I have over 20k hours in ARK, 99% from official pvp servers, starting from a few weeks after the games release. These are the things I would recommend fixing to make ARK: Ascended the best game possible. These are mainly regarding Official Smalltribes Servers.
1. Removing Broken Maps
I suggest keeping maps like Genesis 2 strictly PVE/Single player, removing it from smalltribes, or removing a lot of the broken items/dinos. Alot of these issues dont affect main official servers as much as small tribes. 6 man was completely ruined by the addition of this map.
GENESIS 2/Fjord:
-THE MAP: Genesis 1 on steroids. Missions are WAYYYY too easy. It takes 3 minutes to do a velo hunt mission, and it gives you more points than any genesis one mission. People began turreting off entire areas so that the mission would be automated, giving them infinite points. Element is also too easy on this map.
- Stryder: makes farming too easy. You can right click on ab and get infinite metal. You can put stryders in the small genesis 1 lunar cave, and spawn on them every hour, right click and get 2-4k element in 2 minutes. They are too easy to tame for how OP they are. They completely ruined the grind aspect of PVP. People run around with 4 capped suits, capped rifles, etc, because they have infinite resources. TLDR: ruined the grinding aspect of ark, makes gathering resources too easy, too easy to obtain one
- Shadowmane: They are easy to tame, fast to raise, every single one has a good saddle, without having to craft it. Their hp scales too high, along with their damage reduction mechanic, they are impossible to kill. Along with them being the most mobile non flier in the game. They can dismount with 0 skill and 0 counter. Before shadowmanes tactics like snow owl would be used. The snow owl rider had to hit behind the giga to dismount, and could only freeze a few at a time. You could plant Z the owl then kill it, spread out, etc. TLDR: Has too much hp, mobility, utility, no counter, unkillable
- Astrodelphis: Too fast, does too much damage, glitchy so its hard to dismount, needs to use WAY more element when using its saddle for boosting speed, or shooting.
- Tek Bow: Does way too much damage, doesnt use enough shards. Tek bows made gigas almost completely irrelevant. When you pop a giga, it gets shot by 2 capped tek bows and dies in 20 seconds. They also added to the cancer cage culture with the tranq arrows. This item is a big reason why Gen2 ruined pvp.
- Voidwyrm: Has insane health, and like the shadowmane, a no skill point and click dismount, that doesnt affect your tribemates. People go around with 100k hp voidwyrms dismounting people, while their tribemate sits on a 2k melee lightning and oneshots them once they're dismounted. Big reason why rag pvp was ruined.
- Fed suits: They cannot break........ There is no point to wear normal tek, unless you are suit pvping, you can get an infinite amount of fed suits just by spawning. they makes tek suits completely irrelevant. They have bad armor values, but when people have 800 hp, it doesnt matter.
- Noglins: Again added to the cancer caging meta, too easy to tame. They have alot of counters, but they are a horrible addition to small tribes.
- Desmo: outside of valguero, flying should not be allowed in caves. Desmos are so fast, that turrets hardly register them. You can swoop onto someones fortnite, pick them, and drop them into your turrets without taking any damage because youre so fast.
- Fjordhawk: When you die, and youre tribemate cant get your body, you should lose your gear. This is a VERY pve tame. Half the times it doesnt even work, it just deletes to antimesh, then no one gets the kit.
- Defence Units: This is an extinction "tame" but it added to the automated farming problem plaguing ark. You can craft these very cheap, and harvest them for WAY more than you used to craft. People would kill thousands to farm electronics and oil. No one uses these in PVP besides to farm.
- Meat plants: Removes the complexity of raising and feeding dinos, you throw a dino out, take 10 seconds to hit a plant, fill maewing, thats it. You dont have to leave your base to raise a dino.
Id like to add, I think a lot of good things cames from gen2 like, Maewings, net guns, tek crop plots, exo meks, mannequins, etc, that should still be in the game, adding spawns to island or every map for maewings, and making the items base game engrams, like cryopods, not map locked ones.
2. Revamping maps
A lot of maps dont have good locations for the present ark meta. Caves are pretty much the only thing built, for good reason. Modded servers like MTS revamp locations to fit the current meta. They have added dozens of caves in spots where bases could never be built today. I would suggest doing the same. Adding a ton of good/medium tier caves, so that people have more places to build that wont get instantly raided.
3. Removing/Revamping EVO events
At the very least, remove breeding boost from evo events. Breeding should never be included in an evo event, raising times should be set in stone, excluding holiday events perhaps. Making dinos too easy to raise removes the attachment and value of them. If evo events stay, they should only boost EXP gain, taming, and maybe gathering. Gathering should only be kept in if it doesnt effect the amount of element you get from genesis 1 and extinction element veins. Currently people abuse evo events to get insane amount of element from genesis one ele runs, and element veins. I will make another point about revamping element later.
