Anyone else get a major flyer stamina nerf? My pteranodon was 202 with 2k stamina. Logged in after the update to him being 185 with 490 stam. Argie lost over 1k stam as well.
Iguanodon seems really good. Very fast speed, doesn't use stamina when sprinting, and has two different stances for some reason. He'll take the mount spot for me, I think. Usually I gather up a bunch of carnivores and just roam around eating things. I'll be on a parasaur myself with a crossbow.
And yeah, the flying nerf sucks. I'm SUPER happy I didn't go with my original plan and start a breeding ranch of them. I built the pen and everything. I just didn't put the time into it. I can see why people would quit. Honestly, I don't expect this to stick. They'll walk at least some of the flying stuff back.
Steam and CFN: Enexemander
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KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
Apparently they've already said the nerf is a starting point, not the end values.
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
Everything about tech tier is all wrong. Trying to turn PVP into Halo is not the right direction for this game. Furthermore, locking the strongest PVP gear behind PVE boss arena battles seems like a really weird way of allowing players access to it. Also, it screws solo players. Also, players should not have the power to destroy bases with as much ease as tech tier affords them.
Just... I dunno. I feel like the dev's vision for this game has gone away from what I myself want personally, but also it seems to be going away from what the community wants.
Also, they need to just work on technical fixes and bug fixes for like 3 months straight. No new content until they can get the existing game working.
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KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
Everything about tech tier is all wrong. Trying to turn PVP into Halo is not the right direction for this game. Furthermore, locking the strongest PVP gear behind PVE boss arena battles seems like a really weird way of allowing players access to it. Also, it screws solo players. Also, players should not have the power to destroy bases with as much ease as tech tier affords them.
Just... I dunno. I feel like the dev's vision for this game has gone away from what I myself want personally, but also it seems to be going away from what the community wants.
Also, they need to just work on technical fixes and bug fixes for like 3 months straight. No new content until they can get the existing game working.
I don't think their vision really embraces Single Player or PvE as the point of the game; I think the endpoint is really meant to be "everyone uses Tek on each other or gets obliterated". PvP is the center of Wildcard's vision.
I also don't think that the bug fixes and such will happen for a bit yet; that'll happen only when they have all their systems in place.
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
I would say the flyer nerf is particularly annoying though. Especially with the focus on larger maps like the center. Nerfing flyer speed across the board by 30% and then nixing movement speed upgrades so they're stuck at molasses speeds just makes getting around the maps so fucking boring. I have better things to do than hold down w for an hour.
I would say the flyer nerf is particularly annoying though. Especially with the focus on larger maps like the center. Nerfing flyer speed across the board by 30% and then nixing movement speed upgrades so they're stuck at molasses speeds just makes getting around the maps so fucking boring. I have better things to do than hold down w for an hour.
Yeah, plus they also introduced Leeds which destroy rafts. It's like they wanted to make everything seem "bigger" without doing any work increasing the map size. It just seems kind of cheap to me. I imagine if I had been breeding fliers for hours on end I'd be spitting fire right now.
The crux of the issue is that it's kind of bad game design from the jump- the nerf breaks the rules of the game. You can tame dinos, and you can upgrade those tamed dinos any way you wish. That's the backbone of the taming system. Except now you can't increase speed on fliers. It's an obvious conflict and a bad design decision.
And at the end of the day, at least from what I've read, the whole problem is the effect of these fliers on PvP. Jesus almighty but I thought game companies had started to move past PvP concerns affecting PvE, especially when they HAVE SEPARATE MODES to begin with. As is, if my friends keep playing, we will probably just have to find a way to mod these changes out on our unofficial server. I'm generally a roll with the punches kind of guy, and I love me some hard mode, but this was just a bad change. It takes something fun, makes it unfun, and does it all for the sake of a sub population.
They have made no bones about ARK being a PVP game. Every design decision they make is in furtherance of that goal. PVE is shoehorned in. Which you can see in the bullshit boss mechanics and having to farm them for Element.
