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.
But that's what I'm saying, is with tweaking the values, there could be. In PvE, someone with an assload of 'nades isn't better off than someone with one, really. It's more about iterating on failures against bosses or caves that is the PvE limiting factor (or survival aspects). Scorched Earth, for example, you are still able to stomp around the map on a rex, but a Deathworm or stray Wyvern can still take you out, and sandstorms or heatwaves can still deplete the resources you thought you were fine with, even at level 90. But the actual building and protection of bases, while in PvP is essential and therefore worthy of some grind to keep things "fair". But in PvE, it only matters to you, the base builder. On The Center, you should build in metal (or with metal incorporated) because there, any spawn can be a Gigan, even if it's the smallest chance of one. But you probably don't need Tek, at least until the "Final Boss" where you'll probably need Tek, from what the devs have hinted at. So again, it's more about being able to iterate quickly on the roving and adventuring. Getting into the beginning caves is eventually fairly easy, though at least on The Island, the later caves require (mostly), some sea diving to get BPs for gear strong enough to survive the later caves.
So, if you die doing those things, in PvE, it's more about how long it will take you to get back to those things. I think of it sort of like Dark Souls; everyone claims it's a super hard game, but (A) it's not hard to cheese the difficulty curve, (B) it's usually not hard to get back to where you were (provided you don't push too hard), and (C) if you come prepared, you will obliterate almost every challenge the game has to offer (the Capra Demon and O&S notwithstanding). What's more, you can play completely without the PvP element (other than the occasional NPC invader, which I'd have to say is the most annoying part of those games). It still works, it's still tough, but actually getting souls, for example? Not hard. Farming for items? Not hard. Because it's the world that's meant to challenge you.
That's what I mean by tweaking the values. Gathering and building and such should be mostly trivial in PvE, but caves and bosses (and of course, some other survival elements vis a vis weather or ailments of some kind) should be more enhanced. This is my point, that the game as-is is exclusionary, but could be more inclusive with some simple tweaks to the base elements that, in PvE, have to be more balanced against other players instead of the world itself.
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
I thought I'd remembered reading something about "ascension" as an endgame goal, as nebulous as that is. At some point I think an endgame is planned, but honestly I don't know that we'll ever see it.
I cannot fathom "There is no PvE endgame." There are PvE bosses to fight, PvE caves to explore, and PvE resources to gather, and PvE giant castles/bridges/forts/towns/volcano lairs/undersea bases to build. That's all endgame.
edit: and before anyone says "Why would you need a castle if you don't need to defend against PvP" because a castle is it's own reward!
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.
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KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
I cannot fathom "There is no PvE endgame." There are PvE bosses to fight, PvE caves to explore, and PvE resources to gather, and PvE giant castles/bridges/forts/towns/volcano lairs/undersea bases to build. That's all endgame.
edit: and before anyone says "Why would you need a castle if you don't need to defend against PvP" because a castle is it's own reward!
Exactly, and apparently, the track is meant to be survive, thrive, spelunk caves, fight bosses, store up for the final boss fight, ascension (whatever form that will take). I'm suspicious that ascended player will be able to take some Engrams over to start a new character with, basically like a new game plus, but with a head start, because that sounds about right for this game.
But basically, past the whole "fight other tribes" PvP point, the rest of the game is mostly Co-op/PvE centered. Everything from the first few minutes all the way to the last few current bosses might not require teamwork to do, but totally benefit five-fold from being done with other people, together. Even taming, even with taming or breeding sped up, even with building, and gathering sped up, it's just . . . more fun to play with others around you.
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
At one point I was interested in fighting bosses, and then Tek happened. I'd seen videos of those fights BEFORE the difficulty levels were introduced, and they amounted to "take a shit ton of bred rexes in and hope for the best", which at the time I thought maybe I could handle. After that though? Nah, I'm not going down that road.
The whole "can't take tek into the fights you do to get tek" thing is bullshit, 'weight' restrictions on what dinos you can take into the boss fights are bullshit, and is blatantly set up to make it a bitch to do no matter where you're at in the progression, while ignoring that the only winning strategy of throwing a whole mess of rexes at a boss is lazy game design and allowing tek or gigas or wyverns, or hell, brontos or something, would at least make it interesting.
