How box tribes make ark harder than it is!

[deaduni]

How box tribes make ark harder than it is!

Box tribes are the new thing plaguing ark! how are we supposed to report someone if we don't even know their name? this makes the already hard to use report system even more irrelevant, they pillar spam like its 2016, today i had a guy yank my loot out of the lava Golem and put a velo by the small exit (pve cant kill it) of course it was a box tribe, i hopped in the lava and left cause im not gonna wait...

I really wish we could raise more awareness and that someone smarter than me could explain how this is becoming problematic. 

KILL MORE LEGACY SERVERS AND GIVE THEM THEIR OWN PLEASE!!!

[deedoubleu]

Squares don't play on asian servers because those are broken or laggy.

WC don't want to fix asian servers or add region lock.

You can't even report them because support rarely does anything to punish square tribes and also because, as OP mentioned. you can't tell them apart. Yeah, you heard me, all squares look the same and I blame WC devs for making it look racist.

 

It was like that for years. Obviously not their highest priority. I bet all my mejo it will never get any fix or even as much as official statement from devs.

[Pipinghot]

On 9/8/2020 at 2:27 AM, deaduni said:

How box tribes make ark harder than it is!

Box tribes are the new thing plaguing ark!

This has been part of ARK since Day 1 of Early Access, it's hard to imagine where you get the idea that this is even slightly new.

On 9/8/2020 at 2:27 AM, deaduni said:

how are we supposed to report someone if we don't even know their name?

You install additional languages/fonts on your computer. The reason they show up as boxes for you is because you're computer doesn't know what language they're using.

Edit: This was wrong, after further conversation I remembered that in the past I had used this "Global Font" mod.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=732646921

It can be used on Official servers because it's not a typical mod, as far as the game is concerned it's only a language localization so it's legal to use.

On 9/8/2020 at 2:27 AM, deaduni said:

they pillar spam like its 2016

Players from every country/culture/language do that, it has nothing to do with them being "box tribes", they're not any worse about it than English speakers are. That's just ARK.

On 9/8/2020 at 2:27 AM, deaduni said:

today i had a guy yank my loot out of the lava Golem and put a velo by the small exit (pve cant kill it) of course it was a box tribe, i hopped in the lava and left cause im not gonna wait...

No, not "of course it was a box tribe", again people from any where can pull that kind of crap, it has nothing to do with where they're from or what their native language is. Of course it's frustrating when people do junk like that, but don't turn this into some kind of weird dislike of people simply because they don't have the same language font you do. Jerks can be from anywhere, not just places that you don't understand.

On 9/8/2020 at 2:27 AM, deaduni said:

I really wish we could raise more awareness and that someone smarter than me could explain how this is becoming problematic.

It's not "becoming" anything, it's been part of ARK from Day 1. If you have been lucky enough that you never ran into this before then congrats for being that lucky, but I assure you this is normal and has been around since the beginning, the only solution is to install additional languages/fonts on your computer.

On 9/8/2020 at 2:27 AM, deaduni said:

KILL MORE LEGACY SERVERS AND GIVE THEM THEIR OWN PLEASE!!!

That wouldn't matter, people are going to play where they want to play.

[deedoubleu]

@Pipinghot

Did you tried it yourself?

 I have a ton of fonts with cyrilic characters on my OS and that does nothing for ark text rendering.

Using not localized default version of the game (english) and cyrilic messages show normally if I type them in text input field, but as soon as I hit enter and it is sent and displayed in global/local/tribe/alliance chat I see this message as a bunch of squares. So game already can render cyrilic (and chinese for that matter) characters, but as many other things in ark, it only works partially and it's not user's computer fault.

There are 2 ways that I know of to show non-latin characters: using localized version or global font.

Russian localization has inventory bug which is few years old and global font (last time I tried it was few years ago, maybe something changed since) was 500+ mb and had some weird spacing(?) problem which was messing up every text field in game.

[Pipinghot]

3 minutes ago, deedoubleu said:

@Pipinghot

Did you tried it yourself?

Yes, but to be fair that was 2 computers and 2 OS's ago, I haven't been on the Official servers since Early Access.

I'm thinking that for Windows 10 you would go to the "Language Settings" panel and click on the big plus sign to "Add a language", but as I say I'm working from memory since I haven't been on Official servers for a long time.

[Pipinghot]

16 minutes ago, deedoubleu said:

@Pipinghot

Did you tried it yourself?

I have to make a correction, which makes me glad that you asked the question because I was remembering things wrong.

