purposes, it does not improve the environment or ecosystem. The stat compression nerf slaughtered the viability of dozens of tames. The speed nerfs, both flyer and general, destroyed dozens more. The turret nerf, and their implemented fixes don't even address why the meta is a problem in the first place. 

If disagreeing with whatever internally held beliefs you hold makes me a, ahem, the latter of your statement. I can't do anything, as logical discourse likely holds no sway over you. 

Enjoy your day. 

[Ranger1]

7 minutes ago, iAmE said:

Ah. Yes. I see. The ever ambigious, but completely unknown to any party but the one mentioning them "Problems" that are completely unequalled by any problems posed by the path/choices made because the path/choices made were obviously and completely correct. After all. They were made. Weren't they? 

I would argue this. They had to make the tweaks, regardless of mode. The work invested in developing each mode would be minimal, as the two modes are nearly identical. Testing for Ark is mainly done after the patch is pushed to live servers, and fixes are deployed after the player population has discovered the flaws in the game/code. 

As to the problems inherent to that from a game development point of view, there are some. I won't deny that. I would, however, argue, quite heavily, using the current state of Ark, that the problems for not going it not only heavily outweigh the alternative, but in fact, already do. 

 

It's not a disservice, and my observation is of the former. 

After ten thousand hours of official PvP. Dozens. If not hundreds of servers. More play time in the game interacting with more testers of ARK then the developers, likely, have ever had to deal with. That is my honest opinion. 

I do not believe the developers have any solid grasp on the practicalities of the PvP meta they have created, nor the PvP game they created. I fully believe in the competency of the developers to recognize this shortfall, and decide not to split the game, as they do not have the expertise to capitalize on it. Even if that reason is/was not fully realized by the developer team itself. 

By no means do I care in the slightest that they "Don't do things the way I prefer". The way they handle PvP, in this game, shows a complete and marked lack in experience with it. Not that they don't care. Not that they don't spend the time trying. Not even that they don't try. That they fundamentally do not understand neither the nature of gamer that plays this type of PvP game, nor that they fundamentally understand the changes they make, and the impact they have in that ecosystem.

By all means. Please explain why I am wrong in this regard, because I just don't see it. Every time they make major changes, even for purportedly PvP purposes, it does not improve the environment or ecosystem. The stat compression nerf slaughtered the viability of dozens of tames. The speed nerfs, both flyer and general, destroyed dozens more. The turret nerf, and their implemented fixes don't even address why the meta is a problem in the first place. 

If disagreeing with whatever internally held beliefs you hold makes me a, ahem, the latter of your statement. I can't do anything, as logical discourse likely holds no sway over you. 

Enjoy your day. 

Tsk, that's a pity... and you were doing so well too. 

[iAmE]

15 minutes ago, Ranger1 said:

Tsk, that's a pity... and you were doing so well too. 

Disagreeing with someone, and then trolling them because you disagree is not something a moderator should be engaged in. Is it?

I took the time to rebuke your points, and explain my logic. If you are unable, or unwilling, to engage in mutual discourse, please do not attempt to use the forums and flame those of us who are. Particularly after being chosen by Casanova as one of the moderators of said board. 

[Ranger1]

3 minutes ago, iAmE said:

Disagreeing with someone, and then trolling them because you disagree is not something a moderator should be engaged in. Is it?

I took the time to rebuke your points, and explain my logic. If you are unable, or unwilling, to engage in mutual discourse, please do not attempt to use the forums and flame those of us who do. Particularly after being chosen by Casanova as one of the moderators of said board. 

As always, my opinion is my own.  Moderators are free to express that opinion just like anyone else, just as you are. 

The difference is I try to base my opinion on facts and proven game design theory, regardless of whether I personally agree or disagree with how something was handled.  You started off in that direction and then took a sharp left turn into trying to prove your points with silly condescension, and lapsed back into "I don't like it so obviously they don't play their own game" arguments.

I tried to take you seriously, but personally I don't have time to waste on that kind of nonsense so we're done.

