WildCard, Pull Your Head Out!

[Crows]

No offence intended, but seriously, it's difficult to express my reasons & perspective without you, yourselves experiencing it, so I have to make a whine-sounding topic. The population of your official PvP servers are declining each and every day because of mega-tribes wiping anybody they don't know and claiming servers for their own. 

I know people will disagree with this because they believe I'm just being self-entitled and want it easy, but no, I don't know anybody who likes the current official rates. Most of us don't bother playing when the bonus events end, unless we have to log on for PvP purposes or imprinting. 

• Mega-tribes are ruining official!
• Default Rates are GARBAGE

WHY ARE THE RATES still so low?

They are not consistent enough to keep up with the flow of PvP. Buildings get destroyed, items looted, tames killed, yet the only time we feel like we've made progress to get back on our feet is on bonus event weekends because the default rates are ridiculous. Why do you think so many players move to unofficial and private servers? because official is garbage, and not only because of the lag. I'm not asking for x10 or even x5 rates, but the default rates (yes, they used to be lower, but they got increased by what, x1?) are not exciting, competitive nor rewarding whatsoever. They make no sense for PVP. They make sense in PvE, not PvP.  

(Oh and before somebody says "The rates are fine, you're just wanting it to be easy" or "You're just too used to them, if they were permanently x2 or x4, you'd soon be asking for higher rates" you're welcome to think that, but that's BULLpoop. If I'm turning the knob on a cooker to cook something, I don't want it too low or too high, do I? I want it just right - which Ark official PvP rates are missing. I'm not wanting it easy, even if it was permanently x2 (the bonus event's version) it would be a massive improvement. I'm not after easy gameplay/Pvp, I actually love challenge and don't mind the grind at all when there's a goal to reach, but there's no goal to reach on Ark official PvP because that goal can get shattered instantly and you're back to square one, or while you're offline, and no I won't go to Offline Raid Protected servers, shoo!)

Little Jimmy over here may love the low default rates because it makes him feel competitive, grinding away and raising baby dinos for weeks, until he goes offline for the night and wakes up to nothing left. It's the same story every time. People either get wiped and quit the game or go to PvE, or they rebuild and try again until it happens again, or they join a bigger tribe which is connected to a mega-tribe, and now official servers are nothing more than edgy, tense mega-tribe war zones. Anybody wanting to actually build up has to know somebody otherwise they face losing it all, that has pretty much always been the case but now it's getting out of hand and my perspective is coming from PS4 servers, I'm sure it's worse on PC or Xbox.

FYI I've been offered multiple times to join mega tribes but it's not my style, I'm against them. I prefer fair PvP scenarios, so it's not like I'm complaining for nothing, I'm just tired of playing Ark official PvP when the rates are so bad and we have to rely on bonus weekends to make any progress. 

/Rant 

[Crows]

Also while I'm at it, why the hell are structures so easily destroyed and C4 explosives are so easily crafted? IT MAKES NO SENSE. You've designed PvP to be heavily in favour of the attacker, so the defender must rely on ridiculous Nerd Parade-style building schemes and 100 turrets (because of the cap...) in the "right" places, or you know - just build in a cave or a spot that has one or two entrances to stand a chance. 

[GP]

Why do you feel the rates have any impact on this issue? The issue is not rates, the issue is number of players in mega tribes.

You could have x1 rates with mega tribes and smaller tribes. Mega tribes will wipe the smaller tribes and the smaller tribes will struggle to rebuild.

You could have x10 rates and the exact same will happen, because the rates will benefit both mega tribes and smaller tribes, it will benefit everyone the same.

So how does rates fix or improve this issue?

 

[AName]

Quote

Why do you think so many players move to unofficial and private servers? 

exactly, and to get sure it stays that way the rates stay low, the alpha tribes stay alpha and so on  

[RoyHess666]

Or just don't play on these servers, look for servers without those wannabe alpha tribe people that most likely fail in real life, so they have to compensate in a computer game on a multiplayer server.

