Analysis of the Bronto AoE (and serious BUG)

[Attack Kitty]

I have done some extensive testing with my berry gathering bronto after the nerf to see if it's still viable as a berry farmer after the various nerfs to brontos. And I have discovered several things the Dev's should be made aware of.

First off I'd just point out that I understand the problems with brontos, both in terms of lag and in terms of pvp balance with veggie cakes. And I understand the changes wildcard has been making, even if I'd have approached some of them differently.
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AoE Nerf Highlights the Bronto's Lack of Speed:

My 200+ level bronto... At that level, it's ability to gather berries is "ok-ish". It gathers much slower than it used to, but I had put a fairly large amount of levels into speed so that it could move quickly while gathering and transporting berries. I feel that the extra speed helped immeasurably in gathering with the smaller AoE.

The lowbie bronto however, is a complete joke. It is not as useful as a high level trike.

This leads me to a conclusion: that the decrease in AoE serves to highlight the bronto's seriously lacking speed. If the AoE reduction also came with a speed increase, I think that would help brontos to retain their value as a gathering dino.
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AoE Nerf Hinders the Bronto in Combat vs Large Dinos:

A smaller aoe means the bronto does not push enemies back nearly as far as it used to, because the perimeter of the aoe is much closer to the bronto. This leaves the bronto much more vulnerable to attacking dinos who might otherwise have been successfully kept at a distance via KnockBack.

This issue is further compounded by the Bronto's AoE being centered in it's rear area. This make sense, but it means the front of the bronto's body is poking out of it's AoE attack, making it incredibly vulnerable to attack from the front. The way ARK combat mechanics work, with very slow reverse and the issue of being stuck on other dinos, it can be impossible to turn a bronto to bring it's tail to bear on a hostile dino, meaning a frontal attack vs a bronto can leave it nearly helpless.

This is bad.

Moving the AoE anchor moderately forward in the bronto model could help to alleviate this issue. Or it could be fixed by "somewhat" enlarging the AoE to moderately larger than it's current nerf size.
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30% vs. 51% Nerf:

The area of a circular AoE in a 3D game is usually defined by a radius and a height (if a cylinder) or just a radius (if spherical). Usually when develpers say they are going to nerf an AoE's size by say "30%" what they mean is reducing the radius of an AoE by 30%. However, this somewhat fails at the math of basic geometry...

Area of a circle is defined by radius squared times Pi. That means the impact of any changes to the radius are squared. For example if a radius of a circular area is 10 meters, and you reduce that radius to 7 meters (a 30% reduction in radius), then you have actually reduced the total area by more than half.

(10x10)3.14 = area 314 sq meters
(7x7)3.14 = area 153 sq meters

A 30% reduction in radius will always result in a 51% reduction in total area.
(And that is before we even discuss the height of the AoE)

* I did not measure the bronto's radius prior to the nerf, so I cannot be certain whether the radius was reduced by 30%, or if they actually "mathed" it out to make the area 30% smaller (which incidentally would be a 16% reduction in radius). But I have never, ever, seen any game developer from any company actually bother to do the latter. So I suspect the bronto's area of effect may have actually been reduced by 51%.
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Bronto AoE HEIGHT Issue (serious problem):

The bronto's aoe is cylindrical in shape. I can confidently say this after both attacking wild ones from above and farming berries from a tamed one. It is not a sphere, it's a cylinder (and that's fine, it makes more sense to the attack animation).

But the recent nerf to bronto AoE size however, has caused what I believe is an unintended bug... one which will get a lot of tamed brontos killed.

Previously the AoE would extend down into the ground a little ways, so that if the bronto was standing at a slightly higher elevation than a berry bush (or hostile dilo, etc), it would still hit the target.

This was clearly intentional, and is common to nearly all such AoE's in 3D games. In an MMO for example, this would allow you to do a PBAoE while on a staircase, and still manage to hit the enemy on the stair above and below you. It provides vertical leeway for the AoE to connect to targets.