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
They have made no bones about ARK being a PVP game. Every design decision they make is in furtherance of that goal. PVE is shoehorned in. Which you can see in the bullshit boss mechanics and having to farm them for Element.
The videos I've seen of PvP in Ark are not exactly impressive. If they think that's the main draw of the game, then... well that's a shame. Because dinosaurs, bro. Not shooting mans.
The 'answer' to fliers in PVP should be fixing the game's netcode so you an actually hit something that's moving without rubberbanding all over the place, not nerfing the only workable mode of transportation that doesn't take literal hours to get around.
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KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
They have made no bones about ARK being a PVP game. Every design decision they make is in furtherance of that goal. PVE is shoehorned in. Which you can see in the bullshit boss mechanics and having to farm them for Element.
Because dinosaurs, bro.
Fuck yeah, dinosaurs. Or in the case of Scorched Earth, fantasy beasties.
The draw for me is 100% not shooting up other folks, for me it's all about building a base, taming dinos, and palling around with tribefolks while fighting through caves and, like, the one boss we did pre-boss zones.
Sometimes I wish the dinos were a bit more aggressive towards bases, TBH. Like, if they come across it and their main thing is to be super aggro, I think a dino should be programmed to attack things it thinks it could get through (i.e. not stone unless it can bite through stone, not wood unless it can bite through wood, etc).
I also sort of hope someone mods in Primitive tribes when the game is done, like barbarians in Civilization. More an annoyance you can never fully squash than a true out and out danger.
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
Wow, what a bunch of garbage. It definitely sounds like they want to make the game larger without actually doing the work. This coupled with Island being the map that is and will remain the official map of the game just makes for a bad time. Forcing players to hoof it across an awful unfun/unfinished map doesn't make that map bigger, it just makes you a bad dev.
Also, if you can't mod flyer speed, what has that done to the accepted method of wyvern egg gathering?
Wow, what a bunch of garbage. It definitely sounds like they want to make the game larger without actually doing the work. This coupled with Island being the map that is and will remain the official map of the game just makes for a bad time. Forcing players to hoof it across an awful unfun/unfinished map doesn't make that map bigger, it just makes you a bad dev.
Also, if you can't mod flyer speed, what has that done to the accepted method of wyvern egg gathering?
I can only assume that Wyvern eggs are effectively impossible to get now.
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Just relax for a few days. They've already said a few times that this is essentially "the bottom" for flyers, and stuff will be buffed back up. No need to work up an ulcer over anything.
Yes, the game is early access. Yes, things change and sometimes unpopular decisions are made for the good of the game overall.
But internal testing should be done before things are released publicly. If 30% is just a trial number to "see how it goes" that should have been kept internal, and they should not have released a change so game breaking until they had settled on a number more realistic.
I read about devs all the time during the iteration process of game design say stuff like "We tried it this way and it wasn't fun, so we changed it." That has obviously not happened here. Because if it had, someone surely would have spoken up and said something about the game being a chore to explore and this screws everybody.
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KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
I dunno, it's possible Wildcard likes it this way. It's entirely possible that they are gazing at their navel so much that they need their players to help with balance.
As much as I like the game, I have often thought that the devs really are in to the hardcore, tough as nails, PvP and time heavy games, and they need the audience to balance against their nature.
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
It's just that a lot of the players don't realize that.
Bingo.
A few hundred thousands people are going to figure out shit stinks pretty damn quickly, versus what...maybe a few dozen (if that) people testing internally?
It's just that a lot of the players don't realize that.
Eh. I mean, at this point, the Early Access tag is more of a "tee-hee" kind of thing than the real deal. Paid DLC is pretty much the nail in the coffin of that getting a pass.
Let's be real- this isn't about player feedback. it's about:
a) Flyers being too good at PvP.
a-1-They can pick players off land mounts, which is a problem if they want people to use land mounts.
a-2- The netcode is so bad and the flyers are so fast that the counter measures to flyers becomes a problem (turret tracking, using a non-hitscan weapon against them, etc). I'd put my bottom dollar on making fliers slow just as an easy cover for all the rubberbanding, hits that aren't hits, and other such shenanigans than anything to really do with balance.