[Milsurp]

52 minutes ago, GP said:

Why do you feel the rates have any impact on this issue? The issue is not rates, the issue is number of players in mega tribes.

You could have x1 rates with mega tribes and smaller tribes. Mega tribes will wipe the smaller tribes and the smaller tribes will struggle to rebuild.

You could have x10 rates and the exact same will happen, because the rates will benefit both mega tribes and smaller tribes, it will benefit everyone the same.

So how does rates fix or improve this issue?

 

Because the recipe costs stay the same. If you double everyone's paychecks but keep the cost of living the same, the least-paid people benefit much more than the highest-paid people. Higher rates won't really make a difference to someone who's already got enough, but will make a huge difference to those that don't. 

In this case, the disparity is the ability to build a survivable PvP base / rebuild one that didn't survive. That has a fixed resource cost which you could actually tally up and combine with the time to level to the necessary crafting skills, letting you plot how long it would take a new person with x rates to build a survivable PvP base. 

[GP]

2 minutes ago, Milsurp said:

Because the recipe costs stay the same. If you double everyone's paychecks but keep the cost of living the same, the least-paid people benefit much more than the highest-paid people. Higher rates won't really make a difference to someone who's already got enough, but will make a huge difference to those that don't. 

In this case, the disparity is the ability to build a survivable PvP base / rebuild one that didn't survive.

Yes it will make a difference to someone who's already got enough because they'd have even more.

Yes increasing rates may help the smaller tribes rebuild a bit quicker, but there is nothing to stop the mega tribe coming back at any time. That is why the rates have no impact on issue at hand. If you have higher rates and the smaller tribe rebuilds a bit quicker, then in that time the mega tribe has got even bigger because they are also getting the higher rates and therefore smash down harder next time.

So again, how does higher rates help this issue in the slightest?

[Milsurp]

1 minute ago, GP said:

Yes it will make a difference to someone who's already got enough because they'd have even more.

Yes increasing rates may help the smaller tribes rebuild a bit quicker, but there is nothing to stop the mega tribe coming back at any time. That is why the rates have no impact on issue at hand. If you have higher rates and the smaller tribe rebuilds a bit quicker, then in that time the mega tribe has got even bigger because they are also getting the higher rates and therefore smash down harder next time.

So again, how does higher rates help this issue in the slightest?

Why do you think they can "smash down harder" when they already have everything they need to smash as hard as the game allows? That's where your logic is broken, you think higher rates will somehow increase offensive power for people who already have maxed everything. 

And since you like to be challenging, back at you. Why do you think keeping rates the same will counter the problem of mega tribes denying non-members the ability to play on Official servers? What's your answer then?

[Ranger1]

There is no simple rate increase that you can bring into a game that doesn't benefit larger entities more than smaller entities.

23 minutes ago, Milsurp said:

Why do you think they can "smash down harder" when they already have everything they need to smash as hard as the game allows? That's where your logic is broken, you think higher rates will somehow increase offensive power for people who already have maxed everything. 

There is no such thing as "having maxed everything". 

More explosives, ammo, weaponry, creatures will always give a tribe a greater advantage, and in fact encourages larger tribes to do complete wipes because they have plenty of explosives to spare for such activities. 

More turrets, ammo, and building materials available means more bases available to control more territory on more servers.  If nothing else it allows multiple offensives to be launched simultaneously, and also tends to make them even more attractive from a recruitment standpoint.

Again, there is no simple rate increase that you can bring into a game that doesn't benefit larger entities more than smaller entities.

23 minutes ago, Milsurp said:

Why do you think keeping rates the same will counter the problem of mega tribes denying non-members the ability to play on Official servers? What's your answer then?

Keeping the rates the same doesn't counter the alleged problem, but at least it doesn't go out of it's way to make life even easier for the mega tribes as boosted rates do.