******The current (post nerf) bronto AoE extends exactly zero elevation below it's feet. That's fine if everything it's going to try to hit is at it's level or above, but in reality on uneven ground, usually half of the ground around a bronto is below the bronto's AoE.

Don't believe me? Go take a bronto to a relatively flat area (not perfectly flat), do an aoe, and see that there are many bushes within the AoE which are not hit. Now do the AoE repeatedly, those bushes remain un-hit.

I have even managed to stand on top of bushes with the bronto, so they are between it's feet, and still not hit the bush, because it's on ground that is a few inches lower than the bronto's feet.

On most sloping landscapes, this means you'll only hit berries on one side of the bronto (uphill berries only).

This means that in addition to a likely 51% decrease in area, the area has a further roughly 50% decrease in successfully hitting berries (for those keeping score, that leaves the bronto's aoe at an average of 24.5% of it's original berry gathering, depending on terrain, a 75.5% nerf).

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MORE IMPORTANTLY
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This leaves a bronto totally vulnerable to being killed by small aggressive critters like dilo's, compy's, ants, etc. If any such small creature attacks a bronto from ground that slopes down from where the bronto is standing, then a bronto on neutral will try unsuccessfully to hit the attacker, and fail to ever land a hit. Even a ridden bronto will end up having to be dismounted so the rider can manually clear out small attackers which the bronto's AoE can't connect with.

The problem is extremely similar to the issue Rex's had in early ARK, where they were frequently slowly killed by dilo's attacking them from between their legs.

Regardless of any need for a change to bronto's aoe due to the lag it causes, the current (post nerf) vertical height of the AoE intoduces a very serious bug. And I hope that whatever balancing they decide to go with for the bronto, that they at the very least lengthen it's AoE vertically downward a fair amount. (and NO, 'moving' the aoe downward would be equally bad, as that would leave the bronto totally vulnerable to argents, etc.)


TL:DR - Post-nerf bronto AoE fails to protect it's own hitbox effectively.

[hullu hullu]

Very well written and exactly what i saw today when used my bronto for berry harvesting. Its a Joke now.

[tmora2]

The devs said there would still be a great deal of balancing between the dino's before final release.

[Archie]

Bronto is one of my favorite dinos, along with the titano and diplo (I love sauropods). It seems to me that the devs either got their ass handed by brontos, or, or...hell I don't know, why all of the sudden they nerf them multiple times. If they don't fix them, I'm bumping their base speed and damage on our server. Long live the brontos, and a big middle finger to whoever thought these changes were a good idea. \o/

[hullu hullu]

Diablo those nerfs make sense, for official PVP servers. As sad as it is, its still the truth that the devs look at PVP as the "core" mode of the game, EVERYTHING else has to suck it down or suffer in salt, this includes PVE, Hardcore, Primitive, Extinction and sometimes even the map Center.

[jacob99]

Originally posted by ArkaiusNexus:

Originally posted by hullu hullu:

Diablo those nerfs make sense, for official PVP servers. As sad as it is, its still the truth that the devs look at PVP as the "core" mode of the game, EVERYTHING else has to suck it down or suffer in salt, this includes PVE, Hardcore, Primitive, Extinction and sometimes even the map Center.

I disagree profusely. The nerfs don't make sense...

Especially when there were better ways to counteract that evil. twisted. demonic. cake.

the cake is a lie

[Archie]

Originally posted by hullu hullu:

Diablo those nerfs make sense, for official PVP servers. As sad as it is, its still the truth that the devs look at PVP as the "core" mode of the game, EVERYTHING else has to suck it down or suffer in salt, this includes PVE, Hardcore, Primitive, Extinction and sometimes even the map Center.

I disagree there. They do not make sense, specially the AOE nerf rendering itself unable to properly defend from other dinos. Who even feared that attack? Brontos in PvP are mostly used as tanks, not as melee damagers.

