Too Much Schadenfreude?

[Woody714]

So that I don't appear too negative on a daily basis, most of this game is absolutely great. Dinos and survival...elements of all different types of gaming. What is not to love? It looks great. The basic concept is awesome.  I had some good moments today. I tamed a low level basilosaurus, probably still under level 50-60 at the time, and would have taken down a level 5 Alpha Mosa...if the game had not given me inconsistent stam regen and allowed the mosa to escape.  I laughed all through that as I totally expected that to happen since I brought no back-up dinos. But that is not my grief.

So I stumble across my first nice megatherium, a 130 female, at the arch on the northwest of the island right near where the snow starts and the "mosh pit" ends. I clear out all the badness and build a trap. Meanwhile and all on it's own, the meg walks into the water and dies. Wow... If I had not built a trap, it would have done the same thing when torp running. Come on...really? Someone programmed that bit of schadenfreude...how nice. On the playthrough I just lost in the Xbox/save disaster, I had a 145 holiday female meg torp run from halfway up that mountain into the water to drown after dodging the entrance to my trap on both sides. I have read people criticize the use of flyers, but my only other option would have been to use the mostly worthless level 15 quetz I tamed to pick it up. I don't expect a free ride...it is nice to have a challenge, but come on.   I think Wildcard could turn down the "Ha ha" juice just a bit. 

Does anyone else think this is a bit too much, or do I cry too much? 

Sincerely, single player.

[Pipinghot]

15 hours ago, Woody714 said:

Meanwhile and all on it's own, the meg walks into the water and dies.

I can't speak to the other things you described, but this isn't a thing, land animals don't wander into the water for no reason. Amphibious animals do, of course, but anything that is truly a land animal will only go into the water if it's chasing something or running from something.

Even then they almost never drown (you have to deliberately kite something into deep water where there is nothing nearby to aggro on in order to drown it), instead they get killed by something.

The other possibility (and what I suspect really happened) is that the megatherium that you found was far from its spawn point (this happens a lot when animals are chasing each other or when their spawn point is on a hill) and it just despawned when your back was turned. This is something that happens a lot, any time an animal gets too far away from its original spawn point it can despawn. You don't even need to move out of res range, sometimes all you have to do is turn your back and as soon as it's not visible it can despawn.

[Joebl0w13]

3 minutes ago, Pipinghot said:

a land animal will only go into the water if it's chasing something or running from something.

Dogs wonder into the water all the time. Not chasing anything or running from anything. To add, dogs have been rescued by boat because they wonder too far out into deep and damn near drown.

[Woody714]

I saw the meg slowly walking towards the water as I was building the trap. I needed to craft another piece or two as the trap was close to a supply drop and while the foundation placed fine, the doorframe would not snap to it saying it could not be placed on the floor...as does happen when you are too close to a drop. I destroyed the foundation and walked a few steps away to harvest more materials as I only had exactly enough for the trap when I started and I wanted to try again as I could just see the meg possibly bouncing off a two wide trap and I wanted it three deep. So it is possible that the same thing happened to the meg as happens to a giga that is led to water and drowns when you leave render distance. But I was not that far away. I finished the trap and looked over at the meg which was not that far into the water from the trap and it was all bloody...it was dead. So, yeah probably a render thing, but the meg had no business slowly walking into the water. It was not provoked in any way.

[Woody714]

Dogs? This sounds like someone trying to apply logic to this game. If that is the case, I can master the technology of rotational mechanics to create a fabricator, but there is no way to make a simple wheel or wheelbarrow to carry a couple hundred extra pounds in the early game when you really need to. Logic has no place in the development of this game.

[Joebl0w13]

1 minute ago, Woody714 said:

Dogs? This sounds like someone trying to apply logic to this game. If that is the case, I can master the technology of rotational mechanics to create a fabricator, but there is no way to make a simple wheel or wheelbarrow to carry a couple hundred extra pounds in the early game when you really need to. Logic has no place in the development of this game.

Nothing in this game makes any sense. Trying to relate it to real life is silly. That said, I'm heading out to an obelisk, past a tek dino.

My glowing implant itches.

 

[Pipinghot]

3 hours ago, Joebl0w13 said:

Dogs wonder into the water all the time. Not chasing anything or running from anything. To add, dogs have been rescued by boat because they wonder too far out into deep and damn near drown.

That's what I get for saying animals instead of dinos. Well played.

[DeHammer]

2 hours ago, Woody714 said:

I finished the trap and looked over at the meg which was not that far into the water from the trap and it was all bloody...it was dead. 

Well, no wonder... you aren't supposed to peek at the dinos when they skinny dipping.

Any possibility a water dino killed it?

Shore lines can be tricky. I was taming Megalodons once and luring them into a trap setup near the shoreline. If they got too close to the shoreline they would instantly die the same way, but from too much exposure to the 'air'. Sometimes you'll see water creature jump too far out of the water and die instantly. 

