Grimnar

[Penfold]

Relay of PM:

(This PM includes Council members and Ark Admins)

Hi Grim,

Just to bring the others up-to-speed, Whitey noticed that you had crafted a series of mats for yourself using the admin cheat command in Ark. He approached you about it and you apologised saying you were frustrated.

As you know, cheating in any form is pretty much the worst offence one can do in a gaming community as clearly pointed out in our MEMBER STANDARDS and frankly there's no excuse whatever the reason and however much the frustration. The problem now is that we have no way of knowing if you did something similar on The Island map and for me, that has tainted the whole experience.

Given our policy I feel I have no choice and have asked Whitey to remove your access to Ark with immediate effect and you're now permanently banned from our Ark servers.

With regards to the Community/Forum then I'm going to take this to The Council and we'll decide what/if a wider punishment is in order. On that I'll come back to you in due course.

I don't have to tell you that we're very disappointed - doubly so it being from such a long-standing member, former game leader and someone who's been helpful in the past.

I'm away this weekend but otherwise will be on PM/TS should you want to discuss.

PEN

[Chaosphere]

I'm upset to read this but not entirely surprised... there were 1 or 2 things on the previous map that made me scratch my head.

Re the server ban, well unfortunately I don't think there is any way around it. Like you have said in your pm to grimm this sort of conduct is not acceptable.

It is a shame to see the game lose such an active player but it would be worse to let such behaviour go unchecked. I don't think I can say much more on my personal feelings over this for fear of getting overzealous! I am disappointed to say the least.


Edit

Side note for now maybe, but I think we should remove structures and dinos built/ tamed by grimm from the server - and drop the resources gained from the deconstruction. But that is just my initial thought.. open to discussion if anyone disagrees

[Galatoni]

I can't believe that such a fundamental rule has been broken. This really saddens me.

Side note for now maybe, but I think we should remove structures and dinos built/ tamed by grimm from the server - and drop the resources gained from the deconstruction. But that is just my initial thought.. open to discussion if anyone disagrees

I have to agree here, and further to what Pen was saying regarding 'taint'. It should be purged.

I can imagine there are people present in the community that can find it "frustrating" trying to keep up with more active players, but by doing this the experience has been ruined for all. There is simply no excuse. How very sad.

[albert]

Not being as familiar with Ark as most of you I even was starting to notice the sheer speed that Grim and his friends were crafting and building at. Less than a week ago the South Tropical - South Beach was empty of everything but Snooks old shack.

Yesterday I noted there has been enormous levels of stone construction and a jetty out to the island they all share for their animal keep.

Is there a chance that the other guys in the group have benefited from this additional material generation. Does this make them as guilty of cheating as Grim? Gorion did make his frustration known that the island was becoming a very busy place very quickly. My experience so far is people take a few weeks to get their projects to a mature state, not so on South Tropical, 1-2 days tops.

[Chaosphere]

Who else was there building with grim Albert?

[albert]

Corben was building very quickly opposite Grim and connecting his building to the same island as Grim where they were holding their animals I believe.

Then another chap was right next to Corben. DWI in his name, I think there where 2 DWI clan players working together as I noticed 2 separate names pop up when they logged off a few evenings ago.

[Whitey]

Not being as familiar with Ark as most of you I even was starting to notice the sheer speed that Grim and his friends were crafting and building at. Less than a week ago the South Tropical - South Beach was empty of everything but Snooks old shack.

Yesterday I noted there has been enormous levels of stone construction and a jetty out to the island they all share for their animal keep.

Is there a chance that the other guys in the group have benefited from this additional material generation. Does this make them as guilty of cheating as Grim? Gorion did make his frustration known that the island was becoming a very busy place very quickly. My experience so far is people take a few weeks to get their projects to a mature state, not so on South Tropical, 1-2 days tops.

First, those guys have played a lot of Ark in the past and have been on the server a lot more than most of us over the last couple of weeks.  if you notice how quickly I got my metal structures done you will see that it can be done quickly through hard work and without help with free materials.   I don't think we can judge them based on what has been found but I'm not daft and they may (probably) have benefited.  Does this make them as guilty as Grim?  Absolutely not!   (not unless they actually knew about it and/or encouraged it).

