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[Dunamisdeos]

Ah, yes, my opinions very much change when you bring an MMO into the mix. That's a different model that does indeed operate by different rules. BUT if they started releasing DLC for an MMO whose initial release hadn't happened yet, I'd have the same rant.

An analogy would be if you ordered a $30 pizza with ham and pineapple, but the company ran out of funds to provide your pizza, so they offered a $50 pizza with ham, pineapple, anchovies and truffles, and then sold some of those, and used the profits to get you your $30 ham and pineapple pizza, but now people are pissed because someone else got anchovies and truffles - despite basically getting the same pizza they ordered in the first place.

Nobody cares that someone else got truffles, they're pissed that they paid for a pizza for 30$, got delivered a third of a pizza, and now if they want the rest of their pizza that they already paid for they need to pay 50$ total for things that they already paid full asking price for. Also if they don't want to pay 50$ they will never get the full 30$ pizza they already paid for, and also no option for a refund. So what you described is absolutely the problem.

[Kagus]

The thing with the DLC is mostly just what the public interpreted various terms as meaning "Early Access" meaning "Here you get to buy into an incomplete version of a game while we work on making it complete", and DLC being "Here is an extra addition to a game that is already complete", and so people felt they were being scammed because they felt that content had been ripped from the "official" development of the game (which they would have been entitled to per buying into the early access version) in order to be put into a separate DLC so that they could make more money off of those who had already bought the game. How much content actually was supposed to go in the original version, I can't comment on... But that's the gist of why people got upset about that, and were therefore wary about any other attempts for them to increase or add on prices.


But as for confirmed scummy stuff? I can honestly say I don't really feel liked devoting myself to digging through that many years of maybe-not-newsworthy content to determine what's trustworthy and what isn't right now (it is after all 9:30 PM, and I'm an old man who has to get up early tomorrow).

I only personally saw the fiasco of the Atlas release, which was done by the same people under a different name. For ARK, I was never really interested in the game, so I didn't delve too deep into the rumors surrounding it. Rumors such as devs favoring certain megatribes and tribe structures because of personal involvement, inconsistent administration (wiping entire clans of their player profiles for using exploits that had been publicly known about for months/years, while ignoring other tribes doing the same or even ignoring bug reports made about these exploits), flip-flopping on how to handle the servers when coming out of EA (supposedly they'd announced that they wouldn't be doing a content wipe on servers for release, then went back on that and stated that they would wipe content. There was an outcry, so they retracted the statement about wiping content. Then they announced that they'd split servers into legacy and fresh servers, with the legacy servers being untouched. Then after the split, they started wiping and repurposing legacy servers anyways), and probably a few other things I'm forgetting (again, never really followed ARK that much).

But here's a dude who got globally banned without warning for exposing an exploit that had been known about (and reported on) for years. They unbanned him shortly after the outcry erupted at his banning though, so at least they're consistently inconsistent.

And here is how they handled another long-running exploit (I believe this was one of the things they said they'd fix in Early Access? I dunno).



"8 new replies have been posted": Meh

[Reelya]

And here is how they handled another long-running exploit (I believe this was one of the things they said they'd fix in Early Access? I dunno).

The article says it was a newly discovered exploit and they put a patch out for it straight away once they found out about it. So it's nothing from early access. No need to speculate, the article itself says so.

Also, the article points out that they wiped legacy servers once early access ended, to level the playing field due to old bugs/exploits that had existed, but there was a huge outcry. Then, this new exploit was discovered, exploited for a while, then fixed by the devs. but this time they decided not to wipe the servers. Which again, made a huge outcry, because people said those servers were permanently rigged by not kicking out the cheaters.

But hey, if you don't like the official servers, start your own server. This game supports private servers. So, whatever they do with the official servers, whether resetting them or not resetting them, people get pissed. But ... official servers cost official money to operate so it's really their business how they manage them. Don't like it: make your own server.

[Kagus]

And here is how they handled another long-running exploit (I believe this was one of the things they said they'd fix in Early Access? I dunno).

The article says it was a newly discovered exploit and they put a patch out for it straight away. So it's nothing from early access.

The devs said it was a newly discovered exploit, yes. The players said it'd been around for ages.

But yeah, the private server argument is a solid one (so far as I know). Which was part of why people got as pissed as they did when they utterly borked that option for Atlas.

