Tek tier is miserable

[Andariel Halo]

The insane amount of work and effort it takes just to do the boss fights pushes the limits of the game dinos. the only animals that are worth souping up for the fights is the Rex, and to get 20 of them hyper powered via extensive breeding, hundreds of hours of grinding, and hours more of gathering tens of thousands of hide, fiber, and metal for ascendant saddles, just to get them prepped for the most basic boss on the easiest mode...


By the time you've reached a level where you have 20 rexes that can obliterate the Broodmother within 5 minutes, what else is there to do? More of the same? And the reward is... a handful of Tekgrams to build a base only marginally better than regular metal, and a pittance of element.


Supposing I somehow manage to squeeze even more extra levels out of the rexes, and squeeze some more Ascendant gear for myself and start beating Megapithecus and the Dragon on all difficulties, what is my reward? Random gimmicky trinkets that require more Element to use, like a dealer keeping their junkie fixed so they always come back.


When I think of the Tek tier and the promises it make, I imagine elements that change the nature of gameplay when you're late in, stuff you can start working to as soon as you're level 80 or 85 and letting you do wild, ridiculous things like teleporting, running up mountains, jetpack saddles for ground dinos, carbon freeze tubes to keep prime meat permanently fresh, drone aircraft that can carry a rex all the way across a map or drop dozens of raptors onto the battlefield like a carpet bomb of shrieking feathery lizards.


Thus far, none of the Tek stuff except the Teleport chamber and the Underwater bases are in any way remarkable or game-changing, and those are restricted to the most insanely high difficulty boss fights out there.


I'm at the point in the game where I can hatch and raise 20 fresh rexes and imprint them all almost to 100% and give them ascendant saddles and level them up and take them into a Broodmother fight and win easily. I have thousands of metal ingots to spare at any given moment, and Ascendant versions of pretty much every available item or blueprint in-game. I can take out wild gigas of any level with a handful of my super rexes. I can clear out any cave on the map with any of my other tames.

Yet I cannot beat the Megapithecus Medium without losing half my ultra-rexes. And for what?


I'm completely and utterly burnt out on this game, having reached the absolute apex status on the Island, and yet that's apparently barely good enough to go through most of the bosses even on Easy mode


By the time I squeeze my rexes for another scrap of XP, to get just one more level, or fish with an ascendant rod for 6 hours straight, just barely enough to unlock all the Tekgrams, I'm rewarded with unremarkable garbage that is essentially the next "Metal tier" over metal.


By the point in the game where I am beating the hardest bosses, I am flat-out bored, and there is nothing in the current Tek tier (or the coming Cloning thing) that changes that.



TL;DR
By the time Tek tier is within reach, I'm too bored to get it, and none of the Tek stuff looks like any fun except the teleporter and underwater bases

[Cajun Rabbit]

sounds like your doing this stuff solo? are you not in a tribe?

boss fights are ment for tribes of 10 players or so... it would go a lot smoother.

[Andariel Halo]

I am solo, but also have a tribe alliance with someone who can go with me, and on a server with some boosted rates (Breeding x5, XP x1.5, )


There aren't any 10-people tribes on the server, nor 10 players with the right stuff who are on at the same time to work together

[Archie]

Originally posted by Andariel Halo:

I am solo, but also have a tribe alliance with someone who can go with me, and on a server with some boosted rates (Breeding x5, XP x1.5, )


There aren't any 10-people tribes on the server, nor 10 players with the right stuff who are on at the same time to work together

Well, TEK is mostly for the fun of it, and I guess PvP, or just to have some goals to go after. You are playing with higher rates, imagine those on officials. If you are playing unofficial, and dislike the way TEK is locked behind such hard bosses, then have the admin put the TEK mod that unlocks it for people or something along those lines.

