That's a great stopgap solution. For PvP servers, I think the players would be fine with the consequences. For PvE servers, just blocking the actions and popping a report so the player is aware of what's wrong would be a better answer, I think.
...anyone told Wildcard yet?
The team is taking a look :) Thanks for the heads up!
The team is taking a look :) Thanks for the heads up!
Just to follow up on this. When we talk about mesh detection in the patch notes, this is what we have in place now. It doesn't take automated action yet and you may be wondering why. In some cases, it's very easy to detect when someone is in the mesh - which are all the cases you are seeing here. As said by one of the veteran ARK modders about this solution
"Ok, it detects when a player is inside a mesh. But is it smart enough to not kill you when you are inside a cave, ie. under the terrain legitimately? Or to know when you are not in inside a mesh, but in a inaccesible area between terrain and meshes (usually rocks? Probably not. "
This video isn't showing the failures - and there will be numerous. I commend the dev in this video but I would caution people from reading YouTube titles and assuming meshing is fixed from a 13 minute video that only shows a few cases. Has this been tested on all maps? Has it been tested on all areas of the maps? How long has it been tested? How many people? These are the questions that I would ask of the video before assuming it was the solution. We don't talk about the details of how this works or what we collect because it's counter to the cause. Thanks for sharing this video and nice work to the dev.
Edit: To be clear: I don't discourage this type of discovery or these type of videos. I just want to put everything into context especially when seeing videos with titles that are phrased in a way so that you click on them.
Edit 2: I am now in touch with the server owner who is running this on a cluster and hopefully we can compare some stats.
I'd anwer with another question: Have the maps itsself ever been tested? Have all areas bees tested? How long did Wildcard test?
I guess the answers will be the same...
€dit: By the way, the developer of the mod already made a Plugin finally fixing ORP in Ark, it works so well better than the amateurish ORP that WildCard implemented. Seem like he is a way better developer than all the Wildcrad developers together, so I have high hopes he can fix those things that Wildcard is not able to fix (or not willing, Wildcard does not do bugfixes as seen in thousands of instances)
We have about 45 million data points of testing :) Again, this is not a knock on the mod or the modder. They're doing great work!
Glad to see it's being looked at. Disregarding all of the "it's the answer!!11!!!" people, ofc this only qualifies as a proof-of-concept at this time. I mean, instakilling players is maybe a little extreme for an exploit blocker lol. It seems that the player's actions could simply be interrupted so they couldn't do anything, and after a time they could have a forced logoff so when they log back on they are transported outside the mesh.
But imo, it's a good concept and the mod does prove it has value. So I'm glad you all are checking it out.
Just please remember, "Perfect is the enemy of good". No software company has ever tested all possible use cases before release, right? And meshing is a big, major issue which is taking time and effort away from forward development. If this idea can be used to counter a large portion of mesh exploits, I'd call that a win.
Edit: also, this is a fantastic candidate for a public test server. You would be able to collect mass quantities of data on existing mesh points. Just saying :)
The mod has value, even for unofficial servers, and we're interested to see how these tests go. I'll be keeping an eye on its progress. In terms of a test server, the official network is a great one. I talked to the network/enforcement team and we have nearly 45 million mesh detection points. It just goes to show how much data is really needed to refine it.
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