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How to Fix ARK: Survival Evolved


JehovahWit14

Suggestion

Dear Wildcard, 

 

After thousands of hours of playing ARK on official PVP servers, I have

enjoyed (almost) every hour spent playing it. When I say “almost” you probably know what I mean in saying there are ways in which the game can be critiqued.... Massively. In this note I’m going to mention almost every single  meta that makes it unfair and/or broken in some cases, and how they can be fixed with no fail. The only thing I don’t know how to fix is meshing, (that’s on you guys) but if that’s the one thing you would have to fix about the game then I think that is a good trade-off. Without further ado....

 

Metas: 

 

1: The Giganotosaurus, the strongest creature in the game, capable of destroying absolutely anyone, was not always broken, but after receiving buffs, plus the insane breeding of higher melee, has rendered it way too overpowered. Kentros used to be the counter, but after receiving the rage buff, the giga went from not even being able to bite a kentro without raging, to where now it can tear through multiple without any harm to the rage meter. A giga is also able to “soak” turrets which are supposed to be able to provide quite an effective defense against virtually any carnivore, but that is not the case anymore. There have been times where I’ve actually soaked a TEK turret with a giga which is absolutely insane. The one and only tame that was actually the most effective at countering gigas was the rhino, however, this has also received a recent nerf with the 8 sec timer on building it’s damage buff vs the old timer which was way better. This isn’t such an issue with PC players considering their stats are way better than the likes of PS4, (which I play) however, rhinos only pop with no more than 530 melee at the moment which means gigas are, in fact, still game breaking especially considering gigas pop with nearly 800 melee now on official PS4 servers. I know you have tried some minor solutions, that do work on the short scheme of things, for example, the 10 second cryosick was after throwing out a tame was a good choice, however, not solving every problem with the giga. 

 

How to fix: I’m not saying you should nerf the gigas enrage meter again, but you can make turrets do 30% more damage to gigas enrage meter, (as well as bullets in general if you so choose.) You can also make kentros do 50% more ‘mirror’ damage. Now, I would say you can buff the woolly rhino, but that wouldn’t be fair to PC players, so I’ll just say that’s the console players job to work on breeding better rhinos (that part is on me).

 

1. Quetzal/Paracer/Any platform dinos: We all know, or at least I hope we all know how broken platform saddles can potentially be. The structures that are able to be placed on dino platform saddles has made it to where turrets are virtually pointless, with quetzal bombing and racer bombing being a thing. Quetzal/racer bombing is what us pvp players call “blocking” turrets from being able to shoot a dino by building ceilings, hatch frames, and other types of builds to prevent the tame from being shot, where you can walk up to any base and blow right in with no casualties. 

 

How to fix: There are many ways to fix this, but I imagine your concern would be trying not to make anyone angry, which I can understand, but I have a solution which will keep players happy. The benefit of platform saddles is it enables you to fit more things on to one creature, making it good for transporting players, items, etc. which is the only thing it should be used for, not bypassing turrets. Nerf the structure count more, and remove giant hatch frames and pillars from being able to be placed on the platforms. You can also put a limit on door frames/doors to 1 per platform saddle. 

 

2. Caves: As everyone knows, with the platform saddle meta mentioned above, it is absolutely impossible to have a base that’s not in a cave, but it is also quite impossible to online raid a base that is built in a cave in most cases. Caves where crouch points exist, and other small spaces that only small tames can fit in are easily defendable by a single giga munching at the entrance. Most caves also provide artifacts that most tribes need access too in order to get th element they need, but they are impossible to get with tribes living in these caves, and no one wants to tame 400 gachas in hopes of finding a mating pair of element gachas, only to clone the element gacha pair several times, and then spend hundreds of hours feeding them to provide just enough element to barely make it by. 

 

How to fix: Rework certain cave systems, and get rid of crouch points. For example, the ice cave on the island is one of the most notorious for having an unraidable crouch point. When I say crouch point, I mean a player has to crouch or go prone just to get through them, and when you’re getting shot in the face by turrets it can be quite difficult, just kidding, it’s impossible. This is what leads some players to resort to meshing just to get in a base. You could also make artifact caves unbuildable, but with a little heads up of course so as not to accidentally dev wipe anyone’s hard earned base. 

 

3. Meks: Oh boy are meks broken. They are actually more broken now than they were before they were nerfed believe it or not. Meks used to only be able to shoot dinos, but after receiving a nerf that said the gun would be doing less damage to players and tames, for some reason that also made the mek gun capable of shooting players. Meks can also shoot way further than turret range, are capable of enraging gigas with just a few shots, and can kill any tame in the game with ease, as well as destroy any structures quite easily. 

 

How to fix: First off, reduce the range on mek gun to UNDER turret range, just barely. Nerf the mek gun damage to players and tames by 25%. Reduce mek shield debuff by 10%. Reduce mek shield range by 10%. Increase mek element expenditure by 10%. 

 

4. Hover Skiff: Extremely extremely extremely broken. If I’m fighting on aberration, and I’m on let’s say a megalosaurus for instance, and a skiff grabs my megalo, it’s dead. Absolutely nothing I can do about it. And if I’m sitting in my turret range, that doesn’t matter because the skiff can still grab me and bring me wherever it wants to and I can’t grapple out because it’s aberration. I’m not going to continue about how broken it is, I’m just going to tell you how to fix it.

