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The Game That Was....


ForzaProiettile

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13 minutes ago, SgtChop said:

Only because the Devs have no idea how to code a balance PVP experiance so the players get fed up and go PVE

The only "balance" that matters for PvP is; fairness. Everyone spawn naked on the beach and have access to the same resources. After that, it's all about dedication and strategy that have nothing to do with the game mechanics themselves.

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3 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

Yeah, when we consider that 70%+ of their players are playing the game in PvE, it sure makes sense for PvE to be more a focus for their dev time in the next game.

No the game was designed primarily around PVP. PVE and single player were tacked on broaden the appeal to uncompetitive types. It would be unwise for the developers to alienate their core player base.

Also PVP was the most popular mode in the first few years. The only reason PVE is now popular is because a majority of PVP players have left for other games due to a number of factors including newer games, balance issues, not liking where the direction of the game has gone (TEK & magic creatures) etc. There are also fewer PVP players compared to other modes that are prepared to play on the same dead server with their 5 other buddies making their giant pointless base even bigger for years on end. 

All of these factors contribute to there being less PVP players in the game 7 years after release.

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2 hours ago, ForzaProiettile said:

No the game was designed primarily around PVP. PVE and single player were tacked on broaden the appeal to uncompetitive types.

I thought I said this same thing in a previous post... Maybe not, maybe I only thought it and didn't type it out, either way I agree with you on this point. ARK was conceived and designed to be a PvP game (and single-player) at the beginning, with WC only grudgingly being dragged into more PvE by their player base.

2 hours ago, ForzaProiettile said:

Also PVP was the most popular mode in the first few years.

Not true. Maybe for the first year, but not the first few years. I know this because I started comparing PvP to PvE numbers in late 2017, or maybe early 2018, when the game was somewhere between 1-1.5 years old. I was playing PvP at the time and was quite surprised to see that the majority of the player base was on PvE servers.

2 hours ago, ForzaProiettile said:

The only reason PVE is now popular is because a majority of PVP players have left for other games due to a number of factors including newer games, balance issues, not liking where the direction of the game has gone (TEK & magic creatures) etc. There are also fewer PVP players compared to other modes that are prepared to play on the same dead server with their 5 other buddies making their giant pointless base even bigger for years on end.

You're making up answers that feel right to you, in support of a historical claim that isn't true.

WC has always treated the game as though there were more PvP players, and it hasn't been true since at least 2017-18 (and probably not true before then).

2 hours ago, ForzaProiettile said:

All of these factors contribute to there being less PVP players in the game 7 years after release.

A much better explanation is burnout, it's extremely hard to be involved in ARK PvP without it taking over your time and your schedule. This is true for every game that has fully destructive PvP like ARK, burnout is a major factor for PvP players in all games like that.

 

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10 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

Your reasons are just as valid as anyone else's, but none of the three of us can claim to represent the majority unless we have solid evidence to back that claim.

I feel like you are taking subject too serious, and with that thinking that Im on about the same opinions on whatever side. I wasnt argueing about that, you somehow extrude your conclusions of my replies, but I really wasnt on about the discussion wether the Ark community, Im trying to avert it actually haha :) because this discussion could only stale on assumptions, unless a representitive and total audiance wide poll was created on the right moment. Even then its a Wildcard decision because they have to decide wether any production regarding costumers wishes will be profitable. If the wishes of costumers are to expensive or whatever, they arent going to be satisfied as a whole. This discussions really arent going to be conclusive on these forums.

10 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

Even though there's no evidence that a majority of any group dislikes TEK, it seems from the complaints I've read on the forums that PvP players are more likely to complain about TEK than PvE players. Not exactly important, but interesting.

When playing PvE, I also wasnt too enthusiastic about the Meks and all. At first I was also very sceptic about the introduction of the Yuty and its "magic", like where is this going?! And the snow owl with extinction,same thing, but its a lot easier to just ignore that what you dont like and do your thing in PvE than on PvP. Try ignoring the Mek (or Mana, I also dont like those) thats bashing and shooting at your gates...

10 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

That's a strange argument, you're basically proving my point for me.

Again, im not really discussing you :P
Im trying to look at it in my own way...
But hell, I dont know where you get that 70% PvE occupancies from but thats a whoa.
I allways thought it to be at least only 50-50, but it seems that they should focus more on PvE, which should have a way stronger PvP ascpect.
I again have to tend to this game Ive played before, there was this server that had such a exceptional great system in my opinion. Now in Ark you can only start Tribe wars but if the community has 70!% PvE player base, they should really step up the PvEvP, improve and implement a great PvP zone or server, or whatever traverseable PvE or PvP servers or whatever ideas...

10 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

Again, they could just as easily have made any of those changes after Early Access was done. Plenty of games have made huge changes after they release, there is nothing about releasing a game that prevents the developers from making significant changes. This idea you have about the game being stuck with a certain destiny because the 'train has left the station' doesn't make any sense, games make changes all the time, just as ARK has done.

