New Server - NPCs

[eXitium]

I'm just wondering what the direction or goal is with the NPCs. Is it to create artificial difficulty, create population of the world or just annoy the shit out of people. (Maybe all of the above) This is not meant to be a bash or anything just an open discussion to figure it out.

As it stands now whatever the last adjustment was made it impossible to even really do anything other than avoid them or wherever they are. I used to be able to actually go in with some decent armor, 200 HP and a high level dino and have a chance fighting them. My latest experience resulted in one level 40 taking me out in full flak in 2 hits. From my experience they cannot be outrun on foot and even some dinos. They can snipe you with fire or bolas from almost epic render distance as well.

I'm fine with them being impossible to kill if they are more sparse on the map and actually avoidable but right now you can't go anywhere, they outnumber dinos 3:1 at least and it makes it very difficult to accomplish anything. With that being said, there is no "fun" or even "difficult" value that comes out of impossible to kill, 1-2 shot deadly enemies. They are a nuisance and nothing more than that.

My personal preference would be (if possible, I don't know the settings that the mod offers) to:

1. Remove the status effect NPCs or thin them out, the bolas and slingshot snipes are just ridiculous aimbot bullshit.

2. Balance the difficulty around the fact that you should be able to kill them without cheesing if you're high level and decently geared, Reduce drop probability or remove all together if needed to balance this.

3. Thin the herd, I get it that you want to add to the "emptiness" but there's literally an invasion going on as it stands now.

Disenchantment Epyon CarNage64

[Disenchantment]

That was the point, invasion. They were buffed in consideration for people killing them on dinos since they do drop some ramshackle+ gear and other goodies. They were to mimic the difficulty to an extent that corrupted dinos added on Extinction DLC which is pretty much the same concept, over the top health and damage in numbers. I must say I personally haven't experienced the problems you have said and im curious to see how others are experiencing them too if the same as you or the same as us (keep in mind we dont really live on the main land)

Questions about your preferences:

this isn't CSGO there is no recoil so there is no possible way of really doing this unless we just want to have them not shoot or have range weapons to just be abused like preference 2's concern.

How would you propose or script for them to know if they are being cheesed or not?

As i said above for #3, the idea was an invasion. They are their "own" faction in a roleplay sense but

[CarNage64]

the npcs should not be removed they add an element of realism to the game, if a player wanted u dead your dead i have been shot at bolad etc it adds excitement and fear that you gotta watch yourself donrt remove it

[eXitium]

I don't think they should be removed. I know there's no way to know they are being cheesed but that's the point, The only way to even engage them at the moment is range. A level 40 did 1k torpor per hit and had over 4k HP, that is above and beyond what any player could ever do. Invasion is fine but when the entire map is covered by things that can one-shot you, you can't ever outrun them it's not fun. Their stat levels are contributing to the fact that one slingshot knocks you out automatically no matter what the level of the NPC. Bring the stats down and maybe the status effect issue fixes itself.

Just because to start they were ez and gave loot is no reason to buff them to max. In my opinion they can be balanced to the point where they are strong but not killing your 400 rex strong. I'm sorry but that's not difficult or a challenge, it's just dumb.

I'm willing to work with it obviously to bring this great mod to a point where players enjoy it instead of everyone hating it.

Go back to default settings, bring numbers up SLIGHTLY (Remove loot all together during testing period if needed). There is a way to make it work but going from 0-60 because it was "too ez OP" to start is not how you balance it.

and for CarNage64 , I do watch myself, The only time I've actually died to them was trying to engage; but when there's 6+ NPC's around every single metal node in the area and they are unkillable that's not "fear and excitement".

[Ari]

I personally liked the added difficulty but I already see the mod got removed and x10power will be overseeing some hotfixs soon.

[eXitium]

I don't understand why we have to remove half the mods on the server before having a discussion about it first. I appreciate the work that Jar has done to bring a fun experience to ARK, It was my first time being interested in coming back to the game and I sincerely hope that there is someone who can replicate the quality of work he does whether it's carn or nick or whoever.

[Ari]

I don't understand why we have to remove half the mods on the server before having a discussion about it first. I appreciate the work that Jar has done to bring a fun experience to ARK, It was my first time being interested in coming back to the game and I sincerely hope that there is someone who can replicate the quality of work he does whether it's carn or nick or whoever.

that's the scary part, half of the mods weren't removed, only two because they interacted with each other via loot tables or something. I don't know the technical mumbojumbo on it. We've also had issues where the addon wouldn't even work on extinction, it had to be force path'd in and specific coordinates in the zones to spawn which worked only sometimes. Obviously on Ragnarok they are more evident now because with Extinction, there was like 3-4 different floor levels of the land so we rarely got to see people even.

X10 has hung out with jar when he worked on the server so he has the best idea to do this. There is no real easy quick fix to fix it all besides deactivate the two causing problems right now.

[eXitium]

Ah I obviously don't know how ARK mods work, I suppose if they were shared then yeah that would cause issues. Glad to see NPCs back though.

[Ari]

Ah I obviously don't know how ARK mods work, I suppose if they were shared then yeah that would cause issues. Glad to see NPCs back though.

Yeah they seem not so bad now but they still have a presence throughout the map still. I think Epyon found the sweet spot.