What I did when I was on the Official servers was use this "Global Font" mod.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=732646921

It can be used on Official servers because it's not a typical mod, as far as the game is concerned it's only a language localization so it's legal to use.

[deedoubleu]

1 hour ago, Pipinghot said:

I have to make a correction, which makes me glad that you asked the question because I was remembering things wrong.

What I did when I was on the Official servers was use this "Global Font" mod.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=732646921

It can be used on Official servers because it's not a typical mod, as far as the game is concerned it's only a language localization so it's legal to use.

That makes me think you gave up on reading my comment after first sentence ?

[GreenRoc]

Blocking pathways on PvE is something I would report. When I cant know a name because it is all boxes, I put in "unknown" in the textfield, or "n/a" (non-applicable), depending on what each report field is asking for.

I vaguely recall adding brackets to some reports too. Pretty sure the human reading it would understand that I cant know the symbol, with how many [] [] [] show up on many game clients. I try to count the boxes on the player when I fill in the blank with brackets. Sometimes letters and numbers are with the boxes.

I do my best to fill out the fields, but sometimes some required fields are just "unknown".

[Sandertje]

On 9/8/2020 at 8:27 AM, deaduni said:

How box tribes make ark harder than it is!

Box tribes are the new thing plaguing ark! how are we supposed to report someone if we don't even know their name? this makes the already hard to use report system even more irrelevant, they pillar spam like its 2016, today i had a guy yank my loot out of the lava Golem and put a velo by the small exit (pve cant kill it) of course it was a box tribe, i hopped in the lava and left cause im not gonna wait...

I really wish we could raise more awareness and that someone smarter than me could explain how this is becoming problematic. 

KILL MORE LEGACY SERVERS AND GIVE THEM THEIR OWN PLEASE!!!

U r a fool lol. Killing more legacy servers is useless with the amount of that offials there r. Legacy has a much better experience. Even new ark playets who joined official first said it was laggy n toxic af and came to legacy cuz less lagg and more friendly. Soooo stfu lol

[arkark]

Regarding the global font:

- It is not a steam mod. It is a file from someone, stored in a random server. So it does not receive all the sanity checks a steam mod would receive.

- You dont know if the file contains an undetected payload along with an exploit which loads it in memory when the font is used and activates in some way.

- It is not official at all. I doubt you will see any wildcard employee recommending using that (at least to my knowledge).

- You are in fact modifying game files. Maybe it does not trigger battleeye now but who knows if tomorrow it does.

[GrumpyBear]

1 hour ago, arkark said:

Regarding the global font:

- It is not a steam mod. It is a file from someone, stored in a random server. So it does not receive all the sanity checks a steam mod would receive.

- You dont know if the file contains an undetected payload along with an exploit which loads it in memory when the font is used and activates in some way.

- It is not official at all. I doubt you will see any wildcard employee recommending using that (at least to my knowledge).

- You are in fact modifying game files. Maybe it does not trigger battleeye now but who knows if tomorrow it does.

Since the file is a UI thing, it's fair game to use on officials.   Use of it is buggy though, there will be visual bugs that result from it's use.  There are some fair use modifications that can be used, as well as scripts.

[arkark]

4 minutes ago, GrumpyBear said:

Since the file is a UI thing, it's fair game to use on officials.   Use of it is buggy though, there will be visual bugs that result from it's use.  There are some fair use modifications that can be used, as well as scripts.

Well, the difference between the global font and a script is that the script is a piece of plain text most of us can easily check that it does what it is intended to do and nothing else, however the font is a binary file which almost everyone have to believe that it does what its said.

[Pipinghot]

6 hours ago, arkark said:

Regarding the global font:

- It is not a steam mod. It is a file from someone, stored in a random server. So it does not receive all the sanity checks a steam mod would receive.

- You dont know if the file contains an undetected payload along with an exploit which loads it in memory when the font is used and activates in some way.

- It is not official at all. I doubt you will see any wildcard employee recommending using that (at least to my knowledge).

- You are in fact modifying game files. Maybe it does not trigger battleeye now but who knows if tomorrow it does.

1) The global font has been around for years and no one has ever found a security threat from it.

2) There's this cool thing you might have heard of called "anti-virus software". Download the file then manually scan the file with as many anti-virus and anti-malware tools as required to make you feel comfortable that it's safe.

It's not any more dangerous than downloading anything else from the internet.

