Server Dino Cap Discussion

[Pic1]

9 hours ago, Glerian said:

Paid 20 bucks? Got 2-3 years of enjoyable play from a video game?

Let me explain how extremely, childishly, horrifyingly absurd your logic is: There can be many reasons why people move on. One being they got burnt out of the game. Another could be that they found a better game. Yet another reason might be that their friends are playing a different game now and they wanna play with them. BUT. If a large number of people 'move on' because of the state of the game, you expect them to shut up solely because they 'paid less and played more'? Many people moved on because they were disappointed at the game.

Wanna know why officiall server cap is such a freaking huge issue? Let me spell it out: 80% of this survival game (PVE) is about taming and breeding. If you buy a product and through no fault of your own, you can't use it 80% of the time, will you be satisfied?

[IamTANK]

i think the solution is kibble rework and dino lifespan. dinos should age in some way creating a natural turnover and the kbble rework will cut down on the base amount of dinos needed by ea tribe.  i think it will take a combination of both these things to really achieve a meaningful solution.

[Flaminguo]

think they should just add more servers to split players . 

[Olivar]

7 minutes ago, IamTANK said:

i think the solution is kibble rework and dino lifespan. dinos should age in some way creating a natural turnover and the kbble rework will cut down on the base amount of dinos needed by ea tribe.  i think it will take a combination of both these things to really achieve a meaningful solution.

As some of the tames are horrible to do, regardless if you use a kibble or not, loosing these dino's is simply not acceptable.

[IamTANK]

Just now, Olivar said:

As some of the tames are horrible to do, regardless if you use a kibble or not, loosing these dino's is simply not acceptable.

but the question remains if keeping that dino forever means u and everone else cant tame or breed anymore cuz cap got hit. is it still worth keeping forever? an age mechanic would make breeding more important as you would want to pass on good stats to younger dinos to make the time invested in getting the original dino worth it.

not saying its perfect in every way but its a trade off. i can see no other way to resovle the server cap issue.

[yekrucifixion187]

8 hours ago, Ranger1 said:

Even now if a tame dies, well under any circumstance really but especially within the "safety" of a base, the players outrage is palpable.

This is only because of dino's spawning into locked and secured buildings. 

If I leave my buildings dino gate open and a sabertooth comes in and starts gnawing on my passive animals, I'm upset but that is on me and I'm not going to call out for WC's head but when I have a secure water pen and a manta spawns inside the gate and kills my high level basil, yeah I'm going to be mad at WC because that is a flawed game mechanic. We are supposed to be immersed in this world but that is an immersion breaker. You know how you make that acceptable? Have it actually put into RNG that it happens and have it so that the Overseer did it. If they had explained that the Overseer spawns in dino's as can spawn them anywhere even in secure buildings, boom problem solved. 

if WC did this;

A) People would set up their PvE base defenses differently and it would make stuff like auto turrets have a purpose in PvE.

B) WC would be covered

C) It could help with server dino cap issues

 

If you have base made of stone though and it doesn't have areas where a Raptor can get in but a Raptor kills your tames that are inside because you leave them on passive to prevent them reacting to situations outside and glitching through the walls (which is still an issue not fixed) and bunching up then people have a right to be outraged. 

That being said i do agree with the rest of your statement. The people of the official server need to work together to cull the dino cap. We reached dino cap over the 8x event whcih of course was going to happen and like i had mentioned earlier the larger tribes worked together to get back under the cap and we have been taming and breeding like normal since then but with additional mindful attitude of how close we are. This means we will only keep the best of the best and perform more off server trades as well as upgraded trades in server. 

I killed a 272 and 264 Sabertooth (as well as other 250+ dino's) to help out. It wasn't pleasant but I had already gotten the best stats off of both of them and placed them on one imprinted cat so it was a sacrifice i could make since there was no interest in trading for them. 

I noticed I had over 300 scorpion eggs so i was able to kill 2 of them. 

The server destroyed unused rafts, small builds on platform saddles, and killed unneeded tames and worked together so that we can continue to progress. People moved dino's to their other server's that don't have the cap issue. The only thing we didn't do was come to a a kibble agreement though I am still pushing for it (I think having to ask and wait for kibble/eggs is holding this back so I am trying to set up a weekly delivery system). 

When playing in a community there needs to be diplomacy so everybody can achieve their goals. 

[Olivar]

Just now, IamTANK said:

but the question remains if keeping that dino forever means u and everone else cant tame or breed anymore cuz cap got hit. is it still worth keeping forever? an age mechanic would make breeding more important as you would want to pass on good stats to younger dinos to make the time invested in getting the original dino worth it.

not saying its perfect in every way but its a trade off. i can see no other way to resovle the server cap issue.