If the devs wanted to really fix PvP, they would make it so that there is actually Player vs Player action in officials. Then they could focus on balancing. In that case, PvP is suffering in salt as well, and if this is the best they got, it is clear the devs don't look at the game as PvP-based anymore.

The only thing that bugs me is the AOE nerf. The rest I can offset by adding more speed, damage, health or weight to the base stats of brontos.

[hullu hullu]

Originally posted by ArchXDiablo:

-snip-

Easy, run into a field of plant x, swipe 2x, all plants gone. Theres the reason. Did anybody really do that? Idk, i wouldnt, but this is probably the reason.

[Archie]

Originally posted by hullu hullu:

Originally posted by ArchXDiablo:

-snip-

Easy, run into a field of plant x, swipe 2x, all plants gone. Theres the reason. Did anybody really do that? Idk, i wouldnt, but this is probably the reason.

Any large dino that is faster can wreck them almost as effectively as getting a slow bronto inside a place that has a field of plant X by compensating with maneuverability and speed . Moreover, who would actually leave a field of plant X out in the open for any bronto to easily stand there and wipe them out?

Makes absolutely 0 sense to me to reduce the AOE on top of the other nerfs they recently got. Excessive and illogical how many times they have been nerfed.

[🦊 Hermit]

Somebody needs to draw the devs attention to this op...I'd do it myself but I don't have social media accounts, or an acc on the official forums. Anyone able to show them this?

[CLM]

Brontos ftw <3

[tmora2]

Originally posted by ArchXDiablo:

Originally posted by hullu hullu:

Easy, run into a field of plant x, swipe 2x, all plants gone. Theres the reason. Did anybody really do that? Idk, i wouldnt, but this is probably the reason.

Any large dino that is faster can wreck them almost as effectively as getting a slow bronto inside a place that has a field of plant X by compensating with maneuverability and speed . Moreover, who would actually leave a field of plant X out in the open for any bronto to easily stand there and wipe them out?

Makes absolutely 0 sense to me to reduce the AOE on top of the other nerfs they recently got. Excessive and illogical how many times they have been nerfed.

But honestly don't you think the AoE was a little ridculous on the bronto. You didn't even have to turn tail towards things to hit them. The tail didn't reach the front of the dino yet did damage. If anything they should add a stomp attack to the Bronto for frontal attacks.

[Attack Kitty]

Originally posted by Hermit:

Somebody needs to draw the devs attention to this op...I'd do it myself but I don't have social media accounts, or an acc on the official forums. Anyone able to show them this?

I don't have any social media accounts either. But I would very much like them to read the original post.

Its the sort of meaningful feedback that Devs can actually make good use of, rather than opinion or salt or epeening, it's "hey, this change doesn't work in it's current state, mechanically, and here's why, and here's the math, and here's the results problems its causing right now".

They don't even need to make the AoE larger to address the problems they've introduced, just move the anchor point of the AoE forward some in the model, and make the AoE taller so it isn't bugged vs. all targets at slightly different elevations.

I can just about guarantee that they re-did the bronto AoE in the dev kit layout with the perfectly flat checkerboard floor, and whoever did the work completely forgot about how an AoE works on uneven ground, and that an AoE needs vertical overlap to work right.

[jey123456]

I noticed the issue with the aoe not hitting under the bronto anymore as well. nearly lost a bronto from a bunch of carnos slipping under it (and somehow lifting the bronto up), i had to get off the bronto and kill the carnos with a hatchet (bronto lost 35k hp from it i was too far from my proper weapons) ....

As far as im concerned those nerf were rushed in without any consideration or discussion. Its obvious from looking at how it now compare with other dinos. Paracer is lower tier than bronto on every single aspects and yet is now either equivalent or superior to bronto for every single tasks, from cargo mule to combat passing by mobile platform.

Bronto was already underpowered for its tier and now its just rammed into the ground.

[psyfearea]

So basically pararacers are the king of aoe for now. My testing confirms yours and PR's are a much better option now more than ever.

[CLM]

Bronto nerfed into the ground. A very sad day.