Jat · @Jatheish
16th Jan 2016 from TwitLonger
Regarding the balance changes - 231 / 730
Since PC Patch 231 / Xbox Patch 730 the Dino Stats have been re-balanced to account for stat-inflation. Now you're probably wondering why we made this change in the first place. Earlier in our development phase 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 that would be reasonable to implement in regards to development as well as cover the problems caused by the initial stat inflation.
The misunderstanding was uncovered as we started to introduce higher levels and more difficulty into the game, which resulted in higher-stated creatures, much more than what we had planned or intended.
Due to the inflated stats from the creatures, this then altered the way that new creatures were being designed as we had to further adjust their stats and balance to ensure that they would correctly fit within ARK's ecosystem. Hence the monster that was the pre-patch Giganotosaurus (it's job is to function as the island's ultimate apex-predator, so it had to be incredible scaled up base-stat wise to deal with the already inflated stats from regular creatures). This is basically a statistical anomaly, we do not have any other creatures like the Giganotosaurus (Regular ones that is, fun 'event' types don't count -- and nor do Bosses - though arguably Bosses have not had their balance setup correctly as they have not been introduced to the main game yet, only SoTF - with the exception of the Broodmother which is going to get some altering too).
Our first-step coming up with a solution that could be achieved quickly and effectively in regards to development was to tackle the scaling that the creatures had and the best way to do so would be in one-go and make it a retroactive hit, so it applies to everything. We created a function that globally effects the stats of all tamed-creatures, new and old. We wanted to scale down tamed creature vs wild creatures interaction so that you'll no longer have absurd situations where one dino is single-handedly taking out a herd without much trouble. Though it was also important to ensure that interaction between tamed creatures remained relatively unchanged, as the function we introduced was a global change - we could be sure that this would be the case, by splitting up tamed and wild creature stats + scaling, plus applying the changes to everything.
Other concerns that this solution deals with is the ARK end game. Previously with the old-stat scaling system we would have continuously had to introduce creatures with odd-base stats to get them to function correctly in the ecosystem, we would have had more statistic anomalies being introduced to the game in terms of weaponry, so that survivors had alternatives to use when fighting creatures and bosses. This is something we wanted to avoid and by making these adjustments, we're able to avoid these problems.
Something key to remember is that game is still in development and there is a long way to go, we plan to introduce more weapons, more creatures, more structures, more fun and exciting game-play mechanics (balanced of course), and even more ARKs to the game - this adjustment goes a long way to ensuring that we will be able to achieve all of that and much more as we are no longer dealing with ridiculous inflation. Old creatures, weapons and structures will still serve a purpose on the ARK, as well as new creatures, weapons and structures - of course there will still be some scaling, and it is always more beneficial to tame the highest-level creatures with as much efficiency as possible but we're also bringing it much more into line.
There's still quite a lot we'd like to do going forward, something we're really interested in is how creatures can become more diverse from one another and scale is 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. Part of this will be looked at when we're making our TLC pass on Dinos, where we'll be showing some love to some of our older-friends and bringing them in line with our new ones, possibly a charge attack on the Trike ;).
On top of that, it's pretty disingenuous to say that we don't listen to feedback because I can assure you - we have, we do and we will continue to do so even after the game has been released. Changes have been made following the feedback and there will be more to come. There are going to be times where we're going to introduce features that you aren't a fan of, but more often than not they are critical for the progression of the game - there are times we're going to introduce features you're absolutely in love with and want to see more, and there are going to be times when we add things that you quite frankly don't care about. We aren't ruling out the possibility of making more changes going forward, but for now we need to see how things plan out with the new balance adjustments, as whilst they tackle the problems that arise in the future - we need to ensure that they are dealing with the issues that persist now. Early signs are showing that they do, and players seem to be enjoying it as well (there is some dissent, but that will exist no matter the changes we make - not everyone will be happy, though the weekend following the balance changes was our most active on PC since we the release of SoTF in August).
Please do continue to provide feedback, we’ve got a lot of people checking out our forums, survivetheark.com, we’re still on reddit, still on twitter, 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, as well as ensure that the ARK continues to grow into an amazing survival-experience. There's a lot more planned in 2016, some very exciting things to come and these balance-adjustments play a part in those changes.