Gameplay Limitations due to Air Superiority

[BURNem]

In modern conflicts, Air superiority is king as long as you are not interested to occupy a given space. As soon as the sky is yours, you are pretty much untouchable. All those tanks, the riflemen, the artillery, your trenches and mines and emplacments, all those interesting tactical and strategic options. They are all utterly worthless. I think you see were im going with this.

The introduction of VTOL Gunships/Fighters in the form of the Wyvern and the Griffin has tremendously limiting effects on the usability of all ground based combat animals / tactics.

Design-wise, i think this was a severe misstep.

Escpecially when the one weakness of flying combat vehicles, their exrtreme vulnerability, is not recognized by the game mechanics. The abovementioned animals need to become glass cannons if we want to see a more diverse, more interesting way of conflicts playing out.

Can't wait for some interesting, diverse PVP on Abberation without the dominance of the Wyvern and the Griffin.

[Stephania]

52 minutes ago, BURNem said:

In modern conflicts, Air superiority is king as long as you are not interested to occupy a given space. As soon as the sky is yours, you are pretty much untouchable. All those tanks, the riflemen, the artillery, your trenches and mines and emplacments, all those interesting tactical and strategic options. They are all utterly worthless.

That is not true.
Just look at US campaign against ISIS.
Isis has able to expand their territory during the early stage of US bombing campaign.
Isis only begin lose power when kurdish and shiite militias started their ground campaign against Isis. Air superiority is very innefective against well trained militia groups.

Another example of it is 
The Soviet union invasion of Afghanistan.
The US war against North Vietnam.

[BURNem]

I agree to what you say! Wyverns and Griffins would be not very effective against 10 beach bobs hiding in the woods.

But they are very effective against big, immobile targets like a bunch of Rexes or any other ammasing of animals.

That means that when dealing with Flyers, you would have to go full Guerilla, which means you have no Base and no big Dinos.

Also, in contrary to RL conflicts, ark wars are usally wars of annihilation.

[Stephania]

7 minutes ago, BURNem said:

I agree to what you say! Wyverns and Griffins would be not very effective against 10 beach bobs hiding in the woods.

But they are very effective against big, immobile targets like a bunch of Rexes or any other ammasing of animals.

Ark not have mechanics to neutralize Air superiority like underground building and camouflage.

[davidcostarica]

12 minutes ago, BURNem said:

I agree to what you say! Wyverns and Griffins would be not very effective against 10 beach bobs hiding in the woods.

But they are very effective against big, immobile targets like a bunch of Rexes or any other ammasing of animals.

land to air missile, sniper shots, grapple and c4, etc . stop calling for nerfs and adapt.

[ilidrael]

3 minutes ago, davidcostarica said:

land to air missile, sniper shots, grapple and c4, etc . stop calling for nerfs and adapt.

+ pachyrhino to drain any flyers stam

[yekrucifixion187]

Dimorph's/Vultures/Onyc would be a fantastic nuisance while snipers on the ground do work, the Pachyrhino as mentioned above, Gallimus with multiple riders to be a mobile ground attack as they can combat griffin's speed plus re-position faster than Wyvern's turn radius, Plant X of course if they come within range but if not then you just have to meet them in the air but have 20 dimorphs trailing your Wyvern/Griffin as you go to meet them in air combat and it becomes a new ball game. 

[X111]

careful this doesn't turn into another nerf or not thread when it comes to flyers

why not instead have the Chylo have a advantage against fliers with an attack that is more flack than rocket? with a 60-80% ground to air success rate?

or increase Y plant attack height to immobilise low flying air targets?

or have a plant that provides a area denial effect for up to 20 blocks high and 20 blocks wide? causes fliers to slow and loose health whilst in its area of affect?

[Mctoozle]

1 hour ago, Stephania said:

That is not true.
Just look at US campaign against ISIS.
Isis has able to expand their territory during the early stage of US bombing campaign.
Isis only begin lose power when kurdish and shiite militias started their ground campaign against Isis. Air superiority is very innefective against well trained militia groups.

