DifficultyOffset=MAX? Clarification Please

[FrostByghte]

Can I get some clarification on the max value for the DifficultyOffset? There is a LOT OF confusion since these patch notes:

* Official Servers are now upgraded to the equivalent of "2.0" difficulty, rather than 1.0

many say the scale is:

DifficultyOffset=0 - 50% Difficulty
DifficultyOffset=1 - 100% Difficulty
DifficultyOffset=2 - 200% Difficulty
DifficultyOffset=3 - 300% Difficulty

I haven't found anything official to actually support this. Additionally, several members in this thread:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/346110/discussions/0/523890046884338034/

Claim to be running the game at the 2 and 3 value point with no discernible change to difficulty. So my thought is that the patch notes above may have been taken somewhat out of context and the max is still 1.... OR...do these values higher than 1 actually do something? Thank you for any assistance...really hoping for a link or official response to clarify. Appreciate the assistance.

[Pandah Sykes]

Official servers are definitely up to a harder difficulty because dinosaurs are at much higher levels... An that's all that changes , the wild dinosaur levels .

[Hobo]

Difficulty = 1 = Max lvl 30 Dinos in the wild
Difficulty = 2 = Max lvl 60 Dinos in the wild
Difficulty = 3 = Max lvl 90 Dinos in the wild

[mustangcoupe69]

Originally posted by Hobo:

Difficulty = 1 = Max lvl 30 Dinos in the wild
Difficulty = 2 = Max lvl 60 Dinos in the wild
Difficulty = 3 = Max lvl 90 Dinos in the wild

This is not true, DifficultyOffset=1 spawns dinos at least up to level 87 (and I'm sure higher, but that is the highest I recall actually seeing so far)

[Ten24-Khale K'itha]

http://steamcommunity.com/app/346110/discussions/0/523890681423381550/

According to this guy's tests, with a hex editor, nothing over 1 is seeming to matter.

[FrostByghte]

Additionally according to Cliff over at on the ARK Server Manager forums:

"For the 1.0 vs. 2.0 thing, the 2.0 I think refers to a standard difficulty of 200%, not 100% on the official servers. those values do not map to 0 and 0.5. 0 = 50%, 1 = 300%. So 200% is somewhere in between."

I think that is what is happening here. I am personally not seeing any advantage to increasing the DifficultyOffset past 1.

[Thyriel]

Originally posted by mustangcoupe69:

Originally posted by Hobo:

Difficulty = 1 = Max lvl 30 Dinos in the wild
Difficulty = 2 = Max lvl 60 Dinos in the wild
Difficulty = 3 = Max lvl 90 Dinos in the wild

This is not true, DifficultyOffset=1 spawns dinos at least up to level 87 (and I'm sure higher, but that is the highest I recall actually seeing so far)

That's just not true lol... Our server ran on 1.0 until the above patchnotes. Max dino ever seen was definitly 60. (my Carno from that time is currently lvl92) When the official servers increased it, we increased it too. Max lvl i've seen since then was 89.

Beside dino level, it doesn't seem to me that it changes anything else. Combat isn't harder or more challenging vs a lvl60 then it was before.

[Willow]

I can confirm my private server is set to level 3 and the max I have seen is level 90. On level 2 we only saw up to level 60. From what I read most of the official servers are on level 2. I know the PvE official server I was on went up to level 2 as we started seeing dinos up to 60.

[Thyriel]

Originally posted by Willow:

I can confirm my private server is set to level 3 and the max I have seen is level 90. On level 2 we only saw up to level 60. From what I read most of the official servers are on level 2. I know the PvE official server I was on went up to level 2 as we started seeing dinos up to 60.

2.0 is max lvl 90. My server runs on it, and the whole NE island spawns almost only lvl80+

[Willow]

Originally posted by Thyriel:

Originally posted by Willow:

I can confirm my private server is set to level 3 and the max I have seen is level 90. On level 2 we only saw up to level 60. From what I read most of the official servers are on level 2. I know the PvE official server I was on went up to level 2 as we started seeing dinos up to 60.

2.0 is max lvl 90. My server runs on it, and the whole NE island spawns almost only lvl80+

We ran level 2 and never saw anything over 60. The official PvE server I am on also is set to 2 (this was posted somewhere on the forum...I can't verify if this is true) and we have not seen anything over 60. So I do not know what all your settings are for the ini files, but for me level 2 has not spawned over level 60 for me.

[Willow]

Originally posted by Ryven:

DifficultyOffset=0 is 50% difficulty
DifficultyOffset=1 is 300% difficulty

My server is running 1 and we have level 90 wild dinosaurs.

I am running tests on my clone server atm. I am going to play around with the numbers again...before level 2 didn't yield level 90's for me...the devs could really help us on clarifying this as there is a lot of info going around the forums that does not match up.

[Hades]

Hazens1 is correct... I've tested this extensively.

Thyriel you are smoking some serious weed or trolling.

[Cricket]

This is from the server hosting FAQ posted by the devs:

DifficultyOffset is a new value that will let you scale difficulty. It is currently clamped 0 to 1 but we may remove this later on. At 1, the creatures and loot will scale by a factor of approximately 3x, at 0 it will be approximately 50%.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/346110/discussions/10/530646715633129391/

So, unless they changed that and didn't mention it...

[Thyriel]

Originally posted by Storm:

Hazens1 is correct... I've tested this extensively.

Thyriel you are smoking some serious weed or trolling.

"When" did you test that ?
As i said, that was before they changed official servers to an "equivalent of 2.0 diff". And there where definitly NO lvl90 wild dinos around on diff 1.0 a month ago.

edit: my fault sorry, just reminded myself that we had diff on 0.7 and not 1.0 before that.

Originally posted by Dennis Reynolds:

This is from the server hosting FAQ posted by the devs:

DifficultyOffset is a new value that will let you scale difficulty. It is currently clamped 0 to 1 but we may remove this later on. At 1, the creatures and loot will scale by a factor of approximately 3x, at 0 it will be approximately 50%.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/346110/discussions/10/530646715633129391/

So, unless they changed that and didn't mention it...

I wouldn't count too much on the dev's description about server settings. There's quite some very missleading descriptions or even wrong descriptions from them. Like every resistance multiplicator being in truth a divisor, or MaxStructuresInRange that should be renamed to maxStructuresRange as it has nothing to do with an amount.

[FrostByghte]

I'm going to give my private server a good run on Saturday and will look. Storm has been extensively testing in this thread:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/346110/discussions/0/523890046884338034/

So to me he would be somewhat authortive on the matter. :)

[Thyriel]

Originally posted by FrostByghte:

I'm going to give my private server a good run on Saturday and will look. Storm has been extensively testing in this thread:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/346110/discussions/0/523890046884338034/

So to me he would be somewhat authortive on the matter. :)

Interesting Link ;) Here Storm's stating that 1.0 is the max, and in his own thread he's saying in bold that he's using 2.0 so he has maxlvl90...
Contradicting himself a bit lol ?