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Turrets 2: Electric Boogaloo (Or, what are we actually doing?)


TheRightHand
Message added by Jerryn

You can find the Technical reasons for the change here:

 

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Hey everyone, it's me again, that guy who says stuff, and then tries to make sure other stuff gets done. It's a crazy time!

So, here's what's going down for sure:

Advanced Auto Turret - BobCorp has provided me with authorization to distribute the BobCorp Automated Laterally Attenuated Nano-Cell Electronic Defense system.

This is a new turret we'll be introducing along with these changes that will essentially be a bigger, beefier turret, allowing for people who still need that damage density to populate their turret slots with turrets that are much more powerful. We're aiming for about a 4x increase in overall effectivness and cost for these things, along with disabling their use on rafts/boats. Construction costs and ammunition costs would be similar.

We opted for a new turret because of a few things:

- It conveys the power of the new turret clearly without needing to add any new functionality to anything else.

- It doesn't create a sudden need to change the balance/functionality of existing turrets in any way, and thus rebalance all sorts of other stuff that could potentially break. We're aware we have already done a lot of that, let's not push it farther.

- Existing turrets don't get a sudden, massive buff.

- We can scale the cost/maintenance/upkeep of the new structure without inconveniencing everyone who isn't pushing these upper limits.

- If we need to introduce any specific kinds of modifications to this new turret, we can do it without impacting anything else.

So yeah, that's why that.

In addition, this stuff:

We're coalating feedback that we're getting along the way to develop a better sense of what exploits may exist or severely disproportionately effective tactics might need additional adjustment. For example:

- Stego Armor Plates are going to have to block less damage from either bullets, or turrets specifically.

- Veggie Cakes may need a more prohibitive delay on their use in combat.

- Adding knockback to either the new turret, or both new and existing turret to offset specific movement speed + shield + rocket/c4 configurations may be in order.

These are just examples of things that we'll be seeing how they play out and what kinds of impacts they might have outside of just the general pvp game (for instance, veggie cakes and Therizinos are a good way to fight the dragon right now.) and whatever we decide to act on, I'll make a post about it sometime before December 5th.

I also want to take this opportunity to address a couple of things I've seen in comment threads:

With the exception of some really really large dinos (dinos like the Bronto) we disable idle animations on dinos on the server. Idle dinos also only tick once every 4 seconds or so instead of every frame. Idle dinos, while expensive, are only expensive in a general sense. Things like their animations have next to no cost on the server, and we use paralellized animations, which means most animations aren't even run on the main game thread (They're much faster.)

Dino head tracking is client-side, not server side. It has no cost on the server.

The vast majority of the servers that people play on are very expensive, custom-built servers with top of the line 8 core/16 thread cpus running at 4ghz, 64 gb of ram. We pay out the nose to make sure your servers are powerful.

The ARK Server also only uses 2 threads on the CPU. This is because the version of Unreal that we built the game on did not support multi-threading/paralellization. We have integrated Paralellized animation, and networking, so our networking overhead and cost of animation work are done on a 2nd thread. We're doing more work to try and thread more elements of the server, but it is incredibly complex and difficult work to do. Running 3 instances per server only takes up 6 cores at most. Having less instances per box would have no impact on the performance of each individual server.

We do a lot to make the game run as smoothly as possible, while still enabling the kind of freeform, open-world experience that the game was designed to be.

Anyways, I'll do a follow-up sometime later in the upcoming week about any things that we've decided we're going to do for sure. For now, TLDR:

Adding a new, more powerful turret that'll be able to replace about 4-5 of our current turrets.

Making Stego Armor Plates take more damage from turrets.
Still collecting feedback and looking into additional measures.

Thanks for your time, and your patience.

- The Right Hand

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Thank you for the update and incorporating some of the feedback that was provided between all the salt!

However:

Please be very careful about touching the veggie cakes!
They are currently the only viable means of getting Therizinosaurs to take on bosses and dragons depending on the difficulty.
Reducing their powers will set back ALOT of people because of the increased losses they will sustain.

Sorry to say this, but the whining of the PvP about the cakes does not warrant the destruction of boss fights in PvE.
If you change the cakes, then you need to change the boss fights and their damage mechanics

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These are great suggestions, and definitely a good step in the right direction. The only thing that I don't see addressed here is how you guys came to the conclusion that 100 turrets/ 10 000 units is the number needed to balance player experience with server performance. I worry about this number because I recall that the flyer nerf was initially overdone on purpose and then slowly buffed back to a manageable level. Due to the long-term implications that this turret change will have on the game, I just want reassurance that you guys have tested more lenient limitations before jumping to this number, rather than simply using this as a starting point. If you can't confidently say that this is the right combination, then please consider an initial iteration that looks to preserve the player experience, and then limit from there if need be. Really hoping that you at WildCard can truly collaborate with the community to come to a compromise on this.

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Please release the super turret before the limitation on number. Give us some time to make sure everything weve worked for wont be raided because of impossible timeline of turret release/limitations.

Fix quadruple lava golem spawns..

Fix manticore not landing on rag..

Fix intro lag when transferring between server and appearing allied to your tribe for 15 mins..

Thanks for the clarity and actual response to feedback regarding super turret. This is definitely a step in the right direction.