Another example of it is 
The Soviet union invasion of Afghanistan.
The US war against North Vietnam.

LOL, you cannot compare this to anything in a game. The US and Russia are not out to defeat anything. They are making money.

[Orion]

3 hours ago, BURNem said:

In modern conflicts, Air superiority is king as long as you are not interested to occupy a given space. As soon as the sky is yours, you are pretty much untouchable. All those tanks, the riflemen, the artillery, your trenches and mines and emplacments, all those interesting tactical and strategic options. They are all utterly worthless. I think you see were im going with this.

The introduction of VTOL Gunships/Fighters in the form of the Wyvern and the Griffin has tremendously limiting effects on the usability of all ground based combat animals / tactics.

Design-wise, i think this was a severe misstep.

Escpecially when the one weakness of flying combat vehicles, their exrtreme vulnerability, is not recognized by the game mechanics. The abovementioned animals need to become glass cannons if we want to see a more diverse, more interesting way of conflicts playing out.

Can't wait for some interesting, diverse PVP on Abberation without the dominance of the Wyvern and the Griffin.

This is just far from true. Before anything else is said, you have to realize that Ark's fliers have received two massive nerfs that have left them a, quite literal, pale shadow of their former selves.

Wyverns have low stamina -- often draining in two or three breath attacks, and have awful turn radius'.
Griffins have high stamina and health, but lack damage and are susceptible to turrets. 

Neither of them have saddles, which means they also lose the 25% damage reduction from a Primitive Saddle.

Currently, bred Gigas, Brontos and Stegos are still the best things you can have during a raid. I've both performed and seen many raids that didn't use a single flier offensively, instead relying on turret emplacements along the battlefield and chain bolas on Brontos to take care of Wyverns.

There's also the fact that all of Ark's fliers take extra damage from all Guns -- Longnecks and Fab Snipers. A good quality Comp. Bow will also decimate Wyverns/Griffins due to not having any armour rating.

[Arkasaurio]

@BURNem Generally speaking, I agree. Flier strength has been one of my biggest issues with Ark from any sort of realism perspective from the get go, that and carry weight.

The issue is that fliers are fun as heck to play with, and land dinos, by and large are too much of PIA. Nerfs and the fact that Aberration will not have true fliers, suggests that if WC could do it all over again, fliers would have been much weaker from the get go (and hopefully they would have spent more time working on the things that make land dinos hard to use). However, the community outcry was HUGE over flier nerfs - people have gotten used to playing the game and having fun in a certain way and "OP" fliers are part of the core game experience to much of if not the vast majority of Ark players.

Playing mostly solo, the game got much easier / more balanced when the big flier nerf was introduced in my personal experience. Not being able to zip around the map as easily was easily out weighed by the fact that it made "wiping the server," "beach/noob cleaning," etc. a more time consuming process for Alphas and griefers with firepower. However, I know I am way in the minority for wishing they'd gone further.

[ChargingParacerParacer]

Oh good another 'Nerf flyers further because I suck at pvp and need my hand held' thread. They got heavily  nerfed months ago if you still don't know how to counter them you have no one but yourself to blame. 

[ThzNutz]

5 minutes ago, ChargingParacerParacer said:

Oh good another 'Nerf flyers further because I suck at pvp and need my hand held' thread.

lets maybe leave the condescension out of it plz? thanks 

[Glerian]

10 hours ago, BURNem said:

In modern conflicts, Air superiority is king as long as you are not interested to occupy a given space. As soon as the sky is yours, you are pretty much untouchable. All those tanks, the riflemen, the artillery, your trenches and mines and emplacments, all those interesting tactical and strategic options. They are all utterly worthless. I think you see were im going with this.

I DO see where you're going with this, but you are wrong. Air support is just that, support. In war, a real war, whoever is able to MAINTAIN air superiority has an edge. But by no means are they untouchable. And that is conventional warfare. Throw in guerrilla tactics and air support counts for very little. Air superiority is highly over rated.