[Andariel Halo]

Originally posted by ArchXDiablo:

Originally posted by Andariel Halo:

I am solo, but also have a tribe alliance with someone who can go with me, and on a server with some boosted rates (Breeding x5, XP x1.5, )


There aren't any 10-people tribes on the server, nor 10 players with the right stuff who are on at the same time to work together

Well, TEK is mostly for the fun of it, and I guess PvP, or just to have some goals to go after. You are playing with higher rates, imagine those on officials. If you are playing unofficial, and dislike the way TEK is locked behind such hard bosses, then have the admin put the TEK mod that unlocks it for people or something along those lines.

I imagine it would be even more miserable on Official, but then I am under the impression that the only people on Official are alpha tribes with colossal bases everywhere on the map and chinese/russian hackers.

i feel like if you're going for the Tek stuff for the purpose of PvP, when you already have hyper rexes and ascendant everything, then you're probably PvPing completely wrong, like trying to get ahold of high powered machine guns and sniper rifles when you already have the firepower equivalent of predator drones and satellite lasers (though probably less so now with the flyer nerf)

[EmberStar]

I play in singleplayer. I've turned up taming rates and xp as far as the sliders go (so X3, or X6 over the original base since I didn't turn it down when they increased it.) I don't have increased harvest rates, HP, or damage. From what I've seen, I more or less have to just pretend Tek doesn't exist. Short of using admin commands to stop time and autokill the boss, or just grant myself the engrams and Element, I'll never see anything in Tek. And it's deliberately distributed so that if you can't do the Hard versions, you can't complete *any* of the sets of either armor or building components.

Short of the devs somehow deciding to actually support Singleplayer as a real mode and balance it for one actual player, Tek Tier is something that will never happen in my game. At the moment, it feels like Singleplayer is a side effect, not an actual mode the devs really have any plan to support.

And no, mods that unlock everything aren't "support" for singleplayer. I've looked at a couple, and most of them feel (to me) nearly as cheaty as just giving myself Godmode and knifing Lysyrix to death while she tries to gnaw on my head.

As far as multiplayer... the devs only seem to balance around PVP and mega Alpha tribes with a zillion people and all the free time in the world. Private servers and singleplayer mode people are apparently expected to figure out how to edit the .ini files and balance it for themselves.

[Archie]

Originally posted by Andariel Halo:

Originally posted by ArchXDiablo:

Well, TEK is mostly for the fun of it, and I guess PvP, or just to have some goals to go after. You are playing with higher rates, imagine those on officials. If you are playing unofficial, and dislike the way TEK is locked behind such hard bosses, then have the admin put the TEK mod that unlocks it for people or something along those lines.

I imagine it would be even more miserable on Official, but then I am under the impression that the only people on Official are alpha tribes with colossal bases everywhere on the map and chinese/russian hackers.

i feel like if you're going for the Tek stuff for the purpose of PvP, when you already have hyper rexes and ascendant everything, then you're probably PvPing completely wrong, like trying to get ahold of high powered machine guns and sniper rifles when you already have the firepower equivalent of predator drones and satellite lasers (though probably less so now with the flyer nerf)

Well, it depends on the server and people. People might want to try PvP with TEK. Sure you can have a hundred super-bred t-rexes, but that doesn't exactly mean people will want to use them. Sometimes it's about how much fun it is vs doing it right.

Then there's the ascension thing announced that may put TEK to use, boss wars or something else endgame that puts TEK to use and makes it a necessity. We have to wait for all the actual end-game content to be added to know if TEK will stay as is, or if it will become a necessity.

[Andariel Halo]

Originally posted by ArchXDiablo:

Originally posted by Andariel Halo:

I imagine it would be even more miserable on Official, but then I am under the impression that the only people on Official are alpha tribes with colossal bases everywhere on the map and chinese/russian hackers.

i feel like if you're going for the Tek stuff for the purpose of PvP, when you already have hyper rexes and ascendant everything, then you're probably PvPing completely wrong, like trying to get ahold of high powered machine guns and sniper rifles when you already have the firepower equivalent of predator drones and satellite lasers (though probably less so now with the flyer nerf)

Well, it depends on the server and people. People might want to try PvP with TEK. Sure you can have a hundred super-bred t-rexes, but that doesn't exactly mean people will want to use them. Sometimes it's about how much fun it is vs doing it right.

