Server Cap Exploitation PVE

[Azmeaiel]

Hello,  There is a huge problem at the moment with almost every new official PVE map currently being capped or used as barns by mega tribes simply dumping dinos onto other servers as storage or to temporarily un-cap their own servers, essentially leaving the targetted servers unplayable except for building. There are also regions in which EVERY server is currently dino capped in this way and virtually unplayable eg. Oceanic servers for last few weeks.

will new PVE be released to let new/existing players have a chance at the game?

Will transferring dinos onto already capped servers be policed or stopped to prevent dumping?

Will any limits be put into place on the ammount of any 1 species a tribe can have at a time be put into place, im fairly sure 80+ rexes owned by single players that only ever get on to refresh timers, often found dumped at red obelisks are not there for legitimate play or boss battles. Along with similar tribes owning 100's of dodo's and lystros and 'selling caps'

At least introduce faster decay/despawn/unclaim times for capped servers as turnover of junk/unused dinos is slower than customers who want to try the game getting onto the few servers available and finding them capped and unplayable.

[Lucifina]

Good luck getting anywhere with that WC is now trying to dump a half finished DLC out to get MO $$$ I seriously doubt they give a poop about anything you are saying... even though they really should

[Azmeaiel]

10 minutes ago, Lucifina said:

Good luck getting anywhere with that WC is now trying to dump a half finished DLC out to get MO $$$ I seriously doubt they give a poop about anything you are saying... even though they really should

Yeh, Just sad to see, in the few Hours im online each day, usually see between 15-30 new players having bad experience after recently buying game because they cant find un-capped servers 

There are very very limited servers for region and most were capped within a few days. Basicly its now a few unplayable servers for an elite few tribes.

[Shinarya]

Some tribes are even selling slots now. in our server some people have a poop load of dodos that they sell for the buyer to kill and have a slot -____-

WC just needs to release more servers as all servers are practically capped now and they released wayyy less than they deleted. 

[Azmeaiel]

Tbh since its being so heavily abused they need to put a cap on tribes ammount of dinos per species , set it to something reasonable for bosses/breeding. This wont stop the tribes lystro and dodo taming to sell cap so much but might stop the dino dumpers from the mega-tribes. Although unfortunatly can be exploited through making new tribes.

[Pic1]

3 minutes ago, Azmeaiel said:

Tbh since its being so heavily abused they need to put a cap on tribes ammount of dinos per species

Nope. Won't work. The megatribes will just split into mega-alliances with 1 person per tribe. 

[Azmeaiel]

9 minutes ago, Pic1 said:

Nope. Won't work. The megatribes will just split into mega-alliances with 1 person per tribe. 

which if you quoted the whole sentance ....was at the end of it.

[SadPanda]

There really would be no solution without some form of control that WC will not do since their profit model is solely based on capitalizing on pushing out new content as fast as possible repeatedly and letting the old playerbase upgrade to the new DLC or quit and make way for new players that will pay more for the game again.

• Disabling server transfers to prevent dumping or parking sale inventory on random servers.
• Setting tiered tame caps based on Tribe size which ends up punishing any solo player and forces mega-tribes and politics even on PvE so that the overall server tame count can never be reached.
• Monitoring player population on servers and creating new ones for such regions/modes when one nears capacity and offer it as the default suggested server for new players that join. 

[Supasuno]

This is a worse problem than you think. You have completely discounted the fact that people buy and sell Dino's via websites\facebook for IRL money... And there's not a thing WC can do to stop them.

This means more tribes grinding higher level Dino's. Constantly breeding them for mutations are perfect stats and storing them between servers to sell for profit.
Right now on some Facebook groups, you can buy a high levelled\stat wyvern for 60$ and that's by request! Not by somebody saying "I will sell you" but somebody saying "I will pay you"

WC can't track these trades between servers. There is no way to tell which Dino's are legitimately just moved by players and which are moved for monetary profit.

Sooner or later, every server will have a Dino farm. If you can make money doing it, People will do it.

WC needs to either stop cross server trading altogether (Which seems harsh) or charge money for uploading Dino's (Like 50 uploads, 1 time, 9.99$) to encourage server loyalty.

