| Using Ark for educational purpose. |
Originally planned to scout if Ark can be used to expose myself, and my kids, to English speaking people. As you may guess, PvP is not the most ideal place for English learning as kids will pick up more sinister things about human interaction. So, the focus is shifted to be; How many deaths does a human tribe need to go through to establish a trusting, peaceful lifestyle in a lawless dangerous world?
Members[]
- jarnMod
Joining[]
Contact me outside Ark to join. Currently, data will be gathered separately. Do not expect to play together until number of people is included into the research.
Introduction[]
People in war-torn places are not there by choice. They were born there, or circumstance locked them there. Just like how I joined OC-PvP-94 server. It has the lowest ping. Are there any hope of peace in such a lawless and dangerous area? I wonder.
Point is, we know peaceful existence is possible. If you're playing Ark, chances are you don't have to kill anyone to get online and enjoy. But how much afford does humankind have to go through to make such a life possible? That's what I want to find out.
Ark offers a unique environment for such a study. Ark PvP allows people to kill others by choice. They can live peacefully. They can cooperate. However, they can hunt for other players as well. Dinos are wild animals. Player can be raiders, bandits. Killing/dying is relatively cheap in this game. So, there can be more of both. I intend to try my best to offer peace, and see how each encounter turns out. This should demonstrate how people may choose to interact with a stranger, in a dangerous zone.
With enough data, I will feed it to a machine learning and find the most important things which make an encounter peaceful, or vice versa. The result should show how much one person can expect to show altruism before people stop harming them.
They said if you got slap on left cheek, turn the right one. Let's see how many cheek do you need for people to stop slapping, or what it takes to not get slapped the first time. In my culture, people believe that doing good for other people will make good things happen to you as well. We will see if that applies in Ark.
Lastly, this research is likely to be an answer whenever someone ask you if you want to live in "Simulated reality" or not.
Methodology[]
Anyone participate in data gathering must follow these rules:
- Do not join a tribe: Joining one may put significant bias toward an encounter.
- Do not attack people first: Obviously - you can't study peaceful interaction if you harm them first.
- Do not raid bases: Same as 2
- Log every encounter with human by detail given in encounter log section
- Refrain from answering question regard your personal life, in particular your country or race: same as 1
- Be polite: same as 1
- Be altruistic: The goal of this study is not how a bad guy get killed. It's how decent people get killed despite doing good things.
The data will be fed into multiple machine learning algorithms to see what they can derive from it. The goal is to find:
- What to do if you need an encounter to be peaceful
- What NOT to do if you need to make an encounter peaceful
- What chain of actions lead to peace, violent
Given the nature of these goal, algorithms that should allow the best findings are:
- C4.5
- Support Vector Machines
- Multi layer Perceptron
- Ensemble
Encounter Log[]
Every encounter with other players must be logged. Any encounter violates the "don't" in methodology is not to be included. Log is to be in CSV formal. These are essential values to log:
- Short description of people who was encountered. For example, 2 guys with raptors. For backward reference only.
- First time you meet them?: True or false
- Their armament tech tier: Naked, Primitive, Metal, Industrial, Tek in numeral value 0 - 4
- Their dino: None, Utility, Combat, Epic (such as Griffin, Wywern, Titano) in numeral value 0 - 3
- Your armament tech tier: Naked, Primitive, Metal, Tek in numeral value 0 - 4
- Your dino: None, Utility, Combat, Epic (such as Griffin, Wywern, Titano) in numeral value 0 - 3
- Chance to offer goodwill at first sight: false = Not given, true = Given
- Your gesture of good will: None, Verbal, Basic resource or item (Lower than metal), Advance resource or item (Metal or crafted), epic items (tek) in numeral value 0 - 4
- Encounter situation: By chance, You got ambushed far from their base, You got ambushed near their base, You encounter their hunting party, they specifically seek to kill you, in numeral value 0 - 4
- Violent involved during first contact: None, one side took hit but not retaliate, one side performed self-defend, in numeral value 0 - 2
- Result of encounter(class): Peacefully depart, one side run away, you kill them, they kill you in classful nominal value {peace,run,kill,killed}
Log can be kept in Google Sheet or Excel. Column must be in given order. This is an example of one line of data.
You met a lonely guy with crossbow in the dark. He said hi.You said hi. He attacked you. You took the hit, and give him meat. He stopped. Both depart.
"Guy in the dark",true,2,0,2,0,true,1,0,1,"peace"
*actual nominal form of data may be changed, but will base on a template of data sheet
Hypothesis[]
- Familiarity facilitate peace (log 2)
- Armament of both sides affect the outcome of encounter (log 3-6): As in "Armed society is a polite one". People need violent to deter violent.
- Conversation facilitate peace (log 7 - 8): Talking may remind player that they are playing with people and may deter