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Box tribes and PVE griefing


Poppet

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Box tribes and PVE griefing

This is a post that has been wanting to be written for some time. Last night, however served to be the trigger for me to actually write it. Note I play on PVE.

We all know 'the internets' can harbor the most wretched hive of scum and villainy in the galaxy...to borrow a quote from an old friend ;). I think I have pretty realistic views on my expectations of what a gaming company can and should do to serve overwatch to the going's on in the huge sandbox you provide, and I am relatively hopeful you get the very worst of the sociopaths that like to troll the virtual neighborhood.

I started playing right after PVE released. I had taken a break by the time the huge influx of 'box tribes' became a thing though I read with interest about it 'the influx' of different cultures and the impact on the game, and ultimately agreed with the summation of the article here:https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2015/08/chinese-invasion-ark-survival-evolved-reveals-cultural-imperialism-videogames

After all one of my favorite things about my online time is getting to know Aussies, Croatians, Brazilians, Japanese friends and more in the various games I play. My gaming circle is huge and includes nationalities of people from all over the globe. But there is a problem here in Ark.

Despite the lack of shared language with many of the nationalities I have played with before (There is a Russian guy in our gaming guild that only knows english cuss words and the word 'cool' and he is awesome lol!) There has always been accountability provided by the interface in the form of names. I think the knowledge that a given gamer can be reported for cheats, exploits, or bad behavior because we can see his or her gamer identification serves as a posted speed limit and keeps a lot of players honest. Ark does not have that accountability...instead we see boxes for those gamers of other cultures sharing our sandbox.

And those up to no good- use that lack of accountability to enable conduct against ToS leaving very little we can do about it- even with live video footage. Though I could regale you with numerous examples as I am sure the community could share here as well, this is exactly case in point last night..

I was raising rollrat babies and sitting cowgirl on my giga as they grazed inside the dino leash in the meadow. Pretty boring job, but I have learned to stay rendered and not leave them alone because Ark happens. I notice a flash of red and the sound of a lightning wyvern and look up. Right outside of my render range I notice a wyvern that had flown by twice overhead...fighting a alpha rex. And he is dragging it closer. I warn him or her in local I am there...and they pull it closer. I look through a telescope...yup. Box tribe. I assume then they can't understand and pull my giga between the babies and the the alpha...which he is pulling closer.  So I killed it- despite him trying to box me with his wyvern to allow the alpha to pass to the babies. He flies off...I shake my head and think to myself what a jerk. I got back to playing guard dog only I am more alert.

An hour later on multi hour babysitting gig, I decide to just walk the babies back to the teleporter brimming with berries they have stuffed themselves with- they can sit safely inside the base and mature onto the troughs. That earlier encounter was niggling at me and I didn't feel he was done causing trouble. So I led my crew back...slowly...to the tp. Almost there, I see the wyvern again...only this time it is streaming the glowing effect you see when someone is using flowers to aggro/lead a dino. And i go on high alert and watch...and here comes a Giga running after him.

Note this player had absolutely NO fear of being seen or reported. He was completely protected by his anonymity because they knew all I could see...was boxes. They were bold as brass and knew I had no recourse to protection from griefing BECAUSE THEY WERE ESSENTIALLY ANONYMOUS. It was a 140 wild giga. I killed it but not before it killed 7 of my babies. He hovered and watched.

He literally looked for a wild giga to kite to me for an hour. He was that dedicated to his griefing. I have no dealings with this person and was a random target. That's the sort of dedication they have to griefing community members.

This is just one small blip on the radar, Wildcard. This sort of thing happens constantly. The solution is pretty easy- get rid of the anonymity of box names and introduce accountability to those who exist only to be toxic components to the gaming community. 



 

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4 hours ago, Aylana314159 said:

There should be a report system within the interface of the game, so the devs can get all the information they need. Like players online at the time. Etc.

 

Also, language packs should be built into the base game. 

There is a third party site called 'Battlemetrics' that will tell you who exactly was on at the time. Great site and as the time was in the wee hours I was definitely able to narrow down the box tribes active at the time to 3 suspects. Your point, however is valid- and I do not know if they accept data from battlemetrics in a case like mine to act on a ticket.

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I must say, after seeing hundreds of complaint threads this one is actually well thought out, coherant and with no insults or needless hate! Love it! 

Im sorry this happened. Keep submitting your videos, screens and hopefully your reports get taken care of.. get friends to report them too. Use their base coords and any other defining info as a indicator as who they are if you cant write their box name. 

 

Without getting into a big 'what should  be fixed to prevent this' talk(because we all know something needs to be done) At the very least they should enable some way for you to track or report them. I agree some accountability needs to be given. People are always on the hot button about PVP griefing (meshing, aim botting, etc) but PVE rarely gets a proper discussion with productive thoughts put down into it. Usually gets wrecked by PVP vs PVE debates. With a high voted suggestion seperating PVP-PVE balances in the system I believe this would be a good time to revive this dead horse and talk PVE balance vs wild tame luring and griefing. (Teleporting wilds etc aswell)

@Poppet Im dying to know some thoughts of yours on this subject. Official players always have to deal with the brunt of the griefing (well - unjustified. Unofficial we have admins to help us) thus can usually come up with great ideas out of need. Any ideas?

