Problems With Mutations

[Campi]

9 minutes ago, Anarki said:

If this is correct, please confirm my theory below?

Ive a male 310 Ptera with 18/20 mutations on both mat and pat sides. I have a female 304 Ptera with 16/20 on both mat and pat sides.

I have tamed a clean female and male set of Pteras to clean the mut stat counter.

If I breed m 310 with clean female, and the f 304 with the clean male - get the luck and the stats follow over to both babies - these babies should be effectively clean?

If I am again lucky and get a male and female baby and breed these - I should with any luck get a 0/0 mut stat counter - is this correct?

Thanks

Anarki

As long as you only breed clean ones the mutation counter stays 0/20.

But you cannot reduce the counter. Nevertheless you can breed a 40/20 male with a 0/20 female to get eighter a 40/20 or a 41/20 offspring (2nd if it mutates). And that mutation can mutate a stat from the male even though he was the 40/20 partner of the pairing.

[iAmE]

1 hour ago, Anarki said:

If this is correct, please confirm my theory below?

Ive a male 310 Ptera with 18/20 mutations on both mat and pat sides. I have a female 304 Ptera with 16/20 on both mat and pat sides.

I have tamed a clean female and male set of Pteras to clean the mut stat counter.

If I breed m 310 with clean female, and the f 304 with the clean male - get the luck and the stats follow over to both babies - these babies should be effectively clean?

If I am again lucky and get a male and female baby and breed these - I should with any luck get a 0/0 mut stat counter - is this correct?

Thanks

Anarki

So this is how it works. 

 

You have a Ptera with somewhere between 150k to 200k mutations total, which is standard for the current gen Pteras. You have a wild tamed female of literally any level.

 

You breed the Mutated Ptera and the clean ptera. The offspring will have a 70% chance to inherit any given stat from the mutated Ptera, and that stat also has the ability to mutate on top of that. You breed that offspring back into the mutated Ptera line if you get a desirable mutation, as you can breed stats into the line, you just won't get mutations. You repeat, ad naseum, until you have the stat levels you are talking about. 

 

Technical note is that, if you have a Mutated Ptera with capped mutations, and a mutated ptera with uncapped mutations, but the same stat line, you can mutation breed onto the uncapped ptera to better target a specific mutation for a set number of stats.

So you take a Ptera with 150-200k mutations, and a Ptera with say, 16/20 Mutations. They both have the same melee of, lets say, 430%. You can breed these two to target the melee stat mutation more reliably/heavily, as you don't have a 30% chance of failing the stat inherit as you do with the wild tame method. However this method requires you to have a Ptera with the same melee stat you are targetting, without the mutation overcapping, which is fairly rare. 

[Buck386]

anyone else notice there is usually  a melee stat mutation (increase) when breeding 2 new tames for the first time but it doesn't increase the mutation marker (still shows 0/20 on both sides)?
 

It's because on the first gen you get 100% effectiveness essentially so melee gets a slight increase since you don't get the full 100% when tame

[Anarki]

2 hours ago, iAmE said:

If I am again lucky and get a male and female baby and breed these - I should with any luck get a 0/0 mut stat counter - is this correct?

Sorry - did this question get answered? 

 

[Campi]

You can only get 0/0 on the baby if you had 0/0 on both parents. The baby always gets the sum of what the parents had. There is no correlation to what stats went over to the baby. Mutation-Counter always adds up the parents. If you breed a male with 2 mutation points in HP with a female with 3 mutation points in STAM the baby will always have 5 mutation points. Doesnt matter if it gets the mutated HP or the mutated STAM from the parents. It can even end up with the unmutated HP from the female and the unmutated STAM from the father and it will still have 5 mutation points.

There is NO WAY to lower mutation-counters on offspring. The only thing you can do is breed a >20 mutation-point dino with a <20 mutation-point dino to get more mutations. But it will still end up being a child with the sum of the mutation-points from the parents (>20).

[invincibleqc]

4 hours ago, iAmE said:

offspring will have a 70% chance to inherit any given stat

55%

[iAmE]

6 hours ago, invincibleqc said:

55%

And the Wiki says 65%. That being said, after breeding literal tens of thousands of creatures, I have a strong feeling it is above 55% because I do not recall, ever, needing to slaughter almost half of my hatches on a consistent basis.

[HalfSlabBacon]

14 hours ago, Kimsie said:

 

This  I would say the mutation mechanic needs fixing:

• I'd prefer if you could only have 10 mutations on either side, but only the transferred mutations are counted in the offspring - that way the de facto maximum would be 20 mutations (or hey! make it less if that's better!) and it would be a lot more intuitive.
• Personally, although I believe I'm pretty alone in thinking that  , I would prefer a decoupling of the stat and colour mutations as I find the colour mutations to be horrendously ugly most of the time (such unnatural, wierd colours).
• I'm also not a fan of mutations happening in a stat that is not picked for the offspring - rather reduce the chance of a mutation, but if it happens, it should be in a stat that's used.