Well, as long as I can disable this feature then I don't care.
But I don't want his forced in the game because of some official server issues.

[AngrySaltire]

4 minutes ago, Olivar said:

As some of the tames are horrible to do, regardless if you use a kibble or not, loosing these dino's is simply not acceptable.

Yeah I agree here, hate the idea of aging, Ark is trying to kill all my dinos enough as it is.

A kibble rework is deffinatly needed or even gotten rid of completely, which is kind of a shame because when I first started I liked the progression of working up the kibble tree when it was much much smaller, for progression. Now its a complete mess.

I think also getting rid of the need to have multiple tames (brain storming here) for some things like say breeding and egg laying could help. Why need 10 rexs to lay your boss rex eggs when you could just have 2 ? Just a thought.

 

[IamTANK]

2 minutes ago, Olivar said:

Well, as long as I can disable this feature then I don't care.
But I don't want his forced in the game because of some official server issues.

obviously it should be a setting on official servers that can be turned off in sp or dedis as it wouldnt be needed in those. i know its not perfect or ideal for everyone but i think its a solution that will work and has the least downside of other solutions suggested.

[Olivar]

not convinced it's going to be a viable solution. You're going to simply annoy people that will start loosing dinosaurs that were extremely hard to obtain due aging problems. It's basically going to force you to continuously breed them. And let's be honest, i'm not even sure you're going to be able to breed ALL off-spring in time before your aging timers will kick in.

[yekrucifixion187]

3 minutes ago, AngrySaltire said:

think also getting rid of the need to have multiple tames (brain storming here) for some things like say breeding and egg laying could help. Why need 10 rexs to lay your boss rex eggs when you could just have 2 ? Just a thought.

This is so hard to achieve so you need the multiple chances to get the right stats on each egg. You would be suggesting shorter cooldown timers for breeding which would increase opportunities to hatch thus still having constant dino's.

Not everyone kills the weaker baby even though they should. It also levels the playing field too much.

Even in PvE there is a competition of who has the best stuff, who gets that first boss fight under their belt, etc. By either increasing chances (doesn't help dino count) or just putting all the stats on a new hatchling right away it takes away from competitiveness and IMO game enjoyment. 

[IamTANK]

2 minutes ago, yekrucifixion187 said:

This is so hard to achieve so you need the multiple chances to get the right stats on each egg. You would be suggesting shorter cooldown timers for breeding which would increase opportunities to hatch thus still having constant dino's.

Not everyone kills the weaker baby even though they should. It also levels the playing field too much.

Even in PvE there is a competition of who has the best stuff, who gets that first boss fight under their belt, etc. By either increasing chances (doesn't help dino count) or just putting all the stats on a new hatchling right away it takes away from competitiveness and IMO game enjoyment. 

a multiplier could be added where xp is increased and mating interval shortened the older a dino is. the age doesnt have to be super short either it could be two months( just spit-balling) 

[AngrySaltire]

1 minute ago, yekrucifixion187 said:

This is so hard to achieve so you need the multiple chances to get the right stats on each egg. You would be suggesting shorter cooldown timers for breeding which would increase opportunities to hatch thus still having constant dino's.

Not everyone kills the weaker baby even though they should. It also levels the playing field too much.

Even in PvE there is a competition of who has the best stuff, who gets that first boss fight under their belt, etc. By either increasing chances (doesn't help dino count) or just putting all the stats on a new hatchling right away it takes away from competitiveness and IMO game enjoyment. 

Yeah I was basically just suggesting a shorter breeding cool down. Could couple it with a smaller dino tame limit to compensate for people not killing the bad eggs. Was not suggesting that the good stats should be passed on automatically or what not, just reducing the number of dinos needed. I am not saying its a good idea cause to be honest I dont have a clue, just throwing it there as a vague suggestion. 

[yekrucifixion187]

1 minute ago, Olivar said:

And let's be honest, i'm not even sure you're going to be able to breed ALL off-spring in time before your aging timers will kick in.

Possible solution is two aging timers. It activates after you've had the dino for say a month or after you have bred the dino 5 times whichever comes first. then it's 3 month long again timer. That gives you the dino for at least 2 months. It could even be dino specific since a 2 month timer on a Giga would be ridiculous with a 12 day raise timer. 

So it would just need to be a formula. if 1 game day = 52 minutes real life, then 365 game days = 18980 minutes and 5 years would equal 94900 minutes or 1582 hours which would equate to 66 real days. On something like a Parasaur, Triceratops, etc this time frame would be acceptable IMO. Make it up to 6 months for a Giga which lets be honest you'll have bred and raised a new and better one by then. Fill in other dino's in between. It also alters trading. "This dino has this much time left." 