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Anytime I run into a situation that is common to all MMO style games- and know some studios that handle it well, and others that do not...I wonder why each game studio feels it has to reinvent the wheel. Isn't a proponent of good business learning from other companies? Who handles these same problems well or better than you do and what did they do?

I understand Wildcard has no desire to mimic a police-state and go overboard on GM involvement, but when you actually decide certain behaviors are against ToS- you have to provide the means for players to access your services on official to counter behavior like this.

It seems such a simple move to specify basic identifying player tags to ensure abusers will not continue to disrupt the game for others. I would love to hear at this stage of the game why this and other measures like blocking spammers (sigh summer is very soon and kiddos are gonna be out in force...) in chat are not yet implemented. This is some very basic 'quality of life' stuff for the community.

Shorting the PVE community is an oversight but throwing us cookies now and again can tap resources of vast potential for any studio...and some have really seen a boom from doing so. I don't want to derail my own thread so I will put down my thoughts on the topic elsewhere. 

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I've reported tribes just saying their name with [][][][], and ofc indicating coords of their structures to be indentified and there has been no problem, they are not behind a proxy because they write name in another language.

Also not all box tribes are cancerous, in this years playing ark I can say there are friendly ones russian and chinese you can play with them.

However, from a technical point of view, modifiying the game in any way and this includes adding font files should be automatically triggered by battleeye. I dont know why do they have this exception.

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From discussions in global, there have also been instances of these folks demanding actual money in order to have their griefing activities stopped. From what others observed these particular tribes were Korean.

Our server has a pretty good alert system, folks working together to nip these types of instances in the bud. Even so, we shouldn't have to police things as often as we've had to do. Many folks have downloaded software allowing them to see the writing instead of the boxes, but we shouldn't be forced to do this to protect our bases. 

Though rare, there have been instances of DDOS and rollbacks occurring when certain box tribes were online, and folks unable to log onto the server due to the server mysteriously disappearing from all the lists. I've seen this happen on both this server and my Center server. On the Center server folks trying to log on couldn't find the server listed anywhere for almost half an hour. Those who were on the server at the time reported that there were a number of box tribe members logging on and off even though others couldn't. Coincidence? I doubt it.

Something needs to be done to prevent this behavior. 

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I don't remember if you said you submitted a ticket or not was a wall of text.  But if not you need to.  Don't let these guys get away with this.  Does not matter if they are non-english they need to obey the rules of fair gameplay on pve just the same as english speaking players.  If you cannot fill out the part of the ticket that asks for steam ID as a requirement try using Battlemetrics to find them and post their url.  It's a required field but not fair because we cannot get the steam id in many cases; like "box" (non-english-speaking) players.

Most "box" players are good people and just want to be left alone to game.  Not all of them are capping NA servers with to many pets while leaving their EU servers open.  All people are the same no matter what language we speak; good and bad eggs in every batch.

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28 minutes ago, Jemcrystal said:

I don't remember if you said you submitted a ticket or not was a wall of text.  But if not you need to.  Don't let these guys get away with this.  Does not matter if they are non-english they need to obey the rules of fair gameplay on pve just the same as english speaking players.  If you cannot fill out the part of the ticket that asks for steam ID as a requirement try using Battlemetrics to find them and post their url.  It's a required field but not fair because we cannot get the steam id in many cases; like "box" (non-english-speaking) players.

Most "box" players are good people and just want to be left alone to game.  Not all of them are capping NA servers with to many pets while leaving their EU servers open.  All people are the same no matter what language we speak; good and bad eggs in every batch.

Nope- could not submit a ticket for the exact reason you indicate. I have no way of knowing their name or their tribe name which circumvents the entire support/griefing option....thus my post. I mentioned in that wall of text I used Battlemetrics...but I cannot be certain who it was nor do I know if support accepts Battlemetrics data in a ticket.

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4 hours ago, Poppet said:

Nope- could not submit a ticket for the exact reason you indicate. I have no way of knowing their name or their tribe name which circumvents the entire support/griefing option....thus my post. I mentioned in that wall of text I used Battlemetrics...but I cannot be certain who it was nor do I know if support accepts Battlemetrics data in a ticket.

Poppet, if they were talking in global chat do you have screenshots showing their text, and the time ingame that this occurred? You might be able to submit this, along with your Battlemetrics info. They should be able to access the logs of the global chat-with actual language text instead of boxes from around that time period-to help them identify the culprits. I've submitted tickets on box tribes giving WC as much information as I could and they were able to take care of the situation. Submitting tickets-even if there's not much that can be done at the moment-lets them know there is a problem on a particular server and they can do their own investigations into the situation to stop the griefing.

