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Offline Raid Protection in ARK II


acat

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First of all, im looking forward to a more primitive experience in ARK II and hope the release doesnt get pushed out of 2022. But onto the topic:

 

The ORP system we have in ARK 1 provides permanent and complete prevention of any damage to creatures and structures. This leads to several kinds of exploits or unpleasant gameplay. For example, people place spam with an alt tribe to block others from fobbing up or claiming a cartain base spot. I have also experienced people who stopped playing, but kept their bases up by logging in once a week, doing that for years without ever playing and progressing, denying any other tribe to use that base location. All these things are hard to deal with, since it is very unlikely to be online and notice when the owner of those perma orp structures comes online to refresh the decay timer. It could be at any time within a 7-20 days window (depending on the type of stuff) and only takes 5 minutes plus the 15 minute timer until orp kicks back in. And it is not only annoying for the players, it is also time consuming for the support to deal with all the tickets about those things and to investigate which structures are legit and which are not.

 

Suggestion: In the first five (or maybe less) days after a tribe logs out, the ORP system provides full protection, like the current system works. In the following five days, creatures and structures take 1/20th of the normal damage. In the five days after that, they take 1/10th of regular damage. After those 15 days, everything takes normal damage, as if the tribe was online. Those numbers are just an idea and might have to be adjusted to ARK 2 mechanics of course. After 20 days even structures of the highest building tier should decay, basically as it is with tek in ARK 1.

 

Such a system could make it way harder for abusing tribes to maintain parma orp structures, and at the same time it gets easier for other tribes to catch them refreshing or to deal with the issue themselves as soon as stuff can take damage again. The 15 minute timer until orp kicks in might also have to be adjusted, in ARK 1 it is a bit too short in my opinion, it is still viable for bigger tribes to just log out instead of defending their base. Additionally, pin codes should stop working on orp structures, or be removed alltogether in the orp mode, and personal ownership should not be allowed at all (both open up easy methods for living in invincible bases and serve little to no purpose).

 

I really hope wildcard includes an ORP mode in ARK II (and considers my ideas of course :D). The smaller clusters with an ORP mode in ARK 1 provide a surrounding where smaller groups have a chance to survive in pvp, and large groups like we know them from regular official dont even exist, because there is no need. Tribes dont need to have ppl online 24/7 and on the small cluster it doesnt require a huge group to become alpha.

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56 minutes ago, JJacky said:

Orp that isnt an orp? As a solo player that would be a big turn-off. Cheaters will always find a way. If the first 5 days is standard orp then theyd have bots logging in and out every 5 days. 

It is ORP. A reduction of damage is a form of protection against offline raiders. And as i said, the numbers are just an example to explain the idea of a protection that runs out after a while instead of being permanent. Cheaters always find a way is a lazy argument imo, if there are options to fight known problems they should be taken, otherwise its absolutely pointless. I have also never heard of anybody using a bot to refresh their bases. And i dont think it would even work, because a bot doesnt know where to go to render in all structures, it is hard to program it to refill generators, it cant react if an enemy shows up during refreshing and it would most likely cost money. Who the hell would want that? For an active tribe it is no problem to log in often enough to always have full protection. For solo players it shouldnt be an issue either, especially since they dont have such big bases, but as i  said, the numbers are just an idea.

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5 hours ago, JJacky said:

I am mostly a solo player with work/family/hobbies. If ORP doesnt offer total immunity for a significant amount of time, then there's no sense playing the game. Full protection and not "reduced damage" or big tribes will wipe you regardless of whether you are orped or not. Gotta look at the bigger picture. 

I did look at the bigger picture and still think my suggestion is a good one, the benefits outweigh the negatives you describe in my opinion. But its just my opinion, and your point is a very valid one nonetheless.

5 hours ago, JJacky said:

On a sidenote, there are really good orp mods that could be implemented into ark2. One of my favorites is that you can only orp a spherical area of up to X foundations diameter per map instead of everything on the map.

Thats a very good idea, i have used such a mod long long ago and did think about spheric ORP systems before making the topic. I saw a few issues with it tho: A sphere is a limited space, it might not be enough for bigger tribes. First thing that happens if they run out of space is building a base that follwos the form of the sphere to get as much inside as possible. If that is not enough either anymore, then they will create alt tribes to have another sphere worth of protected space, which creates new perma orp structures. A way around that would be a sphere that adjusts its size to the size of the tribe, but how would you do that? Based on amount of structures? Based on number of tribemembers? - Both could be abused, it is easy to spam structures or alt chars to maximize the spheres radius. If cave building is a thing in ARK II it will also encourage the cave meta even more, since it allows you to have a big base inside and the bubble protects all the important defenses around the entrance. To tackle the entire alt char and alt tribe stuff you could only allow one character per cluster and account, but the hardcore players would not like that idea at all, and people who have the money to buy multiple copies of the game wouldnt care about that limitation. The idea is definitely worth to consider tho, maybe other people have ideas that could make it work well.

A friend of mine, who also spent lots of time on the official orp clusters, always argues for an orp system, that calculates a time of protection based on how long the tribe has been online before logging out. I dont know how that could work exactly but thought id throw it out here...

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  • 3 weeks later...