Can't wait til the end-boss that you're ostensibly saving up tek gear amounts to "shoot it with the tek rifle until it dies" while it stupidly charges you and bites endlessly.
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KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
In my opinion, one of the best things they did for PvE players is uncouple dossiers from taming, because instead of having to tame one or two of everything (excluding whatever eggs work for whatever other critters), you can instead go venture out and find the information on the Island. Now, it still feels hodge-podge, and initially I was pissed (mainly because i had worked hard to collect all the dossiers), but it's actually a brilliant way to get people to, at the very least fly or swim to the unusual places they've placed the information.
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
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.
I just completely disagree with that assessment. Disappointing on purpose is a very dangerous game for a company that cares about their financial future. Maybe it's the old in me worrying about financial viability, but as soon as I saw the severity of what they did, I just knew the Steam reviews were going to tank (which they did, from mostly positive to mixed.) Honestly, I expected it to be worse.
I really can't think of a worse idea than "Piss everyone off as step one, then walk it back." People will quit. Reviews (which tend to be more or less permanent) go down which chops out the legs from future purchases. People lose confidence in development direction. Overall it makes the whole design direction look like a waffle, because you give the impression that you *think* something should be objectively shitty, but you have to change it because of the community uproar.
There's just no upside.
Steam and CFN: Enexemander
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KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
Also, I'm glad that, from what it looks like, they only have 8 more dinos to put in. By using around 4 per patch (when they are releasing them), that means not too much creature work is left. I've always figured that the closer they were to having Tek and the final creatures in, the closer they are to some sort of final release. I really think it's going to take until at least June for them to get everything in and test it, so at least two years in Early Access, but that I'm OK with. I still think hardcore PvE players need to make it clear that ignoring PvE is not good for the player base in the long term.
However, I was happy to learn that the recent nerf was in many ways so they could knock down the values and then build them up to their desired in-game roles through testing and player feedback; most fliers had become basically interchangeable, so that the best choice if you could get it was always a Quetz, much like the problems with land dinos which there are fuckton of, and which will probably get their own nerf and boost cycles from the sound of things to properly place them into their roles.
I know that, after, like, a year (and Scorched Earth) that people got really pissy as if "paid DLC" equals a released game, but I've stuck by the idea that no, dev teams can work differently now, and there's some folks that are going to hate that with a passion, but I'm personally fine with it. If it takes closer to two years and a half years and a paid expansion rather than one year flat, I'm honestly just fine with that.
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
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.
I just completely disagree with that assessment. Disappointing on purpose is a very dangerous game for a company that cares about their financial future. Maybe it's the old in me worrying about financial viability, but as soon as I saw the severity of what they did, I just knew the Steam reviews were going to tank (which they did, from mostly positive to mixed.) Honestly, I expected it to be worse.
I really can't think of a worse idea than "Piss everyone off as step one, then walk it back." People will quit. Reviews (which tend to be more or less permanent) go down which chops out the legs from future purchases. People lose confidence in development direction. Overall it makes the whole design direction look like a waffle, because you give the impression that you *think* something should be objectively shitty, but you have to change it because of the community uproar.
There's just no upside.
Not to get nitpicky, but the reviews behaved similarly after the poor reception of Scorched Earth (as far as paid dlc for a game not yet released officially). I hadn't looked in a while so it looks like they bounced back from that, if they did indeed drop from mostly positive. They'll bounce back from this, I'm sure. Especially once they walk back the nerfs in whatever direction.
I really can't think of a worse idea than "Piss everyone off as step one, then walk it back." People will quit. Reviews (which tend to be more or less permanent) go down which chops out the legs from future purchases. People lose confidence in development direction. Overall it makes the whole design direction look like a waffle, because you give the impression that you *think* something should be objectively shitty, but you have to change it because of the community uproar.
There's just no upside.
Not to get nitpicky either, but the concurrent users (via steamcharts) is actually up over the last week, which isn't consistent with the narrative that players are quitting in droves.
