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Region lock


Antideamon

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Region lock

Tbis region lock myth flothing around isnt something players take litely. 

Tbh leave them alot.

Us goes to asian becasue American servers are ass.

Asia goes to us same reason. 

The raiding and harrasment is always a thing regardless. But if servers become regin locked.you will lose the last of this ganes player base.for good.

 

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The vast majority, and I mean it when I say "the vast majority," of problems on NA servers comes from [][][][][][] tribes. Luring, overbuilding, griefing, etc., would be almost completely eliminated with region locks. There, of course, are the [][][][][] tribes that are perfectly fine, friendly, courteous, and don't build giant metal boxes and store five dinos, if any at all, and nothing else in them, blocking major resource and creature spawn points. They are few and far between, unfortunately, and I feel for them, but it really is time.

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Unless I'm reading it wrong, its not really a region lock. 

It's a lock for people who choose to play on ASIA labeled servers. In other words, people who live in that region can still choose to join NA/EU servers. It's just that if you choose to play on ASIA servers, you will no longer be able to interact with non ASIA servers. 

 

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Region lock is not the problem. The problem is battleeye allowing players to modify binary game files (font) without taking any action. Leading to masked named and hard to trace players, that makes some of them feel like un-punishable players and encourages to do what they do.

As an user that has recently been griefed red lights turn on every time I see any player around me with blocks in its name.

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10 minutes ago, arkark said:

Region lock is not the problem. The problem is battleeye allowing players to modify binary game files (font) without taking any action. Leading to masked named and hard to trace players, that makes some of them feel like un-punishable players and encourages to do what they do.

Well, you are seeing white square because the fonts you are using is not supporting these characters (white squares are commonly used as unknown/default character, sometimes they can be represented as a ? as well, etc.). Not because these players modified their game files. Switch your game into Chinese and you will see Chinese characters, switch it into Russian and you will see Russian characters, etc. Or install a custom localization on your client that support them all (e.g. ARK: Global Font).

17 minutes ago, arkark said:

As an user that has recently been griefed red lights turn on every time I see any player around me with blocks in its name.

Some of them are the nicest people I've met in-game. There trolls and douches from everywhere, the characters they used for their name is irrelevant and isn't it the exact definition of what racial profiling is?

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49 minutes ago, invincibleqc said:

Well, you are seeing white square because the fonts you are using is not supporting these characters (white squares are commonly used as unknown/default character, sometimes they can be represented as a ? as well, etc.). Not because these players modified their game files. Switch your game into Chinese and you will see Chinese characters, switch it into Russian and you will see Russian characters, etc. Or install a custom localization on your client that support them all (e.g. ARK: Global Font).

Yes, I was talking exactly about Ark Global Font, did not want to say the name just not to spread it more.

If you look closely at their instruction page:
1) You are downloading a file from 1drv.ms which is out of the scope of wildcard. Not need to say this is a risk to the end user because it may contain malware.
2) You are installing it in your game files, modifying the software as it is provided.

So for that given reasons, specially the second I think battleeye should not allow to load this files.

I would be glad also to discuss how this way of allowing any custom language to be loaded into the game can be a vector to inject foreing code into game process.

49 minutes ago, invincibleqc said:

Some of them are the nicest people I've met in-game. There trolls and douches from everywhere, the characters they used for their name is irrelevant and isn't it the exact definition of what racial profiling is?

I also know a guy that has [][][] in his name and as he has been nice to me when I returned ark and I've treat him always well also, giving him away my breed lines, etc.
But,
If I see some [][][] scouting my base on extinction I turn red light.
If Im doing OSD and I see someone with [][][] coming to the OSD I turn red lights, specially if I've recently read on forum that there is some bug that bypass the OSD claiming.
etc etc

I dont get your point of racial profiling based on names that you cannot even identify their race given there is only [][][][] on it. Wouldn't you be suspicious if someone with a mask gets closer to you for no reason, or you catch him inspecting your home irl.