If you play with numbers off on hits, you *will* be fooled about how bad the hitboxes and such are. I was fighting the new birds yesterday with a crossbow. Totally pointless. I'll give them the lead, fire, hear the "thunk" and SEE THE GODDAMN ARROW STICKING OUT OF THEM and it never registers as a hit on the server end.
b) People not using land animals
- People don't use land animals more because the goddamn pathing AI is atrocious, and dinos get stuck on each other all the time (even if there isn't a rock or tree involved). I take a whole train through on the Center (Rexes, carnos, raptors, and a small army of dilos, with a few pachys sprinkled in for flavor). I take great pains to organize their follow distance, jump on different dinos to assign classes to certain followers, etc. It *helps* but it's so much work for such a simple thing and they get stuck anyway. I lose more dinos to pathing than enemies, and always have.
This is why I enjoy single player. There's already a mod that puts flyers back to pre-nerf. There's also a mod that allows you to get tek tier and element without boss fights.
Plus the Ragnarok map is SOOOO pretty. The volcano area they added yesterday is goddamn gorgeous.
And I can spawn myself unicorns :P
Decomposey on
Before following any advice, opinions, or thoughts I may have expressed in the above post, be warned: I found Keven Costners "Waterworld" to be a very entertaining film.
This is why I enjoy single player. There's already a mod that puts flyers back to pre-nerf. There's also a mod that allows you to get tek tier and element without boss fights.
Plus the Ragnarok map is SOOOO pretty. The volcano area they added yesterday is goddamn gorgeous.
And I can spawn myself unicorns :P
I think our solution with our private server will just be to nuke Leeds. We're playing on The Center and you kind of need either flying or boating to have fun exploring other biomes and caves... Especially since we're on an eastern island.
I'm interested in that map you mentioned. I tried the Scorched Earth map but literally everything looked so similar I could never tell where I was.
This is why I enjoy single player. There's already a mod that puts flyers back to pre-nerf. There's also a mod that allows you to get tek tier and element without boss fights.
Plus the Ragnarok map is SOOOO pretty. The volcano area they added yesterday is goddamn gorgeous.
And I can spawn myself unicorns :P
I think our solution with our private server will just be to nuke Leeds. We're playing on The Center and you kind of need either flying or boating to have fun exploring other biomes and caves... Especially since we're on an eastern island.
I'm interested in that map you mentioned. I tried the Scorched Earth map but literally everything looked so similar I could never tell where I was.
This is a real problem with Scorched Earth. I had no idea where I was for the longest time.
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
The Ragnarok map still has like 60% of the map as bare unfinished terrain with no spawns. There are caves, but they're unfinished as well, with most of them (I think only two of them work, I've only entered one that does) becoming glitchy black holes as soon as you enter them.
The parts that are finished cover an area larger than The Island, and fucking beautiful. There are so many locations tailor made for people who want to build awesome bases. They also have Scorched Earth dinos, though mostly only in the large desert area of the map. There is a blue wyvern that spawns on a snowy mountain, and now a black one that spawns in the new volcano area which I haven't fully explored yet.
So the map is nowhere near finished yet, but in my opinion it's already better than any other map. If I was building a server it's definitely the map I would choose.
Before following any advice, opinions, or thoughts I may have expressed in the above post, be warned: I found Keven Costners "Waterworld" to be a very entertaining film.
I think they probably have a twistedly brilliant formula for measuring outrage at Wildcard. Jeremy has said many times that dinos are ultimately too powerful, and tamed dinos make surviving easier. Too easy, actually (which is why they didn't just buff land dinos here).
But how do you test the community's tolerance for nerfs? Easy. You go straight to the bottom. You then take measurements on the rage-o-meter to determine how far back up to go.
I'd be shocked if they didn't already have these numbers in mind, and don't already have a good approximation of where they think this is going to land. They just need to calibrate how deep they could go on the nerfs without completely destroying the community.
It's pretty deviously brilliant. Instead of fighting the worse-case nature of your typical gamer, you embrace it and use it to balance the game.
