Duping has ruined official pvp servers!

[YUSHOETMI]

I duped by implant 7 times today, deal with it!  Its so easy to do too, can't believe nobody has worked it out yet.

Punch wild rex - die - pick up bag - duped implant - rinse and repeat for profit.

nice knowing you guys, i'll surely be banned now for telling you all this awesome exploit.

[Thorium]

I am pretty sure they all dupe and use many other exploits. It's very simple: You can't be competitive as a mega tribe on official if you dont do it. Sooner or later you will just be wiped by exploiters. Just having a lot of time doesnt cut it, because the exploiters have the same time just adding the duped stuff to the equation. It is prooven time after time that the top players/tribes allways exploit and put all there time into the game. Pretty much true for any game.

[Crows]

I was skeptic about dupers at first too, big time. I used to roll my eyes at people claiming other tribes dupe and when I saw drama about mega & big tribes duping, but then I actually saw multiple accounts of proof myself, from various big tribes on PS4 and different friends, and now a few videos on YT to prove how they do it and all of the items and structures they dupe as well as dinos... It all started to make sense, especially when I remember the time we saw 4 dead Giga's with the exact same IDs and levels in a server defense and thought that was strange, but just kinda brushed it off as a UI bug on our end, or something. 

[Evample2]

7 minutes ago, LastStandman said:

The people who are trying so hard to convince us that it's not happening are probably the ones who do it the most.

Why else would they be trying so hard to convince others it doesn't happen? Think about it.

not trying to convince anyone that megatribes dont dupe, i know they do. im saying everyone calls all megatribes dupers because of a few that have done it/are duping

[StrangerDanger42]

8 hours ago, Evample2 said:

i'm in a megatribe and yes i know some dupe and one or two have been dev wiped. what im saying is everyone assumes that every megatribe dupes because they've heard about a couple of them dupe on the forums or seen it in game

I dunno about mega tribe 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0 bleh duping forget that logic.  Look at your server, if the server is constantly crashing going up/down, up/down, up/down, or if you see someone in particular on the server with their steam id logging in/out, in/out, in/out, in/out, in/out etc and your server is super lagging most of the time you can pretty much assume their is duping going on....

[Harrist14]

29 minutes ago, Jostabeere said:

You should not cry wolf unless you have actual proof of people duping. Them saying they duped could be a joke. The same as me saying I'm a 1337 h4xx0r. Or just trolling people who go nuts from knowing their Alpha dupes. You do not know this, hence you cannot claim they are actually duping. You can report them to WC, and they'll check it. They might find some dupes, they might not. But you are literally witch hunting.

 

I do actually have proof, that's what I sent in to wildcard. FFS man, are you being intentionally dense? I just mentioned the chat to show how casual they are about it, I personally don't make claims if I don't know what I'm talking about, unlike some people. 

[Jostabeere]

2 hours ago, Harrist14 said:

I do actually have proof, that's what I sent in to wildcard. FFS man, are you being intentionally dense? I just mentioned the chat to show how casual they are about it, I personally don't make claims if I don't know what I'm talking about, unlike some people. 

Let me get this straight, since you seem not to get what I write to you. Someone saying he is duping is no proof. He can lie. troll around or joke.

If you get some actual proof, keep it for yourself, since you're not allowed to post it here, cause of "No naming and shaming" rule. There is no need to spread potentual paranoia without being able to post actual proof.

[ducttapefixeseverything]

12 hours ago, Jostabeere said:

Too bad it's not Wildcards servers.

But to be honest, we can't know this. There are definitely servers that get ddosed. And there are definitely servers which are just crappy because Nitrado is a greedy company who lost their mojo years ago.

 

8 hours ago, Jostabeere said:

I have a hack that kills every player on a PvP server besides me, I can claim someones dinos with a script that hacks Wildcard and I singlehandedly DDoSed Wildcards support so they cannot give people dinos back. I am ARKs Illuminati and control the devs.

Oh. And I dupe dinos on every single Official server!