And BTW, referring them as trolls... you are underestimating them too much. That people that griefed me watch you for days until they can find the opportunity to thrown corrupts to base. They also study where to attack in my case, of any part of my base they went directly to the vaults named BP weapons, BP saddles, BP armor... Thanks god I catched them prior to their corrupted dinos completely broke them, but im pretty confident they were waiting for an opportunity for days, and they did the very first time I made the mistake to go afk to lunch for 10 min while leaving the char connected. They dont cause the damage for the lols, Im completely sure, they obtain some kind of profit from it.

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3 minutes ago, arkark said:

Yes, I was talking exactly about Ark Global Font, did not want to say the name just not to spread it more.

If you look closely at their instruction page:
1) You are downloading a file from 1drv.ms which is out of the scope of wildcard. Not need to say this is a risk to the end user because it may contain malware.
2) You are installing it in your game files, modifying the software as it is provided.

So for that given reasons, specially the second I think battleeye should not allow to load this files.

I don't think you quite understand what it is. That localization pack is not what makes you see white squares. You see white squares because your English font (I assume) doesn't know what to do of these characters and render them as white squares. That pack, is simply a global font that was built with all the other fonts available in the game so that it includes English, Chinese, Russian,  etc. characters so that your client knows how to decode and what to render when you receive them from the server. By installing it, you don't modify any existing files. You add files, and tell your client to use them as font (via the -culture cmdline option). This is an intended feature, not a cheat. The game allows to load this file, you are not forcing it to do so. If Wildcard were against custom fonts, they would simply change the -culture option to only allow for font they distribute with the game, etc. A cheat would be injecting itself into the game process, would be sig-scanning, hooking, etc. into that process memory in order to exploit data within the client. For example, a Wallhack is really just exploiting an array of players and their location that the client already know about but would normally not render them while there is obstructions, etc. But the cheat, that injected into the process, is overriding that data and tell the clients to render them regardless. This is the kind of things BattlEye would looks for.

23 minutes ago, arkark said:

I dont get your point of racial profiling based on names that you cannot even identify their race given there is only [][][][] on it. Wouldn't you be suspicious if someone with a mask gets closer to you for no reason, or you catch him inspecting you base.

Well, relying on the fact they uses foreign characters in their name to determine whether or not they are good people, is kinda the same as saying judging someone on their skin color in my book. You base your judgment on the fact your client cannot decode certain characters to say they are purposely "masking" their identity to grief you while in reality, they are just using their native language.

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28 minutes ago, invincibleqc said:

I don't think you quite understand what it is. That localization pack is not what makes you see white squares. You see white squares because your English font (I assume) doesn't know what to do of these characters and render them as white squares. That pack, is simply a global font that was built with all the other fonts available in the game so that it includes English, Chinese, Russian,  etc. characters so that your client knows how to decode and what to render when you receive them from the server. By installing it, you don't modify any existing files. You add files, and tell your client to use them as font (via the -culture cmdline option). This is an intended feature, not a cheat. The game allows to load this file, you are not forcing it to do so. If Wildcard were against custom fonts, they would simply change the -culture option to only allow for font they distribute with the game, etc. A cheat would be injecting itself into the game process, would be sig-scanning, hooking, etc. into that process memory in order to exploit data within the client. For example, a Wallhack is really just exploiting an array of players and their location that the client already know about but would normally not render them while there is obstructions, etc. But the cheat, that injected into the process, is overriding that data and tell the clients to render them regardless. This is the kind of things BattlEye would looks for.

What you are calling english font is not really english font. IE: it contains the "ñ" that is spanish symbol, not english. It is not my fault if wildcard decides that the font im using does contain english, latin with tildes and some other symbols, and does not provide full unicode support like probably that unnoficial global font, that I dont need and I shouldn't install because it is not officially provided, does.

I've never read wc pronounce about using alternative files not included in their depot. If it were ok they would have already included that files into the game installation long ago.