I don't know how to fix this. I don't have the answers. It may very well be the death of ark.

[Meatmelt]

WC already sold most of the copies of the game, they can make some more money from programmed DLC.  After that, in few months, they wont be anymore interested in maintaining they own servers because they are just a cost and they will close them. The calculation is simple: we have about 700 official servers, each server costs about 500 dollars at year so they spend about 350.000 bucks/year. How long it can last?

Is clear that they are not going to change anything in game mechanic because it will be too expensive to rethink and rewrite the kibble system, the taming system, the clan system, etc. Too many things would change and no one can assure that this will lead to a better gameplay.

Simply they'll go straight forward with their plans i.e. make as much money as it is possible and I can understand it. We have already bought the game so why bother with us? I think we have to deal with that.

[edandbunny]

2 hours ago, SadPanda said:

• Disabling server transfers to prevent dumping or parking sale inventory on random servers.
• Setting tiered tame caps based on Tribe size which ends up punishing any solo player and forces mega-tribes and politics even on PvE so that the overall server tame count can never be reached.

Actually an easier way to fix this is to set tiered tame caps base on amount of time a tribe plays on a server. It wont punish solo players but it will force some of the older tribes who have very few members that play anymore to cut back on the massive dino farms they collected when still active. It will definitely stop dumping though.

[Tobias9]

Pve    52 Server     = 35 Server Capp                     

 

  17 playable  ?? !     after 3 months   RIP ARK

[Novarae]

8 hours ago, Azmeaiel said:

Hello,  There is a huge problem at the moment with almost every new official PVE map currently being capped or used as barns by mega tribes simply dumping dinos onto other servers as storage or to temporarily un-cap their own servers, essentially leaving the targetted servers unplayable except for building. There are also regions in which EVERY server is currently dino capped in this way and virtually unplayable eg. Oceanic servers for last few weeks.

will new PVE be released to let new/existing players have a chance at the game?

Will transferring dinos onto already capped servers be policed or stopped to prevent dumping?

Will any limits be put into place on the ammount of any 1 species a tribe can have at a time be put into place, im fairly sure 80+ rexes owned by single players that only ever get on to refresh timers, often found dumped at red obelisks are not there for legitimate play or boss battles. Along with similar tribes owning 100's of dodo's and lystros and 'selling caps'

At least introduce faster decay/despawn/unclaim times for capped servers as turnover of junk/unused dinos is slower than customers who want to try the game getting onto the few servers available and finding them capped and unplayable.

 

My responses will probably not make you feel much better but they will at the very least offer some alternative thinking to the issue. To best help to couch this, I'll be addressing this in relation to the steam/pc status on this situation but invariably this really applies to all.

When you have choices to easily move to the suburbs and nice gated communities but instead choose to live on the 15th floor in a rank apartment in city welfare housing, complaining about the roaches and smell becomes rather perplexing.

Before the 29th of August, the steam official servers numbered over 950.  When the switch was flipped, that number dropped to below 700 and still is only just now barely at the 700 mark.  As well since 29th of August, people have continued to purchase and play the game, as well as some who quit returning and of course some quitting etc. But overall its been relatively a net gain of people one can argue.

Your complain reflects a symptom: overcrowding.

But here's the cause: 

Wildcard wants to encourage people to play with modded content and customized settings. 

Notice, I've not said(by intention) that Wildcard is discouraging people from playing official servers.   Its a very fine distinction probably for most because they just see the end result of a deficit of 250+ servers(250+ actually were repurposed to consoles according to statements made a while ago).  But it is important, yes, to recognize that that loss was intentional. They very well could've made those 250+ pc official new servers but they didn't.   Obviously once Aberration eventually drops in the coming weeks(months depending on some betting pools), there will be a net increase in servers but the likelihood of their being that much more as to equate to the pre 8/29 loss is low.

So when you begin to understand that all of this was intentional and that frustrations are framed by people with expectations to the contrary,  those frustrations and suggestions for change become rather futile.  A Band-Aid on a brain tumor really.

