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Turret Changes: A Technical Talk about why.


TheRightHand
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The conversation continues, including feedback from TheRightHand on comments and concerns, in this thread:

 

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Ok so i understand that this turret nerf is for performance i get that but without going into large amounts of detail (mostly because this info is largely available already) bases are now undefendable 100 turrets with a 20% boost to damage wont be enough to deter offline raiders or raiders in general, nobody wants to be online 24/7 to prevent a raid and the loss of hundreds of hours of work can you guys please consider maybe implementing a dedicated turret tower or some large upgradable turret tower so instead of having walls of thousands of turrets you only need like 10 of these towers for a large base to keep raiders away and to really benefit from this structure you would have to spend the massive amount of resources to upgrade it to its highest damage potential, i dont know i feel something like this would be beneficial to the pvp element of the game.

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7 minutes ago, BHKane said:

Ok ,cuz this is so serious thing for game and impact to players and game,i was thinking and 1 of my solutions is:

Every turrent have his radius that not allow to build another turrent close to each other. I will explain.

ALL NUMBERS I AM USING ARE RANDOM,JUST FOR EXAMPLE.

if u placeing turrents of flat ground of foundations, and after u place 1 turrent on 1 foundation,next turrent u want to place need to be 2-3 foundations far from other(on any side), this will force players to stop building so much turrents in close range but will not put any limit. Also this is going with 30-50% incrised dmg,so every turrent can replace 2-5 turrents from past. for big bases they will have to reduce turrents even more, or to made more "lines of deffence" but still thay will have same results like before i think. This should reduce FPS usage even more, and all will be happy(this is my opinion,sorry on bad english,and pls dont talk bed to me,cya)

What in the world is a turrent?

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8 hours ago, TheRightHand said:

We pay an ENORMOUS amount of money for our servers. It's not that the servers are weak or cheap. It's that the game is just... expensive. It has to do a lot of stuff, all the time.

So, shutdown legacy, and now you have more machines.  3 servers per machine must mean what, 200 machines?  Repurpose them for official, lets learn from this mistake and move on. :)

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Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of time atm to read all of the other posts so forgive me if this is repetitive, but I see the biggest issue here not being with the turret update. I understand and am okay with the fact that this must be done to improve performance. What I am not okay with is the fact that bases will become completely defenseless when this happens. Luckily, there are many ways this can be fixed. 

I say the best start is to give stegos a big nerf. Let's remove that hitbox problem so that people can't drop walking tanks into bases with a Wyvern. Brontos and Racers can be carried on the Quetz platform, but at least it will take more than a C4 block from the back of a mobile tank to get into the base. 

Secondly, let's up the number of defense options we have. Blueprinted turrets are one of the many great solutions the community has offered on this subject. Let's start looking into how we can make this update balanced (hopefully within the first week or 2 before the whole game is wiped)

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9 hours ago, TheRightHand said:


Currently, the architecture of the version of Unreal we started building on is single-threaded. That means it will only use one CPU thread in order to do all of the stuff it does.

A while back, we added paralellized networking and paralellized networking to our build, so that networking actions and animation rendering could both take place on multiple threads, increasing the number of total threads used by the server to 2. This was months of work.

While we're investigating what else can be done for paralellization, the machines that about 70% of our servers run on are custom built baremetal machines with 8 core, 4+ghz processors, and we run 3 instances per machine, with 64gb of RAM per machine.

This means that at most, all 3 servers are using 6 cores + 2 cores for our reporting, metrics, operating system overhead, etc.

We pay an ENORMOUS amount of money for our servers. It's not that the servers are weak or cheap. It's that the game is just... expensive. It has to do a lot of stuff, all the time.

wouldnt it be cheaper in the long run to slowly purchace your own machines so you guys could get away from nitrados enormous prices? or find a company willing to rent them to you cheaper?

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3 minutes ago, Zederia said:

answers nothing, gives no insight as to what they plan, nothing.

They are currently in the process of collecting feedback, ideas and comments. If you read the original post, you can see that he mentions he will read all the replies during the week end. So for now, there is no more info on the upcoming balancing because there is simply none. Pretty sure they will have meetings in the upcoming two weeks and release changes accordingly for the 5th. Take a look at Kokarn's Dev Tracker daily or directly at the Annoucements forum and I'm sure we will get a follow up in due time.