If anything, all of this commotion has just cemented my position of "nope nope nope, stay away" until the game is "finished". Especially after reading the point in that post about a similar pass being done on land dinos.
It's weird to think that I put in 640 hours to this game and loved (almost) every second of it but I can't use that as a recommendation because
a) It was mostly fun because of the people I played it with, and
b) The version(s) of the game I played no longer exist in an official capacity
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NEO|PhyteThey follow the stars, bound together.Strands in a braid till the end.Registered Userregular
So there being a mod for it is basically a given, are there any GOOD attempts at a mod rebalancing the material requirements away from the Alpha PvP Tribe meta? Needing hundreds of everything to make basic stuff was half the reason I stopped playing, with the other half being taming needing literal hours of babysitting if you aren't doing it as a tribe.
It was that somehow, from within the derelict-horror, they had learned a way to see inside an ugly, broken thing... And take away its pain.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
You can adjust almost every single rate on private servers. Don't use a mod, just set the server rates to whatever your comfort level is.
Keep in mind there were several times over the last year that, while we had the settings on our server set to something reasonable, the devs implemented something new that drastically altered gameplay to the point where I had to rush to fix things.
That's why I am also in the camp of 'wait for the game to be finalized'. Because then once I get things how I want them, I know the underlying math won't change on me.
Also, I just in general wish that the one tool in the Wildcard toolbox wasn't "make it more grindy"
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
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KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
Also, I just in general wish that the one tool in the Wildcard toolbox wasn't "make it more grindy"
That's really one of the most important things. I think the reason for the grind is to make people really commit to their PvP inclinations or just . . . not play? But in having a PvE option, separate numbers should be generated to make the game more feasible. When you aren't fighting other folks on the map, the caves and bosses and breeding for those challenges should be the focus, and things like Tek and Element should either be easier to obtain near end-game, or more should drop per boss fight. When the game doesn't devolve into an arms race, then what does that mean for the players? It should mean that the numbers and value placed on certain things should be reevaluated and changed; gathering, base building, farming, taming, breeding, and exploring become the natural arcs of PvE, and that means that the numbers should be changed to fit the intent of that playstyle.
And if PvE is just meant to be "tacked on", then much like The Center, they need some outside people to provide them testing and valid values that make the PvE game less of a grind and more fun (as well as possibly also more focused on survival, vis a vis Scorched Earth).
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
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NEO|PhyteThey follow the stars, bound together.Strands in a braid till the end.Registered Userregular
You can adjust almost every single rate on private servers. Don't use a mod, just set the server rates to whatever your comfort level is.
server rates can adjust needing more metal to make a pistol than a metal foundation?
It was that somehow, from within the derelict-horror, they had learned a way to see inside an ugly, broken thing... And take away its pain.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
And if PvE is just meant to be "tacked on", then much like The Center, they need some outside people to provide them testing and valid values that make the PvE game less of a grind and more fun (as well as possibly also more focused on survival, vis a vis Scorched Earth).
I would love to see more stuff like Scorched Earth, btw.
The early game was absolutely hard, but not so much you couldn't eventually make progress. Meaning it felt really good to finally have that first, safe house.
Morellatops are really great as a starter dino.
Many species have a specific niche and are only found in very defined areas.
Resources can be scarce, and heavily lopsided depending on location, making it valuable to be based in specific areas. Also opens up opportunities for trade.
Wyverns were a threat but also a goal.
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
I'll freely admit, on my single player game, while I do not spawn in resources or animals (outside of the unicorns I spawned for a science to see if they color mutate), every time I corner, catch, or knock out an animal to tame I just "dotame" it. No way in hell I am playing the total time sink game to tame something, or building an entire barn full of animals completely useless except for their eggs.
But more an more the game is becoming laser focused on PvP, so I don't blame anyone who want to hold off on it until it's officially released so that they know what settings to adjust and what mods to use to actually make it fun.
Before following any advice, opinions, or thoughts I may have expressed in the above post, be warned: I found Keven Costners "Waterworld" to be a very entertaining film.