They could make the current ORP much better if they put some time into it but they don't want to I guess. For example pincodes are disabled on vaults and stuff so you can't have invincible loots on an alt account but pincodes are not disabled on gates so everyone gates their caves off. Simple solution would be disable pincodes on gates or turn off cave building on ORP servers. Cave meta sucks anyway. Hopefully ark 2 has better ORP though.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Unfortunately ORP gets abused so much on official pvp because Wildcard offers next to no support. There's a bunch of caves blocked off by behemoth gates. The timer is reset once in a while, but deeper inside the cave there's a secondary tribe that is actually very active and just uses the pin-locked gate to access their base.

I've stormed a few of these bases by finding out the times at which they abusers play and then just rush in when they open the gate.

15 minute timer is also not enough. Lots of tribes log out whenever they are attacked and then you have 15 minutes to soak turrets, break in and steal their stuff, which is usually not going to happen if they've built enough defences.

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  • 3 months later...

In all honesty I think raid times are a better idea. Sure some offline raiding will still happen. But it's way less common and you don't have to worry about 3am raids etc. ORP causes too much problems in general with clutter on map, ORP abuse using allys/pincodes/alt accounts, etc. Raid times would 90% fix the problem and there's no abuse that can come from it.

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On 7/6/2022 at 11:00 AM, Tylanater said:

In all honesty I think raid times are a better idea. Sure some offline raiding will still happen. But it's way less common and you don't have to worry about 3am raids etc. ORP causes too much problems in general with clutter on map, ORP abuse using allys/pincodes/alt accounts, etc. Raid times would 90% fix the problem and there's no abuse that can come from it.

ORP should exist, except it should be an object that you place down that gives the protection.
Whatsmore, that should be for tribes of 5 or less people, and give them the choice of ORP or raid times, whichever is more ideal for them.
Any Tribe beyond that should be forced to have Raid Times.

As far as building a behemoth gate in a cave then the base further in, just don't allow tribes to place behemoth gates in caves unless they have raid timers enabled. 
Better yet, disable cave building unless you have raid timers enabled.

Raid Timers just won't work for solo players, as they can't exactly defend against a timed alpha raid.
However for bigger Tribes, it's a must, as they have so many people on, an ORP is just useless, driving them to do exploiting such as placing a behemoth gate with a smurf account in another Tribe.


Currently the Fjordur CrossArk6 is awful.
People running around with exploits to see any location where there is a base then destroying it with their tek suit for giggles.
In addition, blocking the element cave, blocking the Mines of Moria entirely with ORP, blocking every single XP node on the map with ORP, etc.

Though to be fair, in this case, its not just for giggles, as the server is almost population capped every other day so they are trying to get people off of the servers so they can play.

Why WildCard hasn't added another set of these servers is beyond me.

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  • 3 weeks later...

The Question is legit and i like the original idea.

One of the possible solution is setting a timer tied to playtime to avoid simple login to rest, and a way to make "killable" dinos that are far from legit buildings.
E.g.
1. ORP protection make invulnerable dinos only if they are in a specific range of owned build. This will solve the FCK.trick to drop dinos on other bases or teleporters.
2. ORP protection make invulnerable based on dinamic decay time that will be calculated on % playtime eg. playing 4h in 1day  you will get a ORP for full decay time, 2h in 1day you will get ORP for half decay time and so on ...

(or something like that ...)

 

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  • 4 months later...

Conan has the best raid system I've ever seen. Very balanced. A 6 hour raid window from 6pm to 12pm.if you don't log in? Tough, bye bye base. If you do log in? Better be prepared for online raids.

Survive past 12? Great you still have chance to defend next time. 

This system would practically kill all arks offline cheating instantly because you can't mesh a base after 12pm when ORP kicks in. 

 

The 24 hour raid window in arks toxic as hell. 7,000 hours on officials pvp and many of those were staying up late defending a base knowing the second you log out you've lost everything which leads to unhealthy late nights. 

 

 

 

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22 minutes ago, Ronson12 said:

Conan has the best raid system I've ever seen. Very balanced. A 6 hour raid window from 6pm to 12pm.if you don't log in? Tough, bye bye base. If you do log in? Better be prepared for online raids.

Survive past 12? Great you still have chance to defend next time. 

This system would practically kill all arks offline cheating instantly because you can't mesh a base after 12pm when ORP kicks in. 

 

The 24 hour raid window in arks toxic as hell. 7,000 hours on officials pvp and many of those were staying up late defending a base knowing the second you log out you've lost everything which leads to unhealthy late nights. 

 

 

 

Wait, so you have to play the game more hours a week then you work? No thanks.

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On 12/11/2022 at 2:24 AM, Joebl0w13 said:

Wait, so you have to play the game more hours a week then you work? No thanks.

No one said that 🤔

 

You don't "have" to do anything. You have the choice. 

People clearly have time to babysit/no life bases currently in ark with a 24/7 raid window so 6 is a cake walk..... 

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I guess developers are introducing new element to force to pvp even notorious pve players.

Its new humanoid monster species with teeth problem as we have seen in trailer.

They will have significant advantage as alien planet is their own planet and they know it better than any new coming player.

You don't need human player as enemy as locals will find you and destroy you faster than anyone else.

And don't hope that logging off will force them to stop roaming around on public official server.

Your base will be found and destroyed.

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56 minutes ago, Noa said:

Its new humanoid monster species with teeth problem as we have seen in trailer.

Fighting them is still just PVE though. It's the same as fighting dinos, with different skins.

56 minutes ago, Noa said:

And don't hope that logging off will force them to stop roaming around on public official server.

Your base will be found and destroyed.

I wouldn't sweat this too much since nobody knows a single thing about how the AI or any other game mechanics are going to work. 

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