The breeding rates in this game are atrocious.

[SarahMonette]

The rates on everything else is fine but the breeding is a nightmare at official rates.  Seriously not fun.  Telling us to go buy a server or play sp is NO.

[Pipinghot]

11 hours ago, SarahMonette said:

The rates on everything else is fine but the breeding is a nightmare at official rates.  Seriously not fun.  Telling us to go buy a server or play sp is NO.

For what it's worth, if you play SP you don't need a server. You can change the configuration file to speed up breeding, changing it to whatever speed makes you happy.

Obviously that doesn't help on Official servers, on those servers you get what you get and you can't do anything about it. But if you decide to try ARK in SP you can configure lots stuff about the game, customize it to be the maximum amount of fun for you, not to mention there are tons of mods that can make the game more interesting & fun in various ways.

Just one example: There are mods that collect eggs and poop for you, because collecting eggs manually is nothing but the game wasting your time with pointless busy work.

On the Official servers ARK is basically a nightmare of a game (in my opinion, obviously) but when you play it SP you have almost complete control over your game experience, you can make the game do just about anything you want in order to make it more fun for yourself.

[Yggdrassil]

It's much easier now with maewings and tek troughs but it is a long boring process, waiting 2 weeks for a giga seeing how it can be gone so easily is just silly. That is why myselfand many others only do most breeding on events and evo's. What i hate even more is the breeding timer, have to wait up to 2 days to breed something im trying to mutate is so annoying.

[DirkInSA]

1 hour ago, Yggdrassil said:

What i hate even more is the breeding timer, have to wait up to 2 days to breed something im trying to mutate is so annoying.

This !!!!
To be sat waiting for a bunch of pixels to become randy is just wrong

Brooding fowl can be quickly induced to breed again if their eggs are removed, mammals can be quickly nudged back into estrous if their babies are removed ... The timers in relation to hatching times are silly.

[DirkInSA]

@SarahMonette I guess this is a "game balance" kinda thing. Given the really MAD levels of bred dinos out in the official realm, maybe the timers here were not set long enough :) - But I wholeheartedly agree - this is the one aspect of "doing stuff" that is waaay beyond a casual gamer, and maybe beyond even a dedicated single dude trying to make their way to ascension on official!

[Yggdrassil]

It is designed to slow the game down, that is why only now are we seeing 254 point stats on official, if breeding rates are always high then dinos would be a max point values years ago, so, to prolong the game it makes sense to slow this down.

From waiting a couple of mins for something to 'breed', then incubate/gestate, then raise to adult can take anything from maybe a couple of days to a couple of weeks, if this was all done in a day, despite my disapproval of timers, i think i would be bored a long time ago.

[CosmicSkeleton]

On 5/2/2022 at 5:37 PM, SarahMonette said:

Telling us to go buy a server or play sp is NO.

You don't have to rent one yourself. There are plenty of suckers like ya boi here that have undertaken that particular task. The trick is finding one that is A: Not filled with cancerous rules/banal junk like mandatory discord attendance/toxicity and nepotism, B: not liable to disappear without warning because the owner decided randomly that they're done paying for others to play for free, or C : Being helmed by an unresponsive admin team that makes no effort to assist in server issues. I'd advise testing the waters on a few that have your desired rates, maybe stay for a week to observe the goings on to see if they fit your tastes. Word of advice though, avoid the mandatory discord ones like the plague. Inevitably it will turn into a cesspit as drama gets ramped up to eleven and favorites are played.

[Vape123]

Play PVP and let everyone else do the breeding.

[Cowgirl]

On 5/3/2022 at 10:27 AM, DirkInSA said:

Brooding fowl can be quickly induced to breed again if their eggs are removed, mammals can be quickly nudged back into estrous if their babies are removed ... The timers in relation to hatching times are silly.

I think the point is to simulate letting the females body rest. Broody avians dont eat or drink much and their body pays for it, and pregnancy is very hard on bodies so its healthy to rest between pregnancies. 

