I do not understand the difficulty WC has in making true PvE servers.

[Midnight_]

PvE = Player versus Environment. This means that a players only threat should be the environment.

PvP = Player versus Player. This means that other players are a threat. 

Currently all official PvE servers are PvE in name only because of the following:

The main reason is that when I have submitted undeniable proof of PvP style griefing (which is acceptable in pvp servers) the GM's respond with "It's ok" (that is of course paraphrased).

Specific cases I am talking about (and there are more, I am just pointing out some of the big ones) are kiting titans on some maps to destroy dinos, and Golems in SE to completely wipe out another players base. Effectively offline raiding......which is a PvP thing. 

#1 Why is it even possible to do that? In my early days of Ark I played on a server for months and gathered many tames and stuff in my base and then decided to join a tribe. Well I did it wrong....I joined the tribe instead of merging. So I left behind a tribe with a base and dinos but no tribe members to own them. I eventually got a GM to help me and got all my stuff back. But before I found out that I could do that I tried to kite dinos to take out a wall so I could get inside because I had all my boxes pin coded. All of my outer doors were locked but not pin coded. In my efforts to get wild dinos to demo my old base I found that they would not damage the base when I agroed them there. It made sense. Because that prevents PvP style griefing on a PvE server. But in Scorched Earth Golems will destroy any base not made of metal. So they fixed pvp griefing on pve servers.....then re-enabled it with new dinos. Step forward ....step backward. I just dont get it.

#2 When you report such griefing you get this response: " ...the development team has decided that since dinos have the ability to be free roaming and being a mature rated, survival game, dinos can wandering into a base at any time, we advise players to build taller reinforced walls in order to prevent this from happening. " Golems don't wander. Golems do not destroy fully enclosed bases if they do somehow on their own wander close. The case I reported was another tribes base (friends of mine) that I fly near to find some new players on the server kiting a golem to destroy the entire base they had and kill all the dinos. With me standing next to them mounted on a wyvern watching them they shouted at me in voice and in global chat "GO AWAY". Blatant griefing they admitted to it in global chat after the fact as well. All screen shots taken and submitted. The GM will do nothing about it.

So adobe is what you build your base in on Scorched Earth servers to survive the heat. Adobe walls are destroyed with one hit from a golem. Gates a couple hits. It does not matter how high your walls are. The only way to combat such griefing is build a metal base and then an adobe base inside that so you are not just making your base a pressure cooker to suicide in. New players and lower level players are just screwed.

WC's current policy is that they do not yet have true PvE servers. They have PvP servers and then servers that protect offline raiders. (they can still raid online....but it is far more difficult to impossible with the tribe you are raiding online fighting back).

The other case of one step forward and one step right back:  The changed PvE servers so you can not grief other tribes by picking up wild dinos and dropping them in others bases to kill dinos. The change was the inability to pick up any wild dinos. Made taming more difficult but the griefing of this type ended. Well now the made new dinos with the ability to pick up wild dinos on PvE servers. So now you just use the new dinos to pick up wild dinos and another tribe-mate picks you up with a quetz and you can again drop wild dinos in other players bases to kill their dinos.

....can we get offline raid protecting for PvE servers?.....why is it that we even need that.....

[MrDynamicMan]

What's your suggestion then? Make it so that nothing aggros? That's not even PvE. It's an unfixable problem. And they certainly don't have the manpower to scrub through the servers and ban 1000s of people. 

[GEonWAR]

@Midnight_ Bro you are wrong other wild dinos also aggro on Stone walls if some dino are exist other side of wall. These are Giga and Alpha Rex, correct yourself.

Other thing, Golem dont auto aggro on any wall near him, I see some golem relaxing next to my outer wall. You should learn the mechanic how they aggro on something (I think most of know this).

When Golem engage to something and target is out of their melee range then they throw rocks on target, This time most troll happen, if someone is standing on ur wall and he leave place before rock hit him, it smash your Adobe, and if any of you dino is neutral they start attacking on golem. And my friend this is the beginning of Golem aggression on someone base who is not responsible for that golem revenge.  

To make you base Golem proof start making an outer wall min 4 wall high. 