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KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
And if PvE is just meant to be "tacked on", then much like The Center, they need some outside people to provide them testing and valid values that make the PvE game less of a grind and more fun (as well as possibly also more focused on survival, vis a vis Scorched Earth).
I would love to see more stuff like Scorched Earth, btw.
The early game was absolutely hard, but not so much you couldn't eventually make progress. Meaning it felt really good to finally have that first, safe house.
Morellatops are really great as a starter dino.
Many species have a specific niche and are only found in very defined areas.
Resources can be scarce, and heavily lopsided depending on location, making it valuable to be based in specific areas. Also opens up opportunities for trade.
Wyverns were a threat but also a goal.
SE did feel more polished, to be sure, and also more simple in some ways.
The struggle, as always, is less my bag, but if I had had to work up from nothing again, I could have. It was much easier, regardless, to do it as a two-person group, and the proximity of our "bases" was fortunate and helpful, I felt, without being super coddling. I mean, without water and food as a nigh constant source, SE's map would willingly kill the hell out of you, regardless of your armor or what beast you were on.
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
But in having a PvE option, separate numbers should be generated to make the game more feasible. When you aren't fighting other folks on the map, the caves and bosses and breeding for those challenges should be the focus, and things like Tek and Element should either be easier to obtain near end-game, or more should drop per boss fight.
I would argue the opposite, actually. If you never move backwards, never get knocked down, and never really lose stuff, why should the PvE game be "easier".
In my opinion, the problem with PvE is it becomes too easy at a certain point. You don't need metal bases. You don't need Tek. There's really no motivating force to actually doing any of the current end game because it's a) super-grinding and b) has no pay out.
Heck, once you hit about the mid 50's, have some decent carnivores tamed and are living in a stone base with a few plant X turrets to babysit your tames, there's no survival left to evolve in ARK. And I play exclusively on private servers, PvE. I'm not a hardcore PvPer coming in here to shit on everyone's PvE game...the exact opposite actually.
So in that regard, ARK really does mature as a purely PvP game after a certain point simply because there's no real threats out there to the safety of purely PvE players, unless you absolutely go to the ends of the earth to seek those out, and do it unprepared. There just simply isn't any PvE endgame.
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Edit: also . . .
.. holy hell
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
And yeah, the flying nerf sucks. I'm SUPER happy I didn't go with my original plan and start a breeding ranch of them. I built the pen and everything. I just didn't put the time into it. I can see why people would quit. Honestly, I don't expect this to stick. They'll walk at least some of the flying stuff back.
Everything about tech tier is all wrong. Trying to turn PVP into Halo is not the right direction for this game. Furthermore, locking the strongest PVP gear behind PVE boss arena battles seems like a really weird way of allowing players access to it. Also, it screws solo players. Also, players should not have the power to destroy bases with as much ease as tech tier affords them.
Just... I dunno. I feel like the dev's vision for this game has gone away from what I myself want personally, but also it seems to be going away from what the community wants.
Also, they need to just work on technical fixes and bug fixes for like 3 months straight. No new content until they can get the existing game working.
I don't think their vision really embraces Single Player or PvE as the point of the game; I think the endpoint is really meant to be "everyone uses Tek on each other or gets obliterated". PvP is the center of Wildcard's vision.
I also don't think that the bug fixes and such will happen for a bit yet; that'll happen only when they have all their systems in place.
So business as usual every time a major balance pass is made?
Yeah, plus they also introduced Leeds which destroy rafts. It's like they wanted to make everything seem "bigger" without doing any work increasing the map size. It just seems kind of cheap to me. I imagine if I had been breeding fliers for hours on end I'd be spitting fire right now.
The crux of the issue is that it's kind of bad game design from the jump- the nerf breaks the rules of the game. You can tame dinos, and you can upgrade those tamed dinos any way you wish. That's the backbone of the taming system. Except now you can't increase speed on fliers. It's an obvious conflict and a bad design decision.