Please report me to Internet Police because this is obviously undeniable proof that I actually possess such things because I am blatantly talking about it.

No. In all seriousness. This isn't proving anything. You simply cannot state something as truth without an actual proof of it. And no, sorry. People saying they did something or are something isn't proof.

 

Correct. He knows nothing of it as he only plays by himself in solo. And to defend a broken part of the game due to lack of knowledge? Bad form. He may actually know how to do it. Does him no good as he does not play online. So anything he says about online play should just be ignored as he is trolling.

That is why his statements are ignored. Not because of any prove or disprove system about duping claims.

There's a few names on this forum that if they claimed to do it would have a GM on their server in minutes.

And uh, DDOS claims are actionable under law. Bad idea to claim you DDOS. Even jokingly. Whether you do or not. It still has to be proven, yes. But what happens during the investigation? I imagine you will be unable to play online until investigation complete.

Oh, wait, you don't play Ark online. So it won't affect you anyway.

Classic troll. Encourage others to make stupid joking claims to ruin their gameplay.

Seriously, don't even joke about saying you DDOS.

Even if innocent, all it takes right now is for your server to go down and you are suspect number one.

And if their investigation times take as long as ticket submittal response times indicate, you could be out of the game for a month.

 

[Jerryn]

No more personal attacks.

If your post is making comment about someone, and not actually discussing what is on topic, then you probably should not post it.

And, wrapping insults and off-topic comments in something that might be on-topic does not make it okay.

[ducttapefixeseverything]

If a server has been going down constantly in the last two weeks? Guaranteed duping.

Hah. Good luck catching the good dupers. They don't stay on a server for more than a day. The smart ones anyway. Stupid ones stay on the same server and keep doing it.

Good ones pop on, set up station, transfer in massive amounts of stuff to dupe, wait for an hour or two, then go to town for three or four hours duping. Then they demo all, and jump off to help somewhere else setting up on another server to do the same.

There are people scouting on the daily for servers to dupe on. It's not a conspiracy. It is true.

I personally tracked down four players on my server. All four had less than two hundred hours played in the last two weeks. Owned the game just as long. Two of them had been to my server a week before for about six hours.

After the first crash ten minutes into me playing, I thought it was just me. Then the server was not in the list for several minutes. I got back on. Several others did too at the same time. One of them posted in general yelling at an unknown person to stop duping. I had never seen this person before, so I researched them. 146 hours in Ark.

I found it highly suspicious that a person with 146 hours in ark would know about dupe crashing and researched further. Same person had been on several other servers, never more than six hours a day for the last two weeks. As had two others, matching the first guy in servers visited for over a week. A fourth matched them also for three of the last six servers the other three people had been on at the same times so I lumped him in with those three.

I say four, because there were also a large number of 123 people on the server. Despite the new upgrades, it is still difficult to track 123 people. Possible, but not simple. Impossible for the timeframe involved to prove to my satisfaction that any 123 people were involved. Highly likely several of them were.

Either way, the four main people were the ones that concerned me. They were there, two of them first time players on the server, two of them having been there a week before for a few hours, and the server kept crashing and rolling back.

That was two days ago. They have not been back since. And our server has not crashed and rolled back since they left. I have one of their profiles still open and watching it for return.

Circumstantial? Maybe. But all of the evidence points to hit and run tactics for duping to avoid getting caught. And duping on a different server and transferring back to their home server, or even a third storage server is a distinct possibility.  Blind drop style. And the funny part is, they can dupe all of the stuff needed to crash the server nonstop for the next server. Correlating the movements from the third server to suspected home server would take a long time. Nearly impossible to catch.  Pretty sure the four I suspect of causing the duping and crashes are alts of other players with much more experience. I also suspect were I to back track and ask questions on the previous servers about crashing during the quartets visit, it would be a yes. Considering a visit to the one they are on soon to ask about crashes. One server is highly suspicious, bloody knife suspicious. Two servers during the crashing process is knife in hand in wound proof. If I visit during their process, then blame could be pointed at me.