4. Revamping Element
Element is one of, if not the most important material in ARK PVP. Currently there are 3 maps where element is too easy, Gen1, Gen2, and extinction. As mentioned, these maps wouldnt be as broken for element if EVO events didnt exist. Getting 1k-1.5k from a 50k element vein is balanced, and the same from a gen1 ele run. With evo events you get 2x-3x that amount which is far too much. Element gachas should be completely removed. People create scripts that run element gachas 24/7, removing the need to do boss fights on other maps. Again, making things too easy to get decreases its value and attachment. Prior to gacha scripts, you had to prep bossfights, or run element veins for dust before you fobbed. You had to use the little element you had sparingly during a fob. Now people can transfer over infinite element, removing another layer of complexity to PVP.
5. Removing automated farming
This ties into the element point. People clone thousands of karkinos, ovis, and craft thousands of defence units to automate farming, polymer, chitin, hide, pelt, electronics, and oil. With a melee character, you can harvest tens of thounsands of hide from an ovis, and harvest a ton of electronics and oil from defence units. People dont do poly ruins, they clone karkis and harvest them with a moschops for 5k polymer per. I'd suggest ovis dropping a normal amount of hide, like every other dino, or not dropping hide at all, and only pelt. Possibly make it so moschops cant harvest poly from karkis. Defence units addressed above.
6. Conclusion
This is all from a small tribes PVP point of view. Ark is not meant to be an easy game, I've put over 20k hours into it, and grinding is one the reasons this game was so fun. Putting the time in to make gear, raise dinos, mutation breed etc. Almost every aspect was enjoyable, yet grindy. Doing metal runs on Ab with a skiff/magmasaur or and karki/anky. Setting up a cliff plat and spending hours doing poly runs on crystal isles. Taking an angler to crystal isle bubbles for black pearls, doing an element vein to make dust. Doing missions for hours on end for spark/ charcoal so you could make your c4. Killing things in lunar for electronics. Spending those first 10 hours keeping a close eye on your babies, doing meat runs and berry runs. These were all ruined by the things listed above, the game is simply too easy now. People played ark PVP because it was the most complex, grindy, progessive, yet insanely fun game out there. Every point I made led to the same conclusion, the game has lost its complexity, to a point where 90% of people dont enjoy it anymore. If ark ascended doesnt address a majority of these problems, i fear for its longevity.
Suggestion
Kman7110200
I have over 20k hours in ARK, 99% from official pvp servers, starting from a few weeks after the games release. These are the things I would recommend fixing to make ARK: Ascended the best game possible. These are mainly regarding Official Smalltribes Servers.
1. Removing Broken Maps
I suggest keeping maps like Genesis 2 strictly PVE/Single player, removing it from smalltribes, or removing a lot of the broken items/dinos. Alot of these issues dont affect main official servers as much as small tribes. 6 man was completely ruined by the addition of this map.
GENESIS 2/Fjord:
-THE MAP: Genesis 1 on steroids. Missions are WAYYYY too easy. It takes 3 minutes to do a velo hunt mission, and it gives you more points than any genesis one mission. People began turreting off entire areas so that the mission would be automated, giving them infinite points. Element is also too easy on this map.
- Stryder: makes farming too easy. You can right click on ab and get infinite metal. You can put stryders in the small genesis 1 lunar cave, and spawn on them every hour, right click and get 2-4k element in 2 minutes. They are too easy to tame for how OP they are. They completely ruined the grind aspect of PVP. People run around with 4 capped suits, capped rifles, etc, because they have infinite resources. TLDR: ruined the grinding aspect of ark, makes gathering resources too easy, too easy to obtain one
- Shadowmane: They are easy to tame, fast to raise, every single one has a good saddle, without having to craft it. Their hp scales too high, along with their damage reduction mechanic, they are impossible to kill. Along with them being the most mobile non flier in the game. They can dismount with 0 skill and 0 counter. Before shadowmanes tactics like snow owl would be used. The snow owl rider had to hit behind the giga to dismount, and could only freeze a few at a time. You could plant Z the owl then kill it, spread out, etc. TLDR: Has too much hp, mobility, utility, no counter, unkillable
- Astrodelphis: Too fast, does too much damage, glitchy so its hard to dismount, needs to use WAY more element when using its saddle for boosting speed, or shooting.
- Tek Bow: Does way too much damage, doesnt use enough shards. Tek bows made gigas almost completely irrelevant. When you pop a giga, it gets shot by 2 capped tek bows and dies in 20 seconds. They also added to the cancer cage culture with the tranq arrows. This item is a big reason why Gen2 ruined pvp.
- Voidwyrm: Has insane health, and like the shadowmane, a no skill point and click dismount, that doesnt affect your tribemates. People go around with 100k hp voidwyrms dismounting people, while their tribemate sits on a 2k melee lightning and oneshots them once they're dismounted. Big reason why rag pvp was ruined.