But also, even if a wildcard employee says to me that it is safe to download a file from a strange domain that is not under their control I would really take it with a grain of salt.

28 minutes ago, invincibleqc said:

Well, relying on the fact they uses foreign characters in their name to determine whether or not they are good people, is kinda the same as saying judging someone on their skin color in my book. You base your judgment on the fact your client cannot decode certain characters to say they are purposely "masking" their identity to grief you while in reality, they are just using their native language.

Well,

You may be seeing this as foreign characters because you have installed that global fonts, but in my case that im using the software as it is provided by wildcard I dont know if that [] characters are from another language, are unicode random symbols, or even steam emotes that appears as [] too. Even the € euro sign appears as a block.

You are making the mistake of thinking a [][] player is a player from another country with another language when it can just be your neighboor that want to do bad things and not to be easily recogniced.

When I was griefed I was only able to see a dino bag with a pattern like 12345[]1234[]123[]123 and with a tribe name [][][][][][]. Given that I havent had the opportunity to know what it is being masked behind that blocks, allow me to suspect when I encounter someone with similar identification near my resources or the event im doing.
 

 

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1 hour ago, arkark said:

What you are calling english font is not really english font. IE: it contains the "ñ" that is spanish symbol, not english. It is not my fault if wildcard decides that the font im using does contain english, latin with tildes and some other symbols, and does not provide full unicode support like probably that unnoficial global font, that I dont need and I shouldn't install because it is not officially provided, does.

I've never read wc pronounce about using alternative files not included in their depot. If it were ok they would have already included that files into the game installation long ago.

But also, even if a wildcard employee says to me that it is safe to download a file from a strange domain that is not under their control I would really take it with a grain of salt.

That's the thing; the fact others are allowed to use it doesn't change anything for you. This is, again, just a font used client-side to render characters on your machine. Its usage doesn't change anything for the server, nor for what other players are seeing. Install it or not, trust it or not, that is your choice and doesn't change the fact it isn't a cheat nor an exploit in any way shape or form and players shouldn't be flagged by BattlEye for using it as you are suggesting. I'm not a character expert, but I know "ñ" is included in the ASCII table, while Chinese or Russian characters aren't which is most likely why it is known for English users.

1 hour ago, arkark said:

I've never read wc pronounce about using alternative files not included in their depot. If it were ok they would have already included that files into the game installation long ago.

But also, even if a wildcard employee says to me that it is safe to download a file from a strange domain that is not under their control I would really take it with a grain of salt.

Well, that is not really a "strange domain", this is a shortcut link owned by Microsoft that redirect to their onedrive.live.com service. That file is also a zip, that only contains ttf and uasset files, the first ones being fonts, and the later ones UE files. There is no executable, meaning they cannot performs anything on your system. They could contains hidden blocks that could be damaging, but it is very unlikely your OS along with UE would run random pieces of data they weren't looking for when parsing these files. I would agree with you if you were downloading a RunAsAdminToClaimYourFreeCruiseAndIgnoreYourAntiVirusWarningsAsTheyAreJustJealous.exe file, but that is fortunately not the case. ?

1 hour ago, arkark said:

You may be seeing this as foreign characters because you have installed that global fonts, but in my case that im using the software as it is provided by wildcard I dont know if that [] characters are from another language, are unicode random symbols, or even steam emotes that appears as [] too. Even the € euro sign appears as a block

No, I don't have it installed. I used to a few years ago (before the new UI, to give you an idea) mainly to distinguish tribes on official PvP. But it has been broken since. The characters are bigger, and sometimes doesn't fit the widgets, etc. The author shared an update no so long ago here on the forums.

Anyways, I guess we will have to agree to disagree here.