Where I personally fault the wildcard team is in their reticence to more transparently make that clear, not the decision to do otherwise.  Kayd for example when the issue of officials comes up like in the charity event stream on twitch the weekend of the 4th(where I intentionally asked him the question btw), encouraged people to play on unofficial servers. They do not market the official servers to say "Officials are basic feature showcase servers and or public test realms, understand your choice to play there accordingly".    Instead they say, this is how the conditions are at the moment on official servers, however we encourage you to consider unofficial servers or single player if you would prefer more control on settings and game play conditions because we encourage people to play the way they want.  More than one dev on the team has iterated this in various ways.

All in all, the point is that once you start to frame that official servers in this manner, and make different choices, much of these issues become non issues. Otherwise, choosing to play in these varying conditions of ecocide of the official servers one just has to accept/reconcile that the situation is not going to be improved to any meaningful level long term.

[Pic1]

4 minutes ago, Novarae said:

When you have choices to easily move to the suburbs and nice gated communities but instead choose to live on the 15th floor in a rank apartment in city welfare housing, complaining about the roaches and smell becomes rather perplexing.

Let me explain why this... comparision, sounds so childish to me:

1. Those nice little gated suburbs and townships will not disappear without warning. Unofficial servers can. And have. What I mean is you can spend weeks and months building a great big castle on an unofficial server with hundreds of mutated dinos and wake up the next day to find out the server has been wiped or discontinued. Not saying that's always the case, but you can NEVER rule this outcome out completely.

2. The reason why people choose to hang on to the official cluster is... unbiased (although not always timely) customer service. Know why so many people left their legacy servers and restarted on the new ones? The main reason is customer service was discontinued.

3. I see that you think everyone plays on official servers because they are free but you're wrong. I am okay with paying some sort of subscription fee. Let them open premium servers (as long as they are attached to the official cluster) and let only subscribers play on them. I'll definitely join because I love the core game, erm... bugs aside.

Okay I understand that you just want more people to opt for unofficial servers but unless there is some sort of solid accountability, you won't convince me into investing my time and energy on one. Thank you.

[Novarae]

31 minutes ago, Pic1 said:

Let me explain why this... comparision, sounds so childish to me:

1. Those nice little gated suburbs and townships will not disappear without warning. Unofficial servers can. And have. What I mean is you can spend weeks and months building a great big castle on an unofficial server with hundreds of mutated dinos and wake up the next day to find out the server has been wiped or discontinued. Not saying that's always the case, but you can NEVER rule this outcome out completely.

2. The reason why people choose to hang on to the official cluster is... unbiased (although not always timely) customer service. Know why so many people left their legacy servers and restarted on the new ones? The main reason is customer service was discontinued.

3. I see that you think everyone plays on official servers because they are free but you're wrong. I am okay with paying some sort of subscription fee. Let them open premium servers (as long as they are attached to the official cluster) and let only subscribers play on them. I'll definitely join because I love the core game, erm... bugs aside.

Okay I understand that you just want more people to opt for unofficial servers but unless there is some sort of solid accountability, you won't convince me into investing my time and energy on one. Thank you.

 

1. Indeed, with tens of thousands of unofficial servers out there there are plenty of bad ones, ones that do disappear, and more. But there are still many that have been around for as long as or longer than even some legacy official servers lasted.   Also, you may want to add there are some that go down for days or weeks at a time(and there are many instances of the same going on with official servers too mind you as has been cited in the past).

Also, some servers do not have such week/month required settings to play on. Some have much more relaxed settings catering to their needs/interest of their players. This is why folks take the time, if wise to vette servers to match their needs/interests.  But again official steam servers lost 250+ of them, while there was certainly notice seen by some for others who didn't see such, it was thus without notice for them(albeit a small number obviously and more due to their inactivity in most cases). 

2. I think that's a bit assumptive, if not erroneous to state that people hang on official servers is due to customer service. This is  especially so, as you cite when legacy servers receive virtually no customer service post the 29th.  Also, its been cited that WC was actually not addressing official servers issues for weeks and weeks prior to the 8/29 change because they new said change was coming and didn't feel they warranted to be addressed.  I think that is more compelling evidence to state that pedestaling the quality and fidelity of said customer service may be misplaced.   That's not a feather in the cap for WC when it comes to how people who play/have played official servers pre/post 8/29.