[Midnight_]

11 hours ago, MrDynamicMan said:

What's your suggestion then?

Does it matter what my suggestion is? My point is they had a fix for it. Then they made new dinos that bypassed a fix they did. So even if we do fix it they will likely break the fix later. Not only that the current policy is that pvp griefing (kiting dinos to destroy bases/kill dinos) is ok by them. 

But my suggestion is do what they already did in the past: Dinos do not damage structures (if agroed by a player) unless the structure belongs to that player/or players tribe.

The second part of that is: GM's need to take action against griefers as long as sufficient proof is provided that they deliberately kited dinos to grief bases. Instead of telling us that kiting dinos to destroy others bases and kill dinos is A-OK.

Alphas and gigas are not a problem that I identified. Though they fit in the category. If players are kiting alphas and gigas to bases and sufficient proof is provided to show that then they should be punished as griefers.

[Volcano637]

12 hours ago, Midnight_ said:

PvE = Player versus Environment. This means that a players only threat should be the environment.

PvP = Player versus Player. This means that other players are a threat. 

Currently all official PvE servers are PvE in name only because of the following:

The main reason is that when I have submitted undeniable proof of PvP style griefing (which is acceptable in pvp servers) the GM's respond with "It's ok" (that is of course paraphrased).

Specific cases I am talking about (and there are more, I am just pointing out some of the big ones) are kiting titans on some maps to destroy dinos, and Golems in SE to completely wipe out another players base. Effectively offline raiding......which is a PvP thing. 

#1 Why is it even possible to do that? In my early days of Ark I played on a server for months and gathered many tames and stuff in my base and then decided to join a tribe. Well I did it wrong....I joined the tribe instead of merging. So I left behind a tribe with a base and dinos but no tribe members to own them. I eventually got a GM to help me and got all my stuff back. But before I found out that I could do that I tried to kite dinos to take out a wall so I could get inside because I had all my boxes pin coded. All of my outer doors were locked but not pin coded. In my efforts to get wild dinos to demo my old base I found that they would not damage the base when I agroed them there. It made sense. Because that prevents PvP style griefing on a PvE server. But in Scorched Earth Golems will destroy any base not made of metal. So they fixed pvp griefing on pve servers.....then re-enabled it with new dinos. Step forward ....step backward. I just dont get it.

#2 When you report such griefing you get this response: " ...the development team has decided that since dinos have the ability to be free roaming and being a mature rated, survival game, dinos can wandering into a base at any time, we advise players to build taller reinforced walls in order to prevent this from happening. " Golems don't wander. Golems do not destroy fully enclosed bases if they do somehow on their own wander close. The case I reported was another tribes base (friends of mine) that I fly near to find some new players on the server kiting a golem to destroy the entire base they had and kill all the dinos. With me standing next to them mounted on a wyvern watching them they shouted at me in voice and in global chat "GO AWAY". Blatant griefing they admitted to it in global chat after the fact as well. All screen shots taken and submitted. The GM will do nothing about it.

So adobe is what you build your base in on Scorched Earth servers to survive the heat. Adobe walls are destroyed with one hit from a golem. Gates a couple hits. It does not matter how high your walls are. The only way to combat such griefing is build a metal base and then an adobe base inside that so you are not just making your base a pressure cooker to suicide in. New players and lower level players are just screwed.

WC's current policy is that they do not yet have true PvE servers. They have PvP servers and then servers that protect offline raiders. (they can still raid online....but it is far more difficult to impossible with the tribe you are raiding online fighting back).

The other case of one step forward and one step right back:  The changed PvE servers so you can not grief other tribes by picking up wild dinos and dropping them in others bases to kill dinos. The change was the inability to pick up any wild dinos. Made taming more difficult but the griefing of this type ended. Well now the made new dinos with the ability to pick up wild dinos on PvE servers. So now you just use the new dinos to pick up wild dinos and another tribe-mate picks you up with a quetz and you can again drop wild dinos in other players bases to kill their dinos.

....can we get offline raid protecting for PvE servers?.....why is it that we even need that.....

