PvP Cluster to Wipe on Retail Release

[DrunkMunki]

I know I put out a poll asking if people would prefer a wipe or not... and the majority voted NO...
well it looks like those players don't play anymore, so going forward, When ARK gets released to retail (estimated 18th August) the PvP cluster will be wiped; Structures, Dinos and Player Levels... PvE and Whitelist clusters will NOT be wiped.

BUT....

• XP will be raised to 8x Player XP for 3 weeks only, then will be set back to 4x (dino taming will not change)
• AntiRaid (no structure damage) will be setup for Weekdays only (mon-fri) so you can relax and not worry about being raided on the weekdays when people have work and school and not enough time to defend.
• Structure Protection will be increased from 100% to 200% Weekends ONLY, so it will take 2x more resources to damage a structure (this should prevent raiding bases so people can focus on PvP, but bases can still be raided if there is determination)
• ORP2 mod will be removed
• Protected Passives mod will be installed and setup 24/7
• Raid times will be from 5am Sat until 11pm Sun (NSW time)

- ORP2 is being removed due to too many bugs affecting gameplay and causing Excessive HP/Melee in dinos.. starvation and other undetected bugs.

Additional: TheCentre and Scorched Earth maps will be removed from the cluster, from the history they are minimally used, and may be added later depending on demand.

If you feel anything else needs to be changed (or mods added), feel free to PM me.

Retail Release date ETA August 29th

[Gambit]

Possibly higher maturation so people put less value into dinos when they can be easily replaced!

Maybe remove a map from the cluster. (Less spread out numbers)
Personally thinking centre due to how broken it is lol


Edit: 3 or 4 man tribes would be great!

[TheWrongAlex]

Hey all!

Glad to see the server is going to wipe, as one of the people who voted yes I really think it was due, although I did join late so I didn't have TOO much stuff to lose at that point.

Very glad to see ORP2 disappear, lost all interest in the server when logging in one afternoon to find every single dinosaur I owned deleted from a bug in the mod. And from a PvP health standpoint I think ORP is absolutely awful, especially a x50 setting, this sort of thing encourages people to log off, rather than defend when they expect a raid coming. And from a player health standpoint, placing 700 c4 per vault is hell on your hands, especially if their is only one side of a vault showing you have to do them 1 at a time or the c4 blow each other up and are wasted.

I like the addition of the passive protection mod, it means people can safely store their passives and the mod author seems to done a LOT of work towards protecting from potential abuse cases.

One change I would personally like to see is for the dino MATURATION rate specifically to bump up to 20x. I know it was already vastly better than say an official setting, but having to either stay up all night, or wake up every hour and a bit if you want 100% imprint on the longer breeds, specifically the popular Giganotosaurus, is not good for both game and personal health. With note to this, i'm not sure how the settings for it work, but being able to ensure 100% imprint possibility on the shorter timed dinos would also be nice. With lots of dinos if you get a long random timer for one of the imprints it's never going to have enough time. Not sure if that's doable or not

I wouldn't mind a mod that slightly improves the supply beacon drops because I like it when drops are actually worth getting, but definitely DON'T want them to be brokenly good. One server I have played on had a beacon mod called 'Rawr Beacons' that seemed a good balance, don't know if they had tweaked any settings though.

I would like to see an increase in tame limit size, maybe 400 as previously we had tame capped 2 servers so we could have all our kibble passives etc and breeding quickly adds up to lots of dinos.

I think that tribe limits dropping to around 4 players would help from having the entire active server population concentrated in a few Alpha tribes

Lastly, I would like to see one map drop off the list to increase the concentration of players, as it is they are currently too spread out. From my perspective that would be "The Centre" as this map is a bit broken IMO and the other 3 provide a good experience. An argument could even be made to drop down to only 2 maps (probably Ragnarok and The Island) but I love Scorched Earth so I wouldn't want to see it go.

TL;DR:
- 20x Dino maturation
- Add "Rawr Beacons" mod
- Tribe limit down to 4
- Tame limit up to 400
- Remove 1 or 2 maps from cluster (my preference to drop The Center)

Probably more thoughts to come xD

[DrunkMunki]

TL;DR:
- 20x Dino maturation
- Add "Rawr Beacons" mod
- Tribe limit down to 4
- Tame limit up to 400
- Remove 1 or 2 maps from cluster (my preference to drop The Center)

thanks for the detailed feedback Alex,
I may increase maturation, but keep in mind this reducing/skips some imprinting and is a bastard to get right, and there's always a few dinos that get affected.

Yeah from what i can see The Centre seems to be the less popular one, i could replace it with a different non standard map, any suggestions?