If I understand correctly, with the current system, there is a possibility for endless mutations as long as you keep breeding with one "clean" parent? That seems a bit too OP even if it does take a very long time: with the longevity of the servers people will eventually get there and with egg trading they will spread fast.

Yes it really needs fixing and is way too OP. The slow pace of Official makes it not really an issue, but if you speed up breeding like most unofficial's do it gets pretty crazy... I have Rex's that hit for over 200k due to breeding.

38 minutes ago, iAmE said:

And the Wiki says 65%. That being said, after breeding literal tens of thousands of creatures, I have a strong feeling it is above 55% because I do not recall, ever, needing to slaughter almost half of my hatches on a consistent basis.

Most of the extensive testing done suggest it is in fact 55%, however I've found once a mutation is present the odds seem to tip in the favor of getting another one stacked on it.

[invincibleqc]

46 minutes ago, iAmE said:

And the Wiki says 65%. That being said, after breeding literal tens of thousands of creatures, I have a strong feeling it is above 55% because I do not recall, ever, needing to slaughter almost half of my hatches on a consistent basis.

It is 55%. Someone over reddit disassembled the binaries and extracted hard data:

Spoiler

 

 

[iAmE]

3 minutes ago, invincibleqc said:

It is 55%. Someone over reddit disassembled the binaries and extracted hard data:

  Hide contents

 

 

Interesting, well I guess even one of the more hardcore breeders in Ark doesn't know everything about the subject. FeelsArkMan. 

[HalfSlabBacon]

Just now, invincibleqc said:

It is 55%. Someone over reddit disassembled the binaries and extracted hard data:

Looks like you may do your research in the same places I do.  

Still think there's something that increases the odds once a dino is already mutated, but it could be placebo.

 

[HalfSlabBacon]

1 minute ago, iAmE said:

Interesting, well I guess even one of the more hardcore breeders in Ark doesn't know everything about the subject. FeelsArkMan. 

I'm in the same boat... Probably breed more some weeks then most dedicated breeders on Official do in a year and I'm still discovering things that aren't "supposed to happen", researching, trying to recreate, and researching some more. Lol....

Doesn't help that the code was poorly implemented to start with.

[iAmE]

2 minutes ago, HalfSlabBacon said:

Looks like you may do your research in the same places I do.  

Still think there's something that increases the odds once a dino is already mutated, but it could be placebo.

 

To be frank, it might be. I was the creator of one of the most used legacy dino DNA lines (PvP Pteras Pre-nerf), and I used to solo hatch, and manage, somewhere between 3 and 500 Pteras a week. Looking over old data, my average "Keep" rate (IE Mutations+Straight inheiritance) was .69483, or roughly 70% across a sample size of 7192 Pteras.

 

It's also possible that the developers were tweaking those numbers as it went on, and my data is outdated due to more recent changes made between the two. As many numbers as I kept to keep track of things, I actually seemed to have neglected to keep track of dates at all for when I actually quit the project, and Ark, for a while, due to the prevalence of duping/aimbotting on Official PvP. 

[HalfSlabBacon]

6 minutes ago, iAmE said:

To be frank, it might be. I was the creator of one of the most used legacy dino DNA lines (PvP Pteras Pre-nerf), and I used to solo hatch, and manage, somewhere between 3 and 500 Pteras a week. Looking over old data, my average "Keep" rate (IE Mutations+Straight inheiritance) was .69483, or roughly 70% across a sample size of 7192 Pteras.

 

It's also possible that the developers were tweaking those numbers as it went on, and my data is outdated due to more recent changes made between the two. As many numbers as I kept to keep track of things, I actually seemed to have neglected to keep track of dates at all for when I actually quit the project, and Ark, for a while, due to the prevalence of duping/aimbotting on Official PvP. 

Yeah, I've found similar, but who knows if this was actually intended. Pretty sure it wasn't intended to have "infinite" mutations (up to 255 per stat) or to get a mutation and have the parents base stat overwrite it.

There's definitely something changed as well. I've had speed mutations actually "apply" a couple times over the last 6 months or so... That's not intended, never happened before, and yes makes the dino pretty much useless in most cases.  Nothing worse then a dino too fast to control.

I started playing with the numbers the patch they added breeding in and came to one conclusion pretty quickly... They may have had the idea early on, but the actual coding wasn't thought out when base dino mechanics were written & as a result breeding and mutation code ended up being a patch job.

[iAmE]

1 minute ago, HalfSlabBacon said:

Yeah, I've found similar, but who knows if this was actually intended. Pretty sure it wasn't intended to have "infinite" mutations (up to 255 per stat) or to get a mutation and have the parents base stat overwrite it.

There's definitely something changed as well. I've had speed mutations actually "apply" a couple times over the last 6 months or so... That's not intended, never happened before, and yes makes the dino pretty much useless in most cases.  Nothing worse then a dino too fast to control.

