Were Pterosaurs Overpowered?

[Music] oh [Music] this video was made in partnership with curiositystream flight is an ability which has been unlocked by a grand total of four separate factions in the history of the game however only one of these factions is no longer playable in today's version of outside i'm of course talking about pterosaurs pterosaurs still hold the record for the largest most powerful flying builds in the history of the game so why is it that the pterosaur build is absent from the current meta did they simply fall out of favor with the player base as players gravitated toward the newly added bird builds or were they outright banned by the devs well first let's discuss the pterosaur build's introduction to the game so directly following the biggest mass ban of all time the update that came at the end of the permian expansion the arkasar faction gained access to two new classes the one that garnered most of the attention was the dinosaur class and for good reason dinosaurs ended up becoming one of the most over centralizing meta-defining builds of all time however the other new class was the pterosaur which despite having a less dominant role in the mesozoic meta was honestly an even more shocking addition to the game prior to the pterosaur's debut flight was an ability restricted exclusively to the insect faction no vertebrate had been able to make a flying build work yet and because of that insects had gotten away with some questionable strategies and hadn't changed much about their flagship builds in a long time pterosaurs were in the perfect position to punish the insect playerbase for their complacency and on top of having a great matchup against insects being able to fly gave them a reliable escape option during a meta where being able to escape meant the difference between reaching the end game or getting one hit by extremely overpowered jaws now while it is true that eventually pterosaurs started investing a lot into the power stat 2 when they were first added to the game they were all far from gigantic initially their base stats looked something like this nowhere near the power and size of their later builds instead keeping the vast majority of their base stats allocated to mobility despite having an hp stat about as high as a piece of paper this strategy worked great there were no serious aerial threats they needed to avoid as the griffin flies had been banned a few updates prior and the birds of prey wouldn't come out for a long time this meant pterosaurs were in the perfect position to diversify and test out all kinds of wacky strategies in addition to chasing down flying insect players terrasaur mains also found that this small agile playstyle also function great in the role of support class cleansing the giant dinosaur players of parasites players looking for better xp rates could also opt for a fish eating bilge although with higher reward of course comes higher risk to mitigate this risk pterosaur mains eventually started to actually put some of their points into hp and power normally this is a bit of a gamble since larger size tends to reduce mobility and while it did increase the startup leg for their takeoff move they more than made up for this by gaining access to the soar ability allowing them to fly for extremely long distances without using all that much stamina upon gaining this ability some pterosaur players realized that a new playstyle had become available to them the scavenger see when the cost of traveling long distances becomes lower it actually becomes a viable strategy to search for rare but extremely high value loot drops like for example the remains of a defeated sauropod player it might seem risky to bank on being able to find that level of loot consistently but it's a lot less risky than the alternatives and when you can patrol an entire server even the rarest loot isn't that hard to find plus them spending most of their time flying minimize the time spent close to danger it's a good thing terrorists were able to spec into gigantism because things were about to get a bit tougher for the smaller pterosaur mains their command over the skies was being challenged as some of the dinosaurs had unlocked flight [Music] through an entirely different combination of perks and attributes a new faction of the dinosaur player base had discovered a way to use an ability originally intended only to provide coal resistance in order to fly this was bad news for the pterosaur mains who liked the smaller more agile playstyle as these new avian dinosaurs were far better optimized for that niche particularly in forest biomes their feathers were far less vulnerable to damage than the thin membranes that pterosaurs were using to fly meaning that these new avian dinosaurs didn't have to worry about puncturing a wing when flying through a dense forest or jungle feathers also offer some blunt damage resistance making any mid-air collisions less damaging these a-beams were sorely lacking in size and power though and so it was on that front that these pterosaurs opted to compete with them soon the larger scavenger slash opportunist type build became the pterosaur's only viable strategy as the avian playerbase had control over the agile insectivorous niche this might not seem like that bad a trade exceeding control of a rather fragile playstyle to another faction while keeping control of a record-breaking niche never before seen in-game and for a while this was absolutely true the pterosaur player base continued to thrive scoring easy loot while still remaining out of reach of the overpowered giant dinosaurs unfortunately those overpowered dinosaurs did end up inadvertently causing the downfall of the pterosaurs because after an incredibly long run of dominating the meta eventually the devs finally dropped the banham and this is where the pterosaur's size came back to haunt them the banning of the dinosaurs meant that those high-quality loot drops suddenly went from rare to non-existent and with no way to keep up their huge food cost giant pterosaurs became unviable meanwhile the small builds like birds and mammals which had been oppressed for so long by the giants they had to contend with suddenly had free reign over huge territories in particular the bird's feather ability had its initial purpose suddenly become extremely relevant again as the overworld temperature had cooled significantly due to the sun being blocked out by dust experimenting with new combinations of abilities is key to creating an innovative build that breaks the meta and gives rise to new dominance and while the pterosaurs initially made some incredible strides in revamping the reptile class to exploit an open niche in the end it was the birds whose adaptations won out usurping an already established competitor and gaining air superiority that is yet to be challenged even in the current meta experimentation is also important to another build the youtube creator the youtube meta isn't always conducive to established creators breaking away from their niche if you publish something that your audience isn't interested in you can kneecap the momentum your channel had built from the success of previous videos this is where the creator-owned platform nebula comes in nebula is a place where creators can get their wackier ideas both funded and realized for example i've started a new series called let's play outside in which i do parodies of let's play videos using actual animal footage or cgi because originals are funded separately i'm not at the mercy of what works for youtube but i still get the budget that i need to make the stuff i want i've got plenty more originals coming soon possibly even a reveal of which character i main in the current version of outside but in addition to my own exclusive videos there are also several other originals made by my fellow creators on the platform including wendover productions lindsay ellis and legal eagle lastly it's worth noting that all of my videos go up on nebula ad-free so if you're sick of sponsors interrupting your favorite videos nebula is the place to be nebula is usually 30 a year but we've partnered with curiositystream to bring you both services for under 15 a year that's 26 off curiosity streams annual price and you get nebula included that's not a nebula trial you'll get the full nebula experience for as long as you're a curiosity stream subscriber and as if that wasn't reason enough to sign up for curiosity stream you should also know that many of the pterosaur cgi clips featured in this video are from a documentary series called ancient earth which you can watch on curiosity stream along with thousands of other excellent non-fiction titles to reiterate that's both services for less than 15 bucks a year easily one of the best deals in streaming nebula recently hit a hundred thousand users meaning our little experiment is really gaining some wings there's tons of awesome new stuff coming up so don't miss out head to curiositystream.comtearsu to get access to all of it thanks again for watching thanks especially to my patrons on patreon and until next time good luck out there [Music] you

Channel: TierZoo

Views: 2,356,310

Keywords: quetzocoatlus, pteranodon, tapejara, pterosaurs, dinosaurs, azhdarchid

Id: OrSzDyv6U_8

Length: 8min 52sec (532 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 31 2020