[Pipinghot]

2 hours ago, Woody714 said:

I saw the meg slowly walking towards the water as I was building the trap. I needed to craft another piece or two as the trap was close to a supply drop and while the foundation placed fine, the doorframe would not snap to it saying it could not be placed on the floor...as does happen when you are too close to a drop. I destroyed the foundation and walked a few steps away to harvest more materials as I only had exactly enough for the trap when I started and I wanted to try again as I could just see the meg possibly bouncing off a two wide trap and I wanted it three deep. So it is possible that the same thing happened to the meg as happens to a giga that is led to water and drowns when you leave render distance. But I was not that far away. I finished the trap and looked over at the meg which was not that far into the water from the trap and it was all bloody...it was dead. So, yeah probably a render thing, but the meg had no business slowly walking into the water. It was not provoked in any way.

Walking towards the water is not the same thing as walking into the water, I guarantee it entered the water because it was aggro'd by something when you weren't looking at it.

On a side note, you don't have to leave render distance with giga's (or anything else), you only have to fly up high enough that they lose aggro. As long as nothing is with aggro range they will become dormant, sink just far enough that their head is below the surface and will drown while you watch. You don't even have to go very far, just fly straight up until they lose interest in you. It's an easy way to harvest giga hearts, fly down to just above the surface and and harvest the dead giga, I've done it lots of times.

[Woody714]

Well, thinking about all that was said, perhaps the original spawn point was out on the little peninsula that juts out from the shore a bit south of the arch...I guess. And perhaps he was seeking it in a straight line. My trap is in between those two points on the  shore of course. He was dead in the water next to the ice, so maybe it was piranha? He was chill until I began building the trap, so it only appears to be malicious programming. My bad. 

[Woody714]

4 hours ago, Joebl0w13 said:

Nothing in this game makes any sense. Trying to relate it to real life is silly. That said, I'm heading out to an obelisk, past a tek dino.

My glowing implant itches.

 

Sure...brag it up!  🙂

 

[Joebl0w13]

Just now, Woody714 said:

so it only appears to be malicious programming

Ark is basically malicious programming.

[Woody714]

Yeah...I noticed that when I first began and before a big change to the game guide. It was tough to learn and I seriously beach bobbed for 50 levels and never was able to tame a parasaur, or any mount, because I couldn't grasp all the concepts of taming and make them work with console controls. "where is the any key?"  I was like level 65 before I had even a raptor mount. I literally farmed berries to live as I had no idea how to use a mount to harvest, suggestions from friends were to "just use this or that, but I assumed they did it by wandering and such. It was a pain to find them again. Then, 30 levels and 6 months from the very start, I finally started to get it. The first really nasty "haha" moment was farming wood with a stone axe for an hour or two to build my first raft and pressing the wrong icon, building sloped ceilings instead of flat ones because the icon is nearly identical and my eyesight is poor. 

[Kodking194]

7 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

I can't speak to the other things you described, but this isn't a thing, land animals don't wander into the water for no reason. Amphibious animals do, of course, but anything that is truly a land animal will only go into the water if it's chasing something or running from something.

Even then they almost never drown (you have to deliberately kite something into deep water where there is nothing nearby to aggro on in order to drown it), instead they get killed by something.

The other possibility (and what I suspect really happened) is that the megatherium that you found was far from its spawn point (this happens a lot when animals are chasing each other or when their spawn point is on a hill) and it just despawned when your back was turned. This is something that happens a lot, any time an animal gets too far away from its original spawn point it can despawn. You don't even need to move out of res range, sometimes all you have to do is turn your back and as soon as it's not visible it can despawn.

as far as i know, a creature wont despawn because its left its spawn area. is this were the case, kiting creatures and carrying them with flyers would cause them to despawn.

[Pipinghot]

49 minutes ago, Kodking194 said:

as far as i know, a creature wont despawn because its left its spawn area. is this were the case, kiting creatures and carrying them with flyers would cause them to despawn.

It does, both kiting and carrying them off will flyers will cause them to despawn, they just don't despawn while you're looking at them.

The game is designed so that animals spawn in, and get despawned, when no one is looking, they didn't want players seeing dino's magically appearing and disappearing on their screen right in front of them. You have to get really lucky to ever watch an animal spawn in, even if they spawn in close to you they will spawn in to the right or left of your screen so that you spot them already spawned in. The best way to see one spawn in is to have a bunch of players working on a spawn point killing stuff, so that their lines of vision constantly overlap each other. The game will try to pick a spot that no one is looking at but if you're all moving around then someone might actually see it pop in.

If you carry a dino away to tame it then it's important not to travel out of the range that keeps it rezzed in. If no one is close enough to keep it rezzed in then it can despawn right from the taming pen. Mind you, there is a certain amount of time that passes. You might get lucky, catch a fresh spawn, take it to your taming pen, fly out of range and come back to find it still there. That just means it's a relatively recent spawn and the timer hasn't progressed long enough to make it despawn. But if you catch something that's been on the map for a while then it's easy to have them go *poof* when you get too far away. As long as you're close enough to keep it rezzed in it won't despawn. Also, once you knock something out it won't despawn, so you're safe to travel out of rez range once it's unconscious.