- Fed suits: They cannot break........ There is no point to wear normal tek, unless you are suit pvping, you can get an infinite amount of fed suits just by spawning. they makes tek suits completely irrelevant. They have bad armor values, but when people have 800 hp, it doesnt matter.
- Noglins: Again added to the cancer caging meta, too easy to tame. They have alot of counters, but they are a horrible addition to small tribes.
- Desmo: outside of valguero, flying should not be allowed in caves. Desmos are so fast, that turrets hardly register them. You can swoop onto someones fortnite, pick them, and drop them into your turrets without taking any damage because youre so fast.
- Fjordhawk: When you die, and youre tribemate cant get your body, you should lose your gear. This is a VERY pve tame. Half the times it doesnt even work, it just deletes to antimesh, then no one gets the kit.
- Defence Units: This is an extinction "tame" but it added to the automated farming problem plaguing ark. You can craft these very cheap, and harvest them for WAY more than you used to craft. People would kill thousands to farm electronics and oil. No one uses these in PVP besides to farm.
- Meat plants: Removes the complexity of raising and feeding dinos, you throw a dino out, take 10 seconds to hit a plant, fill maewing, thats it. You dont have to leave your base to raise a dino.
Id like to add, I think a lot of good things cames from gen2 like, Maewings, net guns, tek crop plots, exo meks, mannequins, etc, that should still be in the game, adding spawns to island or every map for maewings, and making the items base game engrams, like cryopods, not map locked ones.
2. Revamping maps
A lot of maps dont have good locations for the present ark meta. Caves are pretty much the only thing built, for good reason. Modded servers like MTS revamp locations to fit the current meta. They have added dozens of caves in spots where bases could never be built today. I would suggest doing the same. Adding a ton of good/medium tier caves, so that people have more places to build that wont get instantly raided.
3. Removing/Revamping EVO events
At the very least, remove breeding boost from evo events. Breeding should never be included in an evo event, raising times should be set in stone, excluding holiday events perhaps. Making dinos too easy to raise removes the attachment and value of them. If evo events stay, they should only boost EXP gain, taming, and maybe gathering. Gathering should only be kept in if it doesnt effect the amount of element you get from genesis 1 and extinction element veins. Currently people abuse evo events to get insane amount of element from genesis one ele runs, and element veins. I will make another point about revamping element later.
4. Revamping Element
Element is one of, if not the most important material in ARK PVP. Currently there are 3 maps where element is too easy, Gen1, Gen2, and extinction. As mentioned, these maps wouldnt be as broken for element if EVO events didnt exist. Getting 1k-1.5k from a 50k element vein is balanced, and the same from a gen1 ele run. With evo events you get 2x-3x that amount which is far too much. Element gachas should be completely removed. People create scripts that run element gachas 24/7, removing the need to do boss fights on other maps. Again, making things too easy to get decreases its value and attachment. Prior to gacha scripts, you had to prep bossfights, or run element veins for dust before you fobbed. You had to use the little element you had sparingly during a fob. Now people can transfer over infinite element, removing another layer of complexity to PVP.
5. Removing automated farming
This ties into the element point. People clone thousands of karkinos, ovis, and craft thousands of defence units to automate farming, polymer, chitin, hide, pelt, electronics, and oil. With a melee character, you can harvest tens of thounsands of hide from an ovis, and harvest a ton of electronics and oil from defence units. People dont do poly ruins, they clone karkis and harvest them with a moschops for 5k polymer per. I'd suggest ovis dropping a normal amount of hide, like every other dino, or not dropping hide at all, and only pelt. Possibly make it so moschops cant harvest poly from karkis. Defence units addressed above.
6. Conclusion
This is all from a small tribes PVP point of view. Ark is not meant to be an easy game, I've put over 20k hours into it, and grinding is one the reasons this game was so fun. Putting the time in to make gear, raise dinos, mutation breed etc. Almost every aspect was enjoyable, yet grindy. Doing metal runs on Ab with a skiff/magmasaur or and karki/anky. Setting up a cliff plat and spending hours doing poly runs on crystal isles. Taking an angler to crystal isle bubbles for black pearls, doing an element vein to make dust. Doing missions for hours on end for spark/ charcoal so you could make your c4. Killing things in lunar for electronics. Spending those first 10 hours keeping a close eye on your babies, doing meat runs and berry runs. These were all ruined by the things listed above, the game is simply too easy now. People played ark PVP because it was the most complex, grindy, progessive, yet insanely fun game out there. Every point I made led to the same conclusion, the game has lost its complexity, to a point where 90% of people dont enjoy it anymore. If ark ascended doesnt address a majority of these problems, i fear for its longevity.
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