Then there's the ascension thing announced that may put TEK to use, boss wars or something else endgame that puts TEK to use and makes it a necessity. We have to wait for all the actual end-game content to be added to know if TEK will stay as is, or if it will become a necessity.

you're probably right, but I feel that, barring a massive re-balancing of the boss fights (maybe sharply reducing their damage and HP while reducing the number of things you can bring), this will always be like having to bake a perfect cake with no experience the first time, and as reward receiving some cupcakes

[Mightylink]

I wish at least the tek structures didn't require a tek generator to run, its really stupid you go through incredible lengths to get the recipies and element only to require more element to run the generator. They should make it so only the armor powers and guns need extra element, once you go through the incredible work of building a tek base that should just be perminant.

[leefnmajors]

Originally posted by EmberStar:

I play in singleplayer. I've turned up taming rates and xp as far as the sliders go (so X3, or X6 over the original base since I didn't turn it down when they increased it.) I don't have increased harvest rates, HP, or damage. From what I've seen, I more or less have to just pretend Tek doesn't exist. Short of using admin commands to stop time and autokill the boss, or just grant myself the engrams and Element, I'll never see anything in Tek. And it's deliberately distributed so that if you can't do the Hard versions, you can't complete *any* of the sets of either armor or building components.

Short of the devs somehow deciding to actually support Singleplayer as a real mode and balance it for one actual player, Tek Tier is something that will never happen in my game. At the moment, it feels like Singleplayer is a side effect, not an actual mode the devs really have any plan to support.

And no, mods that unlock everything aren't "support" for singleplayer. I've looked at a couple, and most of them feel (to me) nearly as cheaty as just giving myself Godmode and knifing Lysyrix to death while she tries to gnaw on my head.

As far as multiplayer... the devs only seem to balance around PVP and mega Alpha tribes with a zillion people and all the free time in the world. Private servers and singleplayer mode people are apparently expected to figure out how to edit the .ini files and balance it for themselves.

If you can't get Tek on singleplayer, it's just because you're not trying. They actually reduced boss damage/HP by 67% on singleplayer. I found it easier to get all the Tekgrams on singleplayer than it was on official servers (and no, I didn't simply cheat them in). 15 bred Rexes gets everything done, though you might have some losses on the Dragon on Hard.

Cost can be a bit prohibitive to actually make the Tek gear/buildings (just not that easy to farm pearls/poly/metal all by yourself with a reasonable multiplier close to vanilla), and sometimes bugs just screw you over (while attempting to farm Megapithecus on Hard for easy Element, I had a lovely bug where I spawned into the arena and was immediately ported back out WITHOUT my Rexes... lost every single one : /), but as far as just getting the Tekgrams and doing the boss fights? It's as easy as find a Rex around 10k starting health (little under is fine, look for 7.3k and over pre-tame), one around 360-370 starting melee (look for 240+ pre-tame), and get to breeding. Stamina means almost nothing on SP since all but one Rex is unmanned. Find a decent saddle bp (80 armor and higher, 90+ preferred for the Dragon). Level them up to a mix of 50k/400 melee to tank and 25k/800ish melee dpsers to use on the bosses, and go kill some bosses.

[Andariel Halo]

Originally posted by MiT leefnmajors:

Originally posted by EmberStar:

I play in singleplayer. I've turned up taming rates and xp as far as the sliders go (so X3, or X6 over the original base since I didn't turn it down when they increased it.) I don't have increased harvest rates, HP, or damage. From what I've seen, I more or less have to just pretend Tek doesn't exist. Short of using admin commands to stop time and autokill the boss, or just grant myself the engrams and Element, I'll never see anything in Tek. And it's deliberately distributed so that if you can't do the Hard versions, you can't complete *any* of the sets of either armor or building components.