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Will this new beefier with x4 power damage and overall strength not simply out perform the TeK Turret rendering part of that system obsolete? Maybe just be easier to buff all turrets in +2 steps. Standard turrets become x2 stronger your NEW shiny one x4 (as stated) and TeK x6. TeK should out perform everything else as they are part of the endgame rewards. P.S. I use the term "easier" lightly here as a host for ARK I know full well amending one item can significantly unbalance the game. I have not played on officials since the duping all started to be honest and I/we hosts can circumvent this nerf anyway....

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100 turrets isn't enough coverage with the massive amount of space you have chosen for this nerf. Making the new turret is the first step (Gives us our DPS back). Knock back is a great idea. Now you need to reduce the area of this nerf or increase the amount of turrets from 100 turrets to like 300 or 400( the issue was DPS AND coverage). If you help us with the coverage next . You wont have people quitting

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1 minute ago, Natas666 said:

100 isn't enough coverage with this massive amount of space you have chosen for this nerf. Making the new turret is the first step (Gives us our DPS back). Knock back is a great idea. Now you need to reduce the area of this nerf or increase the amount of turrets from 100 turrets to like 300 or 400( the issue was DPS AND coverage). If you help us with the coverage next . You wont have people quitting

I get your concern about coverage, but their concern is on server performance/framerate. With that in mind I don't see how telling them to let you spam turrets helps fix their concerns.

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2 minutes ago, ciabattaroll said:

I don't see how telling them to let you spam turrets helps fix their concerns.

I don't see how WE should lose our bases for their "concerns" OUR "concerns," as players, outweigh the things that they are "concerned" about. they can code around their concerns, we cannot defend against them if they continue to cripple us

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3 minutes ago, ciabattaroll said:

I get your concern about coverage, but their concern is on server performance/framerate. With that in mind I don't see how telling them to let you spam turrets helps fix their concerns.

100 is overkill though. Making it 200 - 400 would reduce lag and keep base defence alive. Its called finding the sweet spot. Making it 100 will make lag better but make bases impossible to defend. 200-400 would reduce lag but not by as much but also make it possible to defend your base. Ask the players which one they prefer

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This patch will also allow the mounted minigun turret to shoot non-mounted tames, but reduce their range to be the equivalent of the auto turret

@TheRightHand  First i would like to thank you for your continued communication during this major change in the game ... Secondly could someone please clarify the above statement?

Does that imply a mounted minigun that is not powered or manned will shoot automatically?

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1 minute ago, ooStuStu said:

This patch will also allow the mounted minigun turret to shoot non-mounted tames, but reduce their range to be the equivalent of the auto turret

@TheRightHand  First i would like to thank you for your continued communication during this major change in the game ... Secondly could someone please clarify the above statement?

Does that imply a mounted minigun that is not powered or manned will shoot automatically?

No, just means the range is decreased and you can hit tames with out a rider with the minigun now.

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1 hour ago, Zederia said:

I don't see how WE should lose our bases for their "concerns" OUR "concerns," as players, outweigh the things that they are "concerned" about. they can code around their concerns, we cannot defend against them if they continue to cripple us

If there were even a smidge of truth to this statement I'd be seeing less "ARK is a laggy unoptimized piece of mess" posts and reviews around. After all, the supposed sentiment is that people would rather have their lag than lose their turrets, right?

1 hour ago, Natas666 said:

A good relationship is made by both sides making compromises within the relationship.Wildcard please don't let us break up due to compromises not being made 

For far too long the community hasn't really bothered to extend their hand on this so-called compromise though. People keep complaining about pillars, Wildcard tries to do something about it, then players go and look for ways around the fixes they do for pillars. Players complain about servers hitting tame caps, Wildcard implements limitations, and players go and start making alt tribes or dumping their dinos off on other servers, perpetuating the problem. For a person from the community preaching about compromises you'll have to pardon me for being jaded on that as I've yet to see where the players actually do partake in this alleged compromise.

1 hour ago, ooStuStu said:

This patch will also allow the mounted minigun turret to shoot non-mounted tames, but reduce their range to be the equivalent of the auto turret

@TheRightHand  First i would like to thank you for your continued communication during this major change in the game ... Secondly could someone please clarify the above statement?

Does that imply a mounted minigun that is not powered or manned will shoot automatically?

Mounted miniguns have never needed power and they also had the benefit of having a range further out than automated turrets. They also have the bane of not being able to damage unmounted tames. The upcoming patch will nerf their range to be in line with automated turrets, but also allow them to actually damage unmounted tames.

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4 minutes ago, ciabattaroll said:

Mounted miniguns have never needed power and they also had the benefit of having a range further out than automated turrets. They also have the bane of not being able to damage unmounted tames. The upcoming patch will nerf their range to be in line with automated turrets, but also allow them to actually damage unmounted tames.

Right....  thanks for clearing that up i guess i never tried to shoot an unmounted tame with a minigun thus i didn't know about the restriction.. thanks again ...

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The new turret is a nice idea, but the turret budget of 100 is still way too low, I would say if you had to have a turret limit, make it 1000. We're a small alpha on ORP official and have managed to smash the limit you've given us, god knows how larger tribes are going to cope, we need big bases to stop Dino's etc from being sniped, and the only way to defend these large bases is with plenty of turrets, if the turret cap stays at 100 I think you're going to lose a lot of players, Its too much work down the drain having to pick up 900 odd turrets, and like I say this is coming from a small alpha tribe, there's going to be tribes who are so much worse off

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