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State of the Game: Eliminate the Code of Conduct for Official PVP


MrTarkanian48

Eliminate the Code of Conduct for Official PVP  

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  1. 1. Eliminate the Code of Conduct for Official PVP

    • Yes
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    • No
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State of the Game: Eliminate the Code of Conduct for Official PVP

In its current state, the integrity of the game is 100% broken.

Recap of all the issues:

Meshing is against the code of conduct, however, meshing is an epidemic.  People do it all the time and even brag and/or threaten about it in global chat.  Tribes are getting meshed wiped constantly. Players are using mechanics that have been posted on youtube for months, and yet these methods are still not patched out.  Players may get banned if they are found to have a meshed base, however, there is zero enforcement against players who mesh to attack a base, as it is difficult to prove any wrongdoing unless you are online and get video evidence.  Even if you get the evidence, these violations often go unpunished.  Furthermore, even if you did catch AND enforce a ban on their accounts, smart players only mesh on alternate accounts anyways, so you only stop them for a time until they get their next alt account up and running.  However, on the other hand, if you place defenses in the mesh you are subject to dev wipe.  

Duping is against the code of conduct, however, duping is now also an epidemic.  Anyone can do it and almost everyone is doing it.  People have vaults full of 65k+ hp and 450+dmg meks.  The only significant counter to meks is that they are rare and expensive.  Now that people have a unlimited supply of god-tier meks they are virtually unstoppable if applied correctly given the limit turrets/defense.  Duping can also be used to have an unlimited supply of backup imprinted tames with over capped saddles stored in cryofridges waiting to be deployed once the first one is lost.

Real money trading is against the code of conduct, however, people are selling stuff, legit and duped alike, for money all over the place.  So now even if you do determine has been duping items and wipe them, they have sold thousands of tames/meks to legit players.  There is no way to trace this stuff, and it would be unfair to ban people who did not dupe, but may have inadvertently profited duped items from raids and or legitimate in-game trades.  Not too mention the people selling for cash could care less if their character gets banned, they will take their hundreds/thousands of dollars in profit and walk, or start an alt account and continue their business.

Ddosing is against the code of conduct, however, ddosing is as prevalent as ever.  Certain tribes/servers are virtually unraidable as any attempt on their base/server results in ddos. To this day however, I have never heard of a single case in which their has been any type of enforcement against a player who is ddosing.  Perhaps it is because it is almost impossible to prove.

Teaming in Small Tribes is against the code of conduct, however, teaming is a constant.  Small Tribes has basically turned into server vs. server alliances.  Servers have large discord groups  and can coordinate alliances.  I am not sure why you would expect any other result in the way that the servers are set up, but regardless, it is against the code of conduct and rarely/never enforced.

 

The result of all this is you have a huge player base that fall into different groups:

1) Experienced players who are exploiting the game in any or all of the above ways.  They are smart and know how to set up alternate accounts and backup strategies, so that even if they do receive some form of disciplinary action, they ultimately can continue to play and exploit.

2) Experienced players who play legitimately.  Some players have enough integrity to play the game legitimate, however, they are at an overwhelming disadvantage against players/tribes which dupe and mesh.  This group is dying and most are likely to quit the game as they refuse to cheat, however, they are fed up with getting wiped and losing countless hours of work to cheaters.

3) Experienced players that have played legit in the past, but are slowly considering resorting to exploits as that is what is required to survive in the game's current state.  Whether it be trying to compete with exploiters directly, or surviving in a game where the economy and balance is completely broken by the presence of duped items.

4) New players who are oblivious to all of this.  They try to play the game and learn the basic mechanics and just get steam-rolled by exploiters and legit players alike.  They may be completely oblivious to all the exploits of this game as it takes months if not years to understand the depth of the game.  They either stick around until they end up in one of the above groups, or just quit.

 

So ultimately I wonder:

Why even have a code of conduct? It is a fairy tale.  It is painfully obvious that the majority of rules in the code of conduct either are not or cannot be enforced.  Meanwhile, a large majority of the player base is caught in an uncomfortable moral dilemma where you almost need to exploit the game in order to compete with other players who are exploiting the game on a grand scale or face losing everything.

Why don't we just dispense with the "Code of Conduct" at this point, as it is a joke in all intents and purposes.

I would totally support this game and have more respect for it if it became survival by any means possible.  The only restrictions would be what the actual game environment restricts.  Otherwise, make official servers the Wild West where anything goes, which it basically is already.  

By doing this you are at least being honest with your player base.  Instead of promising all these fixes and increases to enforcement which never materialize, and continuously disappointing players like myself who are endlessly waiting for some fix to restore integrity and justice in the game.

By doing this you could ultimately wash your hands of the constant complaining, abuse tickets, and criticism of broken mechanics.  Simply say the game is what it is.  Then players can make an informed decision on whether Official servers are the right choice for them, or whether a private server with active admins/enforcement is a better option.

 

 

 

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5 minutes ago, Spiral3 said:

Disbanding the CoD would completely kill the Official servers and all of those players would have to go to unofficial.  I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing...

I don't think it would kill the Official servers.  They are already continuing to operate with all these flaws.  I think this would just level the playing field between exploiters and legitimate players.

There most likely would be some move to unofficial, and I agree that wouldn't be a bad thing.