[Dunamisdeos]

the studio just discovered a vulnerability that has existed basically since the game began. Being that it’s 2018, this August 2015 vulnerability certainly gave exploiters a chunk of time to take advantage. The official announcement stated that “multiple ‘mega-tribes’ across multiple servers were taking advantage of it.”

Benefits included building bases in the mesh under the terrain, seeing all enemies and creatures, and using the cooking pot to create all sorts of materials, summon bosses to crash servers, and craft test meat for instant tames.

No they were 100% perfectly aware of this, because it beggars belief that this was not reported to them over the course of three years. Imagine any of those bugs being in a Fortnite competition and the the devs straight-faced telling you that they had no idea it was happening over the course of three years. Someone came forward and provided personal, first-hand proof that it had been utterly unaddressed since early access (while they released paid DLC, that horse ain't dead yet) and got banned for it.

Keep in mind that the year before they released ARK: Survival of the Fittest, an attempt to bring ARK into the realm of Esports. This involved real money as prizes in the vicinity of 50000$. Imagine if DOTA 2 allowed their game to have a publicly known bug that let people immediately win for three full years, then started banning people who provided proof.

It's difficult to find something that isn't shady about the devs for ARK.

[Reelya]

And here is how they handled another long-running exploit (I believe this was one of the things they said they'd fix in Early Access? I dunno).

The article says it was a newly discovered exploit and they put a patch out for it straight away. So it's nothing from early access.

The devs said it was a newly discovered exploit, yes. The players said it'd been around for ages.

The player in question is in the linked reddit and he says this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/playark/comments/7vwcgd/major_exploit_explanation/

Besides Substitute and myself, VERY FEW people had actual access to the exploit - I'm not going to mention the other people so don't ask.

and

Even though yes the exploit technically existed since 2015, it was never known by anyone back then. This exploit has been in use for about 6 months - or however long the new servers were running for.

I'm not even fishing here, I'm just quoting from the link you provided.

This is the statement from said players. It was only discovered by a small number of players 6 months earlier and they kept it a secret among a few people. So, the guy says only a very small number of players knew about the exploit. It wasn't shared around by "players" en masse. We don't in fact have any evidence that anyone was exploiting it or knew about it back in 2015. What existed in 2015 is call a vulnerability, not an exploit. This is standard terminology in cyber security, exploit means the actual plan of attack itself, not the weakness.

Also, there are two contradictory complaints in the article. One, is that they're questioning the company's statement of how widespread the exploit was, saying in fact that only a few people used the exploit, and secondly, they're questioning the dev's decision not to wipe any servers, stating it's unfair to let the exploiters keep playing. But of course, if the exploit wasn't that widespread, then why would you want servers entirely wiped?

My hunch here is that the devs at first thought the exploit was more widespread, so put the statement out while patching it, but then looked into it and realized it wasn't as widespread as first thought, so decided against purging any servers in order to maintain continuity.

[Dunamisdeos]

The huge mesh bases which I have had, the location which has never been found by any dev not since even legacy times, has been wiped on all servers that I had it.

The huge mesh bases which I have had, the location which has never been found by any dev not since even legacy times, has been wiped on all servers that I had it.

Oops, I've been doing it on official servers since early access.

He's telling me multiple people, however small, have been on multiple servers with admin access doing things like building superhuge inaccessible bases with admin privileges and the devs just had no idea? Did they just not have a way to report things? No logs for their official servers? Ok, sure. That's not a real thing, but sure. Oh, also I can sub to his Youtube channel for more info! Neat!

Here's where people were asking where to report exploits in 2015. So i have a hard time believing that this just slipped through the cracks. 
https://www.reddit.com/r/playark/comments/3yjxdn/where_do_i_report_exploits/

[Reelya]

You left off the next sentence which contradicts your main point :

Well long story short without going into too much detail, I did tell Substitute my mesh location and sadly when he reported the exploit to the devs, he reported my mesh base too

Sorry but this is low-hanging fruit and a waste of time. You're just clipping random stuff out of context and the very next sentence contradicts the main point of your entire post.

The phrase "reported X too" really implies that they're not the same thing. There's no evidence here that the admin-exploit existed before this or that it's got anything to do with the mesh base thing, and that directly contradicts what he said a bit earlier in the post, which was completely unambiguous, about the exploit only existing for 6 months. And you can google "ARK mesh base" and find discussion of that bug from back in 2015/2016. No mention of the admin-privileges bug, so it's not related.

