ADMINS: Realistic server settings

[Hades]

Hi all,

I've been following the comments in the extended server configuration sticky post, but still trying to find the right settings to give the game more realism.

When I say realism... I'm referring to somewhat OP phenomona like tamed carnotaurs taking down a mid-high level rex in a short space of time... and players in hide armor being able to melee a pair of sabertooth's.

OUTCOMES DESIRED

The outcomes I wanted to achieve from the tweaking were:

1. A wild dino vs a tamed dino of the same level... should result in hollow victory. e.g. a tamed tyrannasaur should be down to ~20% health after a fight with a wild tyrannasaur of the same level and stats.
   
2. Wild carnivores should have a 80% chance to kill its herbivore prey, but shouldn't survive 2-3 boosted wild herbivores. e.g. a carnotaur vs 2 stegos should result in carno death, a tyrannasaur vs 3 brontos should result in tyrannasaur death. but 1-1 on should be 80% win.
   
3. Players in anything less than flak armor shouldn't be able to survive more than 3 hits from even a trike or stego... and raptors should be eviserating them. Even a player in flak armor and a pike should struggle to kill a medium level carnotaur. Player vs tyrannasaur should result in player death in a stand-up fight (kiting maybe to win).
   
4. Journeying around the Ark should be a fearful business even toward the late levels. A tyrannasaur lumbering out of the dark should cause a lot of damage even to a strong group, and taking down top-tier predators should ideally involve some planning (tamed dinos acting as tanks, or using fortifications to protect players)

Appreciate any thoughts/ideas on this... or whatever settings you've used that create the outcomes I was going for.

SOME SETTINGS YOU CAN TRY

For those running dedicated servers these settings go into your \ShooterGame\Saved\Config\WindowsServer\GameUserSettings.ini file:

The premise for these settings are:
1) Vanilla tamed dinos have a 3.0 (300%) damage buff, so Dino/Player Damage boosts their damage to match the tamed dinos (e.g. Champion is 3.0... a direct counter-weight)
2) To ensure that wild vs wild and player vs wild balance is not broken (especially caves), need to increase Dino/Player resistance by the same amount that damage was increased (e.g. Champion is 0.333... which increases resistance by 3 times... a direct counter-weight).
3) The above 2 settings solves tamed dino buffs... but doesn't solve players massively stacking health/melee on their tamed dinos nor armor buff that saddles give them... but since there is no buff to TamedDino resistance they are going to get hit a lot harder. So expect low-level tamed dinos, or those that haven't stacked a lot of health to die quite quickly (medium and high level carnivores are going to shred small to medium tamed herbivores).

To prepare your players for these settings consider the following:

1) Tell them that their tamed dinos have been reduced to be balanced agaiinst wild dinos, and they want their first 10 level-ups to be in health to stand a chance.
2) Protecting dinos in fenced enclosures is a priority, and "farming" herbivores should have dino guards if they are doing farming stats (weight, stamina, movement) instead of combat stats (health, melee)
3) Combat dinosaurs (medium to high level carnivores) will not be battle ready on initial tame... they need to be "trained up" on small and/or low level dinos and stacked in health before they can go toe-to-toe with equivilent wild dinos.
4) Running away is a good tactic when things turn ugly. Hotkey "All passive" and "All follow" commands so they can beat a hasty retreat!

*CHAMPION SETTINGS* (high challenge, for very experienced players looking for high challenge)
DifficultyOffset=1.0
DinoDamageMultiplier=3.0000
DinoResistanceMultiplier=0.333
PlayerDamageMultiplier=3.000
PlayerResistanceMultiplier=0.333
DinoCharacterHealthRecoveryMultiplier=2.00
(all other combat stats vanilla)

*VETERAN SETTINGS* (medium challenge, for veteran players that want a more challenge)
DifficultyOffset=1.00
DinoDamageMultiplier=2.0000
DinoResistanceMultiplier=0.5000
PlayerDamageMultiplier=1.5
PlayerResistanceMultiplier=0.6666
DinoCharacterHealthRecoveryMultiplier=2.0
(all other combat stats vanilla)

Other recommended settings:

(this gives you a lot more resources, but takes twice as long to respawn. So areas you clear will stay desolate for longer)
HarvestAmountMultiplier=2.00
HarvestHealthMultiplier=1.00
ResourcesRespawnPeriodMultiplier=2.0

(this reduces player food consumption by 20%, because eating non-stop all day long isn't very realistic)
PlayerCharacterFoodDrainMultiplier=0.80

(this makes days 33% longer and nights half as long; the idea is that there is more daylight time to do things, and you see less night because you're asleep. It also allows players to see a couple of day/night cycles in a 2 gaming session)
DayCycleSpeedScale=0.7
NightTimeSpeedScale=2

SERVERS RUNNING REALISTIC SETTINGS

These are unofficial servers that run Veteran or Champion settings:

