Greetings Survivors! In this edition of the Community Crunch, we’ll cover the details of opening Genesis Transfers on our Official Networks, the Dupe Protection System, Meshing detection, Third-party software, hardware upgrades for our servers, player dedicated servers for console, Mac, Linux, and we’ll touch on what we’ve been working on recently along with an overview of our focuses over the coming weeks. Before we dive into that, we’ll take a brief pause to acknowledge these unprecedented times for all of us - our team, our players, our families, and yours - things are tough right now and we could all use some support and camaraderie. Now, more than ever, activities like gaming allow us to stay connected and engaged with our community, particularly for those of us practicing social distancing, often in isolation. As a small gesture of appreciation for our extended ARK family, we will be continuing to run 2x rates for the foreseeable future. As we continue navigating our way through these extraordinary and challenging times together, our heartfelt thoughts are with all of you. Stay safe Survivors! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/8729288/7f24e3275f076cd5b0297eff47e8069874d48a26.png Genesis & New Official Servers Transfers We’ll be opening full transfer of items and dinos into Genesis on May 15th, 2020 with two notes. The first note is that Extinction Titans will be restricted from transferring and the second is that Managarmr will be marked as unrideable. In the case of the latter, this decision was made in relation to their close-to-flyer status and their ability to dash through certain missions. We have opted to allow Gigas as they serve as a counter to tanking dinos, and Rockdrakes, as they bring some utility whilst being less mobile than Manas. New Server Transfers These were the latest servers added in tandem with our free weekend. Similarly to Genesis One servers, on May the 15th, they’ll also have their transfers enabled: EU-PVE-Official-TheIsland705 EU-PVE-Official-TheCenter706 EU-PVP-Official-TheIsland707 EU-PVP-Official-TheCenter708 EU-PVE-Official-Ragnarok709 EU-PVP-Official-Ragnarok710 EU-PVP-Official-Valguero711 EU-PVP-Official-TheIsland712 EU-PVE-Official-Valguero713 EU-PVP-Official-TheCenter714 EU-PVP-Official-Ragnarok715 EU-PVP-Official-Valguero716 NA-PVE-Official-TheIsland717 NA-PVE-Official-TheCenter718 NA-PVP-Official-TheIsland719 NA-PVP-Official-TheCenter720 NA-PVE-Official-Ragnarok721 NA-PVP-Official-Ragnarok722 NA-PVP-Official-Valguero723 NA-PVP-Official-TheIsland724 NA-PVE-Official-Valguero725 NA-PVP-Official-TheCenter726 NA-PVP-Official-Ragnarok727 NA-PVP-Official-Valguero728 Server Upgrades We’ve also been recently working on upgrading the last of our servers to new hardware. A lot has already taken place across all platforms, these were our most recent that took place over the last week: EU-PVE-Official-Aberration222 NA-PVE-Official-TheIsland339 NA-PVE-Official-Extinction502 EU-PVE-Official-Valguero526 EU-PVE-Official-TheIsland198 EU-PVE-Official-TheIsland43 EU-PVP-Official-Ragnarok189 EU-PVE-Official-Ragnarok397 LEGACY-The-EU-PVE-OfficialServer262 (on Nitrado) EU-PVP-Official-TheIsland333 EU-PVE-Official-TheIsland343 EU-PVE-Official-TheCenter349 LEGACY-The-EU-PVE-OfficialServer272 (on Nitrado) EU-PVE-Official-TheIsland346 EU-PVE-Official-TheIsland347 EU-PVE-Official-TheIsland344 EU-PVE-Official-TheIsland395 EU-PVE-Official-TheCenter396 LEGACY-The-EU-PVE-OfficialServer263 (on Nitrado) EU-PVE-Official-Valguero523 EU-PVE-Official-Valguero525 LEGACY-The-EU-PVE-OfficialServer265 (on Nitrado) LEGACY-EU-PVE-TheCenter633 EU-PVE-Official-Ragnarok389 LEGACY-The-EU-PVE-Isolated-Ragnarok60 EU-PVE-Official-TheIsland78 EU-PVE-Official-GenOne661 EU-PVE-Official-GenOne662 EU-PVE-Official-GenOne663 LEGACY-The-EU-PVE-Ragnarok59 EU-PVE-Official-TheIsland705 EU-PVE-Official-TheCenter706 EU-PVP-Official-TheIsland707 EU-PVP-Official-TheCenter708 EU-PVE-Official-Valguero518 EU-PVE-Official-Valguero519 OC-PVE-Official-Ragnarok208 NA-PVE-Official-Ragnarok383 EU-PVE-Official-Valguero516 {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/8729288/b3f329c936c17ffaa746d3bd24f92df971d04276.png Mac & Linux Late last week we were able to push out fixes for both the Mac and Linux versions of the game, which should allow those clients to play on the latest servers, with all the latest content. We appreciate your patience and will be working on improving our pipeline to get these out to you in a quicker and more stable state. Live Game Over the past couple of months, we’ve shifted our primary focus for our regular patches between balance/quality of life and bugs/exploits. The past few weeks have been primarily dedicated to bugs and exploits in this regard. We’ve also been working on various crash fixes. We plan to pivot back to further balance and QoL improvements soon, including a pass on breeding to improve player’s experience and further tweaks to mission rewards and crates on Genesis. Anti-Cheat & Exploit Measures The last time we spoke about our efforts to combat cheaters, we unveiled our work on our Anti-Meshing systems which focused on detection and prevention. After rolling out the system entirely, we saw a 90% reduction in overall meshing cases across the board. Since then, we've continued the fight against the various ways that underhanded survivors try to cheat on the ARK, and we'd like to give you an update on that fight. Meshing Our Anti-meshing Detection System is proving effective and we’re continuing to see a vast decline in incidents. Like all exploits/cheats, this is an ongoing battle and here's our latest progress: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/8729288/a3432d22a6a4b80a0697423e979da4a55dc54c31.png As you can see the battle against meshers is not over, but cases remain low and will continue to decrease over time. Some of the additional changes we've been working on have included: Improvements to the Anti Meshing detection system. This has involved being able to detect meshing in new areas of the map, as well as eliminating false positives and refining the system where edge cases could slip through. Level Design changes across all maps which focused on filling in holes and ensuring that collision has been set correctly to prevent players from entering unintended playable areas of the map Tackling mesh-methods head on to prevent players from being able to get into the mesh in the first place Initial rollout of the Anti Mesh Biting solution on all platforms, to prevent creatures from attacking through the mesh. Still early days so far, but a lot of the primary methods of mesh biting have been eliminated and we’ll be continuing to monitor for new methods and reports to squash them too! We really appreciate and want to thank the ARK community for the reports and support, as the information provided helped us to improve the system overall. Keep it coming guys!