Thus this isn't actually evidence that the exploit must have existed before 6 months ago.

[Dunamisdeos]

Yeah you're right, he probably had a base underneath the map on multiple servers from which he conducted admin-granting exploits that he knew existed in 2015 (but totally didn't use you guys) for 3 years and only started using 6 months ago and the producers just had no idea even when there was a clear path to reporting exploits.

The word too means he's employing multiple exploits on multiple servers, such as specific given examples of a meshing bug as opposed to the big bad admin one that got lots of attention. I fail to see how missing lots of known exploits instead of just the one somehow "contradicts" my main point that ARK devs are fully aware of major problems in their game and instead of delivering the product that people paid for exploit their customers for profit in ways that would be despicable in any other industry.

Here's a whole paragraph, since you don't like single sentences, about how the the post you presented as evidence literally endorses the main point of my entire post.

While this particular exploit is fixed, there are still other exploits out there, Ark is by no means an exploit free game. For the most part, devs always do a "bandaid" fix. They fix a possible let's call it "backdoor" to allow the exploit but never actually fix any exploit itself. There are still a lot of meshing techniques out there, still a character dupe technique, and some other exploits. A lot exploits were actually "fixed" in the past, but because they were a lazyfix, workarounds have been found to achieve the same result.

You keep bringing up your own specific examples of ARK producers being shitty, and then offering the argument that they should just be allowed to keep doing it or else we wouldn't have ARK.

[Reelya]

Yeah you're right, he probably had a base underneath the map on multiple servers from which he conducted admin-granting exploits that he knew existed in 2015 (but totally didn't use you guys) for 3 years and only started using 6 months ago and the producers just had no idea even when there was a clear path to reporting exploits.

Sorry but what are you even talking about? There are videos showing how people got under the world to put bases there, and none of them involve anything like what you're talking about. You go in certain caves and you can glitch through the walls. You just have to google "ARK mesh base" and there are a ton of articles and videos demonstrating it. It's nothing to do with this new exploit. Normal people were glitching through the caves just to check whether other people were cheating and building stuff down there. you don't need admin rights to glitch through a wall.

Sorry but at this point you're just making shit up.

You keep bringing up your own specific examples of ARK producers being shitty, and then offering the argument that they should just be allowed to keep doing it or else we wouldn't have ARK.

Now you're doing a straw man, totally. I guess they could totally rewrite their engine from scratch. But that would be super expensive and they'd probably have to wipe everyone if they did that. Small fixes are done not because they're lazy, but because big changes to a mature engine are heaps expensive in time and money. They have an active player-base, you can't just pull the rug and and do a re-design. Additionally, it's built on top of a third-party engine, Unreal, and Unreal wasn't really designed for what they're doing exactly, so they only have limited ability to change the underlying code.

It makes sense that if you can fix something in an unobtrusive way, you're much less likely to break everything. If they did the "big fixes" the guy mentioned they'd have to divert time from everything else, it's not guaranteed to fix anything, and it might even introduce whole new exploits. Incremental patches makes more sense.

One reason they haven't fixed the wall-glitching bugs is that, yes, you can change how you're doing collision detection. However ... it's very expensive in terms of CPU power to do better collision detection, so the reason they haven't completely eliminated said bugs is because it would absolutely murder the frame rate, in order to eliminate some edge cases.

[Dunamisdeos]

EXACTLY. IT IS A DIFFERENT EXPLOIT. IT IS WELL KNOWN. IT IS UNRELATED TO THE BIG BAD EXPLOIT THAT THIS GUY IS TALKING ABOUT. THERE ARE MANY OBVIOUS PARTS OF THIS GAME THAT DO NOT WORK AS ADVERTISED. How else can I spell this out.

He's been using exploits for years. He specifically said that even the big admin bug had existed since 2015. He specifically said that ARK does not truly fix these problems, and instead just band-aid fixes them and this is how he's able to continue doing it.  ARK is releasing new paid content. What part of "There are piles of game breaking bugs that have existed since 2015 this is not ok" is unclear to you??? They have a history of longstanding bugs that are reported on fucking Youtube, they do exactly nothing about them in any way, even going as far as to release Esports versions of their game before delivering on the promises of the people who paid for the base game.