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1 minute ago, invincibleqc said:

They are currently in the process of collecting feedback, ideas and comments. If you read the original post, you can see that he mentions he will read all the replies during the week end. So for now, there is no more info on the upcoming balancing because there is simply none. Pretty sure they will have meetings in the upcoming two weeks and release changes accordingly for the 5th. Take a look at Kokarn's Dev Tracker daily or directly at the Annoucements forum and I'm sure we will get a follow up in due time.

no, this will only get swept under the rug, as every other major complaint got.

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Personally, 100 turrets is poop given plant x class as the turrets also. i think 50 tek turrets 100 turrets and 100 plant x with a slight buff would be more effective. 

If this is still gonna happen, atleast remove the stego damage reduction whilst being ridden so huge bases cant be raided by slightly advanced stone bases.

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If they keep the turrets at 300 cap with a healthier damage% increase, more HP per turret(to survive suicide griffins etc) and lower the built platform saddle limit to say 75-100 then i'd be fine with the changes. Maybe make different values for different dinos per platform(Quetz 15, paracer 50, bronto 75) for example. Make the raiding more personal instead of running 6 paracers down mid with 5 brontos behind them moving forward. I feel like the pvp(dino fights) would balance out nicely with lower turrets and less soaking dinos. It would most likely bring a new meta of bred carnivores really taking the spotlight, which is what should happen instead of soaking endlessly with cakes.

Also has anyone ever done tests without all the cables on a server? I feel like those cause more lag then the actual turrets themselves.

 

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I haven't been able to read through every comment, so I'll just throw this out there and hope I am not repeating. What about stacking damage modifiers for turrets? As in, the amount of damage increases with each consecutive shot (or set number of shots? 5-10?). This makes bullet soakers useless, as they will eventually not be able to tank the shots, without needing to grossly OP the turrets for single use emplacements. But anyone running fast enough or on a fast enough dino wouldn't get the stacking damage, because they are not consistently hit. Tracking will be faster because of decreased lag so just running in wouldn't necessarily be an option anymore. Could this work for addressing the bullet soaking meta as well as reducing the overall number of turrets?

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23 minutes ago, invincibleqc said:

They are currently in the process of collecting feedback, ideas and comments. If you read the original post, you can see that he mentions he will read all the replies during the week end. So for now, there is no more info on the upcoming balancing because there is simply none. Pretty sure they will have meetings in the upcoming two weeks and release changes accordingly for the 5th. Take a look at Kokarn's Dev Tracker daily or directly at the Annoucements forum and I'm sure we will get a follow up in due time.

To be fair, last time they were "in the process of collecting feedback, ideas and comments" for the flyers TLC v3 pass - nothing has been done. Dont get me wrong: I was and still is a supporter of that change, but i was against taking away the choice of leveling speed completely on mountable flyers so i was waiting for that v3...

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9 hours ago, TheRightHand said:



We pay an ENORMOUS amount of money for our servers. It's not that the servers are weak or cheap. It's that the game is just... expensive. It has to do a lot of stuff, all the time.

So what you're saying is that when you told everyone that "money would never be an issue , only talent " that you were technically incorrect as you have neither to offer this game.

There is literally no possible way turrets are the cause of the majority of the lags and come December 6th once everyone sees that , you will have a large exodus of players that flock so far away from this game it will be like a mouse in a room full of elephants who were hopped up on caffeine pills.

You corrupted the innocence of this game with weekly nerfs and constant reduction in enjoyment. The game game is grindier now than when I had to pike bugs for chitin to try and make a metal 1x1. Here's a hint guys: most of us already work a full time job so why would we want another unpaid one 

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Just now, DarthaNyan said:

To be fair, last time they were "in the process of collecting feedback, ideas and comments" for the flyers TLC v3 pass - nothing has been done.

Well, if I remember correctly, they said they would see how mk2 was going and analyze collected data before checking if further balancing was required. Shortly after, I also remember that TheRightHand mentioned in an interview that they still plan on iterating on them, but that there is too many things going on and that they currently are in a better place than what they used to be (which I agree, I still miss my 300% speed wyvern but I can admit it was ridiculous...):

However, this is not a thread about the flyer nerf, but I would like to point that I believe this is quite different here because they actually announced the turret changes 2-3 weeks before it happens in order to get feedback -prior- it goes live which shows that they learned from last time. Also, they actually gave a date this time, while there is no explicit x on the calendar for further balancing of the flyers.