Short of the devs somehow deciding to actually support Singleplayer as a real mode and balance it for one actual player, Tek Tier is something that will never happen in my game. At the moment, it feels like Singleplayer is a side effect, not an actual mode the devs really have any plan to support.

And no, mods that unlock everything aren't "support" for singleplayer. I've looked at a couple, and most of them feel (to me) nearly as cheaty as just giving myself Godmode and knifing Lysyrix to death while she tries to gnaw on my head.

As far as multiplayer... the devs only seem to balance around PVP and mega Alpha tribes with a zillion people and all the free time in the world. Private servers and singleplayer mode people are apparently expected to figure out how to edit the .ini files and balance it for themselves.

If you can't get Tek on singleplayer, it's just because you're not trying. They actually reduced boss damage/HP by 67% on singleplayer. I found it easier to get all the Tekgrams on singleplayer than it was on official servers (and no, I didn't simply cheat them in). 15 bred Rexes gets everything done, though you might have some losses on the Dragon on Hard.

Cost can be a bit prohibitive to actually make the Tek gear/buildings (just not that easy to farm pearls/poly/metal all by yourself with a reasonable multiplier close to vanilla), and sometimes bugs just screw you over (while attempting to farm Megapithecus on Hard for easy Element, I had a lovely bug where I spawned into the arena and was immediately ported back out WITHOUT my Rexes... lost every single one : /), but as far as just getting the Tekgrams and doing the boss fights? It's as easy as find a Rex around 10k starting health (little under is fine, look for 7.3k and over pre-tame), one around 360-370 starting melee (look for 240+ pre-tame), and get to breeding. Stamina means almost nothing on SP since all but one Rex is unmanned. Find a decent saddle bp (80 armor and higher, 90+ preferred for the Dragon). Level them up to a mix of 50k/400 melee to tank and 25k/800ish melee dpsers to use on the bosses, and go kill some bosses.

"It's as easy as"


No it's not. All my rexes have base stats 9900 hp and 308 - 331 melee. Most of them I imprinted to varying degrees, and levelled up to have at least 15k HP and over 600% melee, along with ascendant saddles that give 81.8 armor, no points put into anything other than HP and attack

They easily beat Broodmother Easy. They barely beat Broodmother Medium, all of them had their health down to less than 4000 hp. 11 of them died against Megapithecus Easy, but eventually won. It took about 2 months of regular Rex rampages to level up, along with squatting around packs of lystrosaurs for hours each day, and they just barely beat Megapithecus EASY.


This only further proves my point; the insane amount of work and effort having to squeeze every one of 20 perfectly bred, highly imprinted rexes to their absolute maximum, just to get "bare minimum" and narrowly defeat -some- of the bosses while suffering heavy casualties.

[Vin.]

With how many hours you have, I would have burnt out on this game a very, very long time ago.

[VoreX]

35-40k HP 600%+ melee is what i use on official.
can do easy / med / hard brood, easy / med ape. hard ape / dragon require mutliple people also using weapons, as well as dragon having a very particular way to do it.

Single player is a laugh with its hp/ damage debuff on the boss.

[Archie]

Originally posted by Vin.:

With how many hours you have, I would have burnt out on this game a very, very long time ago.

It's common for ARK players to have anywhere from 2-6k hours, at least those that have played for a year. Beauty of sandbox games, paired with mods, well, those are the results.

[BurlsoL]

Originally posted by Andariel Halo:

This only further proves my point; the insane amount of work and effort having to squeeze every one of 20 perfectly bred, highly imprinted rexes to their absolute maximum, just to get "bare minimum" and narrowly defeat -some- of the bosses while suffering heavy casualties.

Pretty much the same problem I see with solo play and this game. Bosses and many other things are not balanced around anything other than 5-20 people all playing together and doing this content.

[The Pretty Good Jaggi]

Random gimmicky trinkets? You can take out an entire metal base worth of turrets solo with the tek suit and rifle.