[arkark]

8 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

1) The global font has been around for years and no one has ever found a security threat from it.

2) There's this cool thing you might have heard of called "anti-virus software". Download the file then manually scan the file with as many anti-virus and anti-malware tools as required to make you feel comfortable that it's safe.

It's not any more dangerous than downloading anything else from the internet.

Anti-virus works in a heuristics way. They dont detect a threat that is unknown, much less if it have been injected into some non-common file type like an unreal engine font.

It's not any more dangerous than downloading anything else from the internet. Right. Thats the point.

¿Am I being a bit paranoid (in security terms)? Yes. But it wouldnt be the first time a malicious asset has been around for a long time due to it is just trusted by users.

You can do whatever you want with your computer but my recommendation here is do not install anything whose procedence is unknown and also there are no sources to validate that it is what it is and nothing else.

[invincibleqc]

2 hours ago, arkark said:

Anti-virus works in a heuristics way. They dont detect a threat that is unknown, much less if it have been injected into some non-common file type like an unreal engine font.

It's not any more dangerous than downloading anything else from the internet. Right. Thats the point.

¿Am I being a bit paranoid (in security terms)? Yes. But it wouldnt be the first time a malicious asset has been around for a long time due to it is just trusted by users.

You can do whatever you want with your computer but my recommendation here is do not install anything whose procedence is unknown and also there are no sources to validate that it is what it is and nothing else.

Substitute, the author of that localization pack, is well known as a tester and has been reporting a lot of exploits over the years. I'd say he couldn't care less about your cat pictures or your minecraft credentials.

[Pipinghot]

4 hours ago, arkark said:

Anti-virus works in a heuristics way. They dont detect a threat that is unknown,

Yes they do, that's the whole point of heuristics. The entire concept of heuristics in anti-virus software was invented/developed to be able to identify threats that are unknown.

4 hours ago, arkark said:

much less if it have been injected into some non-common file type like an unreal engine font.

Anti-virus programs can find problems buried inside compiled executables, so yes of course they can find problems inside of an unreal engine font.

4 hours ago, arkark said:

It's not any more dangerous than downloading anything else from the internet. Right. Thats the point.

Yes, that is the point, the point that I was making. Downloading the Global Font is not any more dangerous than downloading any mod, it's the same level of risk.

4 hours ago, arkark said:

¿Am I being a bit paranoid (in security terms)? Yes. But it wouldnt be the first time a malicious asset has been around for a long time due to it is just trusted by users.

True, which includes all the other mods. Again, it's not any more dangerous than downloading any mod for the game. I'm all about being security conscious (more than is worth describing here in a forum discussion), and in this case your paranoia is unwarranted. The global font has the same level of risk as any mod.

4 hours ago, arkark said:

You can do whatever you want with your computer but my recommendation here is do not install anything whose procedence is unknown and also there are no sources to validate that it is what it is and nothing else.

I'm not sure whether you intended to type provenance or precedence, but either way the Global Font is very well known and is just as secure as any mod.

[arkark]

2 hours ago, invincibleqc said:

Substitute, the author of that localization pack, is well known as a tester and has been reporting a lot of exploits over the years. I'd say he couldn't care less about your cat pictures or your minecraft credentials.

Ok, I did not know that. This shred light about where this package comes from but apparently the original work is from 2016 and I cannot find any checksum in the original website (heroez.ru?)/wayback machine yr2017 copy so I cannot validate that the original work has not been altered by 3rd party during all this 4 years.

[arkark]

1 hour ago, Pipinghot said:

Yes they do, that's the whole point of heuristics. The entire concept of heuristics in anti-virus software was invented/developed to be able to identify threats that are unknown.

Anti-virus programs can find problems buried inside compiled executables, so yes of course they can find problems inside of an unreal engine font.

Yes, that is the point, the point that I was making. Downloading the Global Font is not any more dangerous than downloading any mod, it's the same level of risk.

True, which includes all the other mods. Again, it's not any more dangerous than downloading any mod for the game. I'm all about being security conscious (more than is worth describing here in a forum discussion), and in this case your paranoia is unwarranted. The global font has the same level of risk as any mod.

I'm not sure whether you intended to type provenance or precedence, but either way the Global Font is very well known and is just as secure as any mod.

In my work I often have to submit samples of malware/suspicious files obtained in the wild to virustotal and you would wonder how almost no av detect those files as harmful when they are new threats.

