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

[K0VAKS]

On 20/11/2017 at 6:17 AM, RGGaming said:

So will this new turret count as only one turret placement or 4-5 since it packs a punch of 4-5 

One turret, that's the whole point.

[Galadrin]

@TheRightHand, Can you explain what will be done for people playing on ARK Primitive+ ?

We don't have any auto-turrets, just x-species to defend our bases against other tribes. the new heavy auto-turret is not for us...
Is the unit / foundations the same on ragnarock map? I'm actually at ~2000/100 at some points of my base defenses...

[Crows]

Regarding your "Turret 3:" discussion:

I do hope that only the normal turrets get a knockback effect, otherwise they'll be rendered useless, apart from being required to craft to make the heavy turret.

Having a few normal turrets next to a heavy turret could provide great base defense and it wouldn't be too powerful because then players who want to spend 5 minutes-1 day on raiding a 5+ month old base, will have to actually put in thought, planning and strategies beforehand, as it should be. The way it currently is, is broken and too much in favour of the attacker, hence why this problem came about in the first place (mass amounts of turrets.)

The idea that Plant X could do more damage (%-wise?) and poison/reduce healing, would also help a lot because they'll also kinda fall obsolete otherwise, even though they do currently act as a blind & slow, they're just really weak in general, unless in great numbers, which we obviously can't afford to have anymore. I do feel for those on Primitive+ too, so hopefully this will help them out too. 

Weaponize Bees? interesting thought.

I'm just glad that you're considering all of these great changes and additions into the game because PvP has been such a pain for us (Me and my tribe, and allies) as we've been playing on official PvP servers ever since we started.

[isu]

Don't forget on Tek turrets.

As top tier turrets they are already underperforming, because of their cost+upkeep and slow projectiles. Their only advantage is against stegos, because their aoe hits riders.

With implementing heavy turrets, they will be even in worse state.

 

[CODz]

7 hours ago, ForzaProiettile said:

With regards to the changes my own thoughts are as follows:

1. If you increase the turret damage/ add "Heavy Turrets" what will happen to the ground game? Not all players love to ride dinos (I being one of them). Players are already quite fragile, increasing the damage by 20% will effectively remove any kind of ground raiding which I think will be bad for the game. I would like to see the damage being differentiated between dino and player in the same way a gun in this game does less damage to dinos then an arrow.

2. With the extra damage of turrets coming into play I think its now more prudent to ever to rethink siege options in particular the lacklustre highly nerfed garbage that we meant to use such cannons and catapults. Players need a metal tier siege weapon and a TEK tier siege weapon. This would give them more options when assaulting bases other then the boring standing there with Brontos tanking mechanic which is neither fun for the attacker or defender.

3. Unraidable Caves. Certain cave bases are already nearly ticking the box for "unraidable location" which is an extremely bad thing to allow on any PVP server. If this change goes ahead these caves which are currently only raidable on foot and only because the turrets have trouble tracking the targets will become entirely unraidable. I suggest either not allowing turrets in caves or changing the layout of all caves so that every cave can be raidable using some kind of tankable dino.

4. What is to stop tribes just spamming their turrets all over the map or using an allied tribe to build additional turrets within the restricted 100 area? I'm hoping all turrets regardless of ownership in an area count to the limit and also it is likely you will need some kind of tribe turret cap in order to effectively reduce the lag since tribes will just relocate their thousands of turrets otherwise.

Go tame an animal its what they are there for....... go to an army checkpoint n say get rid of turrets i want to raid the base NOOOO they are there to keep u out and protect whats inside. How many bullets can you take in real life from a turret? So a tribe thats put 1000s of hours into building and protecting there base should have it raided by you that dont wanna play the game the way it was designed? Like i said in other posts these turrets should kill tames not 1 stego drain 100 turrets should take 100 stegos to get in the door and tek because its end game stuff should only be damaged by tek. Ppl that have tek and are at the end game shouldnt have it destroyed by 10 mins work on c4 they've put the time in risked the tames so should be rewarded with a safe base and forces you to play the end game to wanna get in. Come to our server bring ya tek rexs n do a boss fight for element cos its the only way you getting in. Thats how the game should really be and not so easy for the attackers make them think of a strategy not the defenders make it so you have to put effort in the game to be able to get in..... Walls should be a combined health 4 walls on 1 side = 4x10000hp = 40k hp so you have to bring the 40k down to zero then place c4 in the area u want to break in after that health is gone.. y should you have the opportunity to get in someones base if you not even playing the game properly you should have to put in time and effort to get in, the people that built that base have, so should u.