This is why there aren't piles and piles of live dinos around the bottom of hills and mountains, they wander downhill away from their spawn point until eventually they get too far away and then the game despawns them to prevent overpopulation of downhill locations. It's also why you can see a high level apex predator on a sloped piece of ground, fly away to pick up taming supplies, and when you come back it's gone even though nothing in the area could have killed it. If you spot a good animal in a non-flat area then it's important to have someone keep an eye on it while someone else gets the taming supplies, because if the animal keeps moving farther and farther from its spawn point it will eventually get despawned by the game and something else will get spawned in to replace it back at at the uphill spawn point.

It's also why spots that are just slightly uphill from the bottom of mountains/hills/slopes are good areas to set up taming pens, you will get a constant stream of fresh animals coming downhill towards the taming pen. If they're good then you lure them into the pen and tame them, if they're not good enough to tame you just let them go past the pen and they will despawn soon, making an open spot for something else to spawn in uphill.

[Pipinghot]

4 hours ago, Woody714 said:

Well, thinking about all that was said, perhaps the original spawn point was out on the little peninsula that juts out from the shore a bit south of the arch...I guess. And perhaps he was seeking it in a straight line. My trap is in between those two points on the  shore of course. He was dead in the water next to the ice, so maybe it was piranha? He was chill until I began building the trap, so it only appears to be malicious programming. My bad. 

Yeah, a piranha could explain it, or even a shark, once it got close enough to the edge of the ice.

There are also ants in that area where you were, right at the edge of the mosh pit just before the ice starts, and if the megatherium got enraged because of the ants then it could have run into the water to fight a shark ( I don't think they'll go after piranha even when they're enraged, but I don't know for sure ), or maybe even by accident. I've never seen a megatherium just accidentally run into the water because they were enraged unless there was something in the water to fight, but it maybe they do and I just never noticed it.

Also, considering that you had just killed a bunch of stuff to "clear out all the badness" who knows what spawned and started a fight while your back was turned. I'm not sure what all of the species are that spawn in that area, but I'm betting there's at least one species or maybe more that will fight with megatheria.

So I can't tell you for sure what started the fight, or who aggro'd who, but in the end it still comes down to "something started a fight while you weren't looking". Mind you, I feel your pain, it always stinks to lose something good that you wanted to tame, I'm not trying to minimize that annoyance. It's just important to know that the game doesn't randomly or arbitrarily kill things, even when the game is malicious that malice has a rhyme and reason to it.

[Kodking194]

3 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

It does, both kiting and carrying them off will flyers will cause them to despawn, they just don't despawn while you're looking at them.

The game is designed so that animals spawn in, and get despawned, when no one is looking, they didn't want players seeing dino's magically appearing and disappearing on their screen right in front of them. You have to get really lucky to ever watch an animal spawn in, even if they spawn in close to you they will spawn in to the right or left of your screen so that you spot them already spawned in. The best way to see one spawn in is to have a bunch of players working on a spawn point killing stuff, so that their lines of vision constantly overlap each other. The game will try to pick a spot that no one is looking at but if you're all moving around then someone might actually see it pop in.

If you carry a dino away to tame it then it's important not to travel out of the range that keeps it rezzed in. If no one is close enough to keep it rezzed in then it can despawn right from the taming pen. Mind you, there is a certain amount of time that passes. You might get lucky, catch a fresh spawn, take it to your taming pen, fly out of range and come back to find it still there. That just means it's a relatively recent spawn and the timer hasn't progressed long enough to make it despawn. But if you catch something that's been on the map for a while then it's easy to have them go *poof* when you get too far away. As long as you're close enough to keep it rezzed in it won't despawn. Also, once you knock something out it won't despawn, so you're safe to travel out of rez range once it's unconscious.

This is why there aren't piles and piles of live dinos around the bottom of hills and mountains, they wander downhill away from their spawn point until eventually they get too far away and then the game despawns them to prevent overpopulation of downhill locations. It's also why you can see a high level apex predator on a sloped piece of ground, fly away to pick up taming supplies, and when you come back it's gone even though nothing in the area could have killed it. If you spot a good animal in a non-flat area then it's important to have someone keep an eye on it while someone else gets the taming supplies, because if the animal keeps moving farther and farther from its spawn point it will eventually get despawned by the game and something else will get spawned in to replace it back at at the uphill spawn point.

It's also why spots that are just slightly uphill from the bottom of mountains/hills/slopes are good areas to set up taming pens, you will get a constant stream of fresh animals coming downhill towards the taming pen. If they're good then you lure them into the pen and tame them, if they're not good enough to tame you just let them go past the pen and they will despawn soon, making an open spot for something else to spawn in uphill.

i've carried creatures like raptors back to near my base which is no wear near where they spawned, left for a few hours, come back and its still there. so it must take a long time for them to despawn.

[Pipinghot]

1 hour ago, Kodking194 said:

i've carried creatures like raptors back to near my base which is no wear near where they spawned, left for a few hours, come back and its still there. so it must take a long time for them to despawn.

Well, like I said the amount of time that has passed since the dino spawned affects how long it takes before it despawns when it moves away from its spawn point.

Also, I'm curious, was this on single player, Unofficial, Official? How many other bases & people were near yours?  It's worth noting that if anyone causes the dino to rez in it will prevent it from despawning, not just you & your tribe.