The Big Boys (Giganotosaurus,Spinosaurus,Tyrannosaurus

[vanyelxp5]

How about, instead of trying to take the Giga from his place at the top or shove the Spino and Rex up there with it... why not have other dinos that are just as good?

 

An amphibious dino that could be the spino to the rex's Giga. Something faster that doesn't hit quite as hard, or have as much HP, but is able to swim as well as run on land... Maybe even give it a buff in the water (or a debuff while on land as the drawback instead of an enrage mechanic like the giga.) Toss in an herbivore at the same level with higher HP, similar damage, and lower attack speed, and you keep the same dynamic that has been in place through the entire game. If you nerf the giga down to the Rex/spino/bronto level, not only do you have to literally rebalance everything about the dino (to the point where you're basically creating a completely new creature anyway) but it's a massive slap in the face for anyone who went through the trouble of taming one already. Keep it at the same difficulty to tame, and there is literally no reason for people to want one. Why would you put up with a dino that takes more than 5x as many arrows/darts to take down.... requires more than 10X the attention... well over triple the resources to tame, AND has a mechanic where it will kill you for funsies if you let it take too much damage... if it doesn't give you any extra power? The answer is, you wouldn't. You'd tame a good Rex and ignore the Giga entirely.

 

And that's not factoring in the time it takes to raise one. 4X as long as a Rex's maturation time. For that big of a time investment, it has to be the top of the food chain.

 

That doesn't mean it has to be the only thing there, but it does mean that you can't just pull it down, or push the Rex up to match it. A rex is just too much easier to tame than a Giga to make it possible without being a horrible balance issue. And don't say "Make it harder to tame" pretty much everyone already has an army or two of Rexes, You can't buff the base creature to giga level, and not buff them too. And you can't just make the giga easier to tame, because people already have them, and it would be a bunch of trike feces to say "Oh, good for you spending all that time taming that... but now it's the same tier as a rex..... Bye!"

 

As for the other ideas being presented. I agree that it would be cool to have a group of raptor riders take a Giga down with flaming arrows. Though in order to see that happen, you have to either A: Lower the Giga's base speed to where it seems like it should be in the Dossier (it's supposed to be slower than the Rex, but virtually unstoppable. That's one change to it I would support.) or B: raise the raptor's base speed to where you could speed train it to be faster than the Giga without sacrificing too much in other areas. I'd also say that the controls for weapon out riding need a lot of work before this could be done properly.

 

 

[Lockjaw]

1 hour ago, vanyelxp5 said:

...

Aaaand that's one of the specific reasons that someone on this forum gave as to why he wants a complete wipe of official servers. So that people could look beyond their own time investment and be in a better position to give objective feedback.

Experimenting and rebalancing are an inevitable part of early access, even if people who have the overpowered stuff view it as a slap in their face. If that's how you look at it then you should probably have waited until the game is completed and polished before buying it. We're here to test and to give Wildcard our feedback and suggestions, which is exactly what everyone in this thread is doing. If the imbalance bothers us then you can be sure that it will likewise bother a lot of future customers who haven't yet bought the game. It's our job to bring these things to the Wildcard's attention so that they know what they're doing right and what they're doing wrong.

And yes, things like difficulty in taming and the time that it takes to breed are subject to change just like everything else in the game. Actually, these things are already changing. With rates being boosted and new tools being brought into play it's a lot easier to tame a Giga now than it was in the beginning. One of the major differences between taming a Rex and taming a Giga used to be their preferred kibble, but now you can tame either one using raw mutton. And there's a very good chance that breeding will likewise become easier with Tek Tier.

[vanyelxp5]

24 minutes ago, Lockjaw said:

Aaaand that's one of the specific reasons that someone on this forum gave as to why he wants a complete wipe of official servers. So that people could look beyond their own time investment and be in a better position to give objective feedback.

Experimenting and rebalancing are an inevitable part of early access, even if people who have the overpowered stuff view it as a slap in their face. If that's how you look at it then you should probably have waited until the game is completed and polished before buying it. We're here to test and to give Wildcard our feedback and suggestions, which is exactly what everyone in this thread is doing. If the imbalance bothers us then you can be sure that it will likewise bother a lot of future customers who haven't yet bought the game. It's our job to bring these things to the Wildcard's attention so that they know what they're doing right and what they're doing wrong.

And yes, things like difficulty in taming and the time that it takes to breed are subject to change just like everything else in the game. Actually, these things already are changing. With rates being boosted and new tools being brought into play it's a lot easier to tame a Giga now than it was in the beginning. One of the major differences between taming a Rex and taming a Giga used to be their preferred kibble, but now you can tame either one using raw mutton. And there's a very good chance that breeding will likewise become easier with Tek Tier.

Except that WC has already stated that a wipe isn't in the plan. People expect some rebalancing, and even nerfs. But nobody who has put in the time and effort to tame a Giga would accept it being brought down to the Rex level.

 

Make it a bigger, stronger rex that's slower and might bite your head off if it trips over a rock? Sure, that's what it was advertised as, and still is advertised as in he dossier. That would also still give the Rex a purpose. My thinking on the Giga, is make it less of a boss monster, and more of just another dinosaur you can tame. Tone it down to be a similar upgrade in terms of power as what you had going from a raptor to a Carno, or a Carno to a Rex. That way there's no need to immediately subtract more than half of its health, and take 85% off the melee stat when you tame it. Introduce an Alpha Giga that has the original stats so that there is still a massive threat running around ready to eat you. These are things that could be done.

But to take this thing that was introduced as the end all be all Apex predator of the entire ark, and drop it down to the same power level, but a different niche role? no. It looks like a bigger badder rex, make it a bigger badder rex.

[Shrekasaurus]

5 minutes ago, vanyelxp5 said:

It looks like a bigger badder rex, make it a bigger badder rex

That's why I said they should scale it down a bit. It can still be the biggest carnivore. I really think giving creatures more unique roles in combat will be better for the game, and I honestly think the best way is how I originally described it. This kind of diversity will force tribes to tame as many creatures as possible and have them actually used (frequently).

[vanyelxp5]

1 hour ago, Shrekasaurus said:

That's why I said they should scale it down a bit. It can still be the biggest carnivore. I really think giving creatures more unique roles in combat will be better for the game, and I honestly think the best way is how I originally described it. This kind of diversity will force tribes to tame as many creatures as possible and have them actually used (frequently).

I think it should be powerful, but slow. since that's how the dossier describes it. If it was going to be an unstoppable killing machine that can outrun all but the fastest prey, the dossier shouldn't have said it was slow.

 

Even leaving everything else on the giga alone, and cutting the movement speed to lower than a Rex (possibly have a really fast sprint, but still have the high stamina drain with it) would give you a good argument for still using the Rex over the giga in a lot of situations. And if they reduced the AOE of the giga to a cone in front, and let it just barely hit things that are behind its feet, that would give it a pretty substantial weakness that one could use as a way of taking the monster down. That would give you another use for Rexes on a battlefield normally dominated by Gigas, not only as the defender against them (attack from behind and use hit and run tactics) but also as the attacker using them (set the rexes to follow so they'll attack anything that comes in from behind)

This way leaves the Giga still as the definitive powerhouse, but introduces a couple of flaws that have been present in every dino previously.

 

I still very much support the idea of a bigger badder herbivore (What the Titanosaur was going to be before they decided to make it a raid dino only, something a bit less powerful than that, and maybe in between the Titan and Bronto in size), and a bigger badder spino-style carnivore at the very least.

[Foltax]

Agree with OP.