kibble rework A kibble trader's criticism of the kibble rework

[Jacira]

A friend who has tested the new kibble system in singleplayer by opting into beta updates has notified me that the following list is the new materials required to process kibble;

• Basic: 5 Fiber, 5 mejoberries, 10 tintoberries, 10 amarberries, 1 cooked meat, 1 extra small egg
• Simple: 5 Fiber, 5 mejoberries, 2 rockarrot, 1 cooked fish, 1 small egg
• Regular: 5 Fiber, 2 savoroot, 2 longrass, 1 cooked jerky, 1 medium egg
• Superior: 5 Fiber, 2 citronal, 2 rare mushroom, 1 cooked prime, 1 sap, 1 large egg
• Exceptional: 5 Fiber, 10 mejoberries, 1 rare flower, 1 focal chili, 1 extra large egg
• Extraordinary: 5 Fiber, 10 mejoberries, 1 honey, 1 lazarus chowder, 1 special egg

Based on this feedback I would like to share my criticism on a couple of points.

Basic Kibble - Currently it is possible to fit 3-4 stacks of 100 kibble's worth of materials in the industrial cooker. This allows a player to fill up the cooker and walk away until each stack is converted. With the new system and some simple math you can only fill the cooker with around 2 stacks of 100 worth of kibble. As a player will need 20 slots out of the cooker's 48 available just for these berries per 100 stacks.

On the plus side, I believe with this new system the early game progression will feel a lot more organic as a player does not need to be in a rush to process jerky or grow crops in order to tame early game dinos. For that I salute WC.

Superior Kibble - The inclusion of sap into superior kibble type is extremely frustrating. Since a sap tap can only hold a stack of 20 at a time and takes ages to convert if you have multiple taps in the area superior kibble is going to be harder to craft than even exceptional kibble.

Exceptional kibble - I do not understand the inclusion of cooking recipes into kibble at all. It is not a raw resource and just seems out of place. Furthermore this means that in addition to the 10 mejoberries required as a base resource you also need another 10 for each focal chilli. This means that for a stack of 100 you will need 2000 amarberries, 2000 azulberries, 2000 tintoberries and 2000 mejoberries, in addition to 500 citronal and 900 cooked meat. These requirements are huge and means that when a trader has a sale for bulk exceptional kibble. The amount of farming that would be needed to meet the demands of some buyer's would be ridiculous and can only result in the prices of kibble sky-rocketing. Which means in turn, fewer people will purchase it. In addition, even if you do have some berries on hand. A refrigerator has an item limit of 48. This means that with a completely fresh stack of berries you can only fit 200 stack's worth of kibble in each fridge and will need 4 fridges full of berries just for 2 stacks of 100 exceptional kibble.

Extraordinary Kibble - Out of all my criticisms so far this is my biggest, the inclusion of honey (while being annoying) I can understand as it is the top tier kibble variant. However the inclusion of Lazarus Chowder (while not being as overall unbalanced and painful as focal chilli) I believe does not fit in the mix. As a kibble trader I have farmed over 800 Titanboa eggs for my customers. Those 800 eggs however I have collected almost every day of my life for the past entire year. As you might deduce, Titanboa eggs do not drop very frequently at all. Now going off the following chart...

This means that Titanboa eggs are your only viable source of extraordinary kibble crafting. As from experience in golden egg farming with bulk Hesperonis. It is not easy. The rate at which they drop coupled with their outrageous spoil timer makes the effort that goes into each one piece of Kentro kibble completely not worth it, for any price. So now with this new format, not only may it take a month or two, or even three to collect a stack of 100 Titanboa kibble, but now that is even the only hard part. You must now also farm 100 Lazarus chowder to craft it.

 

In conclusion, these are only criticisms and I don't in any way claim to know how to make it better, but I do have two suggestions...
1. Include Prime Jerky in this somewhere! PLEASE! Because with this current format Prime Jerky is actually 100% useless. It serves absolutely no purpose now other than to be eaten or fed to dinos for poor efficiency ratings when taming.
2. Increase the rate at which Titanboa eggs drop to be more frequent. If this isn't done there are going to be a ton of tamed Titanboas needed by every tribe just for one kibble type.

I understand these lists might be tentative, and for the future of Ark I hope this is the case. However I feel I would be remiss in my duty as a kibble trader if I didn't express my concern for this new structure.

In any event, it looks like the size of greenhouses in every tribe are going to double or even triple with this new format. I don't claim to know how the excessive amount of structures on a server contributes to lag or load times, but with most things in Ark the bigger things are the more things break.

[choroni]

I agree with most of your points.  In fact, I didn't notice that Prime Jerky was no longer required in any of the recipes.  I was actually very excited when I first heard of the kibble rework, as I am SP and prefer not to tame dinos simply for the eggs for kibble.  However, this new system is even more tedious at the higher kibble levels,.

[DarthaNyan]

So now kibble farms will move from hundreds of various dinos to hundreds of snakes...