ASIA
- Singapore: 132.147.83.192:7777 (PVE, Veteran settings)
- Singapore: 132.147.83.192:7779 (PvE, Champion settings)
- Singapore :111.221.47.46:7857 (PVE, Ultra-Realism mod beta)

EUROPE
- UK: 195.154.165.238:7777 (PvP, realistic settings)
- UK: 80.229.137.152:27015 (PvP, Veteran settings)
- Germany: 176.57.168.7:27015 (PvE, realistic settings)
- Germany: 85.14.230.48:27015 (PvP, Veteran settings)
- Germany: 85.114.154.189:27015 (PvP, Veteran settings)
- France: 37.187.164.28:27021 (PvP, Veteran settings)

USA
- Central:198.15.72.2:7957 (PvP, Veteran settings)
- Central: 209.250.2.188:7777 (PvP, Veteran settings)
- Central: 198.27.66.14:7777 (PvE, Champion settings)
- East Coast: 45.58.124.138:19774 (PvP, Champion settings)
- East Coat: 104.207.135.113:21010 (PvP, realistic settings)
- West Coast: IP: 69.12.68.20:16195 (PvP Veteran settings)

[Hades]

I've done some changes based on testing, which are now reflected in the post update:

PlayerResistanceMultiplier=1.25
TamedDinoDamageMultiplier=0.25
TamedDinoResistanceMultiplier=3.0
DinoDamageMultiplier=3.0
DinoResistanceMultiplier=0.5

Results to far:

My L32 tyrannasaur vs L38 carno, the carno took off 25% health.
My L32 tyrannasaur vs vs a mid 40s stego + trike+ ankylo it took off around 50% health.
My L24 raptor vs L22 wild raptor, my raptor lost 10% health
My L24 raptor vs L34 carno, my raptor died (badly)

[Nightshriek]

Hmm sounds interesting I might give it a try

[JP]

Im very interested on your findings and tweaked settings myself on personal server. Makes game much more fun tbh!

Im just wondering how the new taming stat boost will make tamed dinos even more OP. I think its best to just nerf tamed dinos damage and resistance settings to balance things up, easier to control than wild dino settings.

Hopefully gonna find decent balance between tamed vs wild.

[Hades]

Here are my latest test settings: basically it involves nerfing the OP tamed dinosaurs.

TamedDinoDamageMultiplier=0.20
TamedDinoResistanceMultiplier=5.0

So far, so good.... I might even nerf tamed dino damage to 0.15 and resistance multipler (read: weakener) to 7.5.

Any testing of these settings appreciated.

[[DOH] Daragorn]

i'd love to play on a server with not OP tamed dinos too.....the goal of the game should be about survival in a deadly island...but when you just need a single mount to destroy anything that comes by, the feeling of survival is completely gone.

[Hades]

Agreed.

Ok I've been doing more testing... and unbelievably I need to nerf the tamed dinos even more.

Using these settings:
TamedDinoDamageMultiplier=0.10
TamedDinoResistanceMultiplier=5.0

A forcedtamed Stego (L27) with default 986 health killed a L30 wild carno.. and the stego went to about 20% health.

Imagine levelling up the stego 5-6 times with health... the health would be upward of 2500... and the carno would have no chance.

I really don't know what the devs were thinking with such massively OP tamed dinosaurs....

Going to do more testing with:
TamedDinoDamageMultiplier=0.10
TamedDinoResistanceMultiplier=10

[Daegan Jukes]

following this intently.

[Darthtanien]

Balance is a tough thing. What is fun for one person is not fun for another. I like more of a challenge, some would not. Thats why the Devs have given us access to all these settings. I think the devs are focused on PVP more than PVE. Thanks for all the testing. Sounds good for my PVE server. will be watching this to see what else you find.

[UrzuS3V3N]

Best discussion i've ever seen on this board... subbed.

[JP]

Im just waiting for newest patch to hit, cause it buffs tamed dinos even more so bit pointless testing atm...

[Cosmic Nite]

Very interesting, I wouldn't mind slightly decreasing dino population, only because sometimes it's like a zoo.

[Eldemann]

Originally posted by JP:

Im just waiting for newest patch to hit, cause it buffs tamed dinos even more so bit pointless testing atm...

It BUFFS them....?

[10 of Hearts]

Gonna subscribe because I love the idea of a more realistic gameplay :)

[EVmaker]

Originally posted by Snowmonkey:

Originally posted by JP:

Im just waiting for newest patch to hit, cause it buffs tamed dinos even more so bit pointless testing atm...

It BUFFS them....?

* Taming with Higher Taming Affinity now increases base level of dino up to 50% if 100% effectiveness, improving its base statistics (previously wasn't doing much, was only generally increasing their damage)

Now whether that simply means higher starting stats (which is still an overall buff), or also increases the gains per point spent in stats afterwards as well, is anyones guess without further testing.

[JP]

Originally posted by Cosmic Nite:

Very interesting, I wouldn't mind slightly decreasing dino population, only because sometimes it's like a zoo.

You allready can by using:
DinoCountMultiplier=1