Look, to use silly numbers, here is the situation in very basic terms.

If your small tribe can craft 100 c4 an hour (to pull a round number out of thin air) normally, you can craft 200 an hour during a 2X event.

If a larger tribe can craft 1000 c4 an hour, they can craft 2000 c4 during a 2X event.

They went from having an advantage of 900 c4 stockpiled to use, to having an advantage of 1800 c4 available to use against you.  Nothing else changed except the 2X event, but the larger tribes advantage in materials created that hour was dramatically increased... and the higher the rates go the larger that advantage per hour becomes.

The smaller tribe loses ground in comparison.

One final time, there is no simple rate increase that you can bring into a game that doesn't benefit larger entities more than smaller entities.

[GP]

13 minutes ago, Milsurp said:

And since you like to be challenging, back at you. Why do you think keeping rates the same will counter the problem of mega tribes denying non-members the ability to play on Official servers? What's your answer then?

Rates are not the problem. The only problem rates cause is the mundane task of resource gathering. The problem with changing rates (i.e. EVO events) is it makes people hold off playing certain aspects until the weekend. None of it has an impact on the issue at hand.

The problem to the issue discussed in the OP is something that does not have a clear solution, which is why this issue still stands to this day. Mega tribes will have tons of players, smaller tribes will have much less players, this means that regardless of what the rates are smaller tribes will always struggle to rebuild because they are, well, small. Even putting caps on how many players in a tribe will not solve this issue because of alliances etc.

I have no solution to give. Just because I disagree with your claims that changing rates will help the issue at hand doesn't mean I can't claim you are wrong.

[Crows]

Well yeah, I understand what you mean GP, the big/mega-tribes will only gain more resources, weaponry, ammo, armour, buildings, tames, etc if the rates were permanently increased, and we don't want that at all, but I'm struggling to think of a solution without it getting too complex, for the lesser tribes who have to start from scratch and continuously lose everything before they can at least set up enough defenses. It's difficult and annoying. 

The only solutions I can think of, is either decreasing explosive damage of C4s and their splash damage radius, increasing their crafting costs or significantly increasing structure health across the board. Right now bases solely rely on turrets, or sometimes rely on active players who're aware of the attack and prepared to defend. Once those bullets are drained, it's a walk in the park, regardless of how many awesome tames somebody may have on neutral/aggressive. 

[Saupe]

1 hour ago, Crows said:

Well yeah, I understand what you mean GP, the big/mega-tribes will only gain more resources, weaponry, ammo, armour, buildings, tames, etc if the rates were permanently increased, and we don't want that at all, but I'm struggling to think of a solution without it getting too complex, for the lesser tribes who have to start from scratch and continuously lose everything before they can at least set up enough defenses. It's difficult and annoying. 

The only solutions I can think of, is either decreasing explosive damage of C4s and their splash damage radius, increasing their crafting costs or significantly increasing structure health across the board. Right now bases solely rely on turrets, or sometimes rely on active players who're aware of the attack and prepared to defend. Once those bullets are drained, it's a walk in the park, regardless of how many awesome tames somebody may have on neutral/aggressive. 

There is no solution, the problem will always exist. Also, rates effect PvP massively, they don't change a thing in PvE other than the time I put needed.e

And about people asking for increased rates then being happy with the change, that's not what happened last time rates were increased, and you say by x1, what that actually means is they DOUBLED everything, the change was astounding, some high level tames needed 200+ kibble. Within a month, the same people were asking for a rate increase again, whilst the competitive PvPers were all shouting stop the x2 weekend, including many mega tribes, even though it greatly benefits them.

bases always rely on turrets, the 100 limit is supposed to bring it more in favour of the small tribes, but in reality the mega tribes could afford to do the maths or trial/error turret tower placement to give them what is strategically better placement of thousands of turrets than building a wall.

 

The best advice you can get for PvP is get big, go hard or hide. 

