Wipe Official Servers

[NoOneBtw]

After almost 2 years of constant breeding, every larger group now has incredibly mutated dinos that are nowhere close to what the game was originally balanced around. This means that dinos like Rhinos or Therizinosaurs deal much more damage and are much harder to kill than they were 1.5 years ago when the game released. Politically, the game is currently very stale, with alliances constant, no big conflicts and many people leaving the main cluster for others clusters or other games for a fresher and more exciting experience. A wipe would easily reset breeding back to its original state and bring these dinos back down to what they were originally, and bring back many players that have left over the last year.

 

edit: im talking (mostly) about the Official PvP network, non-legacy, main cluster)

[LaugherOutLoud]

5 minutes ago, Jacira said:

Do you think all the players who have devoted all this time and effort to getting all that stuff you listed above would see this as a positive thing? Moreover, do you think they'd continue playing if all their hard-earned work was just wiped clean because people who came to the game later couldn't compete?

I've been playing the official servers since it was released and before that played on what is now legacy. Ive had a pretty rounded experience of the game and am currently enjoying it but the way I see it is official servers are ruled, run and ruined by alpha / mega tribes. even if your tribe (like ours does) lets smaller tribes build up they just get taken out by a tribe from another server. the truth of the whole situation is that official servers are losing its player base. without a successful game and strong player base these servers wont be supported anyway. 
so whilst I am enjoying my time breeding and making good lines of Manas and such I also recognise that if a wipe doesn't happen at some point or the game doesn't go through some pretty major meta changes there wont be official servers for me to enjoy my tames on.

also a lot of the stuff about it being a mistake and killing the game was also said the first time around.  yet it didn't it reinvigorated the game.

[OhBaoBao]

I think its funny people point out post count, I don't see how post count has much to do with anything since most of us have been playing for years and just made accounts for forums because the game IS getting stale and we are here to voice that concern. 

PvE needs some type of war mechanic/dueling brought back in so the game isn't just getting on and farming to us. I mean seriously a few people get tricked in PVE and its ruined for the rest of us that like to do 1v1 dino fights? There needs to be better solutions, like adding a prompt for allies to accept to join in on a war and less of the "one bad apple ruins the bunch" thought process. Breeding is a fun pass time but it gets old tbh.

PvP needs to be wiped for every reason that's been stated, its almost pointless to even try since you're gonna get raided every 5 days  and lose everything to some guy who either bought his mutated dinos or is in a mega tribe. Its really just an unfair uphill battle now.

Honestly if you're looking for fair fights I would go to an unofficial to pvp. There you can actually pvp people, the guys on pvp official only want to offline you and steal your things. Essentially Arks official pvp is a few dude cowering in the corner waiting for you to go to sleep at night so they can be "good PvP players".

 

[YurKittenMe13]

i agree i think all servers need a wipe, get rid of huge buildings no one uses, dinos that are over bred and give players something too grind for again. i always love starting on a new map is released as we have the 3 months of no extra crap as soon as they open people spam all their stuff in at once and break the servers. lag, crashes it ruins the game. i think it may also stop alot of the real money trading too if the servers keep getting wiped, will make it hard to hold land that is pillared off for sale.

[Aylana314159]

Think of how many people will upvote a suggestion like this, just cause they want to watch the world burn.

 

There already exists official servers that wipe on a schedule.

[Probitas]

If they won't wipe with some kind of regularity (3-6 month) WC/Snail has to accept the servers will become more or less stagnant. If they want to keep this game relevant, they have to keep people playing, and like it or not new blood is usually better than old.

[RealGamer420]

PVE Wipe is not accepted at all, You can only want PVP wipe. And just because someone of you are lagged behind others, does not mean others will have to lose everything for you.

[nameless]

On the launch of genesis

As far as I am aware of, official pve players hate the following 4 things the most:

1, insiders/ a recruit who is not an insider but is ridiculously irresponsible

2, the mesh exploit

3, the duplication exploit

4, pillars

(there are probably lots of other things, but I think the last 4 are the most hated)

 

Due to these old issues, some of the players want to wipe all pve servers very badly, and some of them.... want no not wipe the servers, equally very badly. Thus I suggest a partial wipe:

(I don't know whats the probability of this happening, but if it does happen, then it will literally be genesis for ark)

 

day 1:

        (this is when all players should be informed about this, and also when the duplication issue is hopefully fixed)

        place log in messages and special labels on all servers affected

 

day 15:

        (this is when all players upload their characters, dinos, and blueprints)

        perform full cluster backup incase anything goes horribly wrong

        alter obelisk settings:

                change item expire times from 24 h to 144 h

                change item number limit from 50 to 300

                limit obelisk upload item type to blueprints and cryopods (with creature having 0 current weight/ no item in inventory when frozen) only, and possibly chibis

 

day 16:

        (this is when duplicated blueprints are removed from uploaded items. By now, a list of characters, blueprints, and cryoed creatures, which are about all the hardwork for every players )

        wipe and reprogram clusted servers to randomly download a part of the blueprint list of a single item type(10-20k  sets of 3-datapoint datasets, information about who is the owner doesnt matter) , compare them in a random-paired fashion.

