Sshadowmane

Awesome idea

Guanlong Wucaii for ASA. I know there is no current creature vote at the moment, but I recently created one for the Guanlong that can be used in the future. I genuinely tried to make this balanced and eliminate any power creep. Please let me know if I can improve this in any way. Thank you. Guanlong Wucaii for ARK Small dromaeosaurid from the Late Jurassic of China Introduces a stealth element to the game Travels in packs of 3-5 Ambush predator/tiny trickster Oviraptor sized Cunning/Curious Temperament Wild- Guanlong travel in groups of 3-5. They spawn in dense jungles/forests. They are cunning ambush predators. The Guanlong are calculated killers, waiting, patiently hidden in position for their next meal to wander by at which point the Guanlong will leap from bushes, piles of leaves and even down onto their prey from the branches of trees, and pounce at once together, delivering fatal blows to their target in one fatal surprise attack. When not hunting together though, they can be seen in the open, playing together. Other then playing together, they are never seen freely roaming. They are ALWAYS perched somewhere in trees or bushes ready to pounce. They are ONLY seen when playing. It is at this point and this point only that they can be safely approached by a survivor. When approached, the Guanlong pack will allow the survivor to join their game. The survivor can accept by pressing 🔼. There are 3 games the Guanlong love to play and will alternate between. Game 1- Red Light Green Light Everyone knows how to play this. The Alpha Guanlong will be the “ref” and the other Guanlong in the group will get into position with the survivor following. The Alpha Guanlong will chirp loudly to start the game. Then again for a “green light”. It will growl for a “red light”. The survivor must win this game to earn taming affinity. If failed, the survivor is attacked/killed and taming is set to zero. The survivor will them have to wait until the guanlong are playing in the open again “i.e. in a playful mood”. Game 2- Hide and Seek The Guanlong will spread out. It’s up to the survivor to hide and avoid them to win. Bug repellant/cactus broth is great for masking your scent. Ghillie suits are also good for disguising yourself among the brush. However, the survivor MUST stay within a certain radius of the game or the taming is canceled outright. The Alpha Guanlong will growl loudly when you have won the game and can come out now, and a status message will appear. Game 3- Combat The Guanlongs love to play fight. In this game, the survivor will have to dodge/block the attacks from the group of Guanlongs around them using a shield in a quick time event. Similar to an Andrewsarchus tame, arrows will indicate dodging left or right in the QTE. Or a shield can be used to block attacks. The survivor alternates between these 3 games at the Guanlong’s discretion until the Guanlongs are tired from playing, at which point their hunger is depleted and you can feed the Alpha meat to finally tame. [EVEN THOUGH THE GUANLONGS ARE TAMED IN GROUPS, YOU STILL HAVE TO TAME EACH ONE. HOWEVER, AFTER THE ALPHA IS TAMED, THE REST OF THE PACK WILL HAVE AN AUTOMATIC 35% AFFINITY IF YOU WANT TO TAME THEM AS WELL. THIS IS TO KEEP THE TAMING FROM BEING TEDIOUS AND REPETITIVE. MEANING IF YOU WANT THE OTHER GUANLONGS AFTER TAMING THE ALPHA. ONLY ONE GAME AND ONE FEEDING SESSION IS REQUIRED. IF YOU DON’T WANT THE OTHER GUANLONGS IN THE GROUP YOU CAN KILL THEM OR JUST WALK AWAY.] Abilities The Guanlong are exceptional hunters, but their strength comes with their numbers. Guanlong can- Mimic calls/noises of large predators like Giganotosaurus or Yutyrannus to scare creatures away from an area. Mimic mating calls of creatures to lure creatures in position for ambushes. Hide above in trees for an ambush, performing a drop takedown when enemy entities come too close (like purlovia) Make leaf piles which they hide under for an ambush. Be trained to recognize the scent of any given creature and track them down. The Alpha Guanlong will sniff the ground and footsteps for you to follow will appear, leading you to the creature you are stalking, like a Genesis hunt mission. For this ability, they must become accustomed to killing the given creature. EX. Phiomia. Your Guanlong must kill 5 Phiomia to gain the ability to “sniff out” Phiomia. This tracker ability scales with creature drag weight, so the requirement to sniff out Raptors may be 25, Carnos 50 etc extra exp meat/hide is rewarded for killing a creature you have stalked. This ability can only be used with a Guanlong hunting party of 3 or more. Guanlong will instinctually “blend in” to whatever environment they are in. In their native environments (jungle and forests) they are black/gray/green. But in the redwoods they will adopt earthier reds and browns. In the arctic biomes they will cover themselves with snow. Guanlong can go prone and enter a “stealth” stance, blending into their surroundings, in which they become semi transparent and have a ghillie like buff which makes them harder for enemies to detect, at the cost of becoming much slower. When near your group, the aggro ranges and cones of vision for nearby dinos are made visible. The radius for this “Awareness” buff is also visualized. At night, the Alpha Guanlong can chitter to it’s owner, letting them know what is nearby. This lets you see all nearby enemies for a short duration. Essentially Widowmaker ultimate. (THIS IS NOT NIGHT VISION, enemies are just tagged) When “whistling attack” on a creature big/small enough for the Guanlong’s to assassinate, they will slowly stalk it making sure not to be seen. One will get ahead of the pack and make the mating call of the opposite sex of the creature they are stalking to lure it in to the trap, while the others follow behind it. When the Guanlong see the prey falling for the bait, they quickly ambush the prey. When a creature is ambushed, they immediately receive heavy damage and are pinned to the ground by your Guanlong hunting party like a Thylacoleo pins its prey. Balancing Changes- I have tried to not contribute to power creep. I have tried to optimize Guanlong for a stealth way of play, and not a Raptor-like style of guns blazing murder everything and incentivize players to use them for stealth ambushing and tracking instead of outright battle. I didn’t want yet another mindless, unengaging killing machine. I wanted players to use the Guanlong intelligently, for its given specialty, stealth/ambush/assassination. I want players to be calculated with their attacks. I also would like to see this applied to PvP. Guanlong are lacking in combat, instead specializing in tracking and stealthy takedowns, filling the “hunting dog” niche of tames. It is because of this that things like raptor packs are better for straight combat, where at Guanlong’s excel in setting up prey for ambushes and quickly dispatching them. Like stated earlier, The Guanlong’s strength come from their numbers, so the abilities can only be used when they are in a group of 3-5 Guanlongs can only take down up to the size of an Iguanodon. In stealth stance they can not be detected by parasaurus or turrets.

