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PVE Declaration of War Banditry


Poppet

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Just now, Joebl0w13 said:

I don’t say that. I said this is nothing new. People have been doing this to clueless traders for years. 

Then they have either been very selective or very lucky with their targets because it was not well known in this community until recently. The OP seemed to not completely understand how they were able to achieve this, with the crashing part etc. Since you are so educated on the subject and are a moderator, would you care to enlighten us all as to how this is achieved?

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On 8/10/2019 at 7:42 AM, Poppet said:

Yiu admitted him to his trade alliance....and then he crashed moments after (not sure if this was random chance or if this was another part of the exploit). As he was locked up and the game disconnecting...he saw the guy had declared war.

When he came back, three guys were there, the bottom of his base was blown up, cryo fridges all destroyed...and they were grabbing pods and took off. In moments thousands of hours of work gone.

He admitted him to his trade alliance and then crashed (queries whether it's part of the exploit or not). As he was locked up and game disconnecting the guy had declared war.

Next minute the war had begun. At no point was it mentioned that the victim had accepted the invitation to war. I'm asking you to explain how someone goes from accepting a person into an alliance, to their game freezing up and then being at war with them?

This is not a case of someone asking to ally and instead declaring war, where the victim has failed to differentiate between an invitation to alliance and war and accidentally accepting.

The irony of you telling me to read and then me having to spell this out for you is dumbfounding.

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2 minutes ago, Joebl0w13 said:

You can lead a horse to water...

Someone else can explain this to you. 

Yes you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it set up an irrigation system without any knowledge of the plumbing trade.

Until "someone else" can explain how a trader can invite a random to their own alliance, for that random to then somehow declare war on them without their consent. The onus still remains on Wild Card to fix this issue.

The only other explanations for this occurring are the following;

1. Accidentally accept war declaration instead of alliance invite (unlikely since the OP stated the randoms were invited into their own alliance)

2. Accidentally invite them to tribe instead of alliance, accidentally make them admin so they can accept war declaration from other party (also unlikely)

Another thing to note here is that the OP is not the only victim I have heard of in the last month to fall prey to this issue. Again making me wonder how these griefers are achieving this.

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4 minutes ago, Jacira said:

Until "someone else" can explain how a trader can invite a random to their own alliance, for that random to then somehow declare war on them without their consent. The onus still remains on Wild Card to fix this issue.

Well, this was not an accident of the sort. Let's say we have player A and player B. Player A invite player B to an alliance. Player B declare war on player C and since player A is allied to player B, he is automatically dragged in and player C can raid him. The "trading part" is basically some phishing tactic to get into an alliance and raid them by proxy war.

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1 minute ago, invincibleqc said:

Well, this was not an accident of the sort. Let's say we have player A and player B. Player A invite player B to an alliance. Player B declare war on player C and since player A is allied to player B, he is automatically dragged in and player C can raid him. The "trading part" is basically some phishing tactic to get into an alliance and raid them by proxy war.

Thank you for your clear and attitude-free contribution to this discussion!

Having never been in an alliance when going to war in PvE I wasn't aware that an entire alliance can be dragged into a battle. Now myself, the OP and others are more educated on this thanks to you.

However if all that is true, do you agree that it presents a more significant griefing opportunity than it does anything else? And if so, do you feel this is something Wild Card could fix with little to no ease? Simply create a line of code that turns off alliances being pulled in to wars and perhaps even release the code to the unofficial community like they do most other changes of this nature?

I'm firmly against making Ark easier, but this is griefing which according to Wild Card's own Code of Conduct, is not allowed. As a result shouldn't Wild Card be all for this change? It would not only save these victims from a world of hurt and time lost, but also save Wild Card answering unnecessary tickets pertaining to it.

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9 minutes ago, Jacira said:

However if all that is true, do you agree that it presents a more significant griefing opportunity than it does anything else? And if so, do you feel this is something Wild Card could fix with little to no ease? Simply create a line of code that turns off alliances being pulled in to wars and perhaps even release the code to the unofficial community like they do most other changes of this nature?

