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Providing a fair, fun, and safe environment for everyone is something we take very seriously here at Wildcard. Building an enforcement team was the first step to making sure that people can enjoy ARK without fear of cheating. Since the introduction of the enforcement team, we've noticed a considerable improvement in the overall quality of life of those playing on our official servers. In severe situations, like someone meshing or duping or spreading information related to such, our first instinct is to try and take action with the intention of preserving the integrity of our official server network. When someone is banned as a result of our Code of Conduct, there is an appeal process that allows for a fair review of the situation. There are always two sides to every story and we want to remain impartial and hear both. Any issue that violates our Code of Conduct is subject to a fair appeal process. When things land in the gray area, our first instinct is to do whatever is in our power to prevent abuse. Upon further review of the situation involving H.O.D Gaming, we felt that it was not deserving of a permanent ban. Videos showing exploit techniques are admittedly a gray area when it comes to enforcement, which is just one of the reasons why the appeal process exists for bans. Several changes each patch are aimed at fixing exploits but the methods that are used are continually evolving; as such, we are always trying to improve our procedures when it comes to situations that affect the player-base. We use these situations to take a look at our internal process and identify areas where we can do better or provide more clarification. There are established methods for escalating exploits to the development team that exist to prevent the spread of information to the general public. The more widely known an exploit is, the more likely it is to be exploited. In these instances you should file your report on the SurviveTheARK website. You can find the link to report abuse or bugs under the support header. We want to make sure that everyone can enjoy their experience on our official network and will continue to take exploit matters seriously. As always, we value community feedback and encourage you to share it with us. Thanks for your continued support and passion for the game! Team Wildcard

Hey Survivors! Welcome to the latest edition of the Community Crunch! Classic PvP Begins Tomorrow! Last week, in conjunction with Snail Games, we announced a new game mode called “Classic PvP” as an exciting large-team competitive experience for ARK. As a studio, we want to explore fun, new ideas and we believe large group PvP has a lot of undiscovered potential. With Classic PvP we'll be looking for your help to suggest balance changes throughout the seasons, while we strive to make this mode fun and competitive for everyone. Over time, as the game mode receives its adjustments and tweaks, we will be connecting the isolated clusters to each other so that they form a more extensive network. Although Aberration and Extinction aren’t available in Classic PvP, the development team is actively looking for opportunities to re-include the content into the mix with balance changes that are in line with the new Classic PvP game mode. While we hope to re-add this content to expand on Classic PvP, there is no specific timeline or timing on this. The Classic PvP game mode will also serve as a test for new experiences to come, and we’re excited for all the possibilities it can lead to. To start, we'll be working with the community to actively seek out tribes and tribe leaders to be representatives in a new type of broadcasted competitive Classic PvP event. These representatives may be sponsored; therefore they must ensure that they’re upholding fundamental values within their tribe which promote clean and fair play. By doing so, they'll be playing a significant role in expanding ARK’s competitive PvP gameplay and helping us shape the future of large group PvP. Look out for the launch of our Classic PvP servers tomorrow at 10 AM PST! If you missed the Classic PvP details last week be sure to read up on them at the link below: Upcoming Console Patch! Xbox and PS4 will both be receiving a patch to fix a number of issues tomorrow at 10am PST. The update version for these patches is: Xbox: v785.11 and PS4: v534.16. The patch notes are listed below. Stay tuned to our Twitter account for up-to-date information regarding the patch release(s) tomorrow. ARK Community Team Changes! We've recently made some changes small changes to the Community Management team that you may have noticed! The purpose of any community team is to make sure the community is being heard and that the feedback they are receiving is being relayed to the developers and management. The Community Management team is a middle point of communication that is employed by the company but works for you, the players! In order to do this effectively, we have expanded the existing team to include Cedric, who is joining Jen. While Jen has been on the Community Team for over three years, Cedric is a newcomer to the team. With beginnings as the developer of Primitive Plus, his active experience on the ARK development team makes him a prime candidate to move over to the Community Team, and provide a new perspective. We have many more ideas for ways to get the community involved in our roadmap as well as different ways for you to create and share ARK content. It is because of our community that we have been very fortunate to work on and build this game we have all invested a lot of time in. The community matters, conversation matters, and open dialogue matters. While we have always been watching and listening, we’re excited to have another set of eyes to better include you into that conversation. Be