 

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13 minutes ago, BadgeAndGun said:

If you would remove the code of conduct it would turn the epidemic into a pandemic. I don't think making something blatently disfunctional fixes anything.

I guess my point is that it is already blatantly dysfunctional.  At least by removing the CoC you are creating a fair environment for all players.

Perhaps completely eliminating the CoC might be too extreme. 

Instead remove anything from the CoC that cannot or is not adequately enforced.  Once the dev's come up with a fix or way to enforce  one or more of the major issues, then a global wipe can occur, and the CoC will be updated with new restrictions that they are capable of enforcing.

It only hurts legitimate players to have an unenforced CoC

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12 minutes ago, Joebl0w13 said:

It's just like the laws in regular life. You don't simply remove them just because lot of people don't follow them.

I don't agree.

This is a video game and cannot be compared to real life

Breaking laws in real life has real life consequences that affect other people. Also, the penalties to being caught committing a real crime are significant enough to act as an actual deterrent to committing the crime in the first place.  Also, real life law enforcement is not nearly as incompetent as the enforcement in this game, so if you want to roll the dice with breaking the law in real life you are at a significant risk of receiving an actual punishment that can significantly impact your life.  In real life, having laws actually works for the majority of the population

The CoC in a video game is arbitrary.  The game is designed around immoral ideas already.  Raiding, stealing, and killing people is not acceptable in real life, but it is the point of a PVP oriented game.  So any other moral restrictions are just the arbitrary restrictions imposed by the game designer.

Currently meshing and duping are considered against the CoC.  If you changed these things to just be a feature of the game available to anyone who plays it, you are not breaking any rules, you are just expanding the acceptable limits within the competitive environment.

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Just now, MrTarkanian48 said:

Breaking laws in real life has real life consequences that affect other people. Also, the penalties to being caught committing a real crime are significant enough to act as an actual deterrent to committing the crime in the first place.

Yet people break them in real life all day every day.

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4 minutes ago, Joebl0w13 said:

Yet people break them in real life all day every day.

Ok, but you are comparing real life to a video game which is a bs comparison.

You should compare it to other games.

Compare it to professional sports.  They have multiple officials watching every play and several different re-playable camera angles.  All these things are designed to make sure that the game is played as closely to to previously agreed upon terms of the game.  That way it is fair for both competitors and there is very little room for error.  The best team usually wins because if you don't win within the boundaries of the rules you will be penalized.

There is little to none of that in this game.  People break the rules all the time and are winning because their is total failure in moderating the outcome and methods players are using.

Stop thinking about meshing and duping as some violation of a transcendent  moral code enforced on all people on earth.  You can kill people and steal from them in this game.  I am simply suggesting that they expand the the acceptable limits of gameplay until they have an actual method to enforce them.

 

 

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1 minute ago, MrTarkanian48 said:

Ok, but you are comparing real life to a video game which is a bs comparison.

You should compare it to other games.

Compare it to professional sports.  They have multiple officials watching every play and several different re-playable camera angles.  All these things are designed to make sure that the game is played as closely to to previously agreed upon terms of the game.  That way it is fair for both competitors and there is very little room for error.  The best team usually wins because if you don't win within the boundaries of the rules you will be penalized.

There is little to none of that in this game.  People break the rules all the time and are winning because their is total failure in moderating the outcome and methods players are using.

Stop thinking about meshing and duping as some violation of a transcendent  moral code enforced on all people on earth.  You can kill people and steal from them in this game.  I am simply suggesting that they expand the the acceptable limits of gameplay until they have an actual method to enforce them.

 

 

But Ark isn't a competition. There is no clear winner, no leaderboards.

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1 minute ago, Aylana314159 said:

But Ark isn't a competition. There is no clear winner, no leaderboards.

I agree and maybe that is part of the problem of why everyone's complaints about enforcement are ignored.  Cheating is detrimental to those types of games. 

But if you spent 1000+ hours building a base, and I meshed it while you were offline.  Stole all your stuff and destroyed your hard work, I'm pretty sure you would feel a pretty strong sense of loss.  And I would feel like I won when I'm using all the free stuff I got from you.

There are winners and losers everyday in this game.  Even if it is just between two people or tribes.

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4 minutes ago, Joebl0w13 said:

They are enforcing them right now as we speak.

No. They aren't. I'm not sure what game you play.

They aren't proactively fixing known methods for meshing that have known about for months.  Also the worst case scenario punishment is a character ban, which takes an experienced player with a couple friends like one day of gameplay to replace if they don't already have half a dozen alts waiting in the wings.

They can't enforce their own CoC adequately.

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1 minute ago, MrTarkanian48 said:

No. They aren't. I'm not sure what game you play.

They aren't proactively fixing known methods for meshing that have known about for months.  Also the worst case scenario punishment is a character ban, which takes an experienced player with a couple friends like one day of gameplay to replace if they don't already have half a dozen alts waiting in the wings.

They can't enforce their own CoC adequately.

I'm playing this one.

 

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2 minutes ago, MrTarkanian48 said:

No. They aren't. I'm not sure what game you play.

They aren't proactively fixing known methods for meshing that have known about for months.  Also the worst case scenario punishment is a character ban, which takes an experienced player with a couple friends like one day of gameplay to replace if they don't already have half a dozen alts waiting in the wings.

They can't enforce their own CoC adequately.

Maybe on Xbox...it's not that ez on steam...you actually need to buy the game more than once...

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