On the launch of genesis
As far as I am aware of, official pve players hate the following 4 things the most:
1, insiders/ a recruit who is not an insider but is ridiculously irresponsible
2, the mesh exploit
3, the duplication exploit
4, pillars
(there are probably lots of other things, but I think the last 4 are the most hated)
Due to these old issues, some of the players want to wipe all pve servers very badly, and some of them.... want no not wipe the servers, equally very badly. Thus I suggest a partial wipe:
(I don't know whats the probability of this happening, but if it does happen, then it will literally be genesis for ark)
day 1:
(this is when all players should be informed about this, and also when the duplication issue is hopefully fixed)
place log in messages and special labels on all servers affected
day 15:
(this is when all players upload their characters, dinos, and blueprints)
perform full cluster backup incase anything goes horribly wrong
alter obelisk settings:
change item expire times from 24 h to 144 h
change item number limit from 50 to 300
limit obelisk upload item type to blueprints and cryopods (with creature having 0 current weight/ no item in inventory when frozen) only, and possibly chibis
day 16:
(this is when duplicated blueprints are removed from uploaded items. By now, a list of characters, blueprints, and cryoed creatures, which are about all the hardwork for every players )
wipe and reprogram clusted servers to randomly download a part of the blueprint list of a single item type(10-20k sets of 3-datapoint datasets, information about who is the owner doesnt matter) , compare them in a random-paired fashion.
If identical blueprints are found, then sent the associated information to cloud server. Cloud server add this blueprint to "duplicated" list
after some reasonable amount of cycles (when most duplicated blueprints are catched by the process)
cloud server scan blueprints list and remove any blueprints identical to any "duplicated" blueprints and compile a list of owners for "duplicated" blueprints (the process should require less computing power than simply comparing all the blueprints for each item type in a recombination fashion)
day 17:
(this is when genesis is released and clusters became playable again)
anti-pillaring mchanisms can be activated from now, other mechanisms can be activated too, (such as character loss prevention)
re-open official servers and allow item downloads on all non-genesis servers. allow character downloads on all servers
day 22:
(this is when everything ends)
alter obelisk settings to default
provide support and recovery for who encountered problems during this great migration
have a little talk with players who is found to own more than 3 duplicated blueprints, some of them may still be innocent and they deserve a chance to explain
Pros of partial wipe:
not all hard work of old players are lost
give new players and returning players room to build
~99.9% of duplicated blueprints are eliminated
100% of all duplicated items are eliminated (welp, in fact it is 100% of the items, duplicated or not....)
minimal loss of old players and reasonable gain of new players
reduce the stress for genesis severs (since people are re-starting their base everywhere, less will go to genesis on the day of launch)
might be fun, for that small portion of pve players who is drowned in mundane daily tasks
remove zombie players who only refresh their base once 2 weeks
a new start that fits the name of "genesis"
Cons:
this might not be satisfactory to either pro-wipe or anti-wipe parties
~0.1% of the blueprints may escape the check (or if we are lucky, they may not)
total chaos, whether there will be a mistake or not
Q&A
Why did you type so much when you know there is very little hope of some one that matters will read it, and even less chance that they will consider this?
I have thought about this, and the conclusion is that it will be my problem if I don't say it, and it will be their problem if they don't listen
Why cant we keep items?
There is no way to recognize duplicated items. Same for buildings built with them.
Aren't we doing anything about the creatures and the characters?
Creatures are breed with food or cloned from elements (one s too troublesome to duplicate, the other can not be duplicated), they themselves have an id that prevents duplication
Even when duplicated items can potentially be traded for such resources used for breeding, I believe relatively few exploiters do that
There is a snow owl freezing exploit but the benefit should hardly persist after this wipe
Each breed need extensive recombination and egg hatch timing, making them valuable even if one have infinite amount of resources
Characters have associated ascensions and tekgrams, both of which requires dinos, equipment's, and trophies, and lots of time
trophies can not be duplicated
creatures can not be duplicated
equipment can, but as far as i know, relatively few exploiters duplicated anything other than blueprints and tek structures
Thus characters are minimally affected by duplication
Other than above, they are the assets most representative of player's hard work.
Why cant we allow legacy transfer to this new cluster?
Baby taming exploit affected the creatures on legacy. As a side effect, characters are affected too due to exploited boss fights.
What about pillaring and insiders?
Pillaring:
instead of instant reset decay timers, decay timer can refresh in an 1:1000 manner when owner is present. (that is, one have to stay around one's structure for 10 minutes per week to prevent decay)
Insiders:
include a reputation system on ark form, much like the trader reputation
use cloud server to cross compare steam id, hardwear id, and IP address to recognize related accounts. (I believe very few insiders are careful enough to make multiple steam ids, hardwear ids, and IP addresses, then make them appear unrelated for a long time...…….)
Neither is a perfect solution, but both are better than non.
At the end, a little suggestion to prevent duplications:
Why not save uploaded items in the local servers first, and then let the server transfer them to ark data cloud when it is saving? So that:
No item can be gained during upload process even if there is a server crash.
players don't have to carry item when waiting for transfer