Patch 231 - Balance Changes

[Jat]

Hey guys!

There’s been a lot of discussion regarding the latest major patch surrounding the balance changes that were implemented into the game. This balance change had been planned for a while, though we’ve been reading your feedback and as always will adjust accordingly as we go along. Just because something was changed today, it does not mean it that it cannot change again in the future. We’re open to change, though we also need to see how new systems play out and whether they’re working as we like or not.

Now you’re probably wondering, why did we make this change in the first place?

Earlier on in development we had a misunderstanding between how both player and creature stat scaling was supposed to function and by the time we had realised what went wrong, and how it went wrong - we had to come up with a solution. The misunderstanding was noticed as we started to introducing higher levels and more difficulty into the game, which resulted in higher-stated dinosaurs, basically much stronger creatures to what we had planned and intended.

The stats for tamed creatures and wild creatures became incredibly inflated and due to this, we had to make further adjustments to the newer creatures to ensure that they would fit correctly in ARK’s ecosystem. Hence the Giganotosaurus (it’s job is to function as the apex predator - so it was incredibly scaled up to deal with the already inflated stats).

Our first-step to coming up with a solution to tackle the scaling was to hit dinosaur stats in one go, retroactively. We wanted to scale down tamed creatures vs wild creature interaction so that you’ll no longer have absurd situations where one Raptor is single-handedly destroying 10s of max-level wild Brontos without any trouble. However we also wanted to keep it so that tamed creature vs tamed creature interaction would remain similar to how it is currently.

This change went through with patch 231 and we made some further adjustments in a minor-version to change to help deal with some of the side-effects of this change (for instance, the harvesting rate).

Going forward we’ve still got quite a bit we’d like to do. One of our goals for the future is for creatures and dinos to become a lot more diverse from one another, as well as scale in much more interesting ways. We want them to become more similar to how they’re described in their dossiers and different to what their base-stats are like. So it’ll be possible to have creatures that function in completely different ways, as opposed to everything being so uniform. We want differences between our creatures and we’ll be doing this by tackling their scaling, their harvesting, adding more utility/offensive/defensive moves where possible. This is a large project and will take some time, but it is something that is currently being worked on.

On top of that, we’ll be continuing to read the feedback you guys have regarding the changes made thus far and will adjust where necessary. Some key points have been made and we’ve already made some initial changes and these numbers will continue to be altered til we believe we’re in a good place. ARK is still in development and there is still quite a bit to do, there are times where we’re going to introduce things you aren’t fans of, there are times you’re going to love some of things we’ve been preparing for you, and there are going to be times where you don’t really care. There are clearly some other things that we need to look at and adjust accordingly, however we’ll only be able to know for sure once we see the effects of our current changes.

However something that you can be sure of always is that we’ll be reading your feedback, responding and taking action where appropriate and we’ll try and be as quick to that as possible. Unfortunately we weren’t able to respond as quickly to the immediate concerns of 231 due to a major-server crash that we had to deal with (which is now resolved, thanks for sending in your save files guys - really appreciate it <3) and we’re sorry about that.

Please do continue to provide feedback, we’ve got a lot of people checking out our forums, survivetheark.com, we’re still on reddit and we’re still on steam and we want to hear what you guys have to say. No one takes anything personally, be as brutal as you’d like towards us and your thoughts about the game, but respectful of one another and we’ll work together to get the game balanced and the creatures fulfilling their role as intended.


Just a quick note regarding the .ini changes -
Good news guys! May have located the issue related to the inis and we'll be uploading a fix shortly.

[Amorfelicia]

Thanks for the reply, I know the community has been harsh in its backlash but the nerf pretty much took everyone off guard, a lot of people ran in like it was pre-patch without much info on patch and took some brutal losses. Combined with higher difficulty of getting enough food to feed dinos and even acomplish much on servers with 5 or less players, this patch was definately way too over top for more casual players.

One last thing I would note, please , please, please fix dino breeding, its completely broken and worthless after 231.

[h-Skittles]

well done jat you guys are a great dev team some people dont seem to understand what an experiment is -ohh second :)

[zetRk]

More than 1.3k hours on Account.

Well first off, i've been playing ark since servers got wiped back than.
I've seen alot of changes, increased dino density and levels, the introduction of alot of fun stuff.. Stuff that would Help Players be able to build in a reasonable time and with lots of effort huge bases, and alot of Tamed Dinosaurs.