Second, they were pretty transparent that this was going to be a series of adjustments, and that this was going to be the bottom. Then they'd iterate up from there. This is my "crazy pills" moment over the entire thing. They literally said things would get buffed back up based on player feedback, yet people still ranted and raved like it was the end of the world. Even after they posted very clearly and objectively the direction, people are still loudly declaring doomsday for ARK.
I know everyone hates it when you beat this drum, but if you can't stand a few days of "rough waters" over a patch in an early access game, especially when the developers have been clear about the direction they're going, then you need to make a personal readjustment on your own expectations.
Third, when you're trying to dial something in, if you know the ceiling, finding the floor is a perfectly valid and logical way of doing it. It's not idiot non-sense here...they're essentially trying to guess a number and get there as quickly as possible. Unlike other games this has been compared to, like WoW or whatever, they don't have the luxury of tweaking a number, waiting a few weeks, tweaking, waiting, tweaking, waiting. You have this bipolar fan base that rips Wildcard for being almost a "year late" on the release, yet gets fanatically rabid if stuff changes too fast.
And ultimately, this is the shit soup that Wildcard (and literally every single game developer in the world) has to sip on every day. It's sort of sad that we as gamers have not only created a certain base level of toxic behavior, but perpetuate it. People can be passionate, they can get angry, or express dissatisfaction, that's fine. I'm not saying people should be quiet on their feedback. Quite the opposite. But at a certain point the drama over stuff like this gets so ridiculous even the original cast of 90210 would roll their eyes over it.
You can't really blame people for reacting passionately when that's literally the barometer the developers are using to evaluate the change. I mean, insert meme of developers throwing a stick through the spokes of a bike they're riding and blaming their customers. It's cause and effect.
Numbers are up because the game was on a massive sale over the weekend.
There's a difference between passion and foaming rage. You can be angry, and still respond like a rational adult to things like this.
I mean, they said someone sent them gif of a guy pooping on their names...like, that's not ok.
They understand people are going to get upset, but their intent is NOT to upset people. Their intent is to get their game in the place they want it to be.
However, they're also smart enough to realize that no matter how they do things, they're going to get met with rage hotter than a thousands suns, with wailing louder than the song of the six-mouthed raven as he sings the song that ends the world.
They've just apparently created some sort of system to measure that. Which is actually really fucking clever.
It doesn't mean they enjoy doing it that way. It just means that's the reality of the environment players have helped create in our world.
KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
Yeah, they did fliers first because fliers there are a relatively small sample size of. Land dinos, jesus. I mean, I suspect they'll do water dinos next just to get them out of the way too . . .
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
Dino Related:
* Flier Mk 2: Click here to see the changes to fliers!
* Ridable fliers (not the Moth) now have ground attacks.
* Leeds spawns adjusted so no longer spawning near shorelines
* Ichthyornis no longer gets stuck in corners of underwater bases.
* Leeds will no longer scale in damage/level etc.
* Therizinosaurus spawn weight and aggro ranged decreased
* Quetz' idle stamina consumption reduced by 50%
* Remove Ichthyornis's ability to steal kibble from dino inventories.
* Certain creatures now have special weight reductions for specific resources similar to the Beaver.
- Mammoth reduces weight of wood by 75%
- Ankylo reduces weight of raw metal by 75%
- Doed reduces weight of stone by 75%
- Beaver and Thorny Dragon now adjusted to 50% reduction for resource-weight (they do a few) due to being a jack of all trades, as opposed to specialising.
UI Related:
* When there is an item in the crafting queue, upon completion the right-click options would close, this no longer happens.
* Updated the UI to include a way to differentiate regular eggs from fertilized eggs, as well as show a health bar and spoiling bar.
* Taming and Fert eggs now display the progress as a %
* Adjusted Blueprint and Engrams colours to help with readability.
* Craft All now correctly displays Craft 100
* Required Engrams no longer clipping and correctly displayed (We've got an Engram page on the way!)
* Placing your cursor over a broken and pressing 'E' now repairs it.
* When adding multiple stacks into an inventory, the stacks force into stacks of the max size (stacks on deck..)