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49 minutes ago, invincibleqc said:

That's the thing; the fact others are allowed to use it doesn't change anything for you. This is, again, just a font used client-side to render characters on your machine. Its usage doesn't change anything for the server, nor for what other players are seeing. Install it or not, trust it or not, that is your choice and doesn't change the fact it isn't a cheat nor an exploit in any way shape or form and players shouldn't be flagged by BattlEye for using it as you are suggesting. I'm not a character expert, but I know "ñ" is included in the ASCII table, while Chinese or Russian characters aren't which is most likely why it is known for English users.

ñ is not on ASCII. ASCII is 7 bit (128 chars) and does not include ñ nor tildes. It is a common mistake to call ASCII to ISO-8859-1 or some of their variants. But yes, this seem to be what ARK is using when configuring it as -culture=en

Still this does not justify why battleeye is allowing custom modifications to game client.

49 minutes ago, invincibleqc said:

Well, that is not really a "strange domain", this is a shortcut link owned by Microsoft that redirect to their onedrive.live.com service. That file is also a zip, that only contains ttf and uasset files, the first ones being fonts, and the later ones UE files. There is no executable, meaning they cannot performs anything on your system. They could contains hidden blocks that could be damaging, but it is very unlikely your OS along with UE would run random pieces of data they weren't looking for when parsing these files. I would agree with you if you were downloading a RunAsAdminToClaimYourFreeCruiseAndIgnoreYourAntiVirusWarningsAsTheyAreJustJealous.exe file, but that is fortunately not the case. ?

Yes, thats true the domain belongs to microsoft but is pointing to their cloud storage where anyone can upload any file.

The file does not need to be .exe to be malicious.

Some examples:

https://www.cisecurity.org/advisory/a-vulnerability-in-7-zip-could-allow-for-arbitrary-code-execution_2018-049/
https://snyk.io/research/zip-slip-vulnerability

As the file is in a public cloud where there is not really integrity checks nor controls, anyone could take control of the account that publish the file and change it with a poisoned one.

As a rule, a normal user shouldnt be instruct to download this kind of files.

49 minutes ago, invincibleqc said:

No, I don't have it installed. I used to a few years ago (before the new UI, to give you an idea) mainly to distinguish tribes on official PvP. But it has been broken since. The characters are bigger, and sometimes doesn't fit the widgets, etc. The author shared an update no so long ago here on the forums.

Then you are in the same situation as me. If you are attacked (In pve) by an user called [][][][][], making you lose the work of a full year, you report it with evidences and you dont know nothing about whats going on because rules that protect privacy of that kind of ppl I assure you would act as cautious as me when interacting with users with similar name, especially on extinction.

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4 hours ago, invincibleqc said:

Well, you are seeing white square because the fonts you are using is not supporting these characters (white squares are commonly used as unknown/default character, sometimes they can be represented as a ? as well, etc.). Not because these players modified their game files. Switch your game into Chinese and you will see Chinese characters, switch it into Russian and you will see Russian characters, etc. Or install a custom localization on your client that support them all (e.g. ARK: Global Font).

I would argue it is not necessarily the case. I have both languages(en, ru) available in my OS. English version of game.

As many others, I see cyrillic text as squares in chat and name plates, but my fonts are fine. I can switch my keyboard to russian layout and type something in chat. While it is still in input field I can see it normally as proper cyrillic characters, but after I send it and message is displayed in global(tribe/alliance/local works the same) chat it is displayed as squares.

So my game in its current state, without messing with fonts, can properly display cyrillic characters as evident by normal looking characters until message is sent. And only thing that prevents me from seeing cyrillic text in chat and name plates is chat implementation.

It is same for chinese btw, and I'm sure would be for other languages with non-latin characters.

 

Devs don't want to region lock the game, guess they want people from all over the world to play together... they just don't want us to communicate for some reason.

 

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52 minutes ago, arkark said:

ñ is not on ASCII. ASCII is 7 bit (128 chars) and does not include ñ nor tildes. It is a common mistake to call ASCII to ISO-8859-1 or some of their variants. But yes, this seem to be what ARK is using when configuring it as -culture=en

You are probably right, but 128-255 are more often than not being referred as "extended ASCII" so they are all the same to me.