Since is a mature rated, survival games Dinos can wander into a base anytime?

wow ok first off that has nothing to do with the games rating or being a survival game. That is a bug that needs to be fixed. How does that response make sense?

[NebraskARK]

12 minutes ago, Midnight_ said:

Does it matter what my suggestion is? My point is they had a fix for it. Then they made new dinos that bypassed a fix they did. So even if we do fix it they will likely break the fix later. Not only that the current policy is that pvp griefing (kiting dinos to destroy bases/kill dinos) is ok by them. 

But my suggestion is do what they already did in the past: Dinos do not damage structures (if agroed by a player) unless the structure belongs to that player/or players tribe.

The second part of that is: GM's need to take action against griefers as long as sufficient proof is provided that they deliberately kited dinos to grief bases. Instead of telling us that kiting dinos to destroy others bases and kill dinos is A-OK.

Alphas and gigas are not a problem that I identified. Though they fit in the category. If players are kiting alphas and gigas to bases and sufficient proof is provided to show that then they should be punished as griefers.

One instant solution to your problem would be single player lol...no meanies to worry about! 

Jk,  I hope they fix it for you... 

[Midnight_]

4 minutes ago, Volcano637 said:

How does that response make sense?

Ya...that was frustrating to read. But the response is a canned cut-n-paste response. So far I have gotten nothing from them to show me they read more than a couple sentences or even more than the subject of my ticket. I first got a response that looks like an automated response to any and all tickets in hopes that they wont have to even read or spend any time at all on my ticket. And that response assumes that I have not done any research and have not tried to fix my issue on my own.

My problem with that is that I have to spend anywhere from 20-120 minutes of time gathering info and screenshots together and filling out the ticket, then they turn around and don't even read it or look at my screenshots.

Oh and another issue is the fact that whips can be used in PvE to steal tools/weapons from other players. Whips should have the same effect that pistols do in PvE.....none at all. Another prime example of one step forward: making it so you can not kill another player to steal their stuff ie..PvP, then making a new item that bypass that fix to re-enable players to steal stuff right out of the hands of other players.

There is a very well defined flaw in the QA process where a very important question is being left out as they continue to develope the game and bring new content. That question is: Will this new item/dino/mechanic/etc break or undo something we have already fixed? That simple question could have prevented a lot of this.

 

It may very well just be that they are fully aware and just have the stance of "we don't care about PvE, and we no we keep breaking PvE (by remaking it PvP) and we will worry/deal with it later when we feel we have more time. That is the feeling I am getting, especially with the response to griefing I am getting.

[Volcano637]

The funny and sad thing is I am sure I have gotten that same universal response before. And to be honest will all of the pve people getting mad all the time it does seem like they don't care about pve'ers at all.

and wow I didnt know that you could still steal people's stuff with the whip in pve! That is not just technically but also actually without a doubt a form of raiding. They pretty much strong arm robbed you. That's even worse then killing you.

if they kill you you get your body back right? But if they steal your stuff and you can't kill them to take it back, what are you supposed to do? Also have a whip and then just take turns whip striking to weapon or tool back? Sounds like a game of pong.

sorry to hear about that man. I wish you luck.

[Novarae]

Since most play on unofficial servers, most of these things are a non issue there.

[Midnight_]

That is nice for those people. Not sure how this is helpful in this thread though. 

[Novarae]

Ive played hundreds of hours on official servers(about the first 500-600 of my 1800+ hours in game) before I started spending more time on unofficial. There is no prestige on official versus unofficial only the perception there of. Your issues are just one of a myriad of reasons why there are 20+ unofficial servers to 1 official.  Issues on official servers are predominantly and lethargically reactively handled where as on decent unofficial servers, owners and admins on them are more proactive.

I understand though your desire to see the issues improved via official servers but things you're having distress over are not new really. I was primarily giving a suggestion to circumvent/work around the issues you're experiencing at the current moment as I would be highly skeptical of resolution being forth coming any time in the near future.

[Midnight_]

Unofficial servers are better in many ways. No argument. This thread is not an official server vs unofficial discussion though. There are reasons some prefer official, this thread is for those people. Same goes for PvP vs PvE..... You are in the wrong thread if your argument is "don't play on those servers".