[DarthaNyan]

9 hours ago, ForzaProiettile said:

4. What is to stop tribes just spamming their turrets all over the map or using an allied tribe to build additional turrets within the restricted 100 area? I'm hoping all turrets regardless of ownership in an area count to the limit and also it is likely you will need some kind of tribe turret cap in order to effectively reduce the lag since tribes will just relocate their thousands of turrets otherwise.

 

7 hours ago, ooStuStu said:

I am pretty sure no matter who owns the turret the 100 per 10k units still applies .... Not 100% sure but pretty sure

But then the next question: what will happen if you drive battle raft with turrets/plants in the zone. Which turrets will go offline (if any). Or is that limitation simply a building restriction that allows for some workarounds to increase the count?

[BrunoLuigi]

I want to know what gonna happens if someone come with a raft with turrets get inside the "10k unit area" that already have 100 turrets online protecting the base. It will disable the Defence turrets? The attacker turrets will stop work? Both gonna work at the same time? It will split the action os both sides?

[ForzaProiettile]

2 hours ago, CODz said:

Go tame an animal its what they are there for....... go to an army checkpoint n say get rid of turrets i want to raid the base NOOOO they are there to keep u out and protect whats inside. How many bullets can you take in real life from a turret? So a tribe thats put 1000s of hours into building and protecting there base should have it raided by you that dont wanna play the game the way it was designed? Like i said in other posts these turrets should kill tames not 1 stego drain 100 turrets should take 100 stegos to get in the door and tek because its end game stuff should only be damaged by tek. Ppl that have tek and are at the end game shouldnt have it destroyed by 10 mins work on c4 they've put the time in risked the tames so should be rewarded with a safe base and forces you to play the end game to wanna get in. Come to our server bring ya tek rexs n do a boss fight for element cos its the only way you getting in. Thats how the game should really be and not so easy for the attackers make them think of a strategy not the defenders make it so you have to put effort in the game to be able to get in..... Walls should be a combined health 4 walls on 1 side = 4x10000hp = 40k hp so you have to bring the 40k down to zero then place c4 in the area u want to break in after that health is gone.. y should you have the opportunity to get in someones base if you not even playing the game properly you should have to put in time and effort to get in, the people that built that base have, so should u.

If you are going to insist on relating this game to real life then I am going to have to ask you a simple question. In what year did humans first ride dinosaurs?

Now back to the task of balancing a game (ie not real life) I believe it is prudent that the game not devolve into who has the bigger fortress/more turrets as to who wins at PVP. Clever base design should always trump spam designs. You can't have good PVP in this game if the cost of attacking a base is so great that you are never going to bother. If that kind of gameplay dominates then servers will become passive/PVE zones which is what is happening atm. It has certainly already happened with Mega Tribes. They already have all the best blueprints and are resource rich so going to war with another mega tribe makes little sense so instead they have mostly formed into alliances with one another.

The devs by tweaking the turret spam will allow for more PVP by opening the door for tribes of all kinds and sizes to get into the PVP game not just those with 70 players. A lot of players seem to be afraid of getting raided and having to do PVP which is pretty laughable. The idea of PVP servers is not to hide behind walls and turrets but to fight other tribes. Unraidable bases is a concept foreign to any well balanced PVP game.

Lastly its important to allow various modes and strategies of doing PVP. If turrets become so powerful that it's impossible to raid even a badly designed base on foot using advanced tactics then that is bad for gameplay. That is one less strategy that players can do and it's a lose for strategic diversity.

[Shoosty]

Wildcard, when you're considering changes to veggie cakes, please also consider the importance that cakes have in the Dragon fight.   If you nerf cakes (again!) then you also need to nerf dragon/breath damage.  You may need to nerf the fight anyway, but a veggie cake nerf would only make it worse.