But I don't get paid to do this. That is someone else's job.

Git Gud someone else.

 

 

 

 

[StrangerDanger42]

Yes double blinds are the best way to stay clean. Part of the issues is the game was so cheap for a while some people have "throw away accounts" and not just alt accounts say for having a crafting only character for instance.  Tracking 123 steam characters can be made impossible if people know what they are doing, ie make their character name bob or jane, use proxy dinos etc etc.  Makes the game more toxic imo.

[ducttapefixeseverything]

@Carcajou

Thumbs up for the brass to take the deletion and ban sure to follow. I gave you an actual thumbs up on the post, but that will probably get deleted too. My goodness, duping is a hot topic right now. Rumor has it that a group of the major dupers are doing it for two reasons, to point out the flaws in the game, and to enjoy PVP with no repercussions and loss.

Me? I think they never should have re-enabled server transfer without fixing the server transfer duping. Never understood the logic behind that move. Or maybe I do, and that is a pure evil way of testing the game engine.

Well, it broke it. Happy now guys? We knew it would break it two years ago the first time we were able to transfer. Chinese selling C4 on Ebay through Paypal and crap like that. Always wondered if anyone ever got their Paypal account suspended for ingame sale of explosives through a Paypal rep thinking they were buying real rockets.

Did you think they would forget how to do this stuff?

You disabled it to ensure game survival then and prevent duping. I read the posts.Not on here, as this forum did not exist then. But Steam sure did. And it was everywhere. People advertising sales of ingame items for real money. Gotta go to archived Steam now for the posts. Now, you are killing your game again.

Someone once laughed at me when I told him that I remember when the obelisks were different colors. Take it from someone who saw transfer duping then, and now.

Nothing has changed, except the devs minds on allowing it to happen.

[Evample2]

12 hours ago, StrangerDanger42 said:

I dunno about mega tribe 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0 bleh duping forget that logic.  Look at your server, if the server is constantly crashing going up/down, up/down, up/down, or if you see someone in particular on the server with their steam id logging in/out, in/out, in/out, in/out, in/out etc and your server is super lagging most of the time you can pretty much assume their is duping going on....

none of our servers are going down.

[St1ckyBandit]

3 hours ago, Evample2 said:

none of our servers are going down.

Consider yourself lucky then. Its a complete and total crapshoot at the moment if I can play the game or not when I fire up my ps4.

 

My server only crashed like 6 times yesterday, which sadly is a good day now.

[BulletForce]

On 7/10/2017 at 0:17 AM, wallaby said:

its because of scum like this that were probably gonna get server wiped on release 

Which is actually a really great thing. There is no way a new player that buys the game at the marked up price of $60 can even remotely hope to compete with tribes that have glitched, exploited and duped their way to victory over the last 2 years. A wipe has to happen.

[wallaby]

4 hours ago, BulletForce said:

Which is actually a really great thing. There is no way a new player that buys the game at the marked up price of $60 can even remotely hope to compete with tribes that have glitched, exploited and duped their way to victory over the last 2 years. A wipe has to happen.

in pvp yeah  maybe because its competitive but there gonna have a massive outcry of dissapointment and anger,  if they wipe pve god help them... 

[Turin]

The blanket of silence that falls upon the duping, as in the "we cant talk about how its done here", is part of the problem, not a solution.

Everyone who has a brain and internet connection can discover how it's done. It's not hard to do. And all the methods are abusing the same flaws on the game design. In more creative or stupid ways, they are all the same.

But, from my point of view, the more people to know the methods the better. Let all people know. Let all people know and let all people use all the methods available. Not for the sake of "levelling grounds". Just for the purpose of forcing the devs to take harsher and faster measures against duping. Duping must end. All methods of doing it must be prevented. The devs must find a solution. It's their game. I trust they can do it. If they can't, then maybe they should go to someone that can. And then, after no more flaws will allow new duping methods to arise, they must wipe. 