As I understood playing this game.. It looked like, you farm on hand, until you're able to Tame a decent Dino, for example Ankylo/Sabre/Doedicurus. With these, it was super great and time efficient farming, even if you're a working person, and can not sit for 10hours infront of the PC

As for the latest patch, and the balancing of Dinosaurs..
I can understand, that it seems Overpowered to 1hit anything in this game with a good leveled Rex or Spino or whatever.
But this now has become Impossible, for newer starting players to able to set themself up and survive! Ever traveled the swamps on foot? bet not... Good Luck.

Another intresting fact about the Dino balance change is, that alot of dinosaurs became USELESS, even more useless putting time into them for taming, OR even breeding...
Best Example, 200%melee, and 1 Mastercraft Metal pick, makes you farm 52Metal Ores. Our best Ankylo which almost has after patch incredible 500% Damage, and apparently 3x gathering... Still only farms the same, even LOWER!

Well Other example, a very GOOD one, Wolfs, Come on, they are nice beauty, and a great change compared to Sabres, (yeah im rather a Dog person than cat hehe) Anyway, Wolf Vs Sabre Sabre can have a Saddle, which gives it Armor, with the changes it sticks around the same HP/DMG Values than a Wolf. But the Wolf is just not having a Saddle, which makes the wolf very weak after all. (Yeah i had to run out of the Cave when farming some chitin to see if the 3x gathering would be True... and nope its not)

So, my Question... Why the Changes after all? What was Realy the matter changing these Stats? Did people think it's impossible to maybe take down a 20k Life argent?
If yes, dont they try and shoot it with a HIGH DMG XBOW 170% 12times, and its KNOCKED out? Yeah 20k life are useless if you only wanna carry and drop people...

So, To be honest, i don't get it. If you want to have it more difficult, Why not increase the HP/Dmg pool of Nontamed dinos. makes it all the same as with Gigano's, Give em insane wildlife stats, which Decrease after DOMESTICATION, because, actually, it would make sense somehow.

Last but not least... Goodbye Breeding, you are totally Obsolete Now.

[RoyalTavern]

Thanks for the communication regarding this issue.

[Lucaine]

The problem now (for PvE) seems to be the opposite of what it used to be. Wild dinos are now too hard to deal with in some cases. Examples being a high level tamed Rex being unable to deal with a low level wild Rex at all.

Don't even get me started on Alphas. They rip through entire groups of dinos like they're nothing. Having one tank while the others damage it isn't really viable.

[[LPNW] SP_Kenny]

TY Jat

[Inc]

ARK-TEAM you betrayd us the harvest rate is still 50% less than befor. My stone dino did 90-100 stones each hit now he do 40-50. I dont even want to test my ankylo now on metal farming. he will now do max 10-15 metal each hit? Please give back the farming rate its hard enogh to build sth in this game bullets will be unpayable now to defend against big tribes

[oXYnary]

Soft-Caps vs current Hard-Caps. This would make the system much more balanced. The amount put into a stat gets progressively less the more that stat is raised.

[Cyber-Dust]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Jat:

Just because something was changed today, it does not mean it that it cannot change again in the future.

Well said.

To which do you most can't the least?

[Dunkurtin]

This makes what you were trying to do a lot clearer. I think my suggestion on having different creature have varying affectiveness against other creatures by implementing an attack and resilience value may be a good way to help make each species unique.
http://steamcommunity.com/app/346110/discussions/0/451850020337823377/#c451850213943614417
I also really think diminishing returns on stat ups should be considered to encourage well balanced builds while also closing the gap between fully trained low lvl tames and max lvl wilds.
http://steamcommunity.com/app/346110/discussions/8/451850213944451189/

[Lucaine]

Oprindeligt skrevet af IncTL:

ARK-TEAM you betrayd us the harvest rate is still 50% less than befor. My stone dino did 90-100 stones each hit now he do 40-50. I dont even want to test my ankylo now on metal farming. he will now do max 10-15 metal each hit? Please give back the farming rate its hard enogh to build sth in this game bullets will be unpayable now to defend against big tribes

This right here is what we need more than anything right now, instead of all this rage. Legitimate feedback.

[Broken Reality]

What about making it so the game.ini file lets you modify dino health and damage as for many private servers this is bugged and not working.

[zurcareV]

No comment for plans on immediate changes to the dino stat values or taming times? Heh...

[Paulie Walnuts]

Further adjustment should be to change it back :~)

[RetroTekGuy]

I'd like Dino V Dino to not be, My number's bigger then yours.