 

 

[DraculaAlive]

On 11/20/2017 at 4:39 PM, ciabattaroll said:

Congratulations on being the exact point I was making. You're too mired in this thought of "the stegos! muh base!" that you're not even giving a crap about the rest of the community to realize this change is being done to improve performance. Given that in this very thread you're seeing one of the lead developers flat out state that they've been collecting feedback and will be implementing changes that should allow for people to have those performance increases while still having the relative comfort of their bases being covered, it should be a slam dunk. But again, you're too stuck on your base being accosted by others to realize that this change should be a win for all, you just refuse to compromise.

More like you are too brainwashed to realize this actually a horrible idea and take the side of the majority of the community, just like you did with the flyer nerf. This game needs to be renamed from "ark survivial evolved" to "ark survive the devs" because that's the only thing we are actually surviving. Geeh I wonder how you became a volunteer moderator lol You sure as hell didn't become one by disagreeing and pointing out how wrong they are or having your own opinion.

[Olivar]

1 minute ago, DraculaAlive said:

More like you are too brainwashed to realize this actually a horrible idea and take the side of the majority of the community, just like you did with the flyer nerf. This game needs to be renamed from "ark survivial evolved" to "ark survive the devs" because that's the only thing we are actually surviving. Geeh I wonder how you became a volunteer moderator lol You sure as hell didn't become one by disagreeing and pointing out how wrong they are or having your own opinion.

If the majority of the community is pro......
Then.....doesn't common sense dictate that it's a good thing to do....
Or are we going to hijack the entire community for the wishes of a few?

[DraculaAlive]

Just now, Olivar said:

If the majority of the community is pro......
Then.....doesn't common sense dictate that it's a good thing to do....
Or are we going to hijack the entire community for the wishes of a few?

I highly doubt the majority is pro "survive the devs" and the vast majority of pvp does not want the 1000's of hours they spent to go down the drain by some random bob who just joined the server. But hey I'm sure @Jatheish is all about the new "turret decorations" just like he loves our "flyer decorations"... The devs have yet to actually balance the game. When ever they nerf something they never buff anything enough to be a new meta it takes them months to do that.

[DarthaNyan]

33 minutes ago, DraculaAlive said:

When ever they nerf something they never buff anything enough to be a new meta it takes them months to do that.

Thats not how meta works. When some overused tactic gets nerfed - it usually takes some time for players to find out what works best in current new situation and after some iterations that becomes new meta. Waiting for buffs/handouts from devs is wrong way to "adapt" to the changes.

Finding new ways is part of the fun.

[ThzNutz]

having just spent almost 2 months of my life preparing theriz for winnable Dragon fights (part of that strat requires them to be able to use veggie cakes in a reasonable manner -- some will eat 2-3) it would be a massive kick in the panda (see what i did there) to have the cakes nerfed into uselessness. i am aware of the turret thing and a need for balance, and i am 100% for better server performance for everyone, i am just hoping that it doesnt come at the cost of so much time and effort on the part of us PVE "Theriz4Dragon" folks. all i am asking, as a longtime Ark player, is that any possible changes to veggie cakes be considered from a pure PVE perspective as well as what may be required for PVP balance. thanks and keep up the great work   

[Gread]

On 20/11/2017 at 3:52 AM, TheRightHand said:

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

the answer to the increase in the quantity of turrets in the bases has a name today: stego.
you need to prevent c4 from being used when mounted on any dino, this would solve other problems.
with stego solved, will use 120k hp brontos with platform saddle, which would solve if the turrets were able to destroy any constructions on saddles

with all this fixed, we will back to drain turrets, spending hours for it, which gives time for some pvp

[Olivar]

I agree, we need panda's!

[FraggleRock]

So the whole point of veggie cakes......to tame sheep right? They were around before sheep? And now they require honey to make which I am having a difficult time gathering. 

Question I would ask is why have they been turned into a must-have for dragon fights or whatever. Was the cake's healing ability a part of the original program?

[GP]

4 minutes ago, FraggleRock said:

So the whole point of veggie cakes......to tame sheep right? They were around before sheep? And now they require honey to make which I am having a difficult time gathering. 

Question I would ask is why have they been turned into a must-have for dragon fights or whatever. Was the cake's healing ability a part of the original program?

To tame Achatina too and to keep them fed, so they have more importance for Achatina than Sheep.

[Jerryn]

On Stegos, and I think I have seen something like this before, make it so that they cannot be carried by grabbing.  Or, as an alternative, if they are being carried, they have to use a special harness with takes up the saddle slot, but provides not additional protection, and also keeps them from being ridden.