Why not call kibble by the type of egg they are using? Whats the point of "basic", "simple" etc?

I disagree with classification of (TEK)Rex, Yuty, Therizino eggs as "extra large". many other dinos make no sense in their categories as well (Trike has small eggs but troodons and terror birds are medium).

[Weiss]

@Jacira please share this here too, so it will be seen:

 

[girlygirlgamer322]

Holy poop these new kibble recipes are godawful and will make it a real chore making kibble. DILO?

[yekrucifixion187]

The requirements should be larger since the reduced amount of varying kibbles will now encompass a larger selection of dino's. 

Sorry but I'd rather build a slightly larger greenhouse and an extra cooker or two vs house and feed 60 to 100 useless dino's that just add lag to a base (dino animation causes way more lag than structures) and reduce server and tribe slots that could house useful and viable dino's.

The one thing I agree with here is boa's dropping eggs a bit more frequently or expanding what constitutes a special egg.

Maybe add Megalania or Megalosaurus eggs to the special egg list. Tames that have a slightly higher degree of difficulty and aren't common to tame. Could also include Wyvern and Rock Drake eggs in the special egg department. 

It's still a work in progress so I think special egg will encompass a few more dino's when the final version is released. 

[d1nk]

I am disspointed prime jerky isnt in these.. thats such a staple of progression.. getting the dinos to reliably farm prime meat so you can cook it.

 

I agree with most of your points, but like most of the new system. For the love of Dodorex please implement Extinction's imprint system (some kibbles but also the 4 berries, cooked meat etc maybe prime jerky can be implemented here instead)

Im sick of purple and black greenhouses, give us a reason to grow all the berries and in addition let us grow mushrooms and flowers - even if at an abysmal low rate say..  20 or 30 per crop plot per yield

 

[SaltyMonkey]

No sympathy for traders because you created this economy, Wildcard didn’t.

[TitiShu]

@Jacira They could also add drake and wyvern to special eggs. It won't totally solve the problem, but still add an alternative.

[Vaculity]

19 minutes ago, TitiShu said:

@Jacira They could also add drake and wyvern to special eggs. It won't totally solve the problem, but still add an alternative.

Problem is their egg are too easy to get once you have the right stragety and creatures for it.

[TitiShu]

3 hours ago, Vaculity said:

Problem is their egg are too easy to get once you have the right stragety and creatures for it.

Titanoboa's eggs are not ghat hard to get, just boring. As you have to tame tons of them, but they are easy tame.

[Vaculity]

46 minutes ago, TitiShu said:

Titanoboa's eggs are not ghat hard to get, just boring. As you have to tame tons of them, but they are easy tame.

I was referring to the Drakes and Wyverns in term of adding them to the special egg list.

[TitiShu]

16 minutes ago, Vaculity said:

I was referring to the Drakes and Wyverns in term of adding them to the special egg list.

Yes, i know. I was refering the fact you said that wyv and drake eggs are too easy, and pointed that snake too (but boring as you need to tame many)

[Jacira]

9 hours ago, DarthaNyan said:

So now kibble farms will move from hundreds of various dinos to hundreds of snakes...

Why not call kibble by the type of egg they are using? Whats the point of "basic", "simple" etc?

I disagree with classification of (TEK)Rex, Yuty, Therizino eggs as "extra large". many other dinos make no sense in their categories as well (Trike has small eggs but troodons and terror birds are medium).

Furthermore, Scorpion, Troodon and Terror Bird eggs are considered medium sized eggs, but trike are small and Parasaur are extra small? Trike and Parasaur are both physically larger than all three Troodon, Terror Bird and Scorpion. Not sure if this is oversight or there's a reasoning behind it.

7 hours ago, yekrucifixion187 said:

The requirements should be larger since the reduced amount of varying kibbles will now encompass a larger selection of dino's. 

Sorry but I'd rather build a slightly larger greenhouse and an extra cooker or two vs house and feed 60 to 100 useless dino's that just add lag to a base (dino animation causes way more lag than structures) and reduce server and tribe slots that could house useful and viable dino's.

The one thing I agree with here is boa's dropping eggs a bit more frequently or expanding what constitutes a special egg.

Maybe add Megalania or Megalosaurus eggs to the special egg list. Tames that have a slightly higher degree of difficulty and aren't common to tame. Could also include Wyvern and Rock Drake eggs in the special egg department. 

It's still a work in progress so I think special egg will encompass a few more dino's when the final version is released. 

I agree with your points on the requirements being larger as the system is becoming more streamlined, however it still has to be balanced, and currently, imo, it is not.

I also agree with you on adding Megalania or Megalosaurs eggs to the special eggs list, however if they were added no one would tame Titanboas anymore, which would be sad as they can be quite a challenging tame.

7 hours ago, SaltyMonkey said:

No sympathy for traders because you created this economy, Wildcard didn’t.

Not asking for sympathy nor do I want it, the way the new kibble rework affects my kibble trading is completely separate from my criticisms listed here.

