How exactly does DifficultyOffset work?

[Orthopaktis]

I remember on ARK Evolved, everyone saying to set DifficultyOffset to 1 because it was a multiplier for levels, ie. using the equation DifficultyOffset × Difficulty (or) OverrideOfficialDifficulty × 30 = MaxLevel for the Island (Difficulty 4) at DifficultyOffset 1 would result in a max wild level of 120. I never tested this however, and just went with the suggested all the time.

However, now that I've started playing ARK Ascended, I decided to play around with settings more and do some testing. My theory was that based on developer and wiki comments, DifficultyOffset was also solely responsible for other things like loot tables, default attributes, spawn rates, etc.

Well, what I seem to have found is that DifficultyOffset has nothing to do with max level at all. Reducing it didn't affect my max, but it did however reduce the rate of spawn of higher levels, meaning a 0.2 DifficultyOffset with a 1.5 OverrideOfficialDifficulty results in more of a 60% in the 1-15 range with another maybe 20% at the 15-25 range, 10% at like 25-35, and so on while a 1.0 DifficultyOffset using the same Difficulty results in a heavy lean towards max level 45ish dinos, with spawns at levels 1-15 far less common.

This means that setting OverrideOfficialDifficulty is the only thing that matters when deciding max levels, but all the sources say the opposite, that Offset is also important. Did something change, or have we just been assuming based on an invisible 1 in an equation that never changed?

[FeatheryBacon]

I feel like you've just misunderstood whatever you read/heard. Nothing I've ever seen has suggested that DifficultyOffset affects the max level of creatures, it only determines the spawn rates of low level vs high level creatures as well as loot quality.

You basically explained to yourself how it works in this post so I'm not sure what you're not understanding.

[Orthopaktis]

Originally posted by FeatheryBacon:

I feel like you've just misunderstood whatever you read/heard. Nothing I've ever seen has suggested that DifficultyOffset affects the max level of creatures, it only determines the spawn rates of low level vs high level creatures as well as loot quality.

You basically explained to yourself how it works in this post so I'm not sure what you're not understanding.

Every source I seen, even now, implies it does affect max level. From the wiki right now for example:

"Instead of fixed difficulties such as Easy, Medium, and Hard, the difficulty is expressed using a number currently between 0.5 and 4.0[1] (or 5.0 in The Center). This number is known as the Difficulty Value and is controlled by the DifficultyOffset option.
...
To calculate the Difficulty Value for a specific Difficulty Offset, use the formula: Difficulty Value = (1 + DifficultyOffset) * (Official Difficulty - 0.5) + 0.5 and round to one decimal. To calculate the Maximum Creature Level for a given Difficulty Value, simply multiply by 30."

This is similar to what you find on pretty much every other explanation, from paid server hosts' explanations to forums to wikis. What am I misreading here?

[Vig]

When i started playing ark under evolved, i read once that TheIsland was always set ti difficulty of 1.25 and the override was set to 5 to give 150 max levels. also byadding the MOD 928708 - Custom Dino Levels that this turned the spawning upside down. meaning that whereby majority of spawns were lower than the 150 normaly , with the MOD it means that the spawns are more likely to be closer to the upper end. Hope that makes sense. I am finding that this is generally true.

[Vig]

Rag also had diffrent settings which always meant generally better spawns than the island

[FeatheryBacon]

Originally posted by Orthopaktis:

Originally posted by FeatheryBacon:

I feel like you've just misunderstood whatever you read/heard. Nothing I've ever seen has suggested that DifficultyOffset affects the max level of creatures, it only determines the spawn rates of low level vs high level creatures as well as loot quality.

You basically explained to yourself how it works in this post so I'm not sure what you're not understanding.

Every source I seen, even now, implies it does affect max level. From the wiki right now for example:

"Instead of fixed difficulties such as Easy, Medium, and Hard, the difficulty is expressed using a number currently between 0.5 and 4.0[1] (or 5.0 in The Center). This number is known as the Difficulty Value and is controlled by the DifficultyOffset option.
...
To calculate the Difficulty Value for a specific Difficulty Offset, use the formula: Difficulty Value = (1 + DifficultyOffset) * (Official Difficulty - 0.5) + 0.5 and round to one decimal. To calculate the Maximum Creature Level for a given Difficulty Value, simply multiply by 30."

This is similar to what you find on pretty much every other explanation, from paid server hosts' explanations to forums to wikis. What am I misreading here?

Let me rephrase.

Nothing I've seen mentions DifficultyOffset affecting max creature levels when OverrideOfficialDifficulty is also being used.

If you have OverrideOfficialDifficulty=x in your .ini, the DifficultyOffset setting has no effect on max levels because the Override line overrides it - that's why it's called Override in the first place. But if you are not using the Override line in the .ini, then the Difficulty Level/DifficultyOffset setting will affect max level.

So if you want to test what actually changes with it, you need to remove the OverrideOfficialDifficulty line from the .ini.

[Orthopaktis]

Originally posted by FeatheryBacon:

Originally posted by Orthopaktis:

Every source I seen, even now, implies it does affect max level. From the wiki right now for example:

"Instead of fixed difficulties such as Easy, Medium, and Hard, the difficulty is expressed using a number currently between 0.5 and 4.0[1] (or 5.0 in The Center). This number is known as the Difficulty Value and is controlled by the DifficultyOffset option.
...
To calculate the Difficulty Value for a specific Difficulty Offset, use the formula: Difficulty Value = (1 + DifficultyOffset) * (Official Difficulty - 0.5) + 0.5 and round to one decimal. To calculate the Maximum Creature Level for a given Difficulty Value, simply multiply by 30."

This is similar to what you find on pretty much every other explanation, from paid server hosts' explanations to forums to wikis. What am I misreading here?

Let me rephrase.

Nothing I've seen mentions DifficultyOffset affecting max creature levels when OverrideOfficialDifficulty is also being used.

If you have OverrideOfficialDifficulty=x in your .ini, the DifficultyOffset setting has no effect on max levels because the Override line overrides it - that's why it's called Override in the first place. But if you are not using the Override line in the .ini, then the Difficulty Level/DifficultyOffset setting will affect max level.

So if you want to test what actually changes with it, you need to remove the OverrideOfficialDifficulty line from the .ini.

If this is true, then it still affects other things like level spawn rate as I'm finding with testing, even with Override on.