* Placing your cursor over an engram or blueprint in a remote inventory and pressing 'E' should craft it.
* Tribe Log should now appear correctly upon opening the Tribe Manager for the first time
* Adjusted size of UI box on Raft so it's no longer in the way when placing structures
* Fixed an issue where breeding dinos would show 100% regardless of progress
* Fixed an issue where text was overlapping during the breeding process.
* Added an option to turn on the grinder inside of it's remote inventory
Other:
* There is now a 0.2s cooldown on meat consumption
* Oxygen Swim Speed multiplier now exposed and included on the following server types: Primitive, Primitive+ and NoTame to help with underwater adventures! [ ?OxygenSwimSpeedStatMultiplier=3.0 ]
* When using the server-config bPvEDisableFriendlyFire=True, you are now able to harvest a slaughtered Ovis.
* Vaults are now paintable
I even saw a rumor or two floating around Reddit that Wildcard doesn't indeed hate their players and want everyone to quit now that they've grabbed all the cash. What a crazy thought!?!
The good thing about this whole silly debacle is that we've all decided to stop rolling vanilla and now we're trying out mods. I quite like the Bush People mod.
Anyone have any other recommendations? Do the building mods break the game in some way?
Structures+ is mandatory for my enjoyment of ARK. Another really fantastic building mod is the Castles, Keeps and Fortresses. Pillars+ actually does break the game, since it really screws with foundation logic, so I'd avoid it. Platforms+ however is another solid mod.
But Castles, Keeps and Fortresses, for sure. If Commander Sheppard played ARK, it would be his favorite building mod.
I think they might have made a pathing fix for land dinos as well. I was stomping around with 2 T rexes, 3 carnos and a gaggle of raptors and none of them got stuck on anything. I even started trying to get the T Rexes stuck on the rock outcrops and they wouldn't do it. Walked right over them. The carnos still had collision with the trees but didn't get stuck on them. So hopefully that's an actual thing and not just a lucky night of hunting.
Siccing T-Rexes on the Bush People was really entertaining. Shades of Un'Goro Crater were swimming in my mind.
I think they might have made a pathing fix for land dinos as well. I was stomping around with 2 T rexes, 3 carnos and a gaggle of raptors and none of them got stuck on anything. I even started trying to get the T Rexes stuck on the rock outcrops and they wouldn't do it. Walked right over them. The carnos still had collision with the trees but didn't get stuck on them. So hopefully that's an actual thing and not just a lucky night of hunting.
Siccing T-Rexes on the Bush People was really entertaining. Shades of Un'Goro Crater were swimming in my mind.
Fucking Devilsaurs. Nothing that big should be so stealthy.
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.
Dino Related:
* Flier Mk 2: Click here to see the changes to fliers!
* Ridable fliers (not the Moth) now have ground attacks.
* Leeds spawns adjusted so no longer spawning near shorelines
* Ichthyornis no longer gets stuck in corners of underwater bases.
* Leeds will no longer scale in damage/level etc.
* Therizinosaurus spawn weight and aggro ranged decreased
* Quetz' idle stamina consumption reduced by 50%
* Remove Ichthyornis's ability to steal kibble from dino inventories.
* Certain creatures now have special weight reductions for specific resources similar to the Beaver.
- Mammoth reduces weight of wood by 75%
- Ankylo reduces weight of raw metal by 75%
- Doed reduces weight of stone by 75%
- Beaver and Thorny Dragon now adjusted to 50% reduction for resource-weight (they do a few) due to being a jack of all trades, as opposed to specialising.
UI Related:
* When there is an item in the crafting queue, upon completion the right-click options would close, this no longer happens.
* Updated the UI to include a way to differentiate regular eggs from fertilized eggs, as well as show a health bar and spoiling bar.
* Taming and Fert eggs now display the progress as a %
* Adjusted Blueprint and Engrams colours to help with readability.
* Craft All now correctly displays Craft 100
* Required Engrams no longer clipping and correctly displayed (We've got an Engram page on the way!)
* Placing your cursor over a broken and pressing 'E' now repairs it.