I think an aging process would be better received than upping the danger as it is something that can be prepared for but it still allows for turnover and dino cap relief. 

I also wouldn't be opposed to both. I seen a level 145 tamed Rex (meaning it was like a level 60 or something wild) beat a level 145 wild rex, on neutral. I mean come on, that is ridiculous and shouldn't happen. 

Wild dino's should be stronger than tamed counterparts though not stronger than a well bred dino. I think they got that right with stuff like the Griffin and Giga and Rock Elemental on initial tame and you can see that in the way players approach stuff. A person has no problem taking a level 66 griffin up against a level 150 Rex but a player is going to most likely avoid even a level 20 Rock Elemental unless they have bred 200+ Rex at a minimum. 

[yekrucifixion187]

12 minutes ago, IamTANK said:

a multiplier could be added where xp is increased and mating interval shortened the older a dino is. the age doesnt have to be super short either it could be two months( just spit-balling) 

Interested, could you show me an example?

[Olivar]

Just now, yekrucifixion187 said:

Possible solution is two aging timers. It activates after you've had the dino for say a month or after you have bred the dino 5 times whichever comes first. then it's 3 month long again timer. That gives you the dino for at least 2 months. It could even be dino specific since a 2 month timer on a Giga would be ridiculous with a 12 day raise timer. 

So it would just need to be a formula. if 1 game day = 52 minutes real life, then 365 game days = 18980 minutes and 5 years would equal 94900 minutes or 1582 hours which would equate to 66 real days. On something like a Parasaur, Triceratops, etc this time frame would be acceptable IMO. Make it up to 6 months for a Giga which lets be honest you'll have bred and raised a new and better one by then. Fill in other dino's in between. It also alters trading. "This dino has this much time left." 

I think an aging process would be better received than upping the danger as it is something that can be prepared for but it still allows for turnover and dino cap relief. 

I also wouldn't be opposed to both. I seen a level 145 tamed Rex (meaning it was like a level 60 or something wild) beat a level 145 wild rex, on neutral. I mean come on, that is ridiculous and shouldn't happen. 

Wild dino's should be stronger than tamed counterparts though not stronger than a well bred dino. I think they got that right with stuff like the Griffin and Giga and Rock Elemental on initial tame and you can see that in the way players approach stuff. A person has no problem taking a level 66 griffin up against a level 150 Rex but a player is going to most likely avoid even a level 20 Rock Elemental unless they have bred 200+ Rex at a minimum. 

That's the power of breeding. A dinosaur bred and imprinted properly is roughly 4x to 6x more powerful to it's wild equivalent when given a good saddle.
Consider it pedigree breeding, focusing on the core values and obtaining the best a species has to offer.
So while it may appear unfair, a lot of effort and resources have been put into obtaining such a dinosaur, and the power that comes with it is the fair reward.
While breeding may seem simple, it's a huge timesink to reach the pinnacle of a species.

And I'm still not sold on the timers.
That will work if you have a limited amount of dinosaurs, but once you have a large selection, you're simply going to run out of time.

[yekrucifixion187]

4 minutes ago, Olivar said:

That's the power of breeding. A dinosaur bred and imprinted properly is roughly 4x to 6x more powerful to it's wild equivalent when given a good saddle.
Consider it pedigree breeding, focusing on the core values and obtaining the best a species has to offer.
So while it may appear unfair, a lot of effort and resources have been put into obtaining such a dinosaur, and the power that comes with it is the fair reward.
While breeding may seem simple, it's a huge timesink to reach the pinnacle of a species.

And I'm still not sold on the timers.
That will work if you have a limited amount of dinosaurs, but once you have a large selection, you're simply going to run out of time.

I am on board with the bred dino's being more powerful not the tamed though. 

As for the second part that's the whole idea behind the timers though so that you don't have this absurdly large selection of dino's. It's a mechanism to keep dino count down. I know that a lot of people feel that infringes on their game play but by having 10% of the server cap an individual is infringing on the other 69 players that can play on that server at the same time. In PvE there is no reason to have 500 dino's and it was a mistake by WC to have increase that limit. 

I am in a two man tribe and we are running a pretty successful breeding program with Rex's, Doedic's, Anky's, Argy's, Saber's, and Bears. We are getting into Thorny's right now as well and have raised quite a few Wyvern's. Our dino number, and we have every kibble we need for taming these and imprints, is 144 as of today (roughly 3% of server cap which could obviously still be construed as large). 