 

That being said, I'm sure we can all agree that when it gets out PvP servers will be chaotic and that more balancing will most likely be required afterwords. Which make me think that Wilcard should maybe consider "locking" the official PvP cluster for a couple days while they make sure everything is balanced. And by locking I mean, they could announce that on the 5th, all progress made for the next couple days will be rollbacked after a "testing" period. True that a lot of players would not bother playing at all, but I'm fairly sure a lot will be there testing and giving feedback, etc. which might cause less rage in case the first shot is not the right one because nobody will lose progress in the end - just an idea.

 

17 minutes ago, Mjsechrest said:

The game game is grindier now than when I had to pike bugs for chitin to try and make a metal 1x1. Here's a hint guys: most of us already work a full time job so why would we want another unpaid one 

Did you already forget that harvesting rate has been doubled by default since then? And that every week-end there is x4 (based on the rates you are mentioning) events? I'd say that the game is far from being more grindier, but that you need to grind more because there is way more content and things for you to do/spend your resources on.

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Make the tribes smaller (like 10 players max, 20 members per alliance limit).. Its the tribes and alliances that kill the servers.. if you dont have 500 turrets on your base, the zerg is just going to roll over it.  Go find a slot capped server (on the  main pvp cluster)   and get the steam join info on it;   9 times out of 10,  there's 300 people spam joining with login scripts.. Thats the new meta of PVP ark..    THAT's what's really changed since legacy. 

Re-balacing will take MONTHS.. its going to be a fubar nightmare; no way around it.  Base Defense IS half of the game.  A Giga takes like 10 days to breed,  and its going to take like 30min for a decent attacking force to walk over your 100 turrets  ( killing all your months of dino breeds / tames) .  You built a game / cluster that makes it impossible to live outside a zerg mega tribe,  Its no wonder everyone clusters in a huge monster base with 2k turrets,  and it gets rendered by half the server pop all day.

Make a new decent sized CLUSTER (something like 20 servers) with smaller tribe and alliance limits. Keep the turret limits ( something like 200 max would be more reasonable, imo) and with smaller tribes, you could even bring back the dino limits and whatnot.

This should really reduce the turret count per server, dino counts, slot capped servers being spammed joined by warring zerg allainces... exc exc exc..

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14 minutes ago, invincibleqc said:

Well, if I remember correctly, they said they would see how mk2 was going and analyze collected data before checking if further balancing was required. Shortly after, I also remember that TheRightHand mentioned in an interview that they still plan on iterating on them, but that there is too many things going on and that they currently are in a better place than what they used to be (which I agree, I still miss my 300% speed wyvern but I can admit it was ridiculous...):

However, this is not a thread about the flyer nerf, but I would like to point that I believe this is quite different here because they actually announced the turret changes 2-3 weeks before it happens in order to get feedback -prior- it goes live which shows that they learned from last time. Also, they actually gave a date this time, while there is no explicit x on the calendar for further balancing of the flyers.

 

That being said, I'm sure we can all agree that when it gets out PvP servers will be chaotic and that more balancing will most likely be required afterwords. Which make me think that Wilcard should maybe consider "locking" the official PvP cluster for a couple days while they make sure everything is balanced. And by locking I mean, they could announce that on the 5th, all progress made for the next couple days will be rollbacked after a "testing" period. True that a lot of players would not bother playing at all, but I'm fairly sure a lot will be there testing and giving feedback, etc. which might cause less rage in case the first shot is not the right one because nobody will lose progress in the end - just an idea.

 

Did you already forget that harvesting rate has been doubled by default since then? And that every week-end there is x4 (based on the rates you are mentioning) events? I'd say that the game is far from being more grindier, but that you need to grind more because there is way more content and things for you to do/spend your resources on.

That's exactly what I mean. Of course the rate doubled but when there's 6x more content to keep up with which is almost all mandatory if you want a chance to survive at pvp. if someone asked you "what do I need to do first to succeed in pvp from beginning to end" I think you might need more pages than a Tom Clancy novel to even begin to explain the various and extremely complex actions and Interactions that players are required to know, understand , and remember in a variety of aspects in this game.

And more content is not necessarily a bad thing but so much of it feels basically mandatory if you want to be the best of the best. Much like the imprinting argument where you don't -have- to imprint but if you want to be the best then you have to imprint. And it all takes an innumerable amount of time.

Which gives heed back to the main topic of turrets, which funnily enough will actually eliminate much of the grind of this game if they are indeed limited to 100 per 36 foundations.