[Dreadcthulhu]

A large part of the slow breeding is game balance, especially for PVP - the faster breeding is the more disposable tames are, which ends up making non-tame defenses weaker in the grand scheme of things.  Its already hard enough for turrets to hold off high health stegos now when they take more than 2 days to raise, now imagine how what it would be like if you could raise soakers in 6 hours. 

[Melcreif]

People don't even understand how much better breading is now on official than it used to be. Back when I first started there were no cryopods and no Maewing. This meant you had to sit there and put food in the babies inventory. Once it was grown a bit you could maybe leave it for an hour or 2 but then needed to check back periodically to make sure it still had food. You also had to setup either torches, or air conditioners to hatch eggs. Now? Stick it in the incubator, wait till it's done. Hatch it, throw it in a cryo until you're ready to raise it. Then use a Maewing and walk away for 8 hours. Not sure what all the fuss is about now.

[Joebl0w13]

People want to drop an egg and get an instant dino.

Then, 3 weeks later, they would complain there is nothing to do now that their dino breeds are all maxed out.

[Tylanater]

I wouldn't expect this to be changed in ark 1 at this point. The problem is that breeding is WAY too powerful, so it has to take a long time. a 450 curated line dino is probably at least 100x stronger than a perfect tame 150 plus the 30% rider imprint bonus on top of that. If breeding was limited to what it was supposed to originally be, 20/20 mutations max, then they could speed it up a lot and not have it be a big deal. So many people have invested so much time in breeding at this point that there will be a huge uproar to any balancing WC were to do around breeding. Even making it 10% easier people would cry that they wasted so much time doing the old breeding. So even though it would be way better for the game, I doubt WC will change breeding at all until Ark 2

[SarahMonette]

On official multiplayer we don't have a problem with the rates it's only breeding rates that are atrocious.  There is no point in giving us an increase in rate if you disclude BREEDING it's the dumb waiting around for eggs to hatch and babies to grow up that is the pain of official.  It's breeding rates we need fixed.  We don't have a problem harvesting.  We don't have a problem taming.  We get our real life lives stolen from us during breeding.  I only look forward to the weekend to take those refrigerated babies out and grow them.  Don't even talk to me about live birth.  Why would I care about anything else except breeding???  Why bother raising any rate other than how fast those babies grow up?????????  You gave us colored dinos now we can't grow them because rates are so bad.

[Frael]

Because it's all about you.

 

[Thekuervito]

You again with you life time problem?leave official servers

[Evhsi]

With an egg you can just wait till the event pops out, but a mammal creature is an alpha nightmare, you can’t pause it once you start the process. Maybe 10-20% faster can be more fun in official 

[SarahMonette]

If the answer is yes why are still bothering with terrible official rates?  If official Ark One is almost over could we not please get a permanent increase on only breeding / baby growth rates?  I say only because the other rates are fine - I avoid unofficial servers they ruin gameplay with increased gathering and their stacking mods.  Breeding rates are the only thing official Wildcard has control over that hurts us most.  We know you cannot stop the lag it comes from players building to big, having to many dinos out not cryo'd, cloning, alpha rex or titan spawn ins and players riding fast sky-hopping dino mounts zipping back forth across the map when pop is high.  Lag does not come from fast growing babies and quick hatching eggs.

 

[Griffin998]

ARK 1 likely isn't going to be completely shut down, since it will be a sort of side revenue for WC apart from ARK II and any other games WC may create. As for breeding rates...well, you could make your own server, and invite your friends over and play like that. Or try your hand at singleplayer.

[Pipinghot]

5 hours ago, SarahMonette said:

If the answer is yes why are still bothering with terrible official rates?

Because there are still record numbers of people playing on Official servers.

No matter how much you and I hate Official rates there are obviously lots and lots of people who are ok with them. WC isn't going to change the Official server for you or me, they would only change the Official servers if too many people are leaving their servers because of the rates. I don't understand why anyone plays on an Official server if they have other options available, but they do, and in large numbers. No matter how much you personally hate it WC isn't going to change the game when there are still so many people playing on their servers.