* When adding multiple stacks into an inventory, the stacks force into stacks of the max size (stacks on deck..)
* Placing your cursor over an engram or blueprint in a remote inventory and pressing 'E' should craft it.
* Tribe Log should now appear correctly upon opening the Tribe Manager for the first time
* Adjusted size of UI box on Raft so it's no longer in the way when placing structures
* Fixed an issue where breeding dinos would show 100% regardless of progress
* Fixed an issue where text was overlapping during the breeding process.
* Added an option to turn on the grinder inside of it's remote inventory
Other:
* There is now a 0.2s cooldown on meat consumption
* Oxygen Swim Speed multiplier now exposed and included on the following server types: Primitive, Primitive+ and NoTame to help with underwater adventures! [ ?OxygenSwimSpeedStatMultiplier=3.0 ]
* When using the server-config bPvEDisableFriendlyFire=True, you are now able to harvest a slaughtered Ovis.
* Vaults are now paintable
I even saw a rumor or two floating around Reddit that Wildcard doesn't indeed hate their players and want everyone to quit now that they've grabbed all the cash. What a crazy thought!?!
Eh, doesn't change the speed changes which were the worst part of the flyer thing
Reminder, the end of the billing period for our Center server is the 22nd, although it may be up a few days past that. Anything you haven't stored that hasn't starved yet, you probably should.
In related irony, it looks like Host Havoc might have finally added the settings I wanted for clusters like, 4 months ago.
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
I cannot fathom "There is no PvE endgame." There are PvE bosses to fight, PvE caves to explore, and PvE resources to gather, and PvE giant castles/bridges/forts/towns/volcano lairs/undersea bases to build. That's all endgame.
edit: and before anyone says "Why would you need a castle if you don't need to defend against PvP" because a castle is it's own reward!
Exactly, and apparently, the track is meant to be survive, thrive, spelunk caves, fight bosses, store up for the final boss fight, ascension (whatever form that will take). I'm suspicious that ascended player will be able to take some Engrams over to start a new character with, basically like a new game plus, but with a head start, because that sounds about right for this game.
Sounds like the kind of thing I would be down for immensely.
My current issue is that friends have dropped off playing, and any server I join is already so built up that there's no fun to be had in scraping. A thing where the world can be reset on a semi-regular basis sounds great.
I mean, I assumed they'd eventually activate the volcano, so that's not surprising. What is surprising, I suppose, is that that's where the lion's share of metal is on The Island, so . . .
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
I mean, I assumed they'd eventually activate the volcano, so that's not surprising. What is surprising, I suppose, is that that's where the lion's share of metal is on The Island, so . . .
I guess if I ever pick this back up in single player, I'll stick to mining at Blue Obelisk.
MuddBudd on
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
There are actually some other spots with some metal, but not nearly as much as the volcano. I guess the devs saw what happened on the PA server where people built structures and placed platforms that actually benefited everyone and helped other players... and they certainly couldn't have that!
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.
There are actually some other spots with some metal, but not nearly as much as the volcano. I guess the devs saw what happened on the PA server where people built structures and placed platforms that actually benefited everyone and helped other players... and they certainly couldn't have that!
I mean, they disabled forges on platforms even before we left the Island. We just built one in the place it would block the least resources. The amount of metal left was still staggering.
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
There are actually some other spots with some metal, but not nearly as much as the volcano. I guess the devs saw what happened on the PA server where people built structures and placed platforms that actually benefited everyone and helped other players... and they certainly couldn't have that!
I mean, they disabled forges on platforms even before we left the Island. We just built one in the place it would block the least resources. The amount of metal left was still staggering.
No shit, sometimes I'd harvest so much it would weight down my quetzels, so I'd end up leaving a few stacks of bars/ore just sitting in the forge for whoever showed up next.
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 assume there will still be metal, and you can probably build there
It's just that any buildings or creatures within that zone might be destroyed when they update
Pretty sure its gonna be a lot of lava.
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
edited April 2017
And in looking at patch notes, something that hit the XBox & PS4, but hasn't shown on the PC notes specifically, is this:
Certain creatures now have special weight reductions for specific resources similar to the Beaver.