[Dylan1602]

2 hours ago, Crows said:

I know people will disagree with this because they believe I'm just being self-entitled and want it easy, but no, I don't know anybody who likes the current official rates. Most of us don't bother playing when the bonus events end, unless we have to log on for PvP purposes or imprinting. 

This here proves the difference in quality between you and them. If you only log on for the Evo Events then yes, you do want it easy mode. The difference is larger tribes who are surviving log in during the week on normal rates and grind just like any other day. Evo Events only mean you get more, it doesn't change the pattern of the grind. They grind when you don't want to and that's why they are the mega tribes and you're not...

 

Work hard and be rewarded.

They have been rewarded

[Crows]

4 minutes ago, Dylan1602 said:

This here proves the difference in quality between you and them. If you only log on for the Evo Events then yes, you do want it easy mode. The difference is larger tribes who are surviving log in during the week on normal rates and grind just like any other day. Evo Events only mean you get more, it doesn't change the pattern of the grind. They grind when you don't want to and that's why they are the mega tribes and you're not...

 

Work hard and be rewarded.

They have been rewarded

I did this for the first 8 months of playing and being part of an alpha alliance. I played almost every single day for 10+ hours. After so long, it gets tiring doing the same old grind again and again just to get to a stable position. 

[Dylan1602]

8 minutes ago, Crows said:

I did this for the first 8 months of playing and being part of an alpha alliance. I played almost every single day for 10+ hours. After so long, it gets tiring doing the same old grind again and again just to get to a stable position. 

I'm sorry but grinding is boring, I know all about it because I never stopped. Don't get me wrong I'm not in a mega, however I am in a strong tribe who knows if a mega wanted, they could obliterate us. However we never stopped grinding and now we're in it for the pvp against large tribes. I've had scraps with WW, WO, SC, UC, KC, the whole shebang and I see that as my reward. 

Maybe if you don't want to do the grind every day, then don't but just know the other people that are, will come looking for fun and you will be hit. Simple eat or be eaten. 

Perhaps guerrilla tactics may be more ideal for you? Just constantly messing with people not worrying if you do get wiped because there isn't months of work inside. Maybe just 2 or 3 days worth? I haven't done this personally but it does sound rather fun because PVP is the main goal to strive towards and whenever me and my tribe get bored of the grinding we will just go to a random server not knowing who it belongs to and we'll just hit whoever we see. The bigger tribes need to have fun as well, its not fair that they grind the way they do and not get to attack people.

[LouSpowells]

.

[Dylan1602]

30 minutes ago, LouSpowells said:

EDIT: Oh. PS4. Fantastic...I wish they never released this game for consoles. 

That's a bit sour and uncalled for, it's a different platform to you so why do you care? If this guy didn't make a post on it then someone else would've just like they constantly have in the past.

[LouSpowells]

.

[Joebl0w13]

Ok guys, enough of the PC master race rhetoric. 

Back to the topic.

[Saupe]

Console servers DID have a lower tame limit on servers due to console limitation. That is the only difference I am aware of and may have been changed with the new sexbox.

On topic - I play both, official console PvP at my friends houses as half the noobs can't even get out of stone and spec x their base (I mean, that's day 1 stuff solo lol) and the Xbox alphas are worse than PC betas. And unofficial PvE on PC at x3 rates (because mega-tribe wars/raids are boring as hell so screw official PvP).

 

I prefer the rates on the official server, nobody wants to empty their doed after 5 or 6 rocks, or their roll rat every stupid tree, change the rates on official you need to change weight and a load of other things. On x3 it takes me 2-3 rich metal rocks to build a 4x4 but CP collection does not increase, so you have to make it, so CP becomes the biggest obstacle in the game, you don't want that. Trust me.