[Oldkane]

Points well made Midnight, I agree with you.  One of my friends bases was the subject of a PVE lured Golem attack and I felt their pain and frustration to the attack and later when no response so far to their ticket.

[Midnight_]

So I got a final response on the kiting golems ticket where I had irrefutable proof golem kiting to offline raid bases (the players openly admitted it in global chat). The GM flat out said they will not take any action for this behavior. So offline raiding in PvE servers officially has the green light.

Edited to add: Sorry you are in the same boat as me Oldkane. As you read above you will be told in 9-15 days what I was told. Nothing will be done about it. The current policy is that is acceptable behavior in PvE servers. You are not allowed to shoot or directly attack other players, but kiting dinos to kill players and demo their bases gets a thumbs up.

This is no ok. This is a very irresponsible stance for Wild Card to have. Hiding behind "pre release" is not acceptable here as well. They need to set the stage for the full game when they do a full release next year. Otherwise when they do release the reviews of PvE will show how irresponsible they are in policies as well as content release that continually turns PvE back into PvP in one form or another.

 

[Midnight_]

I just want to point out that with the whip alone you can truly make PvE unplayable. Can literally follow a new player and prevent them from doing anything more than hand gathering. You can make it so they can not tame any dinos bigger than a dodo (you can punch out a dodo pretty easy. You can do this because by using the whip you can make it so that any player you chose to harass will never be able to equip an item without you knocking it out of their hand and then stealing it from the ground.

And that player you chose to prevent from playing the game....that player....can not do anything about it because they can not harm you back. In PvP that player could punch you, or even use a weapon on you before you could whip them to kill you. But in PvE they can do nothing to retaliate or stop you from taking tools/weapons from them unless they also have a whip and use it on you. But then what? You pull out another whip and take their whip. Then PvE has turned into nothing but a whip fight for this new player. What kind of gaming experience is that? That is exactly PvP. They are forced to ignor the environment a literally fight another player.

I don't know that this has ever happened. But the mechanic's are in place for it. It is VERY plausible that it has or will happen.  I really hope someone from Wild Card is reading this and that plans are in place soon to resolve these issues. As I said above it is irresponsible of them not to. 

[Irk]

I've gotten the same cookie-cutter "everything is working as intended" response when reporting people for kiting alphas and giga's to bases.

Though, if I remember correctly, nothing aggro's walls. I've had plenty of giga's and allo's wandering around outside of my base and they've never attacked my walls. I always kept my larger dino's roughly ten foundations away from my walls and built barns for smaller dino's. Never had a problem with a random alpha or giga attacking my structures.

Chances are the PvE players who log in to a wrecked base lined their 3 to 4 high walls with spikes and Plant X, and kept their neutral dino's scattered relatively close to their walls where larger dino's can see them and aggro.

[Nim]

37 minutes ago, Irk said:

I've gotten the same cookie-cutter "everything is working as intended" response when reporting people for kiting alphas and giga's to bases.

Though, if I remember correctly, nothing aggro's walls. I've had plenty of giga's and allo's wandering around outside of my base and they've never attacked my walls. I always kept my larger dino's roughly ten foundations away from my walls and built barns for smaller dino's. Never had a problem with a random alpha or giga attacking my structures.

Chances are the PvE players who log in to a wrecked base lined their 3 to 4 high walls with spikes and Plant X, and kept their neutral dino's scattered relatively close to their walls where larger dino's can see them and aggro.

Before griefing became allowed, I almost never saw anyone use plant X or spikes on their walls in PvE. Only when they lived in a dangerous area like snow biome or if they had a lot of time on their hands to farm all the necessary mats. Now even fewer people use plant X due to the plants using fertilizer with every shot. Another PvP update that was unnecessary and bad for PvE. Even those bases are easy to grief; just kite dinos to drain the plants, then kite again to destroy the walls. The only way to even attempt to protect against it now is building with metal, which is ridiculous. Most players with decent established bases (stone, adobe) do not lose their bases and tames to wild dinos, especially since most people don't keep their tames close enough to a wall that an aggroed dino will try to bite them. If a wild rex sees a tasty morsel (set on neutral) on the other side of a wall, it won't bite until it's within range of the tame for that bite to connect. It won't just bite the wall on its own. That's why I think destroyed bases and dead tames are more often a result of griefers than not planning your base properly, as wild dino AI at the moment just isn't sophisticated enough to try breaking barriers between them and their target and the vast majority of PvE players build their walls at least 3-4 high (or out of dino/behemoth gates) and build with stone or adobe.