Mammoth reduces weight of wood by 75%
Ankylo reduces weight of raw metal by 75%
Doed reduces weight of stone by 75%
Beaver and Thorny Dragon now adjusted to 50% reduction for resource-weight (they do a few) due to being a jack of all trades, as opposed to specialising.
That, and changes like that, would go a long way into helping make certain creatures both relevant and useful again . . .
Edit: further digging shows it hit the PC at 256.3. Cool!
Kalnaur on
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
Since they can be transferred, pretty much 0% chance that wyverns will ever natively spawn on the Island or the Center either one. Wyverns are one of the major selling points of the Scorched Earth expansion pack.
Posts
But that's what I'm saying, is with tweaking the values, there could be. In PvE, someone with an assload of 'nades isn't better off than someone with one, really. It's more about iterating on failures against bosses or caves that is the PvE limiting factor (or survival aspects). Scorched Earth, for example, you are still able to stomp around the map on a rex, but a Deathworm or stray Wyvern can still take you out, and sandstorms or heatwaves can still deplete the resources you thought you were fine with, even at level 90. But the actual building and protection of bases, while in PvP is essential and therefore worthy of some grind to keep things "fair". But in PvE, it only matters to you, the base builder. On The Center, you should build in metal (or with metal incorporated) because there, any spawn can be a Gigan, even if it's the smallest chance of one. But you probably don't need Tek, at least until the "Final Boss" where you'll probably need Tek, from what the devs have hinted at. So again, it's more about being able to iterate quickly on the roving and adventuring. Getting into the beginning caves is eventually fairly easy, though at least on The Island, the later caves require (mostly), some sea diving to get BPs for gear strong enough to survive the later caves.
So, if you die doing those things, in PvE, it's more about how long it will take you to get back to those things. I think of it sort of like Dark Souls; everyone claims it's a super hard game, but (A) it's not hard to cheese the difficulty curve, (B) it's usually not hard to get back to where you were (provided you don't push too hard), and (C) if you come prepared, you will obliterate almost every challenge the game has to offer (the Capra Demon and O&S notwithstanding). What's more, you can play completely without the PvP element (other than the occasional NPC invader, which I'd have to say is the most annoying part of those games). It still works, it's still tough, but actually getting souls, for example? Not hard. Farming for items? Not hard. Because it's the world that's meant to challenge you.
That's what I mean by tweaking the values. Gathering and building and such should be mostly trivial in PvE, but caves and bosses (and of course, some other survival elements vis a vis weather or ailments of some kind) should be more enhanced. This is my point, that the game as-is is exclusionary, but could be more inclusive with some simple tweaks to the base elements that, in PvE, have to be more balanced against other players instead of the world itself.
edit: and before anyone says "Why would you need a castle if you don't need to defend against PvP" because a castle is it's own reward!
Exactly, and apparently, the track is meant to be survive, thrive, spelunk caves, fight bosses, store up for the final boss fight, ascension (whatever form that will take). I'm suspicious that ascended player will be able to take some Engrams over to start a new character with, basically like a new game plus, but with a head start, because that sounds about right for this game.
But basically, past the whole "fight other tribes" PvP point, the rest of the game is mostly Co-op/PvE centered. Everything from the first few minutes all the way to the last few current bosses might not require teamwork to do, but totally benefit five-fold from being done with other people, together. Even taming, even with taming or breeding sped up, even with building, and gathering sped up, it's just . . . more fun to play with others around you.
The whole "can't take tek into the fights you do to get tek" thing is bullshit, 'weight' restrictions on what dinos you can take into the boss fights are bullshit, and is blatantly set up to make it a bitch to do no matter where you're at in the progression, while ignoring that the only winning strategy of throwing a whole mess of rexes at a boss is lazy game design and allowing tek or gigas or wyverns, or hell, brontos or something, would at least make it interesting.
Can't wait til the end-boss that you're ostensibly saving up tek gear amounts to "shoot it with the tek rifle until it dies" while it stupidly charges you and bites endlessly.