And again, there are plenty of unofficial servers where the owners or admin do treat people fairly, unbiased and actually not just reactive(as WC is primarily and only) but also proactive.   Again duds out there but with over 25 times the number of official servers out there, there are choices to be vetted.

3. Again wholly and erroneously assumptive on your part. At no point did I mention or discuss the point of their being free as a reason for people playing official servers. I'm not sure where you pulled that from.  This sounds more like you were attempting to throw out disinformation to segue into your desire for a subscription based model for official servers.  As I iterated(though didn't specifically address though I will now), that is just Band-Aid on a brain tumor. 

In fact I would counter that in a game where devs pay players stipends to work on their mods(since 3 of our current 4 dlc originate from mods) that such is counter intuitive because they are needing and encouraging people to play modded content for the purpose of integrating/incorporating into the game in a more official capacity for the purpose of, quite frankly, being a revenue draw.  After all the more robust the game is made, the more they have with which to market by.

 And lastly to address your last paragraph, if you read what I wrote, you'd note that I mentioned both unofficial servers and single player.  But as expected, you and others miss the primary point being stated:  this situation the devs have created intentionally and because of their design and implementation philosophy focusing on custom game play and modded content. Again devs have stated this to be their intent and again encouraged people to play unofficial servers in the situations where they lament the conditions of official servers.   They aren't discouraging you or anyone from playing official servers and that distinction is too small perhaps for you to understand at this point(as I said some would not) but I would say the evidence is compelling that they are saying that if you want to play on them, then accept the conditions there in.  The irony is that that is where the true accountability lies and hence why the analogy was given in my previous post despite your churlish reaction to it.

[Pic1]

13 minutes ago, Novarae said:

2. I think that's a bit assumptive

Sounds like you're the one being a bit assumptive buddy. My own tribe received assistance when we lost a mosa to that 'squid grabbing through wall' bug back on legacy (rag server). A gm actually visited our new server to sort a problem a player was having. And I am sorry but you can't put words in WC's mouth. 

17 minutes ago, Novarae said:

3. Again wholly and erroneously assumptive on your part

I was referring to that amusing example of yours regarding the welfare housing and posh suburbs. I apologize if I assumed wrong. And there is no need for me to throw any disinformation to suggest a sub model. I can do so freely because it's a valid point to present in this thread

Heh, and here's one problem with your paid modders argument. If they really wanted mods to be just mods they wouldn't want to integrate S+ into the core game now would they? Some food for thought.

And finally, let me assume that you are being right about WC (although neither of us can really assert that). Even if they intend people to migrate to unofficials, I would call the way they did it as dangerous. All they are doing is encouraging people to actually leave the game by punishing them like this. Which is why I don't believe you.

[Glerian]

2 hours ago, Pic1 said:

3. I see that you think everyone plays on official servers because they are free but you're wrong. I am okay with paying some sort of subscription fee. Let them open premium servers (as long as they are attached to the official cluster) and let only subscribers play on them. I'll definitely join because I love the core game, erm... bugs aside.

Then go to Ark4u and rent yourself a nice little server for 13.50 a month. That's cheaper than a WoW account, and you can stop posting on the forums that you can't play the way you want to, problem solved! There are over 15 different websites listed on the Ark wiki alone that offer servers for Ark at a small fee. Which, as was pointed out, is the goal of WC, to get people to use private servers to host the game and play the way they like. Nitrado, who hosts this very forum, offers servers that you can rent for as low as $13 a month.

So if you are willing to pay, then host your own server. That solves your customer service issue (since you can service yourself, ) and your tame cap issue. Two birds, one stone, and then the rest of us don't have to listen to you complain about server caps.

[Pic1]

1 minute ago, Glerian said:

then the rest of us don't have to listen to you complain about server caps

I'm sorry someone has a gun pointed to your head and is forcing you to read all these threads. I am more than happy to rent my own server if my friends come play with me but they share the same concerns as mine. What if something happens and I can't continue supporting the server? If you can't see how this is way different from a subscription model then there is nothing I can say.