And at the end of the day, at least from what I've read, the whole problem is the effect of these fliers on PvP. Jesus almighty but I thought game companies had started to move past PvP concerns affecting PvE, especially when they HAVE SEPARATE MODES to begin with. As is, if my friends keep playing, we will probably just have to find a way to mod these changes out on our unofficial server. I'm generally a roll with the punches kind of guy, and I love me some hard mode, but this was just a bad change. It takes something fun, makes it unfun, and does it all for the sake of a sub population.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
The videos I've seen of PvP in Ark are not exactly impressive. If they think that's the main draw of the game, then... well that's a shame. Because dinosaurs, bro. Not shooting mans.
Fuck yeah, dinosaurs. Or in the case of Scorched Earth, fantasy beasties.
The draw for me is 100% not shooting up other folks, for me it's all about building a base, taming dinos, and palling around with tribefolks while fighting through caves and, like, the one boss we did pre-boss zones.
Sometimes I wish the dinos were a bit more aggressive towards bases, TBH. Like, if they come across it and their main thing is to be super aggro, I think a dino should be programmed to attack things it thinks it could get through (i.e. not stone unless it can bite through stone, not wood unless it can bite through wood, etc).
I also sort of hope someone mods in Primitive tribes when the game is done, like barbarians in Civilization. More an annoyance you can never fully squash than a true out and out danger.
Also, if you can't mod flyer speed, what has that done to the accepted method of wyvern egg gathering?
I can only assume that Wyvern eggs are effectively impossible to get now.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
But internal testing should be done before things are released publicly. If 30% is just a trial number to "see how it goes" that should have been kept internal, and they should not have released a change so game breaking until they had settled on a number more realistic.
I read about devs all the time during the iteration process of game design say stuff like "We tried it this way and it wasn't fun, so we changed it." That has obviously not happened here. Because if it had, someone surely would have spoken up and said something about the game being a chore to explore and this screws everybody.
As much as I like the game, I have often thought that the devs really are in to the hardcore, tough as nails, PvP and time heavy games, and they need the audience to balance against their nature.
It's just that a lot of the players don't realize that.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Bingo.
A few hundred thousands people are going to figure out shit stinks pretty damn quickly, versus what...maybe a few dozen (if that) people testing internally?
Eh. I mean, at this point, the Early Access tag is more of a "tee-hee" kind of thing than the real deal. Paid DLC is pretty much the nail in the coffin of that getting a pass.
Let's be real- this isn't about player feedback. it's about:
a) Flyers being too good at PvP.
a-1-They can pick players off land mounts, which is a problem if they want people to use land mounts.
a-2- The netcode is so bad and the flyers are so fast that the counter measures to flyers becomes a problem (turret tracking, using a non-hitscan weapon against them, etc). I'd put my bottom dollar on making fliers slow just as an easy cover for all the rubberbanding, hits that aren't hits, and other such shenanigans than anything to really do with balance.
If you play with numbers off on hits, you *will* be fooled about how bad the hitboxes and such are. I was fighting the new birds yesterday with a crossbow. Totally pointless. I'll give them the lead, fire, hear the "thunk" and SEE THE GODDAMN ARROW STICKING OUT OF THEM and it never registers as a hit on the server end.
b) People not using land animals
- People don't use land animals more because the goddamn pathing AI is atrocious, and dinos get stuck on each other all the time (even if there isn't a rock or tree involved). I take a whole train through on the Center (Rexes, carnos, raptors, and a small army of dilos, with a few pachys sprinkled in for flavor). I take great pains to organize their follow distance, jump on different dinos to assign classes to certain followers, etc. It *helps* but it's so much work for such a simple thing and they get stuck anyway. I lose more dinos to pathing than enemies, and always have.
Plus the Ragnarok map is SOOOO pretty. The volcano area they added yesterday is goddamn gorgeous.
And I can spawn myself unicorns :P
I think our solution with our private server will just be to nuke Leeds. We're playing on The Center and you kind of need either flying or boating to have fun exploring other biomes and caves... Especially since we're on an eastern island.
I'm interested in that map you mentioned. I tried the Scorched Earth map but literally everything looked so similar I could never tell where I was.