No, because im talking about base-game structures like going All singleplayer, or completely removing PvP tribe focussing on a PvP protagonist rather that tribes and al that. I dont think there are more than a handfull games that did this kind of altering AFTER release, maybe none at all. Im talking about Fortnite like changes (Though i think it might be so that the Survive-the-night game is still a gamemode in Fortnite?)
If you know any games that made cuch changes, please enlightne me, im very curious :)

If they would have worked out Survival of the fittest from the beginning, it would have been almost undoable to change the MAIN gamemode to the open-world game it is now...

10 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

Yeah, when we consider that 70%+ of their players are playing the game in PvE, it sure makes sense for PvE to be more a focus for their dev time in the next game.

I should visit the Ark 2 forums from time to time I guess :)
Ive got a lot of ideas, though Im poor at working them out. Maybe some good topics there where there isnt endless discussing and contradicting, but rather a constructive dedicated conversation. Good ideas can be turned into good projects. Maybe Wildcard has an eye and ear for it then.

 

 

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7 hours ago, ForzaProiettile said:

There are also fewer PVP players compared to other modes that are prepared to play on the same dead server with their 5 other buddies making their giant pointless base even bigger for years on end. 

This is a point though in my opinion...
They could introduce some kind of EvP balancing, like making Alpha tribes a target for eg the Overseer, trying to protect its existance.
I think most people dont like taking other games as an example, but if people know Aion, they know about the Dredgion. It would allways go for the dominating existance in the Abyss, somehing like that, what would restore the balance could be implemented into Ark2 in whatever way in PvP, maybe even PvE.

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5 minutes ago, SunsetErosion said:

This is a point though in my opinion...
They could introduce some kind of EvP balancing, like making Alpha tribes a target for eg the Overseer, trying to protect its existance.
I think most people dont like taking other games as an example, but if people know Aion, they know about the Dredgion. It would allways go for the dominating existance in the Abyss, somehing like that, what would restore the balance could be implemented into Ark2 in whatever way in PvP, maybe even PvE.

Tribe member number limits and alliance count limits are the best way to curb the power of Alpha tribes. It's been suggested many times on the forum over the years and finally resulted in the creation of Small Tribe servers but the problem still remains on normal official servers. There is no logical reason balance wise as to why a tribe should be able to have 40 players and be allied to 5 other tribes on on a server that can only hold fit 70 players.

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1 minute ago, ForzaProiettile said:

Tribe member number limits and alliance count limits are the best way to curb the power of Alpha tribes. It's been suggested many times on the forum over the years and finally resulted in the creation of Small Tribe servers but the problem still remains on normal official servers. There is no logical reason balance wise as to why a tribe should be able to have 40 players and be allied to 5 other tribes on on a server that can only hold fit 70 players.

How do you feel about the idea that tribes that have more than a certain number of players, or eg artifacts or dinos in possesion will have "defenders" spawn next to their base attacking it. Making going and staying Alpha an extra struggle. Too farfeched or... not??

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42 minutes ago, SunsetErosion said:

How do you feel about the idea that tribes that have more than a certain number of players, or eg artifacts or dinos in possesion will have "defenders" spawn next to their base attacking it. Making going and staying Alpha an extra struggle. Too farfeched or... not??

TBH unless there is some amazing AI or the dinos are all level 1000 then its unlikely to make much difference. Might cause a temporary distraction thats about it.

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1 hour ago, ForzaProiettile said:

TBH unless there is some amazing AI or the dinos are all level 1000 then its unlikely to make much difference. Might cause a temporary distraction thats about it.

Well the AI is indeed a problem, but the fact that they can (continously) spawn is more that just a distraction. Im not talking about 1-2 defenders per day, more like a few packs of 5-10 defenders 6 times a day. All turrets need ammo and if they damage certain walls or gates, its easier to get through into alpha bases if there are significant weakened part in the base. Plus a lot of people just dont attack Alpha bases becouse of the consequenses.
I think a lot of Alpha bases stay unattacked for weeks because they practically dont really have enemies. Having the Npc robots (or dinos) charge at biggest bases (bases with the most progress) will make a way more dynamic PvP environment. Its not going to be good in Ark 1 I guess, but this set-up could be implemented into Ark 2 in some way.

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9 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

Not true. Maybe for the first year, but not the first few years. I know this because I started comparing PvP to PvE numbers in late 2017, or maybe early 2018, when the game was somewhere between 1-1.5 years old. I was playing PvP at the time and was quite surprised to see that the majority of the player base was on PvE servers.

EA was 2-ish years.  For the years of EA, it was primarily a PvP playerbase.  The larger playerbase takeover of PvE players started when the game went to 1.0 in '17 and tipped over in ~18'-19', sure, but the EA years can't be discounted because they definitely had a big influence on what the game would become.  PvP was the dominant mode from '15 until the timeframe you are talking about.