sure to send your community ideas over to Cedric or Jen! Undermeshing Concerns... Last week it was made very clear by the community that meshing remains a critical issue in ARK. Without going into extreme technical detail, it is complicated to show our internal efforts to combat meshing, which is something we have continually been working on. Since it is such a hot topic, ARK developers have been more vocal on social media about ways we've tried to detect and circumvent those who do mesh. If it's one thing we know - players are ingenious and creative, which extends into how they approach meshing, and exploiting the game at large. Giving up too much of the internal working of changes we have made and continue to work on would compromise these efforts. With that said, here's what can be said definitively: We'll make an effort at being more transparent about what we’re doing in regards to preventing undermeshing partly by calling them out in the patch notes going forward We are actively seeking out people who use mesh exploits and banning them As you might imagine, crafting a solution that handles all cases of meshing on all of our maps is challenging. Beyond fixing the sources of meshing, we're continually refining the methods we use to detect players under the mesh. We've made significant strides in this area recently by developing an approach that lets us know sooner than ever if someone is where they shouldn't be, which enables our Enforcement team to take action more quickly. We started issuing bans based on this new method on Friday and will continue to issue bans against anyone who intentionally meshes and exploits the game. Code of Conduct Changes! The Enforcement Team are back again with another important notice regarding the Code of Conduct. We'd like to make Official Players aware of the following revisions: Small Tribe Server Specific Rules Additions Building bases together to provide mutual defenses Modifications Old: Joint raids against one or more tribes (including cross-server) New: Joint raids against one or more tribes (12 v 6 etc) Removals Sharing tame breeding lines between tribes Sharing tames between tribes Moving characters back and forth between multiple tribes Using non-tribemember bodies to store and transport items Bringing players from multiple tribes into a Boss Fight PvE Specific Griefing Modifications Old: Blocking access to important resources (ie. charge nodes, gas nodes, etc) New: Blocking access to important resources (ie. charge nodes, gas nodes, Extinction City Terminals, etc) Old: Intentionally filling the server tame limit via spamming tames and/or rafts New: Intentionally filling the server tame limit via spamming tames (such as Dodo, Jerboa, or easy to 'tame and maintain' dinos) and/or rafts You can find the Code of Conduct here to keep up to date! ARK: Eggcellent Adventure 4 Coming! You’ve guessed it, Eggcellent Adventure is back later this month! And to encourage everyone to get into the festive spirit, we’ll be holding our egg painting competition again this year. During the event: after you've managed to hunt down a Bunny Dodo or Bunny Oviraptor and find yourself an egg, place the egg down on the ground and take out your paint brush and dyes. You'll be able to paint select regions on the egg as well as free-hand paint it with the brush to paint any design on it. Be creative! There will be three competitions with a prize to the winner of $100! PC Egg Painting Console Egg Painting Real-life Egg Painting The first two are self-explanatory and make sure in your entry to state whether you're a PC, Xbox, or PS4 user. PC players will be in one category (using a mouse) and console users (using a controller) in another category to make things fair. Players are expected to paint their own designs and downloading templates or images to use is not allowed. In the third category, we're looking for you and your tribe mates to get together and paint some eggs in real life that somehow reflect the world of ARK! Screenshot or photo quality won't be taken into consideration but try to get a picture that best shows off your egg. The entries will be judged by our community team. Submissions are limited to three eggs per survivor, so choose your best egg! You'll have the month of April to enter! Submit them in the provided thread later this month when the in-game event begins, and we'll pick a winner at the end of the month! Conquest Server Backups! Along with the closure of the Conquest servers, we’ve made backups of these server saves available at the link below for any players who wish to maintain their progress on their server. Conquest Server Backups Creator Feature - UpFromTheDepths! This week we're excited to feature a videographer known as UpFromTheDepths! You may have seen his documentary-style ARK videos featured in the past on Twitter or dev livestreams. We invite you to check out his series 'Paleo ARK', which follows the creatures of ARK through the days in their lives. We have to applaud UpFromTheDepths along with the rest of his cinematic filming/acting team for their dedication to providing beautiful and moving films featuring the world and creatures of the ARKs. We look forward to see what's next! Evolution Event! Survivors on all platforms will be receiving a special Evolution Event perk this weekend! It will be active from Friday the 5th of April at 1 PM EST until Monday the 8th of April at 3 PM EST. All Official Servers across each platform will be undergoing this evolutionary change which includes: 2x Harvesting Rates 2x Taming Rates 2x EXP Rates That's it for this post! As always if you’ve got anything to share you can find us at: Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark Twitch: twitch.tv/survivetheark Steam: steamcommunity.com/app/346110 Youtube: youtube.com/survivetheark All the best, Studio Wildcard