revisit the mutation system.

[Kaprosuchus]

revisit the mutation system.

The current mutation system we have feels broken and is the source of most of the game's imbalance and doesn't even really make sense the way it currently works.  I mean the counters don't even really mean anything and i don't think it was really thought through that well.  What would we replace it with? who knows really but the way it is now just isn't working well.  Yes i realize the major push back against this suggestion is people worried about losing their "work" no matter how unfun it makes it for everyone else.  No, i didn't get killed by someone with a super mutated dino and come to complain as i don't even play pvp outside arkocalypse. 

I think changing the way breeding for mutations works would also make it easier to design and balance dinosaurs.  As it is now most balancing changes have to be done against what people can do with insane stats, and this makes anything that isn't the best it can be pretty much garbage in a wierd zero sum sort of way.

[Kaprosuchus]

I get all of your points. and i mostly agree.  My major problem is with mutation stacking i just have this nagging feeling that they implimented it, it didn't work right, and they were like "well crap we can't undo it now too many people are doing this" because of how people respond to changes.  also it requires them to design future content with these super dinosaurs in mind when those super dinosaurs do not make up the majority of used dinosaurs. 

I am just kind of concerned that new content is going to be designed around the assumption that everyone is going to do things the way they've been doing which is "finding the meta" and doing that one thing. kind of how bosses turned into all rexes, a daeodon or two and a yuty or two for the longest time.  i've been playing a long time like most of us, i don't want an expansion that plays out the exact same way the others have, i want to mix things up even if some people are angry that they have to learn a new thing or change how they do things.  I just don't have any good compromise ideas i can articulate.  Most of my ideas would as you said, necessitate a wipe.  but i play on unofficial with bi-yearly wipes so that's not really a huge concern of mine

[Aylana314159]

56 minutes ago, Kaprosuchus said:

Most of my ideas would as you said, necessitate a wipe.  but i play on unofficial with bi-yearly wipes so that's not really a huge concern of mine

Yeah. Without a wipe, crazy dinos would be grandfathered in and would be unobtainable to new players. 

It would be interesting to add in instability into breeding without enough genetic material. Meaning breeding offspring with parents would be bad.

 

Also have bad mutations. So instead of just getting better and better there would need to be some pros and cons. Like get health at the expense of damage. 

[Aylana314159]

It's too late for major changes like this without a wipe. Maybe for Ark 2. But WC has proved over and over they cannot properly balance the game. Also, continually ignore the player desire for separate PvP and PvE balances.

 

For PvE mutations are fun for colors and even stats. But there isn't any real competition other than just ego. My dino is "better" than yours attitude, etc. 

 

For PvP balance is really nonexistent.  Not sure there is a real way to actually balance this in an open world survival game without introducing limits to the open world concept. Level 1 cannot and really shouldn't be able to compete against level 100. The same applies to having high level dinos, higher species of dinos, non-mutation breeding dinos,and especially stacked mutation breeding.