Carry on.

[iAmE]

9 minutes ago, Ranger1 said:

As always, my opinion is my own.  Moderators are free to express that opinion just like anyone else, just as you are. 

Your opinion is fine. It's the repeated flame baiting, including this post, attempting to draw out angry/provoked responses (Like this one), that don't contribute to the discussion. Even as you've stated, if you don't agree with my opinion, mocking it with no other purpose then to mock it, is against the actual stated guidelines/rules for the forum. Particularly the ones concerning flaming. Of course I don't matter and can't do anything about it, but it remains that in an objective sense.

 

9 minutes ago, Ranger1 said:

 

The difference is I try to base my opinion on facts and proven game design theory, regardless of whether I personally agree or disagree with how something was handled. 

What a coincidence. So do I. Just as I demonstrated in my above post. You simply disagree, and rather then attempting to educate, both of us, as to how other people think, or why they do, you decided to assume I was a random idiot, and mock me. 

I'll admit to being a random idiot, but I do not appreciate being mocked when I go out of the way to explain my rationale to someone. Particularly when I feel like they might offer a perspective that could improve my own. I even pointedly asked for it. 

 

9 minutes ago, Ranger1 said:

You started off in that direction and then took a sharp left turn into trying to prove your points with silly condescension, and lapsed back into "I don't like it so obviously they don't play their own game" arguments.

No. I started off with something you agreed with, then said something you didn't agree with, and for reasons unknown to me in its entire, instead of simply trying to come to a mutual understanding, you decided to mock me. 

Now. As for the discussion being done carrying on and all. If you actually want that, you're free to not respond. I don't want to come away from this with negative feelings. There's no need for it over something as simple as a disagreement over something as simple as our visions and thoughts about a game we are both  evidently passionate about. Though I will be slightly disappointed in losing out on said conversation. 

[Maedean Shepard]

On 4-1-2018 at 4:22 PM, Ranger1 said:

If cooperation with the other tribes isn't an option, this is correct.

Cooperation isn't necessarily a good thing. Yes you can make sure only one tribe makes a kibble farm and make it free to use. Hell I know I'm taking eggs from other tribes so I don't have to make my own kibble farm and be an even bigger burden to the server tame cap.

But cooperation often leads to exchanging dinos/fertilised eggs and breeding even more, so burdening the tame cap even more. So the point you're making about cooperation is rather invalid cause both actions emanating from cooperation pretty much cancel each other out.

A few changes might be made to make things better, like for example having tame limits based on the time you played, or your level, or even the fact that you can tame dinos before having the required level to craft the saddle is kinda odd but that's my opinion.

Still I'm not changing my mind about having extra servers would be a good thing. Trust me, I know having a lot of servers open is costing them a lot of money. If I had enough money and the knowledge I would probably open a large cluster of unofficial servers myself with customer support, trading forums and everything, so untill then (aka never ) I wouldn't mind if Wildcard introduced microtransactions (Cosmetics and stuff, nothing "pay-to-win") to finance the Official cluster. I know it would go against their promise of not introducing microtransactions, but wouldn't be the first time they bend their promises a bit huh? ^^

And on a last note I agree on the fact that PVE and PVP modes should be seperated. One big first change would be to have all the Wild dinos have a higher base HP and Dmg than the Tamed counterparts to make it more interesting, just like the Giga and the Rock Drakes for example.

[DiogoBarradas]

27 minutes ago, Maedean Shepard said:

I wouldn't mind if Wildcard introduced microtransactions (Cosmetics and stuff, nothing "pay-to-win") to finance the Official cluster.

What a good idea, many games already have it. I don't see the problem on selling some skins like the skeleton ones, for example, and pay for it...many many people would buy it, maybe they could have more servers running with it

 

[Kruemel]

There are enough server hosted by Wildcard. but sadly a bunch are wasted on the legacy cluster where only 5-10 players are playing in the rushhour. Repurpose them into the new cluster and the players would use them and the massive load of players may have enough space to build and tame.