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Opinions regarding infanticide for XP.....


ThzNutz

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in a separate thread discussing power leveling and the best way to go about it, user @mandymoo response (makes me sad too :( ) got me thinking about the practice of infanticide purely as a means to level, and the more ive thought about it the more it seems like an exploitative method to gain alot of xp with zero risk, unlike any other method of which i am aware.

 imo it is an exploitative way to gain xp because as we know,  there are no babies in the wild -- no wild fertilized eggs either (other than as @Weisspointed out, drakes or wyvern). a wild baby or wild fert egg would mean there was some risk taken to get the xp, but sitting in 100% safety at your base breeding and hatching eggs just for xp definitely seems questionable. it is my opinion bred/hatched dinos should not give any xp until fully mature, so if you want to fully raise a giga to kill it for xp...well...um....have fun with that :D 

seemed like a good topic for discussion, and one i havent seen.

 lets try to remember that these are not real babies, and while neither i nor my tribe have practiced this approach for xp, or condone its use, we have had to eliminate dinos that did not get stats, and have had to put down older low level dinos to make room for better stat ones, etc..... just so you know there is no "holier than thou" attitude here. i would prefer the discussion remain focused on whether or not this an exploitative game mechanic, and not whether its okay to kill babies....mmmkay? 

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35 minutes ago, ThzNutz said:

in a separate thread discussing power leveling and the best way to go about it, user @mandymoo response (makes me sad too :( ) got me thinking about the practice of infanticide purely as a means to level, and the more ive thought about it the more it seems like an exploitative method to gain alot of xp with zero risk, unlike any other method of which i am aware.

 imo it is an exploitative way to gain xp because as we know,  there are no babies in the wild -- no wild fertilized eggs either. a wild baby or wild fert egg would mean there was some risk taken to get the xp, but sitting in 100% safety at your base breeding and hatching eggs just for xp definitely seems questionable. it is my opinion bred/hatched dinos should not give any xp until fully mature, so if you want to fully raise a giga to kill it for xp...well...um....have fun with that :D 

seemed like a good topic for discussion, and one i havent seen.

 lets try to remember that these are not real babies, and while neither i nor my tribe have practiced this approach for xp, or condone its use, we have had to eliminate dinos that did not get stats, and have had to put down older low level dinos to make room for better stat ones, etc..... just so you know there is no "holier than thou" attitude here. i would prefer the discussion remain focused on whether or not this an exploitative game mechanic, and not whether its okay to kill babies....mmmkay? 

I think there are other ways to get cheap XP in Ark so I'm ok if they remove it, or if they keep it this way.  Of course noone is going to go through the time and effort to fully raise a dino just to kill it later.  It also makes sense to me that baby dinos should come out as already owned by the tribe that is raising them which would be an easy way for WC to eliminate this exploit and to me makes the most sense tbh.

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3 minutes ago, RasFW said:

On my unofficial, I leveled boss r3xes by hitching them to the s+ hitching post and putting them all on aggressive wander. Put a few ACs around them too.

The hitch stops them from moving but they still breed. The eggs incubate and hatch. They eat the baby instantly. 

 

It's a very effective way to level up boss rexes. 

Wow awesome I love this idea!

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I'd rather keep it like this, because

1. Low level wyvern eggs can at least help you to tame troodon and are not completely useless. That probably wouldn't work any more.

2. For leveling when you have a reaper inside of you. If you take the time to collect that many eggs, or sacrifice many tame slots just for leveling, isn't that already a big enough drawback to compensate for the quick xp?

And and least you get something if you baby doesn't hatch like you wished^^

It's equally safe to sit around and let the grinder do it's work, isn't it?

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I think it's fine giving the the limited xp boosts we are given. 

Ways to get decent xp;

grinder method- requires tribe mate for dino usage

kill wild titans- really only a method for very OP dino's that have been leveled, wyvern's, and giga's.

kill wild wyvern's- not too bad here 4776 xp for a 190 but map and spawn specific

kill all dino's- paltry xp gain

kill alpha's- shelf life on this usefulness as you fail to see good gain after about 15k xp

Swamp cave runs- limited to a select group of dino's

kill deathworm's- map and luck of the spawn specific

 

I mostly don't mind many of the grind factor's in Ark. Outside of meat I think harvesting is fine. I think tame times and raising are fine too but xp gains are very lacking. 

