Apprentice/Journeyman + Blueprints - Feedback for DEVS. Please read!

[Senshi]

Hi,
A little bit about my Ark experience - I have had 830+ hours of gametime so far, I play it quite heavily and enjoy the game extensively. The official server I am on (OC PVP 149) is great and thus far has been quite a friendly environment.

I've been farming higher level blueprints and have come across several journeyman BP's for weapons such as Fabricated Pistol, Assault Rifle and Rocket Launcher.

Whilst I have these BP's - I find them to be completely and utterly useless. Were I to go to the effort to make one of these (the rifle requires 515 Polymer alone), I would always stash it in my vault and never use it. In the event I lose this, I lose 'DAYS' worth of farming for such an item. This is worse than farming kibble and taming a higher level dinosaur.

I don't expect it to be cheap, but the costs do need to be reduced dramatically.

In addition, I've noticed that the cave loot crates do not drop any BP's for newer items (or even items themselves) that have been released (IE. Crossbow or Compound Bow). I also get a large amount of turtle saddles.

I don't think many people who play this game have the time to farm caves. As we are well established on the server I've found this time and can tell you that this needs a lot of work. It's an extreme part of the game particularly for end game that is being missed/ignored.

Thought I would raise some awareness on this, it needs to be looked at, at some point. At least some clarification it has been noted would be great as well.

I've spent lots of time and resource clearing old foundations from inside and around the caves to ensure these crates spawn as well. There are a lot of old bases on my server where people have left and it would be great to be able to salvage/demolish these bases. It is just not feasible to blow up a tonne of metal foundations for no gain. It is reducing server performance having all these bases left around.

Also, my base alone takes about 30 seconds to render on my older PC's. My own PC, when loading up into my base takes a good 10 seconds. Large base areas still need more work, of course I'm sure you are onto it.

There's plenty of more feedback I can provide however this I feel is an important thing, as collecting all these blueprints and having 0 use for them is pretty frustrating :)

Thanks for your time!

[Kal]

Very constructive criticism for sure. I agree in full.

What if tools could be leveled up with use instead of finding BP's for them?

[Doc Hussey]

Maybe YOU don't want to waste the time, but hell, that's a part of the game man. You lose a rifle, awesome, what sort of tantrum do you throw when your base gets rolled? No bueno man. Just use some of these beautiful 300% damage blueprints and have a ball man.

[leefnmajors]

A recent Digest mentioned they will be updating the spawn list soon, so I would expect the new item to pop up in crates pretty soon.

I feel like the caves could use a bit of a facelift; it has some potential. Alphas down in the caves would be nice; alphas dropping apprentice/journeyman/mastercraft armor and weapons is a nice Diablo-esque touch to the game. It actually gives you a method to try and get the higher end drops that requires a bit of effort and skill beyond mindless supply drop grinding/cave spawns.

[Senshi]

Man, 515 polymer. That's just the polymer. It literally takes DAYS to farm. It is insane. The risk is not worth the reward man. It is not feasible at all. I may be wrong, I'm happy to get others opinions, but personally I would not spend the time to make said weapons.

In saying that, for the rocket launcher, if it was say 250% weapon damage for some reason, then it may be better than C4. In which case, the risk is worth the reward.
There are balancing issues there for sure.

I just feel the scale of resource cost is way too high. 300 polymer, instead of 500, makes a little more sense for the assault rifle.

[Kal]

Originally posted by Doc Hussey:

Maybe YOU don't want to waste the time, but hell, that's a part of the game man. You lose a rifle, awesome, what sort of tantrum do you throw when your base gets rolled? No bueno man. Just use some of these beautiful 300% damage blueprints and have a ball man.

Pretty sure there weren't any tantrums thrown in his post. He makes a great point. Why in the world would you farm 515 polymer for something that's not that much better for that sort of cost?

[Senshi]

Originally posted by MiT leefnmajors:

A recent Digest mentioned they will be updating the spawn list soon, so I would expect the new item to pop up in crates pretty soon.