And then they come back and say oh geez louise you guys we had no idea this particular bug that has a list of effects that takes up paragraphs on reddit had been going on on multiple servers carried out by multiple players. First we've heard of it, whoops. Please give us more money (that we're putting towards future profits, not bringing you that thing you paid for three years back).

EDIT: So I guess you're just going to do that thing where you edit in half your post instead of actually writing it at the start.

So what you're telling me is they had tools at hand from the start that couldn't accomplish what they promised, have no chance whatsoever of ever fulfilling those promises to their customers, and that what, bugs and missing can just never be fixed becuase they have no idea what it will break? You're literally providing examples of the things you swear don't exist, every time you post. Crying straw man when someone calls you out on it doesn't change that.

Look at FFXIV Pre-Realm-Reborn for an example of what a producer that knows they have the resources to accomplish what they promise can do by literally just pulling the rug and and doing a re-design. Their latest expansion 6 years later is ridiculously popular. They're rolling in dough. I don't want to hear oh no poor little ARK didn't have the resources to do it. They promised something and they didn't deliver, their problems are their own in that regard, and I have no compunction whatsoever to support them after that.

[Reelya]

You're underestimating how complex software is. Look at Cisco and vulnerabilities in their hardware/firmware, and Cisco is far larger and better funded that the guys making ARK. Also, ARK is built on a third-party engine, Unreal. And you can bet they also used a lot of third-party components. This generally means your code is more maintainable and reliable, but it comes with the trade-offs, including less control if things don't work quite like expected.

And those things they know about aren't not fixed because they're lazy or don't care, they're not fixed because they're probably issues that they can't fix without gutting the game and starting from scratch. Building games in engines such as Unreal or Unity can be fucking painful since you don't control a lot of the underlying stuff. It's built on code not written by the ARK developers. There's probably a lot of stuff they can't change, because it's part of the Unreal Engine (or established third-party components), and they're repurposed specific features of that engine for this specific project, so they're then constrained by the design decisions of those components. When building games in Unity or Unreal it's very common to come across bugs you can't fix, because you're using the engine in an interesting way that it wasn't intended, and it glitches. Yet you can't really do anything about it other than abandon that feature or completely rewrite something to side-step the issue.

And there might be fixes, but you need to do them within the engine, and that can add a lot of overhead / kill performance. For example, in engines such as Unity, objects falling through the floor is a thing, so one fix is to put hidden blocks in the floor with colliders on them to act as a fail-safe, or you could stop using normal collision detection and use continuous collision detection algorithms, or additional checking every frame. Whichever way, this is going to be a performance hit to the system, so they might have decided people glitching through the floor in certain spots is not enough of a big issue to sacrifice FPS for every player, all the time.

[Dunamisdeos]

I feel like things like "I've been able to clip through walls and build under the map for 3 years while you develop esports variants" have nothing to do with Unreal 4, but hey, maybe that's just me.

It's notable that Survival of the fittest also came out while the game was still in early access.

They knew they'd failed to deliver to their customers and instead decided to just milk anyone they could for everything it was worth, and we've let that become a business model in game development.

[Reelya]

They knew they'd failed to deliver to their customers and instead decided to just milk anyone they could for everything it was worth

This is just hyperbolic. Maybe they ran out of money, so they needed to do that in order to continue anything. After all, you're only going to sell DLC to people who already have the underlying game, and are happy enough with it to want more content.

[Dunamisdeos]

They knew they'd failed to deliver to their customers and instead decided to just milk anyone they could for everything it was worth,

This is just hyperbolic. Maybe they ran out of money, so they needed to do that in order to continue anything. After all, you're only going to sell DLC to people who already have the underlying game, and are happy enough with it to want more content.

They held the DLC over people's heads as something that was somehow necessary to complete the game they promised to deliver. The reason the description of their strategy is hyperbolic is that their strategy is definitely hyperbolic. That's exactly the point. It's ridiculously unethical.

For comparison, look at Space Engineers. They are the standard for me in regards to what early access should look like. They had an idea in 2013 that they knew broke the mold on what could currently be accomplished, they asked for money in early access, developed their own goddam engine, and sat in development for 6 years until they released every inch of what was expected.

They sold 3.5 million copies and only now in 2019 did they release a single cosmetic paid DLC. Also, people lost their shit about it. If ARK somehow ran out of money doing half the work that Keen did then they are terrible at their jobs and I'm not helping them justify their terrible practices with more of my money. I haven't bought a single DLC for ARK and i don't ever intend to.