Nerf Balloons

[prisma plover]

The meta is balloons, they are too strong with very little risk.
Suggestion:
1 Reduce they speed by up to half. There should not be outrunning cavalry. Balloons/blimps are not fast
2 Reduce their health by half. They should be ultra fragile, it is a balloon after all

[brave panther]

Kongmin Lanterns moving at 1200+ speed with Zhuge Crossbows that struggle to target horses but absolutely delete players on foot is pretty comical. Combine that with the Firebombers rapid dropping and you have a recipe for the highest siege DPS in the game.

This isn't touching on the fact that the maximum height of a Kongmin Lantern is about ~24 cells high, which can be ignored by flying into structures to float upwards and then be used to bypass the majority of enemy defenses. You add targeting issues with towers and siege defense weapons, a bed to spawn at on the lantern, a chest to rekit any dead players, and you have a recipe for disaster for anyone not living inside of a cave.

This game used to have incredible siege mechanics that were about grinding down the enemy along with open warfare that had a sprinkling of weather effects thrown it. It doesn't feel that way anymore when it is all about Rhino or Lantern rushing down people since there is no real counter to towers and buying them off the market. 😂

100% needs a readjustment or a counter in place that isn't reliant on hopeful targeting mechanics.

[alpine gazelle]

Get some bow/crossbow players and that thing pops b4 they can even fly away

[brave panther]

I agree with this but I feel like it doesn't mean much when 40-60 of them hotdrops on your base and cleaves their way down 😂

[alpine gazelle]

If they have 40-60 players on your server, the balloon is the least of your problems

[brave panther]

Oh yeah, I agree with that statement, but you can stall or even stop 40-60 players with defensive towers, ballistas, spam, structures, and other weaponry. This negates that completely without the use of a cave

[hoary bobcat]

Go find a server with a cave then ?

can't do that ?

then raid a cave base and claim it as your own

[alpine gazelle]

If you have a base that isn't a cave, rhinos and elephants will siege it in less than 5 minutes

[hoary bobcat]

tbh that seems like a problem for the people not living in a cave there are quite a few of them on every server

[brave panther]

How about no? This game was never designed around living in caves until this latest iteration where they went fulltilt on caves. Caves were small in design back in the day specifically to avoid dumb stuff like this. If you think this game should be designed around living in caves, you are absolutely part of the problem. 😂

As for Chaos, Rhinos and Elephants will not tear down a properly built base in less than 5 minutes at all. In fact, they will get farmed but to each their own. 😂

[hoary bobcat]

just curious where does everyone live on ark ?

[hoary bobcat]

caves as a whole should be removed then or not build able

[brave panther]

You cannot compare this game to Ark when you receive punishments for living in caves on Ark and there isn't a punishment here. 😂

All they did was make caves bigger here, like who thought that would be a good idea?

[hoary bobcat]

well they should remove them and watch all of the smaller tribes holding a cave get wiped and quit

it would be full chaos it would be fun AF but not viable for a long life game

[brave panther]

You should be able to live in a cave, but the size of those caves should be relative to the Zhongzou map. The size of caves on Dongzhou are ridiculous in nature and design.

Plus, it isn't the small tribes living in caves. Every large, competitive guild is living in a cave. Just like when they lived on the side of cliffs or tops of mountains before. However, the balloons would have been a solid counter to that building design and now are completely neutralized by the massive Cave Systems. 😂

[hoary bobcat]

caves exist due to balancing issues they make caves so they don't have to fix a lot of issues

they make enough caves so that most everyone can get one "ark" "Moe"

this way 90% of all people are living in caves and 90% of people don't care about the balance

the nerf balloon issue is only for players who don't live in a cave and seeming 3/4 of the population playing would be living in a cave it's never been an issue

[brave panther]

There are multiple levels of issues with the Konming Lanterns that aren't just stemming from caves, which is the point of the post though. Balloons move at 1200+ speed, carry 3000+ weight, can equip 4 siege weapons, carry Rhinos/Elephants/20+ players, store 180+ slots of kits, and be a respawn point at the same time.

Hell, the Chinese are using it to mass farm bark too which is hilarious and effecting the coin market which directly effects the Devs overall profit margin due to the abundance of a key resource that would otherwise be priced higher.

Plus, in many caves, the balloon can even fly inside so it doesn't really matter. It's the point of what the balloon represents than anything at this point and that is overtuning of a fun idea.