Sorry, english is not my mother tongue, when I said "procedence" I meant that we dont know where that package comes from. Now that invincible said that author is known here this makes the original work to be more trusted to me. But this should be more clear imho. I've been in this forum for 3 years or so, and its the first time I know about that.

I think there is something wrong here, and we all have some responsability. We should not instruct ppl to download and use files from untrusted sources. And im not only refering to ARK stuff, its just anything. Spreading the idea of that stuff from not really trusted placed can be installed with no consequences its not good.

 

[Pipinghot]

2 hours ago, arkark said:

In my work I often have to submit samples of malware/suspicious files obtained in the wild to virustotal and you would wonder how almost no av detect those files as harmful when they are new threats.

I never said that anti-virus is perfect, I said that's the reason for heuristics, and that's still true.

2 hours ago, arkark said:

Sorry, english is not my mother tongue, when I said "procedence" I meant that we dont know where that package comes from. Now that invincible said that author is known here this makes the original work to be more trusted to me. But this should be more clear imho. I've been in this forum for 3 years or so, and its the first time I know about that.

I understand that, but there is a difference between something being unknown to you and something being unknown to everyone. You entered this conversation without any information, you made some assumptions that were incorrect, and then you made arguments based on those false assumptions. It would have been better if you had been asking questions to learn information rather than arguing based on false assumptions.

2 hours ago, arkark said:

I think there is something wrong here, and we all have some responsability. We should not instruct ppl to download and use files from untrusted sources. And im not only refering to ARK stuff, its just anything. Spreading the idea of that stuff from not really trusted placed can be installed with no consequences its not good.

I agree, and I didn't do that.

What I did was spread the information of getting something that is trusted from a trusted source.

[arkark]

3 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

I understand that, but there is a difference between something being unknown to you and something being unknown to everyone. You entered this conversation without any information, you made some assumptions that were incorrect, and then you made arguments based on those false assumptions. It would have been better if you had been asking questions to learn information rather than arguing based on false assumptions.

No. This is not the first time I've replied to a post regarding the global font. I can remember at least two or three times I've said the same which basically is "be careful with what you are downloading" and never anyone told something near what invincible said today.

If you knew its fine, but without that infomation trying to convince someone to go to a steam guide that is copied from a random .ru domain and which has a file hosted in a cloud storage provider its not ok. 

There is not a forum post, there are not even (afaik) twitter post from official sources regarding that font. Maybe I'm mising some important post on the forum? Can you point me to the original place in which the global font is mentioned by some wc employee as being ok to use?

[invincibleqc]

13 hours ago, arkark said:

There is not a forum post, there are not even (afaik) twitter post from official sources regarding that font. Maybe I'm mising some important post on the forum? Can you point me to the original place in which the global font is mentioned by some wc employee as being ok to use?

I don't think they commented specifically on that one, but using custom translations/fonts is an intended feature: https://steamcommunity.com/app/346110/discussions/7/343787283759100099/

[Pipinghot]

16 hours ago, arkark said:

There is not a forum post, there are not even (afaik) twitter post from official sources regarding that font. Maybe I'm mising some important post on the forum? Can you point me to the original place in which the global font is mentioned by some wc employee as being ok to use?

The same thing is true for most mods. Most mods do not have a forum post, most mods do not have twitter post from official sources. The point I've been making, the point that you are deliberately trying to ignore, is that the Global Font has the same amount of risk as any mod.

[arkark]

12 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

The same thing is true for most mods. Most mods do not have a forum post, most mods do not have twitter post from official sources. The point I've been making, the point that you are deliberately trying to ignore, is that the Global Font has the same amount of risk as any mod.

Im not deliberately ingnoring it. Its just I dont see where u want to go with that. If mods were a thing that one creates and uploads to a random hosting provider I would be saying the same but mods are in the steam workshop, with valve having some responsability about what is hosted there.

Its not the same thing by far.

[Pipinghot]

9 hours ago, arkark said:

Im not deliberately ingnoring it. Its just I dont see where u want to go with that. If mods were a thing that one creates and uploads to a random hosting provider I would be saying the same but mods are in the steam workshop, with valve having some responsability about what is hosted there.

Its not the same thing by far.

You're overestimating the amount of safety and security that Valve provides for mods.

[Helios1]

So how it is if im not mistaken, Asians dont want to play on Asian servers cus they are rubbish, laggy and unstable?

So they come to european server juiced up on VPN, cranck our ping from 45 to 200+, makes the chat look like a skyscraper convention and thats just for the rest of us to swallow? 

this doesnt seam right.