I can't stress the community aspect of official PvE enough. People really need to be mindful of this and not be selfish. 

[bigfishrob]

1 hour ago, yekrucifixion187 said:

Possible solution is two aging timers. It activates after you've had the dino for say a month or after you have bred the dino 5 times whichever comes first. then it's 3 month long again timer. That gives you the dino for at least 2 months. It could even be dino specific since a 2 month timer on a Giga would be ridiculous with a 12 day raise timer. 

So it would just need to be a formula. if 1 game day = 52 minutes real life, then 365 game days = 18980 minutes and 5 years would equal 94900 minutes or 1582 hours which would equate to 66 real days. On something like a Parasaur, Triceratops, etc this time frame would be acceptable IMO. Make it up to 6 months for a Giga which lets be honest you'll have bred and raised a new and better one by then. Fill in other dino's in between. It also alters trading. "This dino has this much time left." 

I think an aging process would be better received than upping the danger as it is something that can be prepared for but it still allows for turnover and dino cap relief. 

I also wouldn't be opposed to both. I seen a level 145 tamed Rex (meaning it was like a level 60 or something wild) beat a level 145 wild rex, on neutral. I mean come on, that is ridiculous and shouldn't happen. 

Wild dino's should be stronger than tamed counterparts though not stronger than a well bred dino. I think they got that right with stuff like the Griffin and Giga and Rock Elemental on initial tame and you can see that in the way players approach stuff. A person has no problem taking a level 66 griffin up against a level 150 Rex but a player is going to most likely avoid even a level 20 Rock Elemental unless they have bred 200+ Rex at a minimum. 

problem with this is some dinos are used for long term. i got a couple wild gigas i use em farming talons on se. absolutely no reason for me to endure a bullcrap 2 week raise for new ones when these get the job done. same thing with a wyvern. i have two lights i use very regularly and hard to replace. it takes away from the aspect of progression to age any dino. maybe focus more on non riden or something dinos age. either way complicated logic and most likely to result in more issues and rando disappeared dinos. imprinting rework still seems like a big boost in right direction Ohh AND ENOUGH SERVERS... cheap company.

[Palenor]

5 hours ago, Atomix said:

Can appreciate your point of view, however I am looking for cold hard statistics, not opinions

You know what they say about opinions....

This was an opinion to an opinion given, he was not asking for facts.....

See the following post for your further enlightenment if you are looking for more opinions on the kibble matter.

https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/forums/topic/223098-so-end-of-august-release-wheres-the-big-kibble-rework-were-at-cap-again/&do=findComment&comment=1532174

[HeatherJo]

16 hours ago, Kallor said:

Wildcard needs to get revenue from existing players, then they have a $ incentive to ensure a quality experience so that you stay, and they get more money. Right now existing players are dead weight and apart from good/bad press that might effect new sales, there is no incentive to keep them around, in fact it would be far better from Wildcards perspective if all the existing players quit.  All those servers are a financial drain, if they only had to support new players for a couple of months before they also quit they could get away with massive savings.

Their business model is new sales, the longer any player sticks around the worse the return is. It's a balancing act, drive too many players away and the game will be perceived as dead which will kill off new sales, make it too good and too many non revenue generating players will stick around consume all their resources.

Well said, I’ve been saying that for a year and been called many names for it, glad to hear others are finally wiseing up to the truth. 

A lot of us legacy players would have gladly paid once the game released if it actually would have been a full release and actually worked, especially for a new exciting DLC map like RAG.  Everyone expects to pay for DLC. The average game in general people spend on average $200 over the course of their play within that game, WC got $20 out of us and then decided to dump “dead weight “ as you so eloquently put it.  WC missed a huge opportunity there, but they knew exactly what they were doing, easier to deal with new players who are oblivious to the issues and take their money and dump the rest, then in a couple months rinse and repeat

I ust think this MO will eventually backfire on them, they just aren’t savvy enough to  pull it off long term.  In fact it already has backfired on them.  When they went to full release they attempted to drive off many existing players during the “great migragration” or “great player extinction”.  They deleted a lot of servers in the guise that they would be repurposed for the new RAG DLC.  The whole thing was a huge mess.  They hoped the majority of players would leave making room for new money spending players and they  could get away with actually releasing a lot less new servers.  Just enough to accomadte the flood of new players they would receive.

Unfortunately this completely backfired on them as the majority of legacy players actually stuck it out so when RAG released every server was flooded with old legacy players an barely a new player anywhere.  And now Dino cap issues abound because there isn’t nearly enough servers to accomadate all those pesky players that stuck around.  If they would have just charged for the “working” DLC they would have been much better off.  They already had an existing clientele willing to fork over money, they shot themselves in the foot big time. 