Gotta say, I’m a huge fan of you and it’s an absolute travesty you have yet to win. But I love this creature. We absolutely need more herbivores in the game. I love how you want to give ARK and it’s dinos actual fun personalities. Your art is awesome too. I seriously hope you work with mod creators to put your great creatures in the game at some point

Love this. I want a return to primitive, For Honor like PvP. This would actually make leveling up mean something. And medieval like combat requires skill as well, refreshing PvP. I want ARK to be as immersive as possible and this would be a good addition

It’s no secret that power creep has been a strong issue for some time now. And by some time now I mean years. New content in the form of new creatures and items render existing creatures and items obsolete, shifting the meta in a very negative way, making for an unengaging, stale meta where players only use certain items, tames and playstyles. We see this in both PvE and PvP. Players in both modes have zero incentive to tame a large chunk of the roster of characters (dinos) because they are utterly useless. In PvE usually just taming them “just because” or just to “catch ‘em all”; and in PvP, simply ignoring them. Most dinos. at one point or another, have been outclasses and outgunned by these newer, shinier creatures with shiny paintjobs, more useful abilities, powerful attacks and creative taming methods. One example of this is the Tropeognathus/Astrodelphis dilemma. Tropeognathus released in June 2020 with the Crystal Isles DLC. It is a pterosaur with a jet and grenade launcher saddle. It does barrel rolls and launches grenades effectively functioning as a mesozoic fighter jet. Just under a year later, the Genesis 2 releases; and with it, the Astrodelphis. The Astrodelphis is a newer fantasy creature. Basically just a space dolphin alien thing. It’s main “ability” was it’s saddle, which held the same function as the Tropeognathus saddle, turning an otherwise just about useless creature into a fighter jet. However, especially on release, Astrodelphis and it’s saddle were incredibly overpowered. It did everything Tropeognathus did and better. Just like that, in under a year, a new creature was useless, obsolete. Example 2. Archaeopteryx/Sinomacrops. By this point you should see where I’m going with this. These newer creatures keep contributing to already insane power creep by completely invalidating creatures that have already existed in the game for years by having completely shiny, new paintjobs and doing what the existing creatures do and much more. ARK would be much healthier if we used the creativity from creature votes and poured that into a round of TLCs for several creatures. This would make the game much more fun to play, incentivize taming creatures that are otherwise ignored, and encourage a return to classic Dino-PvP not the absolute toxic, unbalanced cesspool that is current PvP. I’m not saying never add new creatures, I’m saying it’s not fair that X creature (new) renders Y creature (old) obsolete. X creature gets * Awesome Design/Model * Fresh Abilities * Introduces New Mechanic(s) to shake up gameplay * Engaging Taming Method Y creature gets * Outdated, boring model *Boring taming method (KO) * No abilities beyond an alternating attack animation (Bite/Claw Swipe) *MAYBE a roar (does nothing except MAYBE make small creatures poop) Like I said, we should use the creativity from these votes and update the dinos already in the game instead of trying to vote in dinos with abilities that you could EASILY give to an already existing dino in a TLC. Example- Hatzegopteryx/ Quetzal. Everything the Hatzegopteryx would have been able to do the Quetzal could also do. Why introduce the Hatzegopteryx and leave the Quetzal as useless as it is? Another Example, Diplodocus/Barsboldia Sicinskii. I loved Barsboldia from the Ragnarok vote. It didn’t win, but it was still great. However. Maybe instead of adding in Barsboldia, you could give all its abilities (movement speed completely unaffected by weight, weighing more makes you do more damage, gaining different buffs based on what you feed it etc) to the Diplodocus, refreshing the game and FINALLY doing some justice and Diplodocus. Slap a remodel on there, and give Diplodocus a new, actually engaging taming method, and bam. You have effectively created a brand new creature out of one that has been in the game for years. So much better and more balanced than introducing brand new creature that looks great and has great abilities and ignoring old creature that looks boring and IS boring. To wrap up, we need to go back and revamp pretty much all creatures with new models, abilities, mechanics, and actually engaging taming methods before adding in dinos with all of those things and further contributing to power creep.