Milsurp

Jeebus that's awesome. I can't build for crap.

I would favor keeping it in mod form or integrated into the main game, BUT - it must have configuration options for everything! Amazingly helpful for playtesting before launch, and player refinement over time, esp. if there's an interface like the one Immersive Taming implemented (fantastic work!). Disclaimer, I want the "everything added must be configurable" for all mods anyways, so there's that

@Cedric @Jen Congrats on your new role, and Jen on getting some help!

Nonono! Those devs are very happy and needed where they are! I favor keeping the *entire new dev team that has just gotten in place* and expanding it with new people as needed. Let's remember, those other devs brought Ark from start to 4 years of age. Kudos to them for all they accomplished, but eventually it's time for a team with new eyes to look at things and move them forward. Also, this team specifically has 1 person (in rotation) on bug-fixes every single day. It may be only one person at a time, but someone is on it full-time. And also let's remember this new team launched a PTS! That's a huge step forward in dev-player collaboration and I want to see more of it.

The commentary on how things are working now gives me a lot more confidence. I'm not especially caring about the grandiose story plans or alien stuff (you should just go ahead and make a separate alien-world game if that's what you want to do), but hearing that you've always got at least one dev on bug fixes and issues is very reassuring.

Yes please!

Yes to all! And I helped test Autorun+, takes a surprising amount of "weight" off of the gameplay. So much better.

If you're on PC, try the Dino Aphrodisiac mod. I can confirm it works with boas to push their rate to 1-2 eggs per hour.

Not a fan of the argy changes. They were already OP in terms of carryables and carry weight. Slowing them down as part of the flyer nerf is what makes them boring and blah, not a lack of utility. And if you want to smithy with an argent, all you have to do is carry a thatch platform and a smithy. I think all you need to make the argy fun again is add the griffin's swoop mechanic. That alone makes aerial combat fun, and the argy's stamina would make it an effective repeat attacker. Whereas the griffin hits hard but runs out of stam fast and is squishy, the argy could stay in the fight longer, albeit doing less damage per hit and not having the same kind of escape speed.

heh my PvE server config starts at wild damage x2, and both wild/tame creatures with legendarily powerful bites get 1.5x more via the individual dino damage option. The game feels way more threatening like this. You don't treat rexes or megalodons casually with this build, no sir. (This also puts wilds at about the same melee as a fresh tame from that-level wild. So it's a pretty even fight until you level/saddle the tame, and that also feels well balanced.)

That suggestion is in the TLC pass suggestions. Add your support there

Biggest impact change listed here- "Skittish stance added for tames*. I'm guessing that means "passive but will run if attacked". YES PLEASE.

As I understand it the Rag team is disabling those electrical effects on purpose, 'cause it makes no freakin' sense that you can't shoot a gun or crossbow 'cause of electricity in the air lol. I think they're going to make it interfere with electrical systems still, but don't quote me on that.

Derp I meant to use the sickle, my bad. It's been weeks since I needed prime fish so I completely derped on that. But a pick will also get prime fish - or it used to that is. Maybe that's what has been changed? Ima go test with sickle now. Edit: tested again with sickle, got the swarm and 6 prime from about 12 saber salmon corpses (its a really goooood sickle ). Edited my original response with those results.

No idea why dude/dudette. I get all my prime fish from saber salmons, except for the latest which came from a lowbie squid which was pestering my basilosaurus. Hope that drop hasn't been changed, as a new player a high-level pelagornis is an excellent flyer tame and having prime fish readily available from the salmon has been a great thing. Edit: I guess that drop has been changed or is bugged. I'm getting no prime fish from them with a 300% pick. It was also very hard to get the swarm going. Hitting one and letting it swim away did not result in the usual behavior of that one coming back and bringing its friends. I had to swim out and hit one in the middle of a school, then they swarmed. Sorry for the bad info, it's been working for me forever. Edit edit: I was an idiot using a pick. I know better, I have the sickle in the #1 hotbar slot ffs lol. I retested in the lake up to the west of VB. I hit one saber and swam away, it followed and attacked, and it started a swarm of them per usual. I was using the Megaloceros and trashed the swarm, then harvested with a 300% sickle. I got 6 prime fish from about 12 corpses. So it is still working, at least for me. FYI if you choose to tame one of those flying rats called an ichthyornis, its special ability is to get prime fish when you order it to retrieve a fish corpse. Best of luck!