[HeatherJo]

13 hours ago, Glerian said:

If they have been here since the beginning, that was 2014-2015 ish? Paid 20 bucks? Got 2-3 years of enjoyable play from a video game? I mean, I'm all for trying to fix issues that need to be addressed, but complaining that you got two good years of play from a cheap early access alpha before moving on to newer games is mildly absurd to me. Yeah, server issues need to be fixed. But I dropped 60 bucks on Fallout 4 and I've moved on from that, and that was barely 2 years ago. I don't feel like Bethesda cheated me. I know the parallel isn't exactly the same but come on, you got an alpha for cheap and managed to wring years worth of enjoyment out of them. I've spent more on movie tickets, which didn't bring me near as much.

Lol don’t misunderstand what I’m saying just because we had 2-3 years didn’t mean we had good play or enjoyment. I personally took many breaks out of frustration hoping to come back to a more polished version.  The only reason we stuck with the game and endured the normal growing pains of game development was that we saw the potential of what it could be and believed wildcard would eventually make good on all the promises they were making.  It never happened, the game only worsened until now most finally gave up because for them the game is unplayable.  

Enjoyment? I think not, just a waste of 20$ And a couple years hoping, and what’s funny is we would have paid a lot more if the game actually would have worked, but really I feel bad for all the new players that forked out money for a “full release” version of the game only to be stuck with a broken, half finished, capped experience, it’s them that deserve a full refund.  And really should be demanding one. 

[HeatherJo]

One thing I don’t see being discussed here is how in a small sense, WC really brought this all on themselves by things like their incessant need to constantly realese new worthless Dino’s.  Back in the day we had the Dino’s that we needed to get the jobs done.  Over the past year WC has released so many countless useless Dino’s that add nothing to the game.  New Dino’s means we must tame them off course even if they will just sit forever in the corner of our barns.  A lot of players feel they need to “collect” or “conquer” every new Dino so this only added to the number of Dino’s per tribe which I would venture to say 50% of those are competely worthless and only take up space in theircollections.  Culling the Dino population and getting rid of at least 30% of the worthless pointless irritating Dino’s would obviously help in sorts to the cap and lets be honest we all would love to see the pelicans go. 

But at the end of the day we all know the real issue is the simple lack of proper server rollout.  When you downsize almost 900 servers into 198 what do you expect? But still things like excessive content creation defiantly add to this issue. 

[Joebl0w13]

3 minutes ago, HeatherJo said:

New Dino’s means we must tame them off course even if they will just sit forever in the corner of our barns.  A lot of players feel they need to “collect” or “conquer” every new Dino

You don't need to tame most dinos. Even if you imprint you only need 15 or so breeds. 

If players feel the need to tame everything they see on the map and build ridiculous dino farm houses then the dinocap issue is mostly their own fault.

[HeatherJo]

7 minutes ago, Joebl0w13 said:

You don't need to tame most dinos. Even if you imprint you only need 15 or so breeds. 

If players feel the need to tame everything they see on the map and build ridiculous dino farm houses then the dinocap issue is mostly their own fault.

I was for the most part being facetious, sorry my wit and sarcasm didn’t translate well. we only tame exactly what we need,  but Really let’s be honest there are many players that need to collect every Dino there is.  Instead of worthless useless Dino additions, and maybe more focus on relevant issues it would at least help alleviate some of the issue.  People are going to build Rediculous Dino farms period why not limit what they can build to a more useful selection.  Of course knowing Wildcard they would leave the annoying Dino’s and just make them untameable just to bug everyone bhahaha. 

Plus players are going to play within the limitations of the game as set forth by the game company, so how is it itheir fault that they can tame whatever they want so they do?  The game is to tame Dino’s lol, and if they have a 500dino tribe cap to do so who are we to say how they spend their ark experience that they paid for.  At some point it just can’t be all the players fault at some point WC needs to actually be held accountable.  

[Joebl0w13]

3 minutes ago, HeatherJo said:

I was for the most part being facetious, sorry my wit and sarcasm didn’t translate well. we only tame exactly what we need,  but Really let’s be honest there are many players that need to collect every Dino there is.  Instead of worthless useless Dino additions, and maybe more focus on relevant issues it would at least help alleviate some of the issue.  People are going to build Rediculous Dino farms period why not limit what they can build to a more useful selection.  Of course knowing Wildcard they would leave the annoying Dino’s and just make them untameable just to bug everyone bhahaha. 

At some point in the game, much as in life, people have to take some personal responsibility for their actions.