I feel like the caves could use a bit of a facelift; it has some potential. Alphas down in the caves would be nice; alphas dropping apprentice/journeyman/mastercraft armor and weapons is a nice Diablo-esque touch to the game. It actually gives you a method to try and get the higher end drops that requires a bit of effort and skill beyond mindless supply drop grinding/cave spawns.

I love this idea. The caves are really easy to farm for me at the moment. I spawn north east, jump in, jump out with the crate. Bats can't touch me. It's really easy to farm stuff.

[GeekyGek]

why do i have 15 piggies? cause I got 15 piggy saddles in a row from a single drop spot, so... I started training piggies and made a farm. yep... the drops have made me change what I was doing in the game.

Personally far as ramshackle, journeyman, apprentice, and the other types of blueprints we can find, we should learn to do this ourselves, the more of one item we craft, the better we get at crafting it, improving our ability to make better quality items of that type if we've learned the engram. If not, then we should have to rely solely on blueprints for items that we haven't learned.

I agree on the base bit. I had 3 dodo's set to wander inside a pin, it took a few seconds for the base to load, and in that time, two of the dodo's wandered into the spot that the foundations were at, and were trapped underneath the foundations. They should at least spawn players and dino's after the building loads. the load order of things doesn't really make sense. Personally i think it should be -> building pieces (walls, foundations, ceilings, ladders, doors) followed by containers (chests, vaults, compost bins, planters) followed by players, then animals, to help prevent things like my dodo's and players falling through floors and getting pushed underground by foundations materializing.

[Senshi]

Originally posted by caleb68:

why do i have 15 piggies? cause I got 15 piggy saddles in a row from a single drop spot, so... I started training piggies and made a farm. yep... the drops have made me change what I was doing in the game.

Personally far as ramshackle, journeyman, apprentice, and the other types of blueprints we can find, we should learn to do this ourselves, the more of one item we craft, the better we get at crafting it, improving our ability to make better quality items of that type if we've learned the engram. If not, then we should have to rely solely on blueprints for items that we haven't learned.

I agree on the base bit. I had 3 dodo's set to wander inside a pin, it took a few seconds for the base to load, and in that time, two of the dodo's wandered into the spot that the foundations were at, and were trapped underneath the foundations. They should at least spawn players and dino's after the building loads. the load order of things doesn't really make sense. Personally i think it should be -> building pieces (walls, foundations, ceilings, ladders, doors) followed by containers (chests, vaults, compost bins, planters) followed by players, then animals, to help prevent things like my dodo's and players falling through floors and getting pushed underground by foundations materializing.

The idea of improving a characters skill is great. However random loot drops is also great, both set goals for you to achieve, however working a characters skill i suspect my character would be ascended everything by now with the amount i've played. I think that's too much too easy. Random spawns for good loot creates PVP opportunities and has potential to add more difficult PVE experience which I think suits the game better.

I am not asking for easy mode by any means whatsoever. I just want things to be feasible, right now journeyman is not feasible. I can only imagine Ascended rifle.. No one is ever going to make it unless they play on a 20x farming server.

As for dino loading, i suppose what you say makes sense. Although there may be reasons they haven't done this, who knows! Hopefully they read and comment on this post, some good information that needs to be looked into.

[Senshi]

Originally posted by HandsomeKal:

Originally posted by Doc Hussey:

Maybe YOU don't want to waste the time, but hell, that's a part of the game man. You lose a rifle, awesome, what sort of tantrum do you throw when your base gets rolled? No bueno man. Just use some of these beautiful 300% damage blueprints and have a ball man.

Pretty sure there weren't any tantrums thrown in his post. He makes a great point. Why in the world would you farm 515 polymer for something that's not that much better for that sort of cost?

No tantrums at all, just feedback here :) I personally will never make that blueprint because it's just not feasible at all. I like the idea of putting a lot of time into something and achieve it, however it needs to be feasible to some extent.

Taming where it is right now, for instance, I'm contempt with.

[Coneshot]

Heck, I've heard of high level BPs that required so many mats they wouldn't fit in the required crafting station I.E: the smithy or fabricator

[Senshi]

Yeah they patched that I think hence there's so many more slots than they're used to be lol.

[Senshi]

Just a bump on this. Would be great to get some Dev feedback on this matter.