This is a real problem with Scorched Earth. I had no idea where I was for the longest time.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
The parts that are finished cover an area larger than The Island, and fucking beautiful. There are so many locations tailor made for people who want to build awesome bases. They also have Scorched Earth dinos, though mostly only in the large desert area of the map. There is a blue wyvern that spawns on a snowy mountain, and now a black one that spawns in the new volcano area which I haven't fully explored yet.
So the map is nowhere near finished yet, but in my opinion it's already better than any other map. If I was building a server it's definitely the map I would choose.
I think they probably have a twistedly brilliant formula for measuring outrage at Wildcard. Jeremy has said many times that dinos are ultimately too powerful, and tamed dinos make surviving easier. Too easy, actually (which is why they didn't just buff land dinos here).
But how do you test the community's tolerance for nerfs? Easy. You go straight to the bottom. You then take measurements on the rage-o-meter to determine how far back up to go.
I'd be shocked if they didn't already have these numbers in mind, and don't already have a good approximation of where they think this is going to land. They just need to calibrate how deep they could go on the nerfs without completely destroying the community.
It's pretty deviously brilliant. Instead of fighting the worse-case nature of your typical gamer, you embrace it and use it to balance the game.
a) It was mostly fun because of the people I played it with, and
b) The version(s) of the game I played no longer exist in an official capacity
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
Keep in mind there were several times over the last year that, while we had the settings on our server set to something reasonable, the devs implemented something new that drastically altered gameplay to the point where I had to rush to fix things.
That's why I am also in the camp of 'wait for the game to be finalized'. Because then once I get things how I want them, I know the underlying math won't change on me.
Also, I just in general wish that the one tool in the Wildcard toolbox wasn't "make it more grindy"
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
That's really one of the most important things. I think the reason for the grind is to make people really commit to their PvP inclinations or just . . . not play? But in having a PvE option, separate numbers should be generated to make the game more feasible. When you aren't fighting other folks on the map, the caves and bosses and breeding for those challenges should be the focus, and things like Tek and Element should either be easier to obtain near end-game, or more should drop per boss fight. When the game doesn't devolve into an arms race, then what does that mean for the players? It should mean that the numbers and value placed on certain things should be reevaluated and changed; gathering, base building, farming, taming, breeding, and exploring become the natural arcs of PvE, and that means that the numbers should be changed to fit the intent of that playstyle.
And if PvE is just meant to be "tacked on", then much like The Center, they need some outside people to provide them testing and valid values that make the PvE game less of a grind and more fun (as well as possibly also more focused on survival, vis a vis Scorched Earth).
server rates can adjust needing more metal to make a pistol than a metal foundation?
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
I would love to see more stuff like Scorched Earth, btw.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
But more an more the game is becoming laser focused on PvP, so I don't blame anyone who want to hold off on it until it's officially released so that they know what settings to adjust and what mods to use to actually make it fun.
SE did feel more polished, to be sure, and also more simple in some ways.
The struggle, as always, is less my bag, but if I had had to work up from nothing again, I could have. It was much easier, regardless, to do it as a two-person group, and the proximity of our "bases" was fortunate and helpful, I felt, without being super coddling. I mean, without water and food as a nigh constant source, SE's map would willingly kill the hell out of you, regardless of your armor or what beast you were on.
I would argue the opposite, actually. If you never move backwards, never get knocked down, and never really lose stuff, why should the PvE game be "easier".
In my opinion, the problem with PvE is it becomes too easy at a certain point. You don't need metal bases. You don't need Tek. There's really no motivating force to actually doing any of the current end game because it's a) super-grinding and b) has no pay out.
Heck, once you hit about the mid 50's, have some decent carnivores tamed and are living in a stone base with a few plant X turrets to babysit your tames, there's no survival left to evolve in ARK. And I play exclusively on private servers, PvE. I'm not a hardcore PvPer coming in here to shit on everyone's PvE game...the exact opposite actually.
So in that regard, ARK really does mature as a purely PvP game after a certain point simply because there's no real threats out there to the safety of purely PvE players, unless you absolutely go to the ends of the earth to seek those out, and do it unprepared. There just simply isn't any PvE endgame.