[ThzNutz]

as Joe said, stay on topic -- last friendly warning

[SmokeyB]

To be honest I kind of agree.i have been playing solo recently after being in a mega tribe . Mega tribes are not my cup if tea either . Too many people your stuff always gets moved , there's nothing to do as someone else has already done it , ten people in the breeding room , two quetz out getting metal nothing to tame or build , no one to fight as the whole servers allies it gets boring real quick and most people I see join leave and quit the game pretty quickly . Also there is a lot of noobs in the tribe because they have never had to do anything on their own.  I feel mega tribes are the best way to get bored of the game quickly.  They are only fun for the leaders and even my tribes leader changed hands 3 times while I was there . 

You can have much more fun small scale PvP and building a base on your own. So this is what I do.  My mate is alpha on my main server and I just have a one man tribe and breed tame farm weapons and go raid other servers . Way more satisfying.  

The other week it was x3 breeding and rates and to be honest for a one man tribe that felt perfect . I could get stuff done at an acceptable rate and didn't mind losing the weapons and ammo I made which led to care free fun PvP.  

So my suggestion is limit tribe size to 7. Do away with alliances . There is no need for the alliance system it just encourages Pve. And boost rates to x3 so people can fight more and grind less.

6 hours ago, Crows said:

No offence intended, but seriously, it's difficult to express my reasons & perspective without you, yourselves experiencing it, so I have to make a whine-sounding topic. The population of your official PvP servers are declining each and every day because of mega-tribes wiping anybody they don't know and claiming servers for their own. 

I know people will disagree with this because they believe I'm just being self-entitled and want it easy, but no, I don't know anybody who likes the current official rates. Most of us don't bother playing when the bonus events end, unless we have to log on for PvP purposes or imprinting. 

• Mega-tribes are ruining official!
• Default Rates are GARBAGE

WHY ARE THE RATES still so low?

They are not consistent enough to keep up with the flow of PvP. Buildings get destroyed, items looted, tames killed, yet the only time we feel like we've made progress to get back on our feet is on bonus event weekends because the default rates are ridiculous. Why do you think so many players move to unofficial and private servers? because official is garbage, and not only because of the lag. I'm not asking for x10 or even x5 rates, but the default rates (yes, they used to be lower, but they got increased by what, x1?) are not exciting, competitive nor rewarding whatsoever. They make no sense for PVP. They make sense in PvE, not PvP.  

(Oh and before somebody says "The rates are fine, you're just wanting it to be easy" or "You're just too used to them, if they were permanently x2 or x4, you'd soon be asking for higher rates" you're welcome to think that, but that's BULLpoop. If I'm turning the knob on a cooker to cook something, I don't want it too low or too high, do I? I want it just right - which Ark official PvP rates are missing. I'm not wanting it easy, even if it was permanently x2 (the bonus event's version) it would be a massive improvement. I'm not after easy gameplay/Pvp, I actually love challenge and don't mind the grind at all when there's a goal to reach, but there's no goal to reach on Ark official PvP because that goal can get shattered instantly and you're back to square one, or while you're offline, and no I won't go to Offline Raid Protected servers, shoo!)

Little Jimmy over here may love the low default rates because it makes him feel competitive, grinding away and raising baby dinos for weeks, until he goes offline for the night and wakes up to nothing left. It's the same story every time. People either get wiped and quit the game or go to PvE, or they rebuild and try again until it happens again, or they join a bigger tribe which is connected to a mega-tribe, and now official servers are nothing more than edgy, tense mega-tribe war zones. Anybody wanting to actually build up has to know somebody otherwise they face losing it all, that has pretty much always been the case but now it's getting out of hand and my perspective is coming from PS4 servers, I'm sure it's worse on PC or Xbox.

FYI I've been offered multiple times to join mega tribes but it's not my style, I'm against them. I prefer fair PvP scenarios, so it's not like I'm complaining for nothing, I'm just tired of playing Ark official PvP when the rates are so bad and we have to rely on bonus weekends to make any progress. 

/Rant