 

How to fix: Reduce pick range to HALF of turret range. Hover skiff can ONLY pick tribe owned dinos/players, not enemies or allies. Increase damage from shotguns and fabricated snipers by 25%. 

 

5. Griffin: While they are fragile creatures considering you can’t put a saddle, or breed, or imprint, on them, with enough talent, it can be a very broken dino, and it is an easy fix. The problem with the griffin is once you have been picked, the only possible way to get out of the pick is via whip. You might say “no you can also grapple out.” No, you can’t. I’m very good at flying a griffin and if you were try to attempt to grapple out of a pick, I can literally spam pick you, preventing you from grappling out every time, while also flamethrowering you through the griffin while I’m riding it. (Kinda broken don’t you think?) Sure there are ways around it, like wearing full hazmat to prevent flame damage, but even then, I can shotgun you through the griffin as well. 

 

How to fix: Give the griffin a cool down timer on picking. Argentavis have a cool down on picking, the griffin should too. This is all you would have to do to fix the issue, but I would also like to see drinking med brews/eating food to be allowed while picked/ falling through the sky, it would be a life saver when you are on fire. 

 

6. Flamethrower: The number 1 most broken weapon in the game, and no amount of med brews will save you. The main issue with the flamethrower is that, if you don’t have at least 100 med brews in a PvP situation, then 2 hits from a flamethrower will always kill you no matter what. A primitive flamethrower take two shots to kill, and an ascendant flamethrower also takes two shots to kill (makes sense right?). Also, if you flame me twice and I spam 50 med brews, I might, just might make it out alive with 10 HP, but if you hit me for even 1 more second, I’m dead. Regardless of how many brews I drink. 

 

How to fix: Instead of 9% health loss for 6 seconds it should be 5% of health lost for 6 seconds.

 

These are most of the game-breaking metas which I know 90% of ark players will agree with, and if I have more I will definitely forward them as well, but it had to be heard from an ark player with thousands of hours playing the game. I support Team Wildcard in its efforts to improve the great game that they have, but a lot of the issues can only be seen from

the eyes of an ark player who has been playing official pvp for years. 

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1 hour ago, GigaSpino said:

These are all balanced pvp methods. Unless rocket turrets are buffed for platform saddles. Box Dino’s giga damage fine tbh. You can use your creativity in pvp ;). But if you want it otherwise I suggest you play rust. Ark pvp is meant to be fast paced and if you don’t work harder than your opponents you are dead. What ark actually needs is DLSS 2.0 support.

Hatchframe quetz and racers are not balanced. They might have been clever and fun methods to cheese turrets a few years ago but it's really worn thin and now everyone is huddled in caves, and cave PVP sucks. You say ark pvp is meant to be fast paced but cave pvp is ANYTHING BUT fast paced. It's a battle of attrition, trying to wear down the other team and exhaust not just resources but the other players too. Nerf caves, fix platform saddles and suddenly we will see pvp in the great outdoors again. 

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The real fix to ark pvp would be to finally enforce the 20 mutation cap for breeding that wildcard originally implemented. That would be an important step to change the cave meta because people dont need to have hundreds of breeding dinos which can only be protected in caves and because dinos wouldnt be so strong that land bases are useless. It would also make the game more skill based and attractive for new players or players that join new clusters, because the gap between a newly started line and the ones from end game tribes wouldnt be so astronomically big.

Otherwise i agree that certain caves might need a rework and that completely boxed in creatures shouldnt exist, but the latter is already forbidden and they recently limited the amount of gates on platforms. that was only half successful but a start.

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5 hours ago, sjskdjkfa said:

Does every one think they are supposed to spam tickets? No wonder the ticket system is broken lol...

I don't know, the ticket system feels like a lottery sometimes. More tickets = more chance to win. 

To be honest the only time I ever saw enforcement action from a ticket was for mesh turrets and I think it's because that type of cheating is very self evident. There are turrets and they are in the mesh and they usually stay there. It's obvious cheating. Whereas aimbotting happens in an instant and can be really tricky to prove conclusively. I kinda feel like that's a reason why enforcement don't act on aimbot tickets . . . BUT ONLY HEADSHOTS THROUGH THE MESH, COME ON MAN!!!

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I actually agree with all of this completely. 

The only thing I could possibly add is that while the anti-mesh and anti-dupe systems seem to have largely fixed those issues, aim botting is totally out of control -especially the new aimbot clients that kill players through layers of mesh and wall. I personally know of 3 tribes who have lost their caves just this week so far because as they spawn on a bed they get shot through the mesh and walls. There is no defending against that. Spamming tickets didn't help either. 

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These are all balanced pvp methods. Unless rocket turrets are buffed for platform saddles. Box Dino’s giga damage fine tbh. You can use your creativity in pvp ;). But if you want it otherwise I suggest you play rust. Ark pvp is meant to be fast paced and if you don’t work harder than your opponents you are dead. What ark actually needs is DLSS 2.0 support.

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