@TitiShu The bad thing about adding wyv and drake eggs to special kibble list is that it would give people a reason to have 50 wyverns or drakes out in their base to breed them for the eggs required to make kibble. It would completely throw out the balance even more so than adding megalania/megalosaurus eggs to the special category. 

A better suggestion would be perhaps to add megalania/megalosaurus to the special category but decrease their egg laying interval to the equivalent of Titanboas. This would make the eggs still hard to get. But would give more players choice in terms of which dinos they'd like to have in their kibble barns instead of just mass taming snakes. They could also change the system so that fertilized eggs cannot be used in kibble crafting which would eliminate people trying to mass breed megalania/megalosaurs to boost their special kibble stacks.

[yekrucifixion187]

"The bad thing about adding wyv and drake eggs to special kibble list is that it would give people a reason to have 50 wyverns or drakes out in their base to breed them for the eggs required to make kibble. It would completely throw out the balance even more so than adding megalania/megalosaurus eggs to the special category. "

Except you can't breed Wyv's or Drakes. What it will do is give people a reason to grab the crappy eggs and help keep nests fresh. I think adding them would be good as they constitute a special egg both in dino type and way you get them. 

[flamron]

19 minutes ago, yekrucifixion187 said:

"The bad thing about adding wyv and drake eggs to special kibble list is that it would give people a reason to have 50 wyverns or drakes out in their base to breed them for the eggs required to make kibble. It would completely throw out the balance even more so than adding megalania/megalosaurus eggs to the special category. "

Except you can't breed Wyv's or Drakes. What it will do is give people a reason to grab the crappy eggs and help keep nests fresh. I think adding them would be good as they constitute a special egg both in dino type and way you get them. 

It would also potentially drive purchases of DLC like Ab. So it would benefit Wildcard. 

[Oli4]

I see a new market, the soup market

 

OT: I think its fair to make the kibble recipes a bit harder. And soups arent that hard to craft in bulk anyway(just place some extra cookers)

 

[Jacira]

2 hours ago, yekrucifixion187 said:

"The bad thing about adding wyv and drake eggs to special kibble list is that it would give people a reason to have 50 wyverns or drakes out in their base to breed them for the eggs required to make kibble. It would completely throw out the balance even more so than adding megalania/megalosaurus eggs to the special category. "

Except you can't breed Wyv's or Drakes. What it will do is give people a reason to grab the crappy eggs and help keep nests fresh. I think adding them would be good as they constitute a special egg both in dino type and way you get them. 

Yea my bad lol I had been sitting here thinking that Titanboa are unique in that they are egg layers but you cannot breed them. It's late here and yes you're completely right. I don't even know why I said that tbh. 

I like the idea though. Hunting for eggs in the trenches just to make special egg kibble could make for a lot of fun instead of just sitting at base waiting for Titanboas to drop them. And despite the fact trench running may be slightly faster, due to the increase risk of dying I believe would create a nice balance between the two options.

I also like the sentiment that it gives players more of a reason to take the crappy eggs and refresh spawns.

The only down-side I can see to adding them is that those on the island miss out. But island players miss out on a lot of things.

[Melcreif]

One comment regarding Exceptional and extraordinary Kibbles.  If you look at these 2 Kibbles and the way they are currently employed with taming Mana's, you'll note that they are being used as an either/or in regards to their taming efficiency since they both use the same qty, and the same amount of time to tame.  So if they employ that same strategy in the Kibble rework, you'll have the choice of which of these 2 Kibbles work best for your needs.  On that note though I do find it odd that they didn't use Prim Jerky as well since it's been a staple of all higher level Kibbles.  Maybe they just thought it was one more difficulty level to add? Not sure, but of course this is all BETA at this point so subject to change.

[Yiu]

Of all dinos in the game.. they choose snakes... This isn't really going to reduce the dino count

[KrackenOne]

They should drop the recipes and just add Sap, Honey, and both jerky types.   I'm fine with the special eggs.

My real issue is that this rework takes something away from the game in my opinion.  I would have never bothered taming an Allosaurus, Mantis, Pulmonoscorpius, Sarco, Stego, Titanoboa, Trike or a Vulture if not for the kibble tree.  Having to go out and tame those made me travel around and experience the map more than I would have otherwise.  

[Aylana314159]

Jerky seems kinda pointless now, maybe if it's not going to be in the kibble recipes it's could get a new use.

[KrackenOne]

1 minute ago, Aylana314159 said:

Jerky seems kinda pointless now, maybe if it's not going to be in the kibble recipes it's could get a new use.

I make loads to stock up dinos when I go on work trips or vacations.

[Aylana314159]

Just now, KrackenOne said:

I make loads to stock up dinos when I go on work trips or vacations.

I was thinking like a meat version of a sweet veggie cake.

[KrackenOne]

7 minutes ago, Aylana314159 said:

I was thinking like a meat version of a sweet veggie cake.

Cool