A level 150 Rex gives you 954 xp. How many of those to get even 50 levels on your dino? (43) That's also a huge disparity from a max level wyvern which seems a bit too far apart. 

I'd be ok with other methods if they gave us some. A challenge cave that reads your dino's stats and adjusts difficulty but gives you major xp. That would give players another thing to do, properly challenge you to earn your xp, but give you the opportunity to earn that xp

For PvE, outside of Wyvern's, you need a tribe mate to slaughter the babies while you ride the dino anyway which is the same method as using the grinder which is not seen as an exploit. I likewise don't see an exploit hatching and killing babies for xp. If you are hatching high level babies, enough to influence xp, you've put in some work to get there already, safe or not.

 

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15 minutes ago, ThzNutz said:

i dont doubt that the method is effective -- kinda seems equally as exploitative as hatching for character xp gain tho, if not more so as it is also an afk type method of xp gain.  

Finish writing the other piece and now see you are referencing mainly character xp

Probably have less of an opinion on this. Think @Weiss is right that using a grinder/making narcotics gets you the same results just as safely and maybe quicker since you don't have to wait for hatch timers. 

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@Weiss

wyvern and drake eggs are wild fertilized eggs and would therefore fall outside of the topic -- you had to risk something to get them so i am fine with using them however, including to level while impregnated. still seems like an unintended game mechanic tho, in my opinion.

the topic is not whether you should get "something" from a baby that is born without certain stats -- i would still say no to that -- but the purposeful hatching of many eggs with the sole purpose of leveling.

and no -- even with a grinder you still have to go out into the wild to get the resource to grind = risk. even if that risk is mostly mitigated with high level dino, or Q gathering, etc there is still risk.  

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14 minutes ago, IanHighlander said:

From a killing babies moral standpoint

this has nothing to do with the topic and was specifically asked not to be discussed -- bragging about how many baby dinos you murder at a time def makes you cool tho...right?

14 minutes ago, IanHighlander said:

From an exploit point of view, I don't see it as an exploit when it's a legitimate method in the game

so because you can do it in the game its legitimate? so under mesh is fine too then lol? your argument totally reinforces the opinion that mass killing babies solely for gain is an  unintended game mechanic, hence an exploit. 

 

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Just now, d1nk said:

I feel if you were able to collect the dinos to breed get said eggs.. then why not? Its the same concept as farming wood to grind.. its just little babies instead :P You still have to tame high levels, male and female pairs.

i beg to differ on the point that grinders dont re-fill themselves and that taming high level dinos to breed just to produce high level babies to kill solely for gain would be, in my opinion, unintended.

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4 minutes ago, ThzNutz said:

legitimate method

Think you definitely misconstrued his words here as he stated legitimate and under meshing is definitely not legitimate.

What is legitimate, currently, is you receive xp from killing dino's. The higher the level, the more xp you gain. Hatching eggs is allowed and necessary for game progression. They allow xp gains from killing baby dino's, or else most people would not tame troodon's. There is zero things that correspond to it being an exploit.  If they review it and decide it is not a method they want to allow then so be it but as of now this is a legitimate method using the game mechanics they designed. 

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13 minutes ago, ThzNutz said:

i beg to differ on the point that grinders dont re-fill themselves and that taming high level dinos to breed just to produce high level babies to kill solely for gain would be, in my opinion, unintended.

Thats assuming you do the method above mentioned with hitching post (which is only available to a small portion of a third of the population) While i do agree it probably wasnt intended, that bring me to my next point:

 

Let me ask you this though, grinders werent intended to be used to "grind" exp though? They were intended to be used (before nerf) as a way to get something from your extra items / drops

 

Edit: i dont see it as an exploit in any means, i see it more as an unintended mechanic as you said. That being said, I dont do it nor have I.

 

I like the healthy conversation

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3 minutes ago, yekrucifixion187 said:

Think you definitely misconstrued his words

i did not misconstrue, although my comparison is not accurate as under mesh was known by those doing it as non-legitimate. my apologies.

a more apt comparison would be  platform builds and how that mechanic has played out -- it could be done, used the game mechanics they designed and yet was found to be an unintended game mechanic -- there are others as well.

my purpose here is simply to get others opinions and to discuss -- im not advocating a change or trying to rile anyone up

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1 hour ago, ThzNutz said:

 it is my opinion bred/hatched dinos should not give any xp until fully mature

or give exp in proportion to their maturity %.