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8 hours ago, catnip said:

Poppet, if they were talking in global chat do you have screenshots showing their text, and the time ingame that this occurred? You might be able to submit this, along with your Battlemetrics info. They should be able to access the logs of the global chat-with actual language text instead of boxes from around that time period-to help them identify the culprits. I've submitted tickets on box tribes giving WC as much information as I could and they were able to take care of the situation. Submitting tickets-even if there's not much that can be done at the moment-lets them know there is a problem on a particular server and they can do their own investigations into the situation to stop the griefing.

No not as word was said the entire time.

 

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18 hours ago, Oli4 said:

Chinese somehow dont have to follow the rules, they grief in PvE a lot and reports just get closed without action taken, while in other cases(western people) got banned/wiped for that sort of behaviour

 

Just a fyi , wildcard is owned by chinese company not that it matters really as box tribes is just a naming thing just like the whole "123" thing .Also since its pve they are supposed to enforce the code of conduct since it has a pve specific part of it but i dont see them them enforcing the code of conduct as I reported meshing(with screenshot proof) in the map and they deleted my ticket even though the one gm i talked to that actually was helpful had no idea how they deleted it . I actually got threatened by the gm(have proof)that has a vendetta against me to not bring up the topic again otherwise i would get perma banned(note i didnt break any rules when talking to gm either).....so i made a ticket that didnt regard the topic of cheating that the gm threatened me not to bring up again  so i asked for the one helpful gm that i knew of only for the bad gm to respond which i mentioned previously i wanted no contact with in other tickets and banned me from the system so now i cant get any customer support.......So with that said i do think there some serious bias going on against the region that helped make them what they are today and ive been trying to get in contact with the devs about the issue but they keep trying to sweep it under the rug before it gets their attention by deleting my posts?

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@Poppet that is freaking terrible.  Damn.

Not a lot can be done unless you can see the steam-name of the player, then maybe you can find out through Battlemetrics what the name is, and report it.  Even if it is in Chinese, you can find it through Battlemetrics.  Not a great solution, but sadly its our only method:  Spyglass+screenshot key, then MAYBE you can find it and report the steam account.  As far as the survivor and tribename though?  Unless you have the language pack installed that's gonna be impossible, and even with it you'd have to screenshot it and report it after you figure out what characters they are.

Sorry you lost your babies.  There is nothing that we can do to stop this, and nothing WildCard will do to prevent it.  Would region-locking help?  It would.  Will it ever happen?  Apparently not.

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So as mentioned by @catnip we have had extensive issues on the server with Box tribes griefing. And that has included one tribe in particular threatening the whole server and another demanding real life money to leave off harassing a neighboring tribe. Interestingly they put in a ticket (the tribe that demanded money is a Chinese tribe but has a partial english name), and the brontos the other tribe had dumped on their base were removed by a gm, but the ticket just deleted instead of answered.

Last night yet another Boxer led a wyvern to our base. Fortunately a tribe member was on and dealt with it but it appears I will not be able to cook off these last couple levels on my toon sitting in a tek coffin at least during Boxtribe play hours? At least we have base defenses as an option to deal with that, but honestly I play on PvE and have no desire to maintain my base like Ft. Knox in case people drag alphas or wyverns to it.

There are always going to be miserable people  on multiplayer games. But once again all we see are boxes on the griefer and can't report- one of the reasons I am on official is that I am supposed to have recourse to a GM for this sort of thing. This needs to be addressed. 

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28 minutes ago, Poppet said:

But once again all we see are boxes on the griefer and can't report- one of the reasons I am on official is that I am supposed to have recourse to a GM for this sort of thing. This needs to be addressed. 

This is why official PvE isn't well thought out. It was added after the fact and without any kind of in-game protection/diplomacy.  Support tickets don't happen in real time and are not a solution.

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No action will be taken against chinese players, period. We see it over and over again. They have free range on the game thanks to Snail Games owning WC. So don't waste your time opening tickets to report them.

Chinese are the worst community of the online gaming world followed in a close second by Brazilians (I'm from Brazil and I don't play with ppl from my own country, only on NA servers!)

With that said, let me ask you this: do you raise babies in the open? How is it possible for a wild dino to even get close to your babies? I don't get it.

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39 minutes ago, Vaiks said:

No action will be taken against chinese players, period. We see it over and over again. They have free range on the game thanks to Snail Games owning WC. So don't waste your time opening tickets to report them.

Chinese are the worst community of the online gaming world followed in a close second by Brazilians (I'm from Brazil and I don't play with ppl from my own country, only on NA servers!)

With that said, let me ask you this: do you raise babies in the open? How is it possible for a wild dino to even get close to your babies? I don't get it.

Im guessing youve heard of / played Tibia? 

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