[Midnight_]

5 hours ago, Nim said:

The only way to even attempt to protect against it now is building with metal

That is it. In PvE they only way to circumvent griefers is building in metal. The canned response they give about building higher walls is given out of ignorance. Even wood bases will protect you from wild dinos. As they often get "bored" or distracted after a while and will move on with their own AI driving them. Only when a griefer is motivating them to attack and stay attacking will they wipe out bases.  The only protection is Metal. And the idea that only when you have metal walls all around your base can your stuff and dinos be sure to survive you logging out for a few hours is not reasonable. And when you go to farm metal you have to hope that the griefer does not happen upon you with his trusty griefing whip.

I know I am pushing that whip concept a bit hard....but I can see the future and it is full of whip griefing. I have already gotten reports yesterday of exactly what I foresaw happening with the whip. yOu have to remember that for every voice who speaks in the forums there are 94 or so others with the same/belief/idea/complaint/etc who don't communicate in the forums. the forums tend to represent a sampling of about 6% of all the players.

[LilNastyGurl]

41 minutes ago, Midnight_ said:

That is it. In PvE they only way to circumvent griefers is building in metal. The canned response they give about building higher walls is given out of ignorance. Even wood bases will protect you from wild dinos. As they often get "bored" or distracted after a while and will move on with their own AI driving them. Only when a griefer is motivating them to attack and stay attacking will they wipe out bases.  The only protection is Metal. And the idea that only when you have metal walls all around your base can your stuff and dinos be sure to survive you logging out for a few hours is not reasonable. And when you go to farm metal you have to hope that the griefer does not happen upon you with his trusty griefing whip.

I know I am pushing that whip concept a bit hard....but I can see the future and it is full of whip griefing. I have already gotten reports yesterday of exactly what I foresaw happening with the whip. yOu have to remember that for every voice who speaks in the forums there are 94 or so others with the same/belief/idea/complaint/etc who don't communicate in the forums. the forums tend to represent a sampling of about 6% of all the players.

To be honest, you CANNOT completely circumvent griefing in PvE. There are always things people can do that will impede and troll other players if that is what they want to do. One of the best ways one can actually avoid this is to limit the amount of strangers they play with. Jumping on unofficial with like people and civil players, rather than jumping into servers with anti-social strangers that only think about themselves usually helps this. Official PvE servers are filled with people who just want to test the boundaries of what they can get away with, be it kiting dinos, whipping, spamming pillars, spamming foundations, putting spikewalls everywhere, filling the volcano with dodos or Brontos, or just building so many obnoxious rafts that the server actually runs slower trying to render them in. 

In general, Official PvE NEEDS hard regulation because unlike Official PvP, if somebody is being an obnoxious phiomia molester, you can't just destroy all their stuff and drive them off. You have to live with them. But until that happens, and they get either a nanny or an actual judge in these things, you'll have to deal with obnoxious behavior.

[wildbill]

2 hours ago, Midnight_ said:

That is it. In PvE they only way to circumvent griefers is building in metal. The canned response they give about building higher walls is given out of ignorance. Even wood bases will protect you from wild dinos. As they often get "bored" or distracted after a while and will move on with their own AI driving them. Only when a griefer is motivating them to attack and stay attacking will they wipe out bases.  The only protection is Metal. And the idea that only when you have metal walls all around your base can your stuff and dinos be sure to survive you logging out for a few hours is not reasonable. And when you go to farm metal you have to hope that the griefer does not happen upon you with his trusty griefing whip.

I know I am pushing that whip concept a bit hard....but I can see the future and it is full of whip griefing. I have already gotten reports yesterday of exactly what I foresaw happening with the whip. yOu have to remember that for every voice who speaks in the forums there are 94 or so others with the same/belief/idea/complaint/etc who don't communicate in the forums. the forums tend to represent a sampling of about 6% of all the players.