Also, if you reduce the player protection by the plates, you might up the protection to the stego from large carnivores, as the plate make it harder to bite them where it hurts.

[invincibleqc]

19 minutes ago, ThzNutz said:

having just spent almost 2 months of my life preparing theriz for winnable Dragon fights (part of that strat requires them to be able to use veggie cakes in a reasonable manner -- some will eat 2-3) it would be a massive kick in the panda (see what i did there) to have the cakes nerfed into uselessness. i am aware of the turret thing and a need for balance, and i am 100% for better server performance for everyone, i am just hoping that it doesnt come at the cost of so much time and effort on the part of us PVE "Theriz4Dragon" folks. all i am asking, as a longtime Ark player, is that any possible changes to veggie cakes be considered from a pure PVE perspective as well as what may be required for PVP balance. thanks and keep up the great work   

Would a Cake nerf be viable if the 62.5% damage reduction from fire was fixed for the Dragon breath on herbivores? If so, maybe this could be a good compromise, nerf the cake for PvP soaking meta and fix the damage reduction for Dragon fighters!

[Jinxy]

12 minutes ago, FraggleRock said:

So the whole point of veggie cakes......to tame sheep right? They were around before sheep? And now they require honey to make which I am having a difficult time gathering. 

Question I would ask is why have they been turned into a must-have for dragon fights or whatever. Was the cake's healing ability a part of the original program?

Because when people starting beating bosses they change it and in the past have made mistakes example on easy mode even brood  people were taking in 20 dinos and being wiped out because they made it too powerful (they never replaced all the rexs and mc and asc saddles people lost just offered 2x breeding for that weekend). There is no test pilot that they try any of these things before they add to the servers something they should try instead of just doing it keep there fingers crossed and hoping for the best.  Now that some people are beating the bosses they want to change it again and again and again.  Could understand if people were exploiting or how people are buying this game and having us veterns tell them there is no room, we are capped etc  but some of us take the time and wait the hours for imprinting and farm and farm matts for the saddles . Maybe they should focus on the important issues such as lag, duping,people losing characters instead of when good things are going well they fix it. Cakes are being used what they are meant for, therzinoes are being used what they are meant for, just because players figured out something doesn't mean have to change it to make the game harder to keep people interested. 

[CODz]

Have you guys actually seen the vids on youtube of people testing the turrets with stegos and trikes with a 400% turret buff? look how big the area is upon when you can place your next 100 turrets plus within 30 secs they are virtually done so more expensive turrets plus bullets for 30 seconds? DILO how is that fair? plus how easy is it to raise 4 of these tames? plus the next four in case they die like the vid your better off having a thatch hut with a 100 dodos on aggressive!!! If you dont like turrets shooting your character stay away its what they are there for.

[Jinxy]

Nothing against pvp as many good players play on pvp but pve and pvp is quite differn't people should learn that hint hint.....

[DarthaNyan]

14 minutes ago, invincibleqc said:

Would a Cake nerf be viable if the 62.5% damage reduction from fire was fixed for the Dragon breath on herbivores? If so, maybe this could be a good compromise, nerf the cake for PvP soaking meta and fix the damage reduction for Dragon fighters!

A good compromize would be NOT sending theriz into battle every time dragon lands to give them more time to heal from HealPig and cakes... unless DPS race against the timer isnt in your favor.

[Murkenator]

IMO the 100 turret rule could be good. I do have some suggestions tho.

What suggestions i like

- I like the new turrets idea so that's good.
- That turrets or plant x give you knock back, thats great.
- Nerf the veggie cakes a bit.

My own suggestions

- Make turret count as 1 and plant x as 0,5.
- Make the turret damage instead of 120% at least 150%
- Think about changing the area a bit, if you bring down the foundations from 33  to 25 which will still increase the performance of the game a lot and the community will like this better).

- Let the players place more turrets ( like deadwalls) behind eachother, just 100 turrets will work at one time. So lets say you got 2 deadwalls behind eachother and you're under attack.
Once u notice that the 1st deadwall has been drained, make it able to shut that deadwall off and power the 2nd one.
In this case you still get a maximum of 100 turrets shooting and the players have a better way to defend themselves (if they are online).