I just completely disagree with that assessment. Disappointing on purpose is a very dangerous game for a company that cares about their financial future. Maybe it's the old in me worrying about financial viability, but as soon as I saw the severity of what they did, I just knew the Steam reviews were going to tank (which they did, from mostly positive to mixed.) Honestly, I expected it to be worse.
I really can't think of a worse idea than "Piss everyone off as step one, then walk it back." People will quit. Reviews (which tend to be more or less permanent) go down which chops out the legs from future purchases. People lose confidence in development direction. Overall it makes the whole design direction look like a waffle, because you give the impression that you *think* something should be objectively shitty, but you have to change it because of the community uproar.
There's just no upside.
However, I was happy to learn that the recent nerf was in many ways so they could knock down the values and then build them up to their desired in-game roles through testing and player feedback; most fliers had become basically interchangeable, so that the best choice if you could get it was always a Quetz, much like the problems with land dinos which there are fuckton of, and which will probably get their own nerf and boost cycles from the sound of things to properly place them into their roles.
I know that, after, like, a year (and Scorched Earth) that people got really pissy as if "paid DLC" equals a released game, but I've stuck by the idea that no, dev teams can work differently now, and there's some folks that are going to hate that with a passion, but I'm personally fine with it. If it takes closer to two years and a half years and a paid expansion rather than one year flat, I'm honestly just fine with that.
Not to get nitpicky, but the reviews behaved similarly after the poor reception of Scorched Earth (as far as paid dlc for a game not yet released officially). I hadn't looked in a while so it looks like they bounced back from that, if they did indeed drop from mostly positive. They'll bounce back from this, I'm sure. Especially once they walk back the nerfs in whatever direction.
Not to get nitpicky either, but the concurrent users (via steamcharts) is actually up over the last week, which isn't consistent with the narrative that players are quitting in droves.
Second, they were pretty transparent that this was going to be a series of adjustments, and that this was going to be the bottom. Then they'd iterate up from there. This is my "crazy pills" moment over the entire thing. They literally said things would get buffed back up based on player feedback, yet people still ranted and raved like it was the end of the world. Even after they posted very clearly and objectively the direction, people are still loudly declaring doomsday for ARK.
I know everyone hates it when you beat this drum, but if you can't stand a few days of "rough waters" over a patch in an early access game, especially when the developers have been clear about the direction they're going, then you need to make a personal readjustment on your own expectations.
Third, when you're trying to dial something in, if you know the ceiling, finding the floor is a perfectly valid and logical way of doing it. It's not idiot non-sense here...they're essentially trying to guess a number and get there as quickly as possible. Unlike other games this has been compared to, like WoW or whatever, they don't have the luxury of tweaking a number, waiting a few weeks, tweaking, waiting, tweaking, waiting. You have this bipolar fan base that rips Wildcard for being almost a "year late" on the release, yet gets fanatically rabid if stuff changes too fast.
And ultimately, this is the shit soup that Wildcard (and literally every single game developer in the world) has to sip on every day. It's sort of sad that we as gamers have not only created a certain base level of toxic behavior, but perpetuate it. People can be passionate, they can get angry, or express dissatisfaction, that's fine. I'm not saying people should be quiet on their feedback. Quite the opposite. But at a certain point the drama over stuff like this gets so ridiculous even the original cast of 90210 would roll their eyes over it.
Numbers are up because the game was on a massive sale over the weekend.
I mean, they said someone sent them gif of a guy pooping on their names...like, that's not ok.
They understand people are going to get upset, but their intent is NOT to upset people. Their intent is to get their game in the place they want it to be.
However, they're also smart enough to realize that no matter how they do things, they're going to get met with rage hotter than a thousands suns, with wailing louder than the song of the six-mouthed raven as he sings the song that ends the world.
They've just apparently created some sort of system to measure that. Which is actually really fucking clever.
It doesn't mean they enjoy doing it that way. It just means that's the reality of the environment players have helped create in our world.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
* Flier Mk 2: Click here to see the changes to fliers!
* Ridable fliers (not the Moth) now have ground attacks.
* Leeds spawns adjusted so no longer spawning near shorelines
* Ichthyornis no longer gets stuck in corners of underwater bases.