9 minutes ago, yekrucifixion187 said:

game mechanics they designed. 

They designed game mechanic called "weight limit" and gave weight stat to all items, yet it doesn't work with "bodybags" - clearly an unintended mechanic they have yet to address. Another instance of this is "overharvesting" that devs touched a couple of times but never fixed at its core - an ability of dino to continue to add items to its inventory past its weight limit.

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@ThzNutz

Mmmh... But to get fert eggs you have to have a breeding pair.

If you buy it you have to go into the wild and farm mats to pay.

If you tame them yourself you have to to go into the wild and work on getting the kibble, tranq arrows/darts, a weapon, maybe a trap, find the animal, finish the tame, bring it safely back home.

Ofc as soon as you have nice parents it's easy to make eggs.

But as soon as you have any nice tame it's easy to collect mats and explorer notes too.

I never power leveled any char (or tame), so idk how efficient the different methods are. 

It would definately feel "more natural" if babies gave less xp than adults. 

22 minutes ago, ThzNutz said:

the topic is not whether you should get "something" from a baby that is born without certain stats

That's why there's a smiley at the end of the sentence.

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2 minutes ago, d1nk said:

Let me ask you this though, grinders werent intended to be used to "grind" exp though? They were intended to be used (before nerf) as a way to get something from your extra items / drops

 

I like the healthy conversation

true, i remember saving mats to craft our first one, threw a bunch of stuff in it and let it do its magic.....i was horribly underwhelmed :D 

werent they given the XP thing later to give them some value?

i like it too :) 

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3 minutes ago, Weiss said:

That's why there's a smiley at the end of the sentence.

^^ is a smilely? :) had to scroll back up and look hahaha

at any rate, i dont disagree that taming high level dinos (your first) is not an easy task -- i just question the risk to reward when we have users describing hatching 1k plus eggs for the sole reason of xp gain.

i have power leveled one character, my first and thats only because we found narco fun -- that said alot of time was spent out of camp gathering to be able to level that way. the only tames we've leveled using a grinder were our theriz before their first boss run because we ran out of time. really, we only have grinders for flint and grinding all the crap we bring home (ie, what my wife cant throw away :D )

10 minutes ago, Weiss said:

It would definately feel "more natural" if babies gave less xp than adults.

agreed and i also like what  @DarthaNyan suggests, a % of maturity

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35 minutes ago, ThzNutz said:

this has nothing to do with the topic and was specifically asked not to be discussed -- bragging about how many baby dinos you murder at a time def makes you cool tho...right?

so because you can do it in the game its legitimate? so under mesh is fine too then lol? your argument totally reinforces the opinion that mass killing babies solely for gain is an  unintended game mechanic, hence an exploit. 

 

Apologies for the first part, no bragging intended I mis read it.

The second part however, not even close to the same thing and how do you know it's an unintended mechanic? Either way, your attitude stinks, sorry you aren't prepared to accept other peoples points of view, I'm out of this thread enjoy yourself :)

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12 minutes ago, DarthaNyan said:

They designed game mechanic called "weight limit" and gave weight stat to all items, yet it doesn't work with "bodybags"

i really should get my multi-quote going on this but my skills are lacking today :)

you are correct tho for sure, there are many unintended mechanics in use daily -- and i use some of them as well (dont take my over-harvest please :D)

 

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5 minutes ago, IanHighlander said:

not even close to the same thing

if you scroll up and read i state it is not a fair comparison and apologize. the point of the thread is to get others views, however your post seemed to be more of your wanting to express your cavalier attitude towards the topic, which led to a somewhat snarky response. my bad, if you have more input on the topic you are more than welcome to share here.

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12 minutes ago, ThzNutz said:

if you scroll up and read i state it is not a fair comparison and apologize.

Then again I missed that, trying to read and participate in the forums whilst also playing Ark is never a good idea, so mutual apologies but I'm withdrawing from this thread none the less :)

For the record, no snarkiness was intended. However "cavalier attitude" is also a matter of opinion and perspective, however I'm 46 years old and have better things to do with my life than argue with a stranger on line about the way I play a game that's designed for people to play it the way they want to.  Currently busy taming a 180 Rex on @GP's servers :)

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