And what do you think these forums are here for? Companies try to collect feedback about their product and complaints, whether you like it or not, are a form of feedback.

[Glerian]

1 minute ago, Pic1 said:

I'm sorry someone has a gun pointed to your head and is forcing you to read all these threads. I am more than happy to rent my own server if my friends come play with me but they share the same concerns as mine. What if something happens and I can't continue supporting the server? If you can't see how this is way different from a subscription model then there is nothing I can say.

And what do you think these forums are here for? Companies try to collect feedback about their product and complaints, whether you like it or not, are a form of feedback.

Lol, look mate, I'm not gonna argue with you about it. You do what you want, but as was pointed out by Novarae above, this is WildCard's intent. For you and your friends to rent a server and play on that. But honestly, if you are worried that you and your friends can't scrape together 13 bucks a month then there really is nothing more to say, and a subscription model isn't going to help you. It's an option that solves all of the problems that you are complaining about and is 100% supported by WildCard.

Yes, companies gather feedback, but there is a difference between offering feedback and critiques of a companies product, and constantly flitting from thread to thread to post about how much you hate a particular aspect of the game and why you think you are entitled for the company to change it to benefit you. And if you can't see the difference then there is nothing I can say.

 

tl;dr You have a variety of options to fix your current problem (unofficial servers, hosting your own server, getting people on your server to cooperate, etc.), and complaining constantly about a known issue isn't even remotely close to feedback.

[Pic1]

So you wanna get personal. Okay, let's go.

1 minute ago, Glerian said:

You do what you want, but as was pointed out by Novarae above, this is WildCard's intent.

I don't care what you think WC's intent is, get that through your head. And please, either learn to read or put an effort to. I explain what the difference is between renting my own server and subscribing and you try to berate me and my friends. And what's this nonsense about 100% support from wildcard? I think I'm going to start questioning whether you are even coherent right now. Wildcard doesn't even offer support for their own legacy servers.

Why do you care what I do on these forums? Mind your own business.

[Supasuno]

Charge people to upload dinos[emoji23] That certainly would be the death haha.

I know lol but my point being people may think twice about uploading dinosaurs unless they REALLY have to.
Or at least it will add the extra amount to the cost of the average Dino that people may refuse to buy them at such inflated prices.

[anubis3691]

In the Xbox patch notes it shows that last little update we got is stopping uploads to already capped servers. I know this isn't a fix for already capped, or going to stop servers from being parking lots, but I think it's a good sign they are aware of the issues and they are working on solutions? Baby steps?

I mean I won't say I'm a hard core player but it seems like to much xtra effort having to put all your Dino's in 10 other servers and keep up with them all because you can't just dump them all into one server now.

[Mctoozle]

You all dumpin on the devs when this issue is made by the players themselves. They can't do anything. If a PvE(which is just a game mode they made available for fun - PvP is the intended mode) server is full ... then it's done. Go play on another server. That's that. Why would you want them to stop working on a DLC or new content just because your sad about your jammed up server?? Get a perspective. Think about it. There is no magic solution. They aren't going to hire staff to judicate your god damn server full of dodos.

[SwishPapaSweets]

1 hour ago, Pic1 said:

So you wanna get personal. Okay, let's go.

I don't care what you think WC's intent is, get that through your head. And please, either learn to read or put an effort to. I explain what the difference is between renting my own server and subscribing and you try to berate me and my friends. And what's this nonsense about 100% support from wildcard? I think I'm going to start questioning whether you are even coherent right now. Wildcard doesn't even offer support for their own legacy servers.

Why do you care what I do on these forums? Mind your own business.

If it bothers you so bad go play elmos world. Otherwise quit your bitching. 

Now what would be good for a pve official server would probaly be either add aging to creatures or make a dino storage uploader that only stores the info of the dino but can't cross transfer from it. 

[powerfit]

pls add new serveur PVE its just impossible to play at ARK in serveur PVE