I started playing with the numbers the patch they added breeding in and came to one conclusion pretty quickly... They may have had the idea early on, but the actual coding wasn't thought out when base dino mechanics were written & as a result breeding and mutation code ended up being a patch job.

To be fair, most of the game is a slap happy patch job, but they seemed to have managed alright. There's no problems really, I'm just surprised that my records deviate so much from a datamine, and think that it might be due to a change in the code. Wildcard changes internal coding and a lot of stuff that affects the gameplay of the game heavily, without ever putting it in the patch notes or discussing it, mainly, because I believe they don't understand the gameplay (Which I don't blame them for. Playing Ark is basically a second job, and making Ark is like a first, second and third job all at once). 

 

It's undoubted that there are numerous bugs and problems with the breeding system that the developers never accounted for, experienced or possibly even knew of. Between unlimited breeding, and cap-taming, just to name a few. There's also a bug where you can 100% reproduce speed mutations over every breed, but it does nothing for you but inches you towards the level 450 dino cap where your dino gets deleted if you go over it, so no one uses it. 

[HalfSlabBacon]

27 minutes ago, iAmE said:

To be fair, most of the game is a slap happy patch job, but they seemed to have managed alright. There's no problems really, I'm just surprised that my records deviate so much from a datamine, and think that it might be due to a change in the code. Wildcard changes internal coding and a lot of stuff that affects the gameplay of the game heavily, without ever putting it in the patch notes or discussing it, mainly, because I believe they don't understand the gameplay (Which I don't blame them for. Playing Ark is basically a second job, and making Ark is like a first, second and third job all at once). 

 

It's undoubted that there are numerous bugs and problems with the breeding system that the developers never accounted for, experienced or possibly even knew of. Between unlimited breeding, and cap-taming, just to name a few. There's also a bug where you can 100% reproduce speed mutations over every breed, but it does nothing for you but inches you towards the level 450 dino cap where your dino gets deleted if you go over it, so no one uses it. 

I don't think they are that out of touch with the game play, they just have a unique viewpoint.

If anything I'd say the changes to the internal code are to try and clean up the ""slap happy patch job". They have the skill set, it just seems the culture is run with the idea at 300% speed till implementation... Then look backwards when/if time permits to see what mess was made & needs to be cleaned up.

In all fairness, the game is damn awesome, and even though some issues drive me batty from time to time, if that is part of their creative process, so F'n be it! I get to Smash stuff with Super Dinos!!!!!   

[iAmE]

9 minutes ago, HalfSlabBacon said:

I don't think they are that out of touch with the game play, they just have a unique viewpoint.

If that's what you want to call it, sure. I'm certain they know what they want gameplay to be/how, and they know what they've done/can do. I just don't think they actually play their game enough to understand what their various changes do. Neither do they listen to people who do, as a lot of the changes, even though I understand the necessity for them (IE Turret Changes, Flyer Nerf, Stat Compression) are usually only done/handled up until the point where, from a developers point of view, the job is done. While at the same time, players going through them/dealing with them, find a plethora of issues with the change that largely impede/hurt the state of the game. 

IE They did the flyer nerf, and then for about a month, it was impossible to use a flyer to steal Wyvern Eggs because Wild Wyverns outflew anything in the sky. For a couple months after the stat compression, dinos were rendered, literally useless, as you could gather anything faster with a stone pick/hatchet then you could with any of the specialized dinos, by a huge margin. The turret changes just aren't feasible for PvP, because even with thousands of heavy turrets, your base can usually be raided in an hour with a stego and someone with the knowledge of how to do it. 

But we're diving off a whole different board, and derailing the thread a wee bit. So I'mma go grab something to eat. 

[Zahlea]

11 hours ago, iAmE said:

To be frank, it might be. I was the creator of one of the most used legacy dino DNA lines (PvP Pteras Pre-nerf), and I used to solo hatch, and manage, somewhere between 3 and 500 Pteras a week. Looking over old data, my average "Keep" rate (IE Mutations+Straight inheiritance) was .69483, or roughly 70% across a sample size of 7192 Pteras.

 

It's also possible that the developers were tweaking those numbers as it went on, and my data is outdated due to more recent changes made between the two. As many numbers as I kept to keep track of things, I actually seemed to have neglected to keep track of dates at all for when I actually quit the project, and Ark, for a while, due to the prevalence of duping/aimbotting on Official PvP. 

Iirc, when the mechanic was released, it was indeed a 70% chance of inheriting the higher stat. So yes, I believe that number has been tweaked.

Found a source: an early version of the breeding page on the wiki - https://ark.gamepedia.com/index.php?title=Breeding&oldid=64885

[phantom55]

On 04.01.2018 at 4:38 PM, Anarki said:

Sorry - did this question get answered? 

 

as my experince you cant clear mutation number for both side.only u can stack them one side father line so you can keep mutating them mother line.