54 minutes ago, arkark said:

Still this does not justify why battleeye is allowing custom modifications to game client.

If you modify any existing assets, the game will refuses to load and crash with a mismatch error, but since this is technically not a modification but an addition, this is fine. As mentioned above, if they didn't want players using custom fonts they would simply prevent them from being loaded by their configuration. BattlEye is an anti-cheat, and a custom font is as much a cheat as editing your INI to boost your breeding rates is. This is a feature, and I still really don't understand why it bother you that much what others see or don't to be honest. ?

But anyways, this is clearly getting nowhere so I will leave it at that:

1 hour ago, invincibleqc said:

I guess we will have to agree to disagree here.

 

1 hour ago, arkark said:

Yes, thats true the domain belongs to microsoft but is pointing to their cloud storage where anyone can upload any file.

The file does not need to be .exe to be malicious.

Some examples:

https://www.cisecurity.org/advisory/a-vulnerability-in-7-zip-could-allow-for-arbitrary-code-execution_2018-049/
https://snyk.io/research/zip-slip-vulnerability

As the file is in a public cloud where there is not really integrity checks nor controls, anyone could take control of the account that publish the file and change it with a poisoned one.

As a rule, a normal user shouldnt be instruct to download this kind of files.

Much like anything on the internet. The same argument could be said about mods. Modders upload them to Steam, players download them, and they must trust that the game can't be tricked into processing something in a exploitable manner which is pretty much exactly what I pointed above as a possibility, but very unlikely.

1 hour ago, arkark said:

Then you are in the same situation as me. If you are attacked (In pve) by an user called [][][][][], making you lose the work of a full year, you report it with evidences and you dont know nothing about whats going on because rules that protect privacy of that kind of ppl I assure you would act as cautious as me when interacting with users with similar name, especially on extinction.

Don't get me wrong, while I never had to report someone (or bothered to), I totally agree that every players should see everything. ARK is the only multi-player game I ever played that do not allow different speaking languages players from communicating. I also totally understand that it makes reporting players a nightmare, and I can only imagine how many reports the GMs are receiving that they cannot act upon because they have no idea who is being reported resulting into the offenders being unpunished. That being said, this has nothing to do with the font, which is actually a community-provided solution to this very issue since it allows players to read others. I also totally agree that players shouldn't have to install a custom font, and that they game should ideally allows players to communicate, but using a custom font still doesn't makes it a cheat or a BattlEye matter.

25 minutes ago, deedoubleu said:

I would argue it is not necessarily the case. I have both languages(en, ru) available in my OS. English version of game.

When I say client, I talk about your game; not your OS. Switch your game to Russian (either set your Steam to Russian, or add -culture=ru to your cmdline) and your game will be able to decode and render the Russian characters networked from the server.

26 minutes ago, deedoubleu said:

Pardon, what exactly are you suggesting me to search for?

https://arkdevtracker.com/?search=region lock

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9 minutes ago, invincibleqc said:

When I say client, I talk about your game; not your OS. Switch your game to Russian (either set your Steam to Russian, or add -culture=ru to your cmdline) and your game will be able to decode and render the Russian characters networked from the server.

Maybe the problem is how server is sending strings, I don't know, but my client is capable of rendering cyrillic characters without switching game to russian. That's what I'm trying to explain.

Okay, would be easier to show I guess. Here how it is for me

 d1ed35de7e2c6d995a53e7ca8fbdffbc.png

And if you can't take my word for it and think it is photoshoped, you can add me on steam and I will broadcast it for you.

 

16 minutes ago, invincibleqc said:

My message was not a question so it doesn't answer anything. Doesn't disprove anything I said either.

Joebl0w13 repeated what I said and suggested me to use search. Was it just bloating the message because forum thinks "yup" is too short or am I missing something here?