[Builder]

SNIP

So far seems good given what happened this wipe. Putting aside the fact numbers in general for ark are dropping across the board, here's my thoughts:

1) Removing ORP seems like a good call. While good in theory, it had heaps of bugs.
2) Given the clientel so to speak on Munkis' servers, going back to weekend raids is a good move. Either that, or have ORP at full protection (I had tossed and turned over that side of things especially in previous threads on the topic, but given the raids styles we'd been seeing that is my current view). My only issue with orp being full protection in the past was my concern of combat logging abuse of defenders (which to my understanding isn't as bad as I thought considering I think there wasn't only a timer on it, but it wouldn't kick in if there were enemies in the bubble or debre).
3) Increasing the structure hp is also something I'm for so that base raiding is still possible, but hopefully encourages more open world pvp. One thing I need to say again though: raid playstyle is still something to consider in terms of what kills it for some (especially smaller players) and leads them to rage quit. What I mean by this is that when someone logs in to find their fabby blown as well as their vault and defences, that can be shrugged off as a 'oh well, I've been hit'. They are more likely to rebuild after that. But to log in and find EVERYTHING blown, just because the raiders wanted to check 'just in case' there was loot hidden in that small wooden box beside the phiomia and the garden, then they are more likely to just give up because all of their stuff is gone. This is especially the case if they actually did rebuild after a hit like that only to be hit again in a short period of time. I know some raiders will argue that there can be good blueprints hidden in 'weak' places like wooden boxes out in the open, but the reality is that the mentality to check 'just in case' is what resulted in the smaller/medium guys getting cleared out then just not bothering to stick around. It's a playstyle that raiders who choose to pvp on munkis servers need to accept when raiding small to medium tier bases.
4) Never used the protect passives mod. Seems good in theory but I don't know much about it and therefore can think of some possible abuse: pvpers whistling passive mid combat to save their dinos, using a passive dino to drain turrets, etc.

Possibly higher maturation so people put less value into dinos when they can be easily replaced!

Maybe remove a map from the cluster. (Less spread out numbers)
Personally thinking centre due to how broken it is lol

Edit: 3 or 4 man tribes would be great!

5) Higher maturation rates certainly would encourage people to be less precious of their dinos I think. However there is a chance that might screw the imprinting values unless Munki wants to make imprinting even easier (can you imagine gigas only needing 2-4 imprints O.o). It would also speed up tek progression for tribes I imagine as they could stat farm and breed rex lines up quicker. Got some good pros and possible cons.
6) Removing a map... my issue is which one? Island: sentimental and doesn't require an extra download. Centre: buggy yes, also has jumping puzzle... Scorched Earth: - it' hot.... Ragnarok: A few bugs, but seems popular, has dinos from both SE and Island and... griffins!
7) I'd also see smaller tribes as a possible good thing to even the playing field so to speak... especially since there's nothing stopping alliances still.

Extra point:
8) If we go back to weekend raids: someone suggested ages back to change the time from 'weekend protect' to 'raid weekend' from midnight to 5am. I would support this, as in the past players have been accused of 'camping' bases and hitting them just after it rolled over after midnight. Making it kick in at 5am would hopefully deter this (or at least deter the accusations) as raiders would have to get up VERY early to hit their target in this way instead of just staying up late which most players seem to find easier

[Gambit]

Custom maps are far too flawed, i'd rather stick to the officially supported so to speak.

[TheWrongAlex]

@ Builder in regards to small tribes having all their various storage containers blown in raids. Personally i'm of the opinion that all these things should be left unlocked. If you want to stop people blowing things just to take a look, then leave them unlocked. If they made it past your defences/blown their way in, then likely you will lose that stuff anyway.

And I agree that custom maps can be iffy, but also that the point of removing a map is to reduce spread, so adding a replacement map defeats the purpose.

[TheWrongAlex]

On the maturation thing, I know it can become really tricky for you to work out Munki, and appreciate the effort you may need to put in to that. The upside is that if you have worked it out once for a given rate you don't need to work it out again. I would also say that there are many dinos where people wouldn't care about 100% imprint as long as the core ones that really benefit from it were doable.

[Builder]

@ Builder in regards to small tribes having all their various storage containers blown in raids. Personally i'm of the opinion that all these things should be left unlocked. If you want to stop people blowing things just to take a look, then leave them unlocked. If they made it past your defences/blown their way in, then likely you will lose that stuff anyway.

And I agree that custom maps can be iffy, but also that the point of removing a map is to reduce spread, so adding a replacement map defeats the purpose.

I agree. I've also advised players of this. The issue is: some players still don't do this due to inexperience or they simply forget, or, some raiders don't check or don't care. The other issue is that they leave it unlocked, raiders blow in, check, leave it, but then someone else comes in and cleans them out because they can and can't be traced.

[King_Kiff]

Regardless of what you set buildings HP at you will never "encourage online PVP" if the ability exists to offline raid it will be the default choice for raiders.

Simple as that.