Really? Sometimes a saber salmon will run away at first, but it will be soon be back with friends - I think it's a mechanic to ensure aggro is spread. Enough of them can actually be dangerous to someone in flak armor, no lie. They don't always give prime fish, it's about one in three for me. But when you get a school, you're getting several corpses at a time so the prime adds up pretty quick. I used to just walk a stego down a river and keep swinging, then jump off and harvest, then put the prime in the stego's inventory because it won't eat it. Now on Ragnarok I carry a megaloceros to the Viking Bay cave with an argie, stand it in the shallows and pop one and hop on. The resulting swarm is like 10-15 strong and the megaloceros just reks them with its AOE. More prime feesh than I actually ever need, really

If you need prime fish, just walk a stego down a river with sabertooth salmon in it (or stand in the shallows with a Megaloceros) and hit one to pull the swarm. Thedinos are herbivores so hitting corpses does not harvest meat, so all the corpses will be there when you're done killing the swarm. All the prime feesh you could want

FYI with the 99% Ragnarok update, the Canyon has lots of spinos and they're in evidence in other waters as well. I went and got three

5th post on "can we get some reassurance that dino abilities will get upgrades as part of the TLC?". The artwork looks sweet and I appreciate it, BUT I'm interested in the massive potential for dino gameplay upgrades. This wasn't mentioned at all in the announcement (that I saw, so many pictures!), hence this post in support of gameplay upgrades. Why is this important to me? Since the days these dinos were created, you've been developing new dino abilities along with the development of new dinos. Many of those abilities are just as appropriate for legacy dinos to have, and since legacy dinos are highly prominent on every map, backfilling their abilities would instantly add a ton of variety and depth to the gameplay on all maps. For example, I would love to see all big predator dinos able to use the megalosaurus's pick up and shake attack, esp. megalodons. We KNOW sharks do exactly that with their prey. I'd love to see other aspects such as updates to the prey lists too, and the tapa's flee mechanic applied to all prey re their predators (including humans) so the gameplay looks as realistic as the dinosaurs do. To me, this TLC pass is also a chance to fulfill the original expectations made from the promise of a dinosaur survival game. Every game (every product and service really) reaches plateaus and then must be propelled upwards to the next higher level. As an Early Access title, Ark was allowed low plateaus that were easily reached in order for your company to generate revenue to support development. Fair enough. But now the game has launched. To summarize a Bruce Lee quote "We reach plateaus, but we must not stay there." So please, use the TLC pass as the opportunity to take dino gameplay from the low plateau it's been at for years up to the level which fulfills the promise of this game. Edit: I had posted a suggestions collection thread for the TLC pass which lists a lot of things I and others would like to see implemented. Hope it helps communicate the possibilities.

Thanks for the response. Leave it to MS to make cross-compatibility restrictive and difficult :\

Re Ark: Play Anywhere, what does Windows 10 have to do with Xbox compatibility? I play other games with PS4 users and I'm on Windows 7. This is a server-side change, so why does it have to be Windows 10?

@Jat @TheRightHand Aside from the flyer nerf, I wanted to congratulate you on 256.3. Fixed a lot of things that needed cleaning up -nice! Re the flyer nerf, I still think you should do something *interesting* with flyers instead of grinding spreadsheets though. Your model for pteras is broken - you can't have a "fast, sprinting scout" with low stamina. Since scouts by definition don't know where their objective is, they need stamina to search for it. And their main role is 1-person light transport in non-PvP, so again stamina is important. Either way, it doesn't work unless you make it mediocre at everything and good at nothing, and that carries over to the other birds' "roles" as well. (Hate roles, that model is a trap with no future.) In addition to the other flyer suggestions I've made (lower pickup size, scale damage up/down by size differential, exchange hover for slow fall or make hover drain the most stamina), you could try lowering birds' stamina a lot, but only using it in sprint mode and combat and changing non-sprint (walk) mode to glide mode for long-distance travel. That gives them pluses and minuses for every situation - they have short-distance escape speed, short-term combat ability and long-distance travel endurance, but they can only use one at a time. And you can adjust the stamina drain for any of the three, giving you fine-grained balance tuning.

I'm...not going to argue with you about whether the statistical analysis used in polling and marketing is valid science. You'll need to take that up with those entire industries please.

You know that polling uses a fraction of a population and assumes the results are directly proportional to the entire populace, right? Exactly what you're claiming isn't valid. Now forums aren't statistically valid polling. You are getting the input from people who will make the effort on their own, and their motivations are a factor. Some people are legitimately concerned with the future of the product, some are concerned with the impact on their personal games, and some are just trolling on here (proof enough you can't assume good motivations for posting. Also you should be moderating those trollers, dude. Some are confessing they don't even play with tames and the patch doesn't actually affect them. They're just on here to screw with people and get forum participation ranks from it. They derail anything they can, and that's not constructive.) I'd recommend putting a feature-based polling system in place and integrating it with the program both on launch and on shutdown. Be proactive and use your tech so you can get statistically valid results, and above all, ask honest questions in the poll. Don't be all leading-question and seeking validation for your decisions. Be straight up "Do you want this to work this way or that way?" and take the answers you get.

Have you talked to each and every one of them to confirm "they're not upset"? Because they could just be so POd they are not bothering to post, they're just not playing. You can't claim you know their minds any more than I can. I'm going off of the forum posts for my response to that other conversation, which you were not a part of. Most of the posters are upset. A small minority are defending the patch, and of that many are trollers and non-constructive insulters, like you.