Be careful what you ask for. Complain about the whip too much and the simple solution would be to remove it from the game.

Never seen or heard of anyone getting griefed by a whip. Griefers are mostly cowards, if you see them in action they usually run. Wouldn't be like most griefers to actually do anything where you can see them do it. Griefing is a passive/aggressive behavior, using a whip is an actual act of a aggression.

[perseaus1977]

and even when thay make policies to prevent pve greifing, thay dont enforce them like thay should, like other players blocking the path up too the valcano with pillars preventing people from waling dino's up their.

[Dam Son]

personally, I think it wouldn't hurt if the devs just disable wild golems from able to destroying stone structures. it gives the griefers one less exploit.

it's not like we have beaver dams on scorched earth, and also you have to fight every inch just to harvest metal.

[Midnight_]

16 hours ago, wildbill said:

Be careful what you ask for. Complain about the whip too much and the simple solution would be to remove it from the game.

Never seen or heard of anyone getting griefed by a whip. Griefers are mostly cowards, if you see them in action they usually run. Wouldn't be like most griefers to actually do anything where you can see them do it. Griefing is a passive/aggressive behavior, using a whip is an actual act of a aggression.

I love the whip. I is so useful. But It is better its gone than abused. I also loved being able to pick up wild dinos to carry to a taming pen for easy taming, but better that is gone than abused. However all they have to do is make the whip like a pistol. No effect to none tribe members. That would be better than gone.

18 hours ago, LilNastyGurl said:

To be honest, you CANNOT completely circumvent griefing in PvE. There are always things people can do that will impede and troll other players if that is what they want to do. 

In general, Official PvE NEEDS hard regulation because unlike Official PvP, if somebody is being an obnoxious phiomia molester, you can't just destroy all their stuff and drive them off. You have to live with them. But until that happens, and they get either a nanny or an actual judge in these things, you'll have to deal with obnoxious behavior.

The problem is you CAN wipe them out. The only thing I can not do is shoot them in the face. Using a golem I can destroy entire HUGE bases with HUGE walls around them and kill hundreds of dinos in one night. That is full on PvP.

There is a huge difference from having dirt bag players to deal with and having a stated PvE game mode that is not PvE. The game mode is broken. Has nothign to do with the players other than those dirt bag players love it. Lot of "lollercoptering" ahead for them because the developers gave them new tools to make the game unplayable for those who play PvE to avoid having to fight off other players in PvP in order to enjoy other aspects of the game.

[Midnight_]

The solution to all this is just stupidly simple.

 

New dino? ....nice we love new dinos. Apply the same settings as old dinos on the new dino! You kite a bronto to a base it does NO DAMAGE to the base....do that for the golem....is that not simple?

 

New weapon? WE LOVE NEW WEAPONS! Apply the same settings to the new weapon that is on old weapons!!!! Shoot someone not in your tribe with a gun NO DAMAGE/NO EFFECT.....do that for the new weapon.....  

 

Like the title says I do not understand the difficulty. Is there a valid reason they are not doing this?

[LilNastyGurl]

40 minutes ago, Midnight_ said:

The solution to all this is just stupidly simple.

 

New dino? ....nice we love new dinos. Apply the same settings as old dinos on the new dino! You kite a bronto to a base it does NO DAMAGE to the base....do that for the golem....is that not simple?

 

New weapon? WE LOVE NEW WEAPONS! Apply the same settings to the new weapon that is on old weapons!!!! Shoot someone not in your tribe with a gun NO DAMAGE/NO EFFECT.....do that for the new weapon.....  

 

Like the title says I do not understand the difficulty. Is there a valid reason they are not doing this?

Probably because they secretly dislike PvE players and put little diabolical easter eggs in for PvPers to find and use on unsuspecting PvEers. They have how many official testers now? 5? They probably knew this was possible in PvE, but they didn't care. they let it in. They wanted this to happen. 

It's not that they are stupid and aren't being communicated with, or were unaware. They just see this as a non-issue.