 

[YUSHOETMI]

to be fair there have been some pretty stupid ways to bring down a server and cause the dupe glitch, I remember accidentally pressing "craft 5" on a mastercraft fishing rod that only allowed 3 crafts. It brought down the server and caused a rollback, made the mistake of apologizing on global chat and explained what happened, after that tribes would keep a rod blueprint handy incase they was being wiped, just craft more than 3 and get a rollback.

[NanaNitro]

I must say, having been gone from official servers since December and just coming back to one a few days ago, I was confused when playing yesterday and the server crashed after I had placed 12 stone Dino gates. When I came back gates were not there but instead back in my inventory...this happened 3 times before I finally got them placed for good. Then about an hour later I had just finished taming a Petra and had another one at 50% done taming , had just finished making kibb for the 2nd one when server crashed and did same thing as before...when I log back in, my 1st Petra is at 97%, the 2nd is just starting taming and none of the kibb is made...I re made kibb again, and server went done again ? I had to make kibble 3 different times before the duping finished and I was able to complete my taming!  Someone finally explained to me that one of the big tribes, on one of the other servers in the cluster, was duping ?

It really sucks that the cheaters ruin gameplay for us all, and it sucks even more that WC has not/is not dealing with this. Maybe a simple solution until they can figure out how to fix it permanently would be to shut off any/all cross ark transferring, stop them from moving from server to server and destroying everything, idk. If a mega tribe or any tribe has to cheat to win, they aren't really winning...they are losers!!! I personally will go back to my player dedicated server and enjoy gameplay again....gameplay where it isn't constantly laggy, where u can fly around without fear of dc'ing and losing ur flyers, where duping DOES NOT happen, and most importantly, where mega tribes DO NOT exist. And before u say it, there are good player dedicated servers out there that are ran fair and honestly ☺️

[YUSHOETMI]

I may be way off the mark here but wouldn't the fix for duping be relatively simple? Unique codes?

Can it not be done that every item in game or stack of, has its own unique id code represented by what the item actually is?

Something like this  - A longneck rifle would be LNG00000000001 or a Ptera would be PTE00000000001  stack of metal MET00000000001 etc.

that way should an item be duped, when it is brought into the server or the cluster it is from the server can see it has an identical id code to another item in game and delete the newest one brought into the game.  Of course when the item is used/killed/despawned then the id will have to go back into the pool of available unique ids so it doesn't stop dupers from keeping an item in the obelisk until using the original or losing it, but if the transfer time for keeping items within the obelisk was reduced to say 6 hours, chances are they would lose it before they have the chance to bring it into the game without the server knowing it is a dupe.

Just a thought and doesn't seem that hard of a solution.

[StrangerDanger42]

57 minutes ago, YUSHOETMI said:

I may be way off the mark here but wouldn't the fix for duping be relatively simple? Unique codes?

Can it not be done that every item in game or stack of, has its own unique id code represented by what the item actually is?

Something like this  - A longneck rifle would be LNG00000000001 or a Ptera would be PTE00000000001  stack of metal MET00000000001 etc.

that way should an item be duped, when it is brought into the server or the cluster it is from the server can see it has an identical id code to another item in game and delete the newest one brought into the game.  Of course when the item is used/killed/despawned then the id will have to go back into the pool of available unique ids so it doesn't stop dupers from keeping an item in the obelisk until using the original or losing it, but if the transfer time for keeping items within the obelisk was reduced to say 6 hours, chances are they would lose it before they have the chance to bring it into the game without the server knowing it is a dupe.

Just a thought and doesn't seem that hard of a solution.

Generally yes if you have a remote db and a centralized database they are synced in some way.  this process however is not as easy as it sounds.....especially given large volumes of data and the need to check items in real time against large amounts of data.  This is the reason for the lag or hitch experienced when you pull an item from the ark or put something in? i could be wrong, but the point remains the implementation of this issue is a lot harder than is sounds.  They need to fix the root issue as putting a rubberband around the problem is going to cause them design issues in the future....