                If identical blueprints are found, then sent the associated information to cloud server. Cloud server add this blueprint to "duplicated" list

        after some reasonable amount of cycles (when most duplicated blueprints are catched by the process)

                cloud server scan blueprints list and remove any blueprints identical to any "duplicated" blueprints and compile a list of owners for "duplicated" blueprints (the process should require less computing power than simply comparing all the blueprints for each item type in a recombination fashion)

 

day 17:

        (this is when genesis is released and clusters became playable again)

       anti-pillaring mchanisms can be activated from now, other mechanisms can be activated too, (such as character loss prevention)

       re-open official servers and allow item downloads on all non-genesis servers. allow character downloads on all servers

 

day 22:

        (this is when everything ends)

        alter obelisk settings to default

        provide support and recovery for who encountered problems during this great migration

        have a little talk with players who is found to own more than 3 duplicated blueprints, some of them may still be innocent and they deserve a chance to explain 

 

 

Pros of partial wipe:

        not all hard work of old players are lost

        give new players and returning players room to build

        ~99.9% of duplicated blueprints are eliminated

        100% of all duplicated items are eliminated (welp, in fact it is 100% of the items, duplicated or not....)

        minimal loss of old players and reasonable gain of new players

        reduce the stress for genesis severs (since people are re-starting their base everywhere, less will go to genesis on the day of launch)

        might be fun, for that small portion of pve players who is drowned in mundane daily tasks

        remove zombie players who only refresh  their base once 2 weeks

        a new start that fits the name of  "genesis"

 

Cons:

        this might not be satisfactory to either pro-wipe or anti-wipe parties

        ~0.1% of the blueprints may escape the check (or if we are lucky, they  may not)

        total chaos, whether there will be a mistake or not

 

Q&A

 

Why did you type so much when you know there is very little hope of some one that matters will read it, and even less chance that they will consider this?

        I have thought about this, and the conclusion is that it will be my problem if I don't say it, and it will be their problem if they don't listen

 

Why cant we keep items?

        There is no way to recognize duplicated items. Same for buildings built with them.

 

Aren't we doing anything about the creatures and the characters?

        Creatures are breed with food or cloned from elements (one s too troublesome to duplicate, the other can not be duplicated), they themselves have an id that prevents duplication

                Even when duplicated items can potentially be traded for such resources used for breeding, I believe relatively few exploiters do that 

                There is a snow owl freezing exploit but the benefit should hardly persist after this wipe

                Each breed need extensive recombination and egg hatch timing, making them valuable even if one have infinite amount of resources

        Characters have associated ascensions and tekgrams, both of which requires dinos, equipment's, and trophies, and lots of time

                trophies can not be duplicated

                creatures can not be duplicated

                equipment can, but as far as i know, relatively few exploiters duplicated anything other than blueprints and tek structures

                        Thus characters are minimally affected by duplication

        Other than above, they are the assets most representative of player's hard work.

 

Why cant we allow legacy transfer to this new cluster?

        Baby taming exploit affected the creatures on legacy. As a side effect, characters are affected too due to exploited boss fights.

 

What about pillaring and insiders?

        Pillaring:

                instead of instant reset decay timers, decay timer can refresh in an 1:1000 manner when owner is present. (that is, one have to stay around one's structure for 10 minutes per week to prevent decay)  

       Insiders:

                include a reputation system on ark form, much like the trader reputation

                use cloud server to cross compare steam id, hardwear id, and IP address to recognize related accounts. (I believe very few insiders are careful enough to make multiple steam ids, hardwear ids, and IP addresses, then make them appear unrelated for a long time...…….)

        Neither is a perfect solution, but both are better than non.

 

 

At the end, a little suggestion to prevent duplications:

Why not save uploaded items in the local servers first, and then let the server transfer them to ark data cloud when it is saving? So that:

        No item can be gained during upload process even if there is a server crash.

        players don't have to carry item when waiting for transfer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[SlipperySquid]

On 7/31/2020 at 4:22 PM, Galaxyheart said:

TL;DR Official is too overpowered a wipe should be done, or put new servers which gets constantly wiped that are connected to official/small tribe that you can't transfer stuff onto ever but you can transfer stuff off making it more fair for the little guy.

The last wipe + the conquest servers + the classic server has proven that even with a wipe the little guy stands no chance because they are not willing to go to the lengths these mega alliances will go to. If you are a little guy you are not going to Ddos you are not going to dupe you are not going try and slot cap a server after using a program to check steam profiles and learn when the enemy has their least amount of players on. 

The same players stand at the pinnacle of Ark as those who were standing at the pinnacle of ark back during legacy. During conquest during classic and so on. You need core gameplay mechanics changed if a wipe to happen to improve the game.

The dev's are never going to make meaningful changes to the game that will improve PvP because it means ruining the game for their larger audience the PvE community. 

 

You need to just suck it up join a mega and accept that you play it like that or you will be wiped weekly if not daily.

[KeeblerElf]

As others have said, maybe for pvp...but not for pve...

[Jacira]

2 minutes ago, LaugherOutLoud said:

I've been playing the official servers since it was released and before that played on what is now legacy. Ive had a pretty rounded experience of the game and am currently enjoying it but the way I see it is official servers are ruled, run and ruined by alpha / mega tribes. even if your tribe (like ours does) lets smaller tribes build up they just get taken out by a tribe from another server. the truth of the whole situation is that official servers are losing its player base. without a successful game and strong player base these servers wont be supported anyway. 
so whilst I am enjoying my time breeding and making good lines of Manas and such I also recognise that if a wipe doesn't happen at some point or the game doesn't go through some pretty major meta changes there wont be official servers for me to enjoy my tames on.

That is the nature of Ark PvP unfortunately, and the amount of people they would piss off by wiping the servers just to "stem the tide" is not even worth thinking about the idea.

In my opinion, the best way to play Ark PvP is on unofficial anyway.