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One Tribe to Rule them all Or Arks Oligopolies


ChocolateCake

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Hello Fellow Survivors,

I was looking at John Olivers Last week Tonight and he had a piece he was doing on Oligarchies. I did a little bit more research and I noticed that there were some parallels between Oligarchies and Mega Tribes. 

What is an Oligarchy? 

  1. Oligarchy
  • A small group of people having control of a country, organization or institution

What are some examples of Oligarchies?

  • Luxottica

They are the owners of most (if not all) major eye wear brands and stores. Fact Checked

  • Air Line industry

The group of airlines have shown trends in colluding with each other By Bloomberg and Suspicion by The Economist 

  • Cable Companies

I'm sure you've experienced Some of this before 

Can Mega Tribes be considered an Oligarchy?

Lets look at the actions of Mega Tribes on PVE and PVP

  1. Will put pillars  and gates everywhere they can to keep others not in the alliance from building.
  2. Will Monopolize resources so that only they have access to it.
  3. On PvP Mega tribes will often wipe out any smaller independent tribes, forcing you to join them or leave.
  4. Sometimes the Mega tribes will even block Obelisk Access and allow only those who are part of the Alliance.

Is this a bad thing?

Well that depends on your perspective, if you are happy with one tribe to rule them all then it's a non-issue to you.

I think it speaks volumes that in the real world such things are regulated for a reason. With the Official servers slowly succumbing to the One monolithic mega Tribe, it feels as though ARK (on official) will soon become a game where you log on to official and You have a choice.(GoT Spoliers)

Thoughts?

I've talked about this for a bit and this will most likely be my last post on the matter (unless it's a suggestion for improvement). Do you see the parallels or am I just grasping at straws?

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On 9/25/2017 at 5:49 PM, ChocolateCake said:

Hello Fellow Survivors,

I was looking at John Olivers Last week Tonight and he had a piece he was doing on Oligarchies. I did a little bit more research and I noticed that there were some parallels between Oligarchies and Mega Tribes. 

What is an Oligarchy? 

  1. Oligarchy
  • A small group of people having control of a country, organization or institution

What are some examples of Oligarchies?

  • Luxottica

They are the owners of most (if not all) major eye wear brands and stores. Fact Checked

  • Air Line industry

The group of airlines have shown trends in colluding with each other By Bloomberg and Suspicion by The Economist 

  • Cable Companies

I'm sure you've experienced Some of this before 

Can Mega Tribes be considered an Oligarchy?

Lets look at the actions of Mega Tribes on PVE and PVP

  1. Will put pillars  and gates everywhere they can to keep others not in the alliance from building.
  2. Will Monopolize resources so that only they have access to it.
  3. On PvP Mega tribes will often wipe out any smaller independent tribes, forcing you to join them or leave.
  4. Sometimes the Mega tribes will even block Obelisk Access and allow only those who are part of the Alliance.

Is this a bad thing?

Well that depends on your perspective, if you are happy with one tribe to rule them all then it's a non-issue to you.

I think it speaks volumes that in the real world such things are regulated for a reason. With the Official servers slowly succumbing to the One monolithic mega Tribe, it feels as though ARK (on official) will soon become a game where you log on to official and You have a choice.(GoT Spoliers)

Thoughts?

I've talked about this for a bit and this will most likely be my last post on the matter (unless it's a suggestion for improvement). Do you see the parallels or am I just grasping at straws?

There really isn't an easy fix for this one.  Your points are all valid.  Having played for a long time, the issue really got out of hand with the ability to do cross ark transfers.  I see the only solution is to put more limitations on the transfers.  There are lots of options with this WV could make.  This allows mega tribes to still transfer, but makes them invest some time in the server they are wanting to invade.  This balances things a bit and gives the incumbent server time to attempt to band together and defend.  

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4 hours ago, ChocolateCake said:

So before Cross Ark Transfers people were a bit more civil? I haven't played before that was not a thing.

No before each server had an established alpha that couldn't be touched due to opponents having to level from level one and tame everything fresh,  they would let people build for a month or two then wipe them. 

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Make PvEvP servers... that's the only way it will work for everyone

 

The Russian army have 2 soldiers 1 weapon between them in ww2. If one died then the other was to pick the weapon up, the Polish also fought tanks with horses! 

Its the Same with ark, they expect people to fight tek guys with stone picks and axes!!!

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17 hours ago, SmokeyB said:

No before each server had an established alpha that couldn't be touched due to opponents having to level from level one and tame everything fresh,  they would let people build for a month or two then wipe them. 

That's WAY better than it currently is. At least with that much time you can build a decent defense or something that requires a little skill to battle pvp.

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OP: You're not wrong, but like society Ark tribes can exhibit traits of many social structures (including oligarchy), often times with one prominent influence and multiple subsidiary influences. Some Ark tribes may have parallels with an oligarchy, but the same goes for the parallels various Ark tribes may share with any other social structures. Additionally, Ark tribes - like IRL societies - are not limited to just one of these social structures. Ark tribes will typically have multiple prominent and influential social structures. 

Ultimately, Ark tribes are a microcosm of human society, not one specific social structure.

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6 minutes ago, LouSpowells said:

OP: You're not wrong, but like society Ark tribes can exhibit traits of many social structures (including oligarchy), often times with one prominent influence and multiple subsidiary influences. Some Ark tribes may have parallels with an oligarchy, but the same goes for the parallels various Ark tribes may share with any other social structures. Additionally, Ark tribes - like IRL societies - are not limited to just one of these social structures. Ark tribes will typically have multiple prominent and influential social structures. 

Ultimately, Ark tribes are a microcosm of human society, not one specific social structure.

I agree with you for tribes not on Official servers. My observation however makes me think that there will come a point where there will be a singularity for the tribes (hopefully I'm wrong)

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On 9/26/2017 at 9:54 PM, ChocolateCake said:

So before Cross Ark Transfers people were a bit more civil? I haven't played before that was not a thing.

I would never use the term "civil", but there was a slight sense of community rule on many official servers if you stuck around played the social game a bit.  With cross-ark transfers, mega-tribes bounce from server to server attempting to destroy everything in their path, just to leave moments later.  Let me be clear, I am not against mega-tribes or cross-ark transferring.  Both CAN be good for the game.  Under it's current situation though, it has really forced the small to medium sized tribes to dedicated servers to avoid being caught up in a mega-tribe battle and reduced the social aspect of a server to zero meaning.

 

But yes, everyones definition of PVP is different.  I tend to like a balance.  I attack folks when provoked or the situation calls for such, but choose to not wipe small tribes and reduce them to "tree punchers" again.  Just personal preference as I know how much time and effort is put into taming and building by folks.

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