[wakafloo21]

Was wondering if they are doing something in order to fix this? Any update on this? So far haven't seen/heard any devs talk about this issue. I'm pretty sure they know this. Looking to get an answer. Thanks

[myksta0121]

6 minutes ago, wakafloo21 said:

Was wondering if they are doing something in order to fix this? Any update on this? So far haven't seen/heard any devs talk about this issue. I'm pretty sure they know this. Looking to get an answer. Thanks

2days ago Jat responded to someone on reddit regarding duping his words were

"We've fixed around 3 exploits today, unfortunately, due to the crunch we're in, we're not able to respond as quickly as we'd like to but we will get to it when we're able to. If anyone has any methods they'd like to report, let us know."

He also replied on reddit to someone who mentioned ddos'ing which is a popular method for crashing/duping on pc. These are his exact words.

"Your reports will get taken a look at it, but as I've mentioned (and you have) in your post, we are currently working on disc submission.

Now I know a lot of you are wondering why we're focusing on the disc when we've got this DDoS problem going on and players exploiting this to crash servers. The disc is more so about the offline version of the game, anyone who intends to then play Official Servers would have to download an update, therefore we're able to iterate on the online version of the game even after we submit the disc build. Our focus will be switching back to online as we finish up, it's going to be rough for a bit longer but we'll be back on it soon enough.

We'll be doing some networking work to heavily improve the situation, obviously, it won't resolve it completely because quite frankly, that's near impossible (everyone in the world is affected by this), but it should make a significant difference, and if it doesn't, we'll need to come back to the table to see what better action we can take."

The problem is you cant exactly stop ddosing, you can make the ddos mitigation hardware stronger to sustain  more network traffic but if someone has access to a decent booter/huge botnet bombarding the server with TBps the server will always crash under that much network traffic. 

[TheSpirit]

8 hours ago, myksta0121 said:

The problem is you cant exactly stop ddosing, you can make the ddos mitigation hardware stronger to sustain  more network traffic but if someone has access to a decent booter/huge botnet bombarding the server with TBps the server will always crash under that much network traffic. 

This is insane thing. In any other game DDOS is a problem, but not a long term problem. The way ARK is with the transfers, dupers can actually impact a huge part of player base. As I see it the only way to mitigate the impact would be isolating players as much as possible (for example cluster servers). As it stands anyone with big enough botnet can actually have infinite amount of, well, anyhing, really.

[Thorium]

23 hours ago, YUSHOETMI said:

I may be way off the mark here but wouldn't the fix for duping be relatively simple? Unique codes?

Can it not be done that every item in game or stack of, has its own unique id code represented by what the item actually is?

Something like this  - A longneck rifle would be LNG00000000001 or a Ptera would be PTE00000000001  stack of metal MET00000000001 etc.

that way should an item be duped, when it is brought into the server or the cluster it is from the server can see it has an identical id code to another item in game and delete the newest one brought into the game.  Of course when the item is used/killed/despawned then the id will have to go back into the pool of available unique ids so it doesn't stop dupers from keeping an item in the obelisk until using the original or losing it, but if the transfer time for keeping items within the obelisk was reduced to say 6 hours, chances are they would lose it before they have the chance to bring it into the game without the server knowing it is a dupe.

Just a thought and doesn't seem that hard of a solution.

Well it's not that easy. There are games using this methode. For example Diablo 2, still duping happened.

The problem is you can pretty easily bypass checks for dupes. They can't scan all the servers and cross reference all the items and dinos to find dupes. That would take way to much ressources. So they need to have them in the same context to check if they are duped. For example, original and dupe are in the same inventory. The scan should be very fast and doesnt take a lot of ressources. However then i just keep original and dupe seperated. So you scan the whole server, takes more time and ressources, but, i would say, still doable. Then i tell you, i don't care. Because i use the item uploads to dupe and keep original and dupes on seperate servers. Scanning the whole cluster, not so much doable. At least not in a time frame that would make sense.

So i keep my originals on one server and just dupe them if i want to go and attack another server. Or store dupe stashes on different servers. Not that i realy do this, i dont even play official for such reasons.