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One more thing

40 minutes ago, invincibleqc said:

either set your Steam to Russian, or add -culture=ru to your cmdline

What you suggesting is to willingly break the game and trade inventory functionality for being able to see cyrillic.

"drop all" and "transfer all" doesn't work on filtered items in russian version. Was reported on this forum, so known for at least 2 years now.

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15 minutes ago, deedoubleu said:

Maybe the problem is how server is sending strings, I don't know, but my client is capable of rendering cyrillic characters without switching game to russian. That's what I'm trying to explain.

Okay, would be easier to show I guess. Here how it is for me

 d1ed35de7e2c6d995a53e7ca8fbdffbc.png

And if you can't take my word for it and think it is photoshoped, you can add me on steam and I will broadcast it for you.

Oh, I trust you. And that is actually normal. Your game doesn't process the issued text until it is actually sent. Then when it is sent, your game attempts to display it but have no idea what they characters are because they are not available in the font used by the language of your game.

20 minutes ago, deedoubleu said:

My message was not a question so it doesn't answer anything. Doesn't disprove anything I said either.

Joebl0w13 repeated what I said and suggested me to use search. Was it just bloating the message because forum thinks "yup" is too short or am I missing something here?

No idea, I was just linking what I assume you were invited to search for.

7 minutes ago, FreeEnergyDrink said:

Why not only allow to use latin characters....

That would prevent a large portion of the player base from communicating in their language. Ideally players should just be able to read (and copy!) the chat messages no matter their language.

3 minutes ago, deedoubleu said:

What you suggesting is to willingly break the game and trade inventory functionality for being able to see cyrillic.

"drop all" and "transfer all" doesn't work on filtered items in russian version. Was reported on this forum, so known for at least 2 years now.

Well, that is a totally different issue. Currently you do need to put your game to Russian for it to be able to decode Russian characters or you must use a custom font that includes them. The more this thread is going, the more I think the chat system needs a major TLC.

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Region lock will never be an option. A quick google search will tell you that Wildcard sold itself out to Snail Games a Chinese gaming company because of some stupid stuff that the Wildcard grounders did in the past... you can read the whole article with a quick search for it.

 

The Chinese are partly owning Wildcard and this happens to a lot of companies. Look at Path of Exile: 80% in Chinese hands, Riot Games: 100% and the list goes on and on. Region Lock will never happen. I have also never seen a Chinese player getting banned while they heavily griefed everyone none Chinese and got reported by tons of people with video and picture evidence, nothing happened. Another report was 2 Chinese players abusing the Snow Owl maturing bug to freeze their babies, nothing ever happened to them and the bug is still abused 1 week later. 

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45 minutes ago, invincibleqc said:

That would prevent a large portion of the player base from communicating in their language. Ideally players should just be able to read (and copy!) the chat messages no matter their language.

Chat messages are fine, but Character names/Tribe names could be limited to Latin characters. That would allow an easier way to find their Steam IDs and report.

Just recently i found a built over charge station on Abe, its built by a [][][] tribe, and i saw are player from that tribe, but his char name is also [][][] and steam name is 123. At that moment steam showed 5 players currently playing in the server with the name "123". So what could i do? Nothing...

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29 minutes ago, FreeEnergyDrink said:

Chat messages are fine, but Character names/Tribe names could be limited to Latin characters. That would allow an easier way to find their Steam IDs and report.

I think that is actually a good idea! Player/Tribe names could be limited to alphanumeric characters. Pretty much like creating an email address, except that it should also accept spaces, etc.

32 minutes ago, FreeEnergyDrink said:

Just recently i found a built over charge station on Abe, its built by a [][][] tribe, and i saw are player from that tribe, but his char name is also [][][] and steam name is 123. At that moment steam showed 5 players currently playing in the server with the name "123". So what could i do? Nothing...

I'm sure the GMs could have handled the situation, since you had coordinates.

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