I'm firmly against making Ark easier, but this is griefing which according to Wild Card's own Code of Conduct, is not allowed. As a result shouldn't Wild Card be all for this change? It would not only save these victims from a world of hurt and time lost, but also save Wild Card answering unnecessary tickets pertaining to it.

I'm pretty much on the fence to be honest. On one side, I think all parties should have their say on whether or not they want to participate in a war. On the other, I think it make sense that your alliances have your back and I personally think that people using alliances for trading goes against the purpose of what an alliance really is to begins with. This is nothing really new though and this have been used to wipe tribes on PvE since as far as legacy. I think it is getting more popular because players can now get their hands on frozen dinos and breeding lines. My only advice would be to be as careful with the tribes you are allying with as you are with players you are adding to your tribe. However, the ones that are victim of that should submit a support ticket and while I don't think game masters are getting involved or restoring what was stolen I'm pretty sure they are taking notes that they are passing on the the devs and the more it becomes a thing the more chance they will address the situation.

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2 minutes ago, invincibleqc said:

I'm pretty much on the fence to be honest. On one side, I think all parties should have their say on whether or not they want to participate in a war. On the other, I think it make sense that your alliances have your back and I personally think that people using alliances for trading goes against the purpose of what an alliance really is to begins with. This is nothing really new though and this have been used to wipe tribes on PvE since as far as legacy. I think it is getting more popular because players can now get their hands on frozen dinos and breeding lines. My only advice would be to be as careful with the tribes you are allying with as you are with players you are adding to your tribe. However, the ones that are victim of that should submit a support ticket and while I don't think game masters are getting involved or restoring what was stolen I'm pretty sure they are taking notes that they are passing on the the devs and the more it becomes a thing the more chance they will address the situation.

Great insight. Thanks.

I think players using the alliance system as a means of trading speaks more to the limitations of trading and transporting resources as a whole than to what the alliance system is supposed to be used for. They could either implement a temporary trading agreement for sleeping bags etc or rethink the alliance system. Until something gets done I've cut ties to all my alliances, as a precaution.

I agree with you about cryo-fridged dinos making this method more lucrative. I hadn't even considered that.

Aside from the bad cop / good cop routine, this was a very productive discussion.

4 minutes ago, SaltyMonkey said:

@Jacira you know there’s an easy solution on how not to griefed in an alliance, don’t invite random traders to it.

With what I now know, the disadvantages of being in an alliance at all massively outweigh the advantages. Regardless of the trust you may have in people.

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18 minutes ago, Jacira said:

Great insight. Thanks.

I think players using the alliance system as a means of trading speaks more to the limitations of trading and transporting resources as a whole than to what the alliance system is supposed to be used for. They could either implement a temporary trading agreement for sleeping bags etc or rethink the alliance system. Until something gets done I've cut ties to all my alliances, as a precaution.

I agree with you about cryo-fridged dinos making this method more lucrative. I hadn't even considered that.

Aside from the bad cop / good cop routine, this was a very productive discussion.

With what I now know, the disadvantages of being in an alliance at all massively outweigh the advantages. Regardless of the trust you may have in people.

I forgot to mention, there is a way you can get yourself out of a war if you don't want to participate:

In some cases it might be too late to react but good to share just in case I guess.

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I think alliances can still be used to stream line trading but it's going to have to evolve a bit to protect traders. If you have access to an extra account you can have your alt toon make a new tribe with very limited permissions that is allied to the trading tribe. Once you invite unknown 123 trader or whoever to your alt tribe with limited permissions, they can lay sleeping bags due to the alliance but since they are limited on permissions won't be able to declare war on any other tribe. Only way I could think of to make it still work for large trades but it would require a second account. 

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34 minutes ago, Jacira said:

With what I now know, the disadvantages of being in an alliance at all massively outweigh the advantages. Regardless of the trust you may have in people.

I’m actually surprised so many people use alliances to trade. People go on about how bad insiding is, then ally up with complete strangers.