It will be a griefers paradise and with the new handcuffed to the chair stuff I wouldnt expect much else from WC. They love to grief their players just like a good beach troll would 

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Perhaps one solution could be to add an expensive armor piercing round (or other new types of rounds), or buff turret damage to dino's by a factor that makes sense when on 'Players and Tames' for example.  100 per a certain range might be too low as well.  Is it possible to up turret count in that range you have set a bit more, and if so how many more turrets could you allow us?

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This will kill the game no matter what you guys think this will help. It will help but there are other ways to fix the issue. Get rid of all tail swing. Don’t make te animals move at all if they are not being used no one will mind. PvE might so if that would be a issue make it a PvP thing only no one in PvP servers will care about that.

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2 minutes ago, XxPackeyXx said:

This will kill the game no matter what you guys think this will help. It will help but there are other ways to fix the issue. Get rid of all tail swing. Don’t make te animals move at all if they are not being used no one will mind. PvE might so if that would be a issue make it a PvP thing only no one in PvP servers will care about that.

Except it's been stated in this thread that tail swing is client side and as such does not affect things in the same way that turrets do, which you'd know if you bothered to read the thread.

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Yet another band-aid on something broken. As has been said multiple times in this thread start banning the tribes using scripts to slot cap servers, sort the ddosing you guys supposedly turned the official servers on to stop from legacy (funny how its just as bad as it ever was) set a realistic limit for turrets ie if the avg is 1200 0r 1000 per 37 foundations make it 500-600 not 100 a number a small tribe of 2 would have 3 times as many on for their 8x8. Actually add not strip tools for tribes to protect against off lining and tanking dinos, a bigger auto canon that targets siege animals and does big ae damage, sort armour bonuses etc. This game nerf which is all it is in its currently pitched state will see the end of this game as ark, it will become rust as if it isnt close enough to that state now and no way it benefits smaller tribes or new players, Big tribes still have big pens of animals and gear and explosives are cheap so it just hinders any ability to protect your time and work while not online end of story. Maybe purchasing ORP instead of S+ might be a better option to meter damage and shielding I dont know.

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So, ive seen the responses you guys have put out and still think you are wrong to do this.

How exactly does reducing turret density without reducing the number of actual placeable turrets change anything?
we still have all these turrets we can't put on our base anymore, but we can still put them everywhere else.

All we will do is build allied tribes and turret towers in our bases to have the turrets we need to be safe, completely bypassing this change. and if your turret limits include other tribes turrets. well. we will just put turrets all over the map and then no one gets turrets but us...  you don't seem to realize how powerful some alpha tribes are wildcard.

And you know whats going to happen then? you will lose players, not just because now we cant defend bases, but your pushing your players into a corner where to defend ourselves, we must come up with alternative strategies to stay safe, those strategies will negatively impact new players hugely in the pvp servers, they won't be able to build anywhere due to turret spam, servers will be just as laggy with the same number of turrets just spammed far and wide across the map.

And a more realistic number of turrets for base defence is 300, instead your lowballing the problem, our base has 1680 turrets inside the range in many places and we are not even that big a tribe. you think we like having to grind turrets all day so we can go to sleep at night?
by going low with your first iteration of the problem, you are cursing many tribes to be wiped on the 5th. there will be destruction the likes of which ark has not seen in a long time.

Plans are already underway in the larger tribes on who to hit when this update drops. and you know who we will blame wildcard.

Anyone who has played ark a lot and went to us players and asked us what we would do in response to a change of this magnitude in game would know this.
you should have come to us and given us options instead of ramming this silliness down our throats and expecting us to be happy about it. there had to be alternatives.

You need a player advisory council so you can discuss this stuff directly with your player base in an intelligent way, like how eve online and other mmo's work to keep the players happy.
you're too far past release to be making these kinds of mistakes. this harks back to early access and the bad old days of drastic changes, this has to be the biggest gameplay change ark has seen since the flier nerf. and its even bigger than that.

Please ark devs, wildcard. listen to the players.

 

( my solution would be server wide cap on turrets per tribe in addition to a say 500-600 cap based on proximity, plus some turret alternative to reduce the number of turrets required to have a similar level of defence, suitibly expensive in resources ( im thinking high level blueprint levels of resources for the powerful ones)

you could cap numbers on each kind of turret too, so you might only be able to have like 2 large autoturret cannons or something on the whole server.  this would impliment an element of strategy to construction and drastically reduce the need. for the turret spam causing the issue, by going and fixing the core issue instead of the symptoms of it, you will have much less laggy servers.)

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