Failsafes to prevent deleted characters

[Oieru]

Ark was built with cross-Ark transfers in mind. You can't get the complete experience and finish all bosses without transferring between Arks.

But as you know from one of the last patches, these transfers come with a great risk. If the server on the other end crashes or there is a rollback for any reason, you character is deleted. Recovering your exact character with all engrams and imprints is inconsistently offered by GMs (tek engrams I have yet to see them restored) and it takes weeks. If you don't have a multi-member tribe, everything is lost due to auto-decay.

So here is the suggestion: Implement failsafes and other methods to recover you character.

I would suggest storing and tracking info regarding your character on both ends of the server (what are the 15min saves for anyways...). It is a minimal amount of data, that can't take up more than a few GB for all characters.

Then there are efficient methods of retrieving characters, used by unofficial server admins. They work! They constantly retrieve the original characters with engrams and everything!

Just a few quotes:

 

On 4/3/2019 at 1:05 PM, Sphere said:

They can't recover your lost boss achievements, but I can recover your entire character back down to the last molecule. Per hour backup. But it would probably be a pain in the butt to recover characters the way I can on Unofficial. I take a backup save, and load it into the Backup server and get you to log into that and move your character into the main cluster. This recovers your character back.

 

On 4/4/2019 at 10:42 AM, Sphere said:

Okay, I will answer.

Now, I am assuming that each data center has a bunch of servers running on the boxes available. Thankfully, it is possible to have the files backed up to an address. I would not recommend FTP WAN, because sending off-site will consume bandwidth and thus create latency problems. One server slot would have to be kept open, with ports, to ensure that a server could be opened with the save file. Thankfully such a server will really only need to have a couple of slots open anyways. It can also be passworded. An admin would only need to give the person a direct connect link, for example steam://connect/support.wildcard.com:27015. Moving the save file over takes about 5 minutes each at most, and then you launch for about 3 or 4 more minutes. Would need to make sure that the server is using the correct map name as well. It is important that the schedule of time for people to recover is followed, as you can imagine, many people have to use this service. Some people will fail to use the service and thus waste time. The other option is to open up live service, and thus on request be able to do this per person who requires character recovery. This could work. However, it is important that the player gives which server they know they were active on at a timezone that the Admin can work with, in order to recover your character from that point in time. Also, you would not be allowed to recover any items or dinosaurs from that server, and it would be important for the Admin to make sure that nobody else logs in to that server; or if they do, to hold them accountable.

Sure it's possible. But there are problems associated with this. But, it would mean getting your entire character back. However, given the time for Wildcard to answer tickets, yeah, that might be a while, and thus I hope you have friends in your tribe.

 

On 4/4/2019 at 11:31 AM, invincibleqc said:

Why so much trouble? You just have to delete the arktribute file and re-upload the arkprofile from your backup. No need to run an extra server, you can even restore characters while the server is running as long as the players is logged off at the time you restore it. You however cannot restore a profile from a map to another unless you hex edit the map name along with the length that is stored in the profile.

Here is the link to the topic:

There are solutions and they can be implemented. But now, in addition to losing items during transfers, transfers are getting really dangerous. They are an essential part of the game. And losing an old character with hundreds of imprints, all engrams, bases on multiple servers only determines players to quit. It is an unacceptable bug to basically lose access to all you have worked for.

 

[Sphere]

I actually had an excuse recently to recover a character on my unofficial cluster. Copying the character from backup to the server, works.

[MYTVY]

I really don't understand why they don't keep backups. Even if it did it automatically every few days AS WELL as every time you transfer/upload etc I can't see there being any more total losses, worst case scenario people would lose items but would still have their character and unlocks.