That aside, the issue is that there is no way to ever balance PvP in a sandbox style game with so many elements.  People will always find the thing that is the deadliest for the least amount of work and will dedicate a whole server to fill a base with whatever that thing ends up being.  It is harder when WildCard seems to hand it to players on a silver platter by releasing the new-most-OP-thing with the next expansion to garner interest in buying a new xpac.  Now to be clear, WC has been really generous with the amount of money that ARK costs as we've seen from other developers.  It can get far worse, and the cost isn't my concern.  But it's just the way the game has been presented:  Every xpac heralds a full-on meta shift that requires less effort and swings power in an increasingly large way.

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13 hours ago, SunsetErosion said:

But hell, I dont know where you get that 70% PvE occupancies from but thats a whoa.

By looking through the information on the battlemetrics site.

To be fair, it's been quite a while since I looked at it (a year or more) so the numbers could have changed since then. The ratio of PvE/PvP could easily be anywhere from 60/40 to 80/20 by now, but when I looked at it in some detail (2017/18, and again in 2020) it was about 70/30 PvE/PvP.

 

I can't really say anything about the rest of your post because it's rather disjointed and hard to follow. It will have to suffice to say that ARK has done plenty of experimenting with different game modes since it first began, and it was already a game that supported multiple game modes right from the beginning. WC has been more than capable of adding/removing/changing game modes regardless of the state of the game when they first came out with it.

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9 hours ago, TheDonn said:

EA was 2-ish years.  For the years of EA, it was primarily a PvP playerbase.  The larger playerbase takeover of PvE players started when the game went to 1.0 in '17 and tipped over in ~18'-19', sure, but the EA years can't be discounted because they definitely had a big influence on what the game would become.  PvP was the dominant mode from '15 until the timeframe you are talking about.

Whoops, yeah I made a mistake in my thinking about the dates.

Early Access began: June 2, 2015

Early Access ended: August 2017

So yeah, when I was looking at the numbers for PvE vs. PvP it was 2+ years after the game was released. Considering the ratio at that time was 70/30 PvE/PvP, I strongly suspect that the tipping point was significantly before the game went live, but that's fine detail that doesn't doesn't need to be resolved for the purposes of this thread.

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On 3/23/2022 at 11:16 PM, Tylanater said:

Also it seems the pvp community agrees that the most fun you can have in Ark is when the new maps come out. Lost island was so much fun it was crazy. But it's ruined now that transfers are open. Fjord or w/e it's called will be very fun for the first few months as well.

Not just PvP, a lot of people on the PvP servers had a real good time there building up their tribes to get their first OWN bossfight.
Now the servers are turning into just a copy/paste version of all the others with big boxes full of "top stats", fully lagged out.

Unlimitted transferes are not good for the gameplay.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I know that this is an older topic, but these kinds are the most interesting to me. So i share some sentiment in that the game isnt in its golden days anymore, but i think that it has less to due with what's been added and more to due with player mentality.

Just looking at the two videos you've posted, you can feel the vibes and see just how much the players have changed. In the first video skism gets inside the base without a clue of what to do and is just running around while being chased by the enemy team, having a laugh and overall enjoying the moment. In the second video they are much more serious, getting frustrated when they fail to eliminate a target and calling out certain mechanics (which does support your criticisms to be fair.) I do think that you have a fair argument here @ForzaProiettile, but I am more convinced that the game is less enjoyable, due to an optimization mentality that has been taken on by the player base. 

I made a topic about this awhile back, speculating that players are ruining the experience for themselves through guides, youtube and other means of trying to become the best rather than simply enjoying the game and thinking for themselves. I think that if you took todays players and stuck them in 2015 ark you would find a much different experience to the one that we have had. There is no more enjoyment, no more exploration...only efficiency and competition in todays gaming culture.

It extends beyond ark and i don't believe it will end with ark 2's primitive system or any other new mechanics. We will simply wait until the next guide is out and follow it step by step until we are all pro gamers hating each other for being try hards, living as the monsters that we set out to destroy in the first place. 

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I think a lot of the problems with the game stem directly from trying to use the exact same game structure for PvP and PvE. Despite the high customisation of the game settings provided, merging two experiences with vastly different needs is really impossible. Also, the amount of sandbox freedom provided has been to the detriment of the game's balance and technical instability. Specifically the building& Harvesting aspects of the game alongside the lack of pop-cap for tames etc, leading to all sorts of balance and technical difficulties.

Truth be told it's easy to try and critic a game with hindsight after so many years of development and evolution. Design philosophy issues aside, I think their vision always exceeded their technical/production capabilities and usually realised too late leading to releases of less than optimal content in an effort to achieve somewhat reasonable timeframes.

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