[hoary bobcat]

Top section of this message seems broken as all hell

second part about effective dev profit by harvesting an in game resource "pixels" doesnt really matter

And flying it inside a cave wouldnt really have any strategic benefit surely ?

[brave panther]

It is extremely broken in the current form. I'll post two videos for people to see how stupid broken Lanterns are and how little counterplay there is when surprised by them.

Firebomber Damage and Zhuge Crossbow Damage Output - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTeOUT9O_C0
Offensive Raiding Capability - https://v.douyin.com/iYab8ab6/

The first video speaks for itself on the damage output of both bombing and zhuge crossbows. The second video, they carried 40+ people into the enemy base with three Lanterns that were above the 24 cell height limit for Lanterns and raided it from the inside out.

As for the profit margin, it matters to the company which is why they are cracking down on the gold selling market with multiple changes.

[hoary bobcat]

I got to 13 seconds and noticed the base they are raiding has no towers .....

again watching the douyin video and they fly in and get to a point which has again NO TOWERS

Perhaps you should goto single player and find out the damage from a glazed tower to a balloon and damage from 900 bow skill to a balloon and then see if they are broken because in 2 instances above for "raiding" both videos had 0 tower coverage

im sorry it did sound quite broken but having all of those people on an object which ive been told can be taken down very quickly by towers and bows just doesnt seem that scary

[brave panther]

The first video is an example of the damage output it can do. It's not about countering it. This was a raiding FOB that got ambushed as they were setting up. They wiped all of those players in seconds, which is from one of the top four Guilds in this game presently. Same guild is the one who raids in the Douyin video.

The second video had plenty of towers as shown by the images. It was poor base design with the roof open, but the targeting of the towers prioritizes players over balloons as I explained earlier about how tragic the targeting system is. This forces people to have to choose for the towers to shoot strictly balloons, leaving yourself super vulnerable to enemy players, or setting them to shoot players and balloons, which again, leaves you vulnerable to a balloon invasion.

[hoary bobcat]

Yeah I see that there is towers but again not much coverage over all

that base doesnt seem to have much anti balloon setup which will be a thing in the future im sure

like in many other pvp games with the next above the base with tower coverage so players cant drop from above and do what they did

unforunate yes for sure

but for the cost of that balloon nerfing it to cater to a small % of people would be silly I agree an elephant or a rhino shouldnt be able to do it perhaps a compromise would just be to simply add a weight limit to the lantern

[brave panther]

There were enough towers to have taken down one balloon if it prioritized targets properly. However, none were killed and only a few people appeared to have been lost with the slow climb up to the roof's elevation. This base was massive enough that it caused slow chunk rendering too.

It's not a small percentage of people either since many large Guilds are living on the old map. However, if we are being honest and unbias here, hiding in a cave should not be the strongest counter to the most deadly siege weapon presently too. That's a terrible balance choice if we're being fair.

Lanterns should only be able to carry a certain amount of weight, move at a certain speed, and not be able to ferry 20+ people on snap on cushions either. 😂

[hoary bobcat]

20+ being ferried I think is fine but the weight I will agree with for sure add a weight and speed reduction based on weight then

[analog maple]

since when? cave builds were meta since ark's release 🤣

[analog maple]

i countered that in my base with simply having towers specific for certain targets. some tower groups were specifically for tames so it would stop any rhinos/elephants and others on siege. splitting them up like that also prevents all your towers just being drained with 1 counter. add a little bit of active management and you can do a lot.
balloons are rather fragile, so just level ranged 🤷‍♂️

[clever onyx]

I used to be an avid rust player. I'm no stranger to Cave Dwelling 😎

[analog maple]

i can't think of a game where caves wouldn't be meta. it's just logical, as it hugely limits the ways enemies can attack from.

[surreal tapir]

you can just wingsute 5 guys off it and destroy any base while eating tower shot as u destroy the walls to get to the stone can desteory a base in less than 5 minutes if your stone is inclosed in anyway that can LoS towers after they destroy a single wall which doesnt take long with 5 people hitting the same wall

[surreal tapir]

thats fine if it didnt take 5 seconds for 5+ guys to wingsuit down into your base destroying the wall around ur stone and smashing it with metoeirc weapons "{

[alpine gazelle]

if your base can get destroyed by 5 dudes cleaving, balloon isnt the problem

[surreal tapir]

if you inclose ur stone that all it takes fair warning 😛 need 2 keep stone open so towers always have sight to the stone but then it can be treb to a degree though