Rebalancing Alpha Downriver Run

[SoulSuspect]

I suggest adding 10 seconds to this mission, since the mission is very difficult. Watch these 2 videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygKar1V83tM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJDVlV3jCjU
They completed the mission with 1 second remaining and i completed this mission with 1 second remaining.

I also propose to change time before the start of the race from 15 seconds to 45 seconds. With SSD, the remaining time before the start of the race is 3-5 seconds. On the HDD, the situation is simply deplorable. After loading a mission, sometimes as much as 30 seconds pass in the race. Thus, it is impossible to complete the race on HDD!

[deaduni]

Would love to see more time added to the race seeing as you have to slow down so much to compensate for the boat floating cause latency and lag, it should be just as viable as all the other races like circuit chase, slide and glide, slipstream etc. 

there should be another nerf to alpha survive the ark id love to see something other than the melee meta be more viable, bow and cluster grenades is a skin of the teeth way i get its alpha but it shouldn't be stressful this is a game it should be fun. 

Add admin commands to be able to instant complete a mission, for personal and other people on server whos pc cant keep up. 

[Collprince]

they've acknowledged the fact that their quality assessment team needs to be fired (not literally) and inadvertently said that they essentially see console players as second class citizens. "ark1 issues are sorted by priority" this shows that they dont see the 5 seconds it would take to change 5:00 to 5:30 as a 'priority' despite it having been like this for over a year and only affecting console players.

[Collprince]

firstly. even a year after gen 2 released there are still multiple locations and instances where upon doing a hunting/tracking mission on gen 2 there will either be tracks that glitch under the mesh rendering the mission uncompleteable, the targets spawning inside walls and under the mesh. this is most blatant at the mission terminal located at 33lat and 91long. out every 10 missions there'll probably be like 2 or 3 where you physically cannot complete the mission due to some of the aforementioned reasons. could someone potentially compile a list of locations this happens and fix it, it might not be the most major thing but when you're doing dozens of missions a day for grinding the amount of missions which you literally cant complete add up to be quite substantial and equate to a rather large chunk of time just going to waste.

 

as for downriver run, well theres many not very nice things i wish to say to the dev team and the people responsible for quality assessing and balancing some of the missions. for context, i play official pvp on my xbox series x and have been playing ark / official pvp for years upon years. in my time playing ark i have been meshed and insided dozens of times and never have i been so aggrevated as i was upon learning that downriver run on alpha difficulty is essentially impossible on console. when it comes to being meshed and insided i can at least attribute that to malicious action by trash people and rationalise it. downriver run on alpha difficulty however i cannot wrap my head around because it has to have been decided by the dev team, not only is it difficult in the sense that you have to manage your canoes health and be as fast as possible which is rather stressful in of itself. but its difficult in the sense that it is quite literally impossible to do on console/controller. due to the nature of playing on controller being rather different to mouse and keyboard there are obvious differences between what these two mediums can achieve, when it comes to mouse and keyboard you can actually complete downriver run on alpha although only barely (most time left i've ever seen is 10 seconds). as for controller it is quite literally impossible to beat downriver run on alpha for 99% of players because of the ways controller work, in order to turn you have to choose to sacrifice speed which is something you cant do on a 5 minute long mission which is barely enough time for MnK players let alone people who play on console/controllers. i have ran this mission dozens upon dozens of times, tried every route, tried every tactic and done every single thing i could to potentially save time but the truth is that there simply just isn't enough time to actually complete the mission on controller, the furthest i have ever managed to get over the course of my dozens of hours wasted on this mission i was about 20-30 seconds before the end, past the zig zag section and just about reaching the final boost (about 20-30 seconds more and i'd be at the end). it is physically not possible to get futher than this point on controller as i have reached this point countless times but never further.

can someone on the management/dev team at least try to complete downriver run on console while using a controller to see that it is unbeatable thus effectively locking the majority of the console community out of ever being able to attempt rockwell prime on alpha. please dear god give console players another 20-30 seconds so we can actually complete the mission. of the small handful of people i know that have actually completed downriver run on alpha, all had to resort to using mouse and keyboard on console which you shouldn't require in order to just do basic stuff in the game.

i mean, its not exactly as if downriver run is the be all end all of ark, it doesn't give you a million hexagon points (barely even 0.1%), it doesn't give you insane blueprints or loot. there is no reason whatsoever for the mission to be so unforgiving, even if you took away the buginess of using the canoe, bumping into stuff  you're over a meter away from and the litany of other issues with this mission, there simply isn't sufficient time to complete it with controller. the console community shouldn't be forced to resort to being limited to beta rockwell prime because of one poorly designed/balanced mission which i sorely doubt was quality assessed too thoroughly. why is this mission which is supposed to be a fun little minigame harder than literally all endgame content and boss fights combined.

i implore someone at studio wildcard to try and complete downriver run on alpha with a controller on console without wanting to lay facedown on a beltsander, something i would rather do than willingly ever choose to do downriver run on alpha as it currently exists if i ever manage to complete it, which i and the console community never will unless we get more reasonable conditions for completing the mission.

[Collprince]

an example of the mission being literally impossible

[Collprince]

another complaint about the time constraint of downriver run (not sure if this guy plays controller or not)

[Collprince]

a complaint about creatures you're tracking spawning under the map (you still have this happen even to this day)

[deaduni]

This has been said 100 times over by so many people add more time and nerf canoe damage this is  a game it should be fun. even on unofficial or single player its next to impossible why is it so hard? 

[Spacelycan24]

Okay so I know its not that much of a push but downriver run alpha just seems impossible. On console there's just almost so many things that go into this. Your control over the canoe has to be perfect, you have to find a perfect route around a 5 minute long map, you have to hit every speed boost, rely on not hitting rocks, not lagging at all, or the canoe randomly flying and more and then you may possibly be able to complete this mission. I have every other gen p2 mission but this one just seems impossible. And to add to the fact I'm on a very populated Xbox pc unofficial server so I can't exactly have perfect ping either. Literally even 45 seconds added onto the time would make this mission possible. I don't have any other issue with this mission but a canoe race shouldn't be the most difficult mission to do.

[Collprince]

after playing ark for years upon years and spending thousands of hours playing it, grinding for boss fights and then doing them. it would be nice to at least have even a slight chance of ever being able to complete the final official boss fight in the journey that was ark 1.

 

but at this point i think the devs and management team just dont care honestly, gen 2 has been out for like a year at this point and they've never even talked about downriver run let alone ever done anything to actually make it possible on console. screw us people on console i guess.

[Collprince]

it would be nice to at least have a chance of ever doing rockwell prime on alpha, but as it stands theres just no chance on console.

at the very least you need an additional 15-30 seconds on console to ever complete downriver run on alpha because that is consistently what you'll be behind the necessary time left for completion to be possible by even the thinnest margins.

[deaduni]

please even like 10 seconds ❤️

[slayerofzombs87]

ok first and foremost this race is absurd due too server performance you need a literal perfect run too make it and then sometimes for some reason your doing flawless and due too desync and world save / server lag you end up back where you was but less time than you started with once you made the leap over the waterfall this mission needs more time added 10 seconds or it needs the canoe to be less brittle some rocks i can bounce off of take no damage then some i can breeze past and get wrecked in one hit further down.this mission is the most absurd in terms of frustration and near being impossible even on keyboard and mouse. so wc devs have a look at this race go and play it on an official test it see how you do guarantee you cant do it! please change something about this mission. and yes i know it seems like im ranting. im frustrated and annoyed at how much of a joke this mission actually is! and i have beaten all the other missions on gamma and beta that are a struggle