[albert]

For sure you're totally correct Whitey. I'm just seeing a pattern in velocity. Only the admins know how many hours a person spends online and can determine if the production of parts matches the time.

Sent from my LG-H962 using Tapatalk

[Penfold]

Collectively the DWI guys spend a lot of time online so I'm not sure we can be sure they're implicated knowingly.

We also have no idea if this is a one off or repeated occurrence however from the PMs I've received it appears that people have had suspicions on the last map as well.

Basically the whole thing is a total ball ache and leave a bad taste in the mouth. I'm mightily disappointed and angry about it. It feels like a friend has stolen from me. We all have to grind and it's a major PITA but it's what we do.

I'm away so don't have access to the game over the weekend so I'd be grateful if someone could please log on and lock out Grim's house (press and hold E and make all the doors admin access only). At least then we'll stop any access.

I think we do have to wipe his building and tames (seriously dubious about the 202 Rex he has given he hasn't got scorpion kibble and it's a good few hours tame). I also think someone needs to explain to the DWI guys what's happened and why we're turning up and demolishing his base. I can't imagine him wanting to have that conversation.

Tame-wise he has a Rex, a couple of stegos and a couple of other things in his hut. I think the prefix on them all is [GR].
If someone would be willing to put them all into his house or taming pen and then lock that out I would be grateful. We can then work out what to do.

Obviously any mats etc would be allowed to perish and the sea will wash his footprints from the sand.

Just for the record, from the few logs we've seen he only crafted level-appropriate materials but it's all moot.

Posting here means that all GL's can see this in addition to Ark admins. That was accidental on my part but in retrospect it's not a bad thing as I think they have a right to know.

However I would ask that we keep this in the admin circle for the time being until the Council have had a chance to discuss

I like Grim and there's no denying he has been helpful in the past but from my side of the boat he's been a total Plank. :angry:

[albert]

Seriously, the amount of resources the DWI guys would need to create their current buildings and the time to tame their Dinos (205 T-Rex and a lvl 150 takes 3 hours with 65 impossible to obtain kibble!) considering they only started building less than a week ago, knowing how much effort my little patch has taken me (3 hours a day for 3 weeks), I find it doubtful that they managed to get the simple stuff in such vast quantities from that island so quickly without Beavers and Doedi's. Take a look at their stuff, I'm sure you'll agree there was outside intervention. There boat is bigger than my house.

If we're willing to ban a respected admin and long term dMw guy how can we even contemplate leaving guys on there that knowingly took ridiculous amounts of resources. For one, I would expect them to start rampaging through the map and destroying other peoples creations as their friend has on most other servers.

I'm pretty hardcore about these things.

[Chaosphere]

Appreciate what you're saying mate but I think we have to look at it like this

1. Grims stuff will be removed including tames
2. The other guys as we have no PROOF will be innocent until proven guilty, we will just have to keep a close eye.
3. If any damage is done by them we can fix that - that's what admin commands are for NOT for personal gain!

(Remember only Admins can deconstruct structures so they can't dismantle your Base)


And if I see those guys online I will speak with them and lock Grims doors etc when I'm home tonight if not done before then.

[OldBloke]

I've locked Grim's doors, removed all his dino saddles and placed them in a storage box in his house.

He has a few unlocked chests that are full of resources and a lot more that are pin-coded (I cannot find a way to remove the pin).

[Chaosphere]

Thanks OB.

If any admin catches the other 2 guys online can we try to have a chat with them about the whole situation? I think we need to do that.

Please don't do this in text chat on the server though, this is not stuff that the other players need to be reading...

[TeaLeaf]

In the mean time Council are discussing what to do next.   As Pen said, it's a ball-ache as we've known him for so long, but we have standards to uphold and his actions have ruined the experience of many others, so there must be consequences.

[smilodon]

Sadly it's down to proof. Do we know for an absolute certainty that these guys used stolen resources, and do we know for an absolute certainty that if they did use stolen stuff, that they knew where it came from?

If we don't they they have to get a pass.