* Leeds will no longer scale in damage/level etc.
* Therizinosaurus spawn weight and aggro ranged decreased
* Quetz' idle stamina consumption reduced by 50%
* Remove Ichthyornis's ability to steal kibble from dino inventories.
* Certain creatures now have special weight reductions for specific resources similar to the Beaver.
- Mammoth reduces weight of wood by 75%
- Ankylo reduces weight of raw metal by 75%
- Doed reduces weight of stone by 75%
- Beaver and Thorny Dragon now adjusted to 50% reduction for resource-weight (they do a few) due to being a jack of all trades, as opposed to specialising.
UI Related:
* When there is an item in the crafting queue, upon completion the right-click options would close, this no longer happens.
* Updated the UI to include a way to differentiate regular eggs from fertilized eggs, as well as show a health bar and spoiling bar.
* Taming and Fert eggs now display the progress as a %
* Adjusted Blueprint and Engrams colours to help with readability.
* Craft All now correctly displays Craft 100
* Required Engrams no longer clipping and correctly displayed (We've got an Engram page on the way!)
* Placing your cursor over a broken and pressing 'E' now repairs it.
* When adding multiple stacks into an inventory, the stacks force into stacks of the max size (stacks on deck..)
* Placing your cursor over an engram or blueprint in a remote inventory and pressing 'E' should craft it.
* Tribe Log should now appear correctly upon opening the Tribe Manager for the first time
* Adjusted size of UI box on Raft so it's no longer in the way when placing structures
* Fixed an issue where breeding dinos would show 100% regardless of progress
* Fixed an issue where text was overlapping during the breeding process.
* Added an option to turn on the grinder inside of it's remote inventory
Other:
* There is now a 0.2s cooldown on meat consumption
* Oxygen Swim Speed multiplier now exposed and included on the following server types: Primitive, Primitive+ and NoTame to help with underwater adventures! [ ?OxygenSwimSpeedStatMultiplier=3.0 ]
* When using the server-config bPvEDisableFriendlyFire=True, you are now able to harvest a slaughtered Ovis.
* Vaults are now paintable
I even saw a rumor or two floating around Reddit that Wildcard doesn't indeed hate their players and want everyone to quit now that they've grabbed all the cash. What a crazy thought!?!
Anyone have any other recommendations? Do the building mods break the game in some way?
But Castles, Keeps and Fortresses, for sure. If Commander Sheppard played ARK, it would be his favorite building mod.
Siccing T-Rexes on the Bush People was really entertaining. Shades of Un'Goro Crater were swimming in my mind.
Fucking Devilsaurs. Nothing that big should be so stealthy.
Eh, doesn't change the speed changes which were the worst part of the flyer thing
In related irony, it looks like Host Havoc might have finally added the settings I wanted for clusters like, 4 months ago.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
We cleaned everything out last night. Took about a dozen dinosaur convoys to get it all done. Thanks again for hosting.
Sounds like the kind of thing I would be down for immensely.
My current issue is that friends have dropped off playing, and any server I join is already so built up that there's no fun to be had in scraping. A thing where the world can be reset on a semi-regular basis sounds great.
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
https://www.pcgamesn.com/ark-survival-evolved/ark-survival-evolved-patch-257-volcano-delay
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
I mean, I assumed they'd eventually activate the volcano, so that's not surprising. What is surprising, I suppose, is that that's where the lion's share of metal is on The Island, so . . .
I guess if I ever pick this back up in single player, I'll stick to mining at Blue Obelisk.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
I mean, they disabled forges on platforms even before we left the Island. We just built one in the place it would block the least resources. The amount of metal left was still staggering.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
No shit, sometimes I'd harvest so much it would weight down my quetzels, so I'd end up leaving a few stacks of bars/ore just sitting in the forge for whoever showed up next.
It's just that any buildings or creatures within that zone might be destroyed when they update
Pretty sure its gonna be a lot of lava.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
That, and changes like that, would go a long way into helping make certain creatures both relevant and useful again . . .
Edit: further digging shows it hit the PC at 256.3. Cool!
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.