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)

[Camulorix]

Apart from tamed animals being too OP, I think that there are too many carnivores compared to herbivores.
But if the story of the game is that the animals are artificially populated, then it doesn't matter.

[Innversion]

Originally posted by Camulorix:

Apart from tamed animals being too OP, I think that there are too many carnivores compared to herbivores.
But if the story of the game is that the animals are artificially populated, then it doesn't matter.

I think as they add in more dinos we will see more of a balance. Or we can hope.

[Camulorix]

Originally posted by Innversion:

Originally posted by Camulorix:

Apart from tamed animals being too OP, I think that there are too many carnivores compared to herbivores.
But if the story of the game is that the animals are artificially populated, then it doesn't matter.

I think as they add in more dinos we will see more of a balance. Or we can hope.

If not, we can always tweak the spawn ratios ;)

[Tantalus]

Originally posted by SydKhaos:

Could not disagree more.....

As a 6year vet of US Army airborne infanty I can tell you from first hand experience that a person can indeed learn to 'take more damage' through training.

The obvious ways....learning tactics and to use gear to mitigate damage to oneself.

There is also the mental toughness....something a trained soilder will have ALOT more of than untrained civilian. In a combat situation this can and most time is make or break. Its the ones with the willpower to stay infield longer that win the fight. The ability to outlast the enemy, to keep going despite hunger, exaustion and fatigue...this will win a battle more often than supperior firepower......

Disagree all you like. If I shoot you cleanly in the head and you're not wearing a helmet, your training isn't going to save you. If a T-Rex gets his/her jaws on your torso, despite how mentally tough you are, you're dead. Sure, you might fight the inevitable longer/harder than someone else, but you're still going to die.

[Midnight Express]

Originally posted by SydKhaos:

There is also the mental toughness....something a trained soilder will have ALOT more of than untrained civilian.

No, No, it's the opposite. Only a mentally weak person would go fight some corporate war for military contractor's and energy companies. Any kid with a bit of mental toughness, real self confidence, and spirit would go to school, and better his mind, and country rather than blindly combat total strangers because someone told him to. You watched too many movies, or took video games too seriously. Enlisted personel are generally rather unintelligent, and easily controlled.

[mustangcoupe69]

We are also searching for a happy medium on our server In the quest for making our server more terrifying. We are also trying Hardcore Mode + 5x XP to add consequence. Don't forget other aspects of the game that this will effect. Realistic dinos may make a number of things very difficult. Two things off the top of my head:

1) Creature resources: In the current state, you have to mass murder the map to get keratin, and even hide and meat to some extent in any usable quantity. The already difficult cement making becomes even worse when creatures are hard. (Harvesting rates might solve this, but makes resources more common)

2) Pearl diving: Often get swarmed by 3-7 mega's. This task would become nearly impossible in many cases. Bruce(my mega) and I have had to kill 25+ megas on a single trip to just get 100 pearls. (Spawn density might solve this)

[mustangcoupe69]

Originally posted by Midnight Express:

Originally posted by SydKhaos:

There is also the mental toughness....something a trained soilder will have ALOT more of than untrained civilian.

No, No, it's the opposite. Only a mentally weak person would go fight some corporate war for military contractor's and energy companies. Any kid with a bit of mental toughness, real self confidence, and spirit would go to school, and better his mind, and country rather than blindly combat total strangers because someone told him to. You watched too many movies, or took video games too seriously. Enlisted personel are generally rather unintelligent, and easily controlled.

This is extreme ignorance, move along.

[Syd Khaos]

Originally posted by mustangcoupe69:

We are also searching for a happy medium on our server In the quest for making our server more terrifying. We are also trying Hardcore Mode + 5x XP to add consequence. Don't forget other aspects of the game that this will effect. Realistic dinos may make a number of things very difficult. Two things off the top of my head:

1) Creature resources: In the current state, you have to mass murder the map to get keratin, and even hide and meat to some extent in any usable quantity. The already difficult cement making becomes even worse when creatures are hard. (Harvesting rates might solve this, but makes resources more common)

2) Pearl diving: Often get swarmed by 3-7 mega's. This task would become nearly impossible in many cases. Bruce(my mega) and I have had to kill 25+ megas on a single trip to just get 100 pearls. (Spawn density might solve this)

I think thats kinda the idea of this thread....you should NOT be kill 25+ megas with you+1mega...that is not very balanced. Pearl diving n such should be dangerous for a group to pull off on a hard setting server. Idk...just how I see it, can totaly understand not everybody is gonna want to go max ballbreaker setting though =)

[AlexIce]

Need to start with "my ideal PVE world" no1 cares and will never afraid of AI dinos Players is what you need to be afraid of. TRY your "ideal" settings in HARDCORE pvp and ill see how you will like it ) still good maybe for pve

[mustangcoupe69]

Originally posted by SydKhaos:

I think that's kinda the idea of this thread....you should NOT be kill 25+ megas with you+1mega...that is not very balanced. Pearl diving n such should be dangerous for a group to pull off on a hard setting server. Idk...just how I see it, can totally understand not everybody is gonna want to go max ballbreaker setting though =)

Yes, I completely agree, which is why I am here. Max ballbreaker might mean very little to none of the high-level gear will be crafted. Or getting something like a refrigerator is "end-game" content.

[tyonisius]

Loving the sound of this. Might just rent my own server to do something similar. Keep us posted with your findings please!

[colonel_eviscerator]

I'll worry about realistic damage after the devs have a viable stealth system and dinosaur senses working.

[Mike.C]

I hope they make it so you can individually adjust animals DPS

[Syd Khaos]

Storm...just curious about something....
I have a small 20 slot server I am currently getting set up for small tribe PvEvP..this will be very hard setting pve server mon-thurs, then base protected pvp fri-sun.

I am curious as to what difficulty offset value your conducting your testing with.

[Xul]

Storm, I rented a 40 person server for my guild to play on in the beginning, but after leveling so quickly and being virtually unkillable, we kind of came to the same conclusion that the game was too easy.

I came across your post the day you made it, and we hatched a plan that we implemented yesterday.

1) I summoned about 50 Broodmother's and we watched while they devastated our home, then I wiped our server.

2) We made leveling 50% slower and limited the Engrams points to make people specialize. We want tribes to work together.

3) I used your current settings to make the tamed Dinos much weaker, including setting the difficulty to 1.0

4) Left the wild dinos alone for now, till we see what we have wrought

5) Lowered Player damage by 50%

6) We set the server to PvE, and will have events both PvE and PvP, plus tribe events. Stuff like PvP free for all king of the hill for something special, or tribe versus tribe events for rare items, even treasure hunts.

Our goal is to turn this into a TEAM based survival game. We think a single person should be able to bring down a dodo, maybe a dilo, but anything bigger than that should take teamwork and time. A single person riding a Saber should not be able to bring down a TRex, it should take a small pack.

I am going to let it run for 1 day to see how challenging it is, then we are going to invite 30 interested people onto our private passworded server and let them create PvE tribes as well.

Is there any other settings you would change to make the game more challenging or enjoyable?