Beware the wall of text below I wrote at the end is a much smaller summery if you want to skip and just see what my idea is basically, below are the reasons for each idea rather than just its statement.
Just been playing on a few pvp and pvpve servers and what I noticed and I bet a lot of you have as well is that there is nothing to do other than raid each other, no objectives or goals. Unless the server admins add some kind of goal its just chaos. Sure that is fun for a while but you can not play like that all the time it gets boring you need to set a goal to make things interesting.
So while playing I though what we need is a McGuffin item for everyone to aim for and fight over, a McGuffin is an object or item that is important for only reason that it is important. Of course with such a large multiplayer base having just one item will cause a bottle neck which leads less to fun tactics and more like a brawl, so have more than one McGuffin for people to collect and fight over.
So I though what kind of items would be worth fighting over? Well they need to be rare to have value if everyone had one then why fight over them, also to make it fair and fun for everyone it must be something you can not craft but have to find, this means that everyone has a chance of finding one, you can not control where they appear like if you could craft it. Oddly enough they need to not have an active use else its less a collectible and more like a rare tool to be used rather than fought over.
After thinking about the above I looked at what other games consider collectibles and with lol fallout 4 coming out and I was replaying fallout 3 the fallout bobble heads came to mind. These are rare as in there are only one of each, collectible and you can not use them actively only carry them around or put them on your display. I know they give a stat boost when you collect them but I’ll get into that later for now its a good example of a rare item that in a multiplayer game people would fight over especially if they was only one of a certain amount of types of them in the game.
Btw i know there is a trophy display and trophies currently in game but they are not what I am describing.
Now I’m not suggesting bobble heads in ark but small trophies would be good, but trophies of what? How about the creatures in Ark this give a variety of unique trophies to fight over and gives something special to link them to I will talk about this at the end.
There are currently 41 released creatures in Ark at time of writing this post add the survivors as an extra trophy and you have 42 trophies to fight over, this might seam a lot but on a large server they will get snapped up quickly, have the trophies be small models of each creature in a pose with the survivors of the default man and woman standing back to back so be fair. You could have the trophies metal. We also need a place to put and display the trophies so make a trophy display able to hold all 42 trophies with the option to increase its size as more creatures are added, make this display craftable by anyone with a new engram.
So there we go 42 small trophies each shaped as one of the creatures of ark like the dodo trophy or the trex trophy. There metallic in colour and they have a trophy display to be placed on.
So how do we use them then? Well firstly the trophy mod does the following, it only spawn one of each type of trophy, they spawn in drops or on the actual creature they are modeled after, the survivor trophy would be fun if it spawned on a new spawning survivor making them hunted by the rest of the server lol but anyhow that how they are introduced to the server. The rate they spawn is set at 1 per hour unless it is changed in the mod config files. O yea how about have the creature that is spawned with the trophy glow gold like the way Alphas do so we dont spend the rest of our lives searching for the trilobite trophy lol
Whats to stop someone from just hoarding all the trophies in a vault or on themselves and hiding themselves away? Well two things, one trophies decay when spawned like food, they default by a one hour start rate again changeable in the config file, at which point if the decay reaches 0 they disappear and go back into the spawn pool, they should be spawned randomly in order.
To stop them decaying all you got to do is place them on the trophy display in which case the decay stops but stays the same amount it was when it was placed on the display, this stops people from putting it on the display case every hour then hiding it away.
Next have some way for everyone else on the sever to know who has what trophy. I am thinking of a crafable wall mounted leader board, listing all trophies and where they are 1; not spawned 2; spawned and are waiting to be found 3; found and held by a person or tribe who ever owns the trophy display they are set in or currently has in there possession.
Now we have something for everyone to focus on and fight over, it focuses peoples aim on those who posses trophies meaning they have to track them down, figure out the defences and find a way to raid and get the trophies and then finally how to defend there newly acquired trophies.
Now here is the last part of this mod that is optional, why not have trophy effect for the person or tribe that possesses them some advance like for example if you had the trilobite trophy placed in a display trilobites give you and your tribe 10% more resources when harvesting from them.
For the creatures that you can tame have a 1% stat boost or exp boost, have this percentage configurable in the config file.
Is this last bit doable?
Well there we go and the word trophy has lost all meaning for me after writing it out so much lol.
I have included a summery before for those that skipped the massive wall of text above.
Summery:
A mod that adds 42 unique trophies to Ark, each trophy is based on each currently released creatures from dodos to T-Rexs plus one for the survivors.
The trophies each spawn one at a time on either drops or on one of the currently spawned creatures each trophies is modelled after i.e. dodo trophy on a dodo. Creatures with trophies should glow to help people track them down.
Trophies decay from spawn unless placed in a craftable display but retain there decay rate when they where placed. A crafible wall display that shows all trophies and who has them/ if they are spanwed at all. Bragging rights and all else why collect something no one knows you have.
Trophies could also have an optional special ability when placed on a display which will give that player or tribe a boost when dealing with that trophies creature i.e. more resources from harvest able creatures and an exp boost with tameable creatures.
Wow the summery is much smaller than the rest but in that other text I explaine the reason for each idea.
Well I am not able to do this mod but its free for anyone to have a go at.
I think it would add a lot to the game to have a fun goal to fight over like this.
Thanks for reading