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6 minutes ago, SaltyMonkey said:

I’m actually surprised so many people use alliances to trade. People go on about how bad insiding is, then ally up with complete strangers.

It's the only way to do it efficiently and not waste hours upon hours of transferring materials. That's why it's so widely used despite the risks. Either weight or stack size hinders efficient trading due to the restrictions Wildcard has in place. Another option is build a small base on the traders server with a couple of beds and enough storage for trade mats and transfer over the same way as you would to their base using an alliance (sleeping bag next to traders vaults) and then just ferry over your trading mats on an argy you transferred over until payment is completed. You could avoid the weight and stack size limitation this way. Still would add a ton of time for both sellers and buyers but it would avoid alliances altogether at least and protect from this form of griefing.

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2 minutes ago, Ocicat said:

It's the only way to do it efficiently and not waste hours upon hours of transferring materials. That's why it's so widely used despite the risks. Either weight or stack size hinders efficient trading due to the restrictions Wildcard has in place. Another option is build a small base on the traders server with a couple of beds and enough storage for trade mats and transfer over the same way as you would to their base using an alliance (sleeping bag next to traders vaults) and then just ferry over your trading mats on an argy you transferred over until payment is completed. You could avoid the weight and stack size limitation this way. Still would add a ton of time for both sellers and buyers but it would avoid alliances altogether at least and protect from this form of griefing.

Making something easier at the cost of security is not better. That’s what I mean when I say I’m surprised, not the reasons why alliances make trading easier.

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2 minutes ago, SaltyMonkey said:

Making something easier at the cost of security is not better. That’s what I mean when I say I’m surprised, not the reasons why alliances make trading easier.

Never said it was better, said it was more efficient. As you pointed out there are still risks involved when doing this. Ultimately, as I originally said, the alliance system is a poorly designed mechanic for PvE. It's not a bug since it was designed this way, but it is exploitable which is what's been happening a lot lately. 

But yeah, some people value efficiency over security and just hope people will behave themselves. Never trust people in Ark is the moral of the story if there ever was one lol.

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23 minutes ago, TR-8R said:

But here , you can initiate a war between tribe in alliance just by walking up to theirs lifeless body .

No, you cannot declare war to a lifeless body. In the example I gave above, player B and player C were working together to purposely trick player A into an alliance (by pretending to need to place a sleeping bag for trading purposes) and drag him into a war:

4 hours ago, invincibleqc said:

Well, this was not an accident of the sort. Let's say we have player A and player B. Player A invite player B to an alliance. Player B declare war on player C and since player A is allied to player B, he is automatically dragged in and player C can raid him. The "trading part" is basically some phishing tactic to get into an alliance and raid them by proxy war.

When you go to war, all your alliances are dragged in because alliances should have your back. There is no "exploit", just some phishing tactics being used to trick people into an alliance to raid them.

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20 hours ago, Jacira said:

He admitted him to his trade alliance and then crashed (queries whether it's part of the exploit or not). As he was locked up and game disconnecting the guy had declared war.

Next minute the war had begun. At no point was it mentioned that the victim had accepted the invitation to war. I'm asking you to explain how someone goes from accepting a person into an alliance, to their game freezing up and then being at war with them?

This is not a case of someone asking to ally and instead declaring war, where the victim has failed to differentiate between an invitation to alliance and war and accidentally accepting.

The irony of you telling me to read and then me having to spell this out for you is dumbfounding.

This is the exploit problem right here. I am inclined to believe that once he accepted the alliance, his friends under the base blew the base with C$ they had already placed- which was likely what disconnected him. HE AT NO TIME ACCEPTED THE DECLARATION OF WAR. That is the exploit.

 

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Also easy solution here-

What about expanding the TYPES of alliances in the game?

PVP Alliance

BOSS FIGHT Alliance

Trade Alliance

Or more specifically- allow alliances to be tiered with permission like tribe ranks. Tier one allows you to place a sleeping bag and mount the extra seat on a dino.

tier 2 allows ability to place structures.

tier three allows boss fight buffs

top tier full alliance allows PVP alliance as we presently know it?
 

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