Heck in World War II Germany and Japan focused almost exclusively on getting and maintaining battlefield air superiority. Rarely were they outmatched. The Allies, on the other hand, focused on strategic bombing. Which is why the Axis ran out of ways to keep those neat planes in the air. But I see this has nothing to do with Ark so I will digress. Just wanted to point out that this statement was categorically untrue.

[Brayn]

12 hours ago, Orion said:

This is just far from true. Before anything else is said, you have to realize that Ark's fliers have received two massive nerfs that have left them a, quite literal, pale shadow of their former selves.

Wyverns have low stamina -- often draining in two or three breath attacks, and have awful turn radius'.
Griffins have high stamina and health, but lack damage and are susceptible to turrets. 

Neither of them have saddles, which means they also lose the 25% damage reduction from a Primitive Saddle.

Currently, bred Gigas, Brontos and Stegos are still the best things you can have during a raid. I've both performed and seen many raids that didn't use a single flier offensively, instead relying on turret emplacements along the battlefield and chain bolas on Brontos to take care of Wyverns.

There's also the fact that all of Ark's fliers take extra damage from all Guns -- Longnecks and Fab Snipers. A good quality Comp. Bow will also decimate Wyverns/Griffins due to not having any armour rating.

Quick corrections here bud...  25 armor saddles give 50% dmg redux.

All bullets do 25% less damage to all dinos.  Flyers don't take any more damage than regular dinos.

Wyverns do get up to a 30% dmg redux from imprinting.

I have a griffin on official with 25k HP, 2k stamina and 300% melee.  Its dive bomb does over 2k dmg.

[OttoGrunf]

i do not agree that fliers are op, but i would like to see them reduced more to role of transport since they are used too much

[BURNem]

Thank you guys for replying to my post.

It certainly could be the case that my observations are wrong since I'm not a military expert nor an experienced Ark player.

However, in my limited experience with Ark PVP, it always came down to these 2 animals doing the brunt of the PvPing.

This feels limiting. If you don't even consider bringing Tyrannosaurs and Trikes and Raptors to a fight, then thats - in the best case - a missed opportunity from a game design perspective. I know that this is naive to some extend, but i would love to bring the fights down to earth, and to see most of the availabe animals beeing used.

7 hours ago, Glerian said:

The Allies, on the other hand, focused on strategic bombing. Which is why the Axis ran out of ways to keep those neat planes in the air.

That probably means that the Axis has lost their air superiority prior to said bombings.

[TracerBee]

12 hours ago, ChargingParacerParacer said:

Oh good another 'Nerf flyers further because I suck at pvp and need my hand held' thread. They got heavily  nerfed months ago if you still don't know how to counter them you have no one but yourself to blame. 

Was going to say exactly that lol.

Really hope there won't be any more further nerfs to fliers. Still suffering from the previous ones.

Also, fliers can be easily sniped down, maybe except griffin.

 

[Yster]

Wyvrens are glasstanks..  you dont even need the new turrets to down them, Griffins are very very prone to fire arrows..  if you get picked with a griffin, it sort of sucks, but I have placed 5 - 10 C4 on him, grapple to the ground and blow it..  if your not prepared your just dead. 

I dont think fliers are OP in any sense of protecting your base.. Griffins however are an formidable enemy in an air to air combat, or most smaller ground dinos. But if you played before the flyer nerf, even a griffin is nothing compared to a good pre-nerf pteranodon.

 

but honestly.. once your airborne the ARK is yours to conquer..

I don't really see tribes making large progress without flyers. 

 

[ilidrael]

42 minutes ago, Yster said:

Wyvrens are glasstanks

but honestly.. once your airborne the ARK is yours to conquer..

I don't really see tribes making large progress without flyers. 

 

You cant really raid with flyers. You can assist the raid sure, but tanking turrets / killing dinos with flyers happens like only 2% of the time.

Wyverns are glasstanks yep :

 

[Yster]

 true..  

 

Tanking Dinos are a huge part of the game. your also focusing on end game PvP, 95% my PvP when I'm out farming, or when I log in, and dont have a bed to spawn at. 

[RabidWarpig]

Please leave flyers alone.. the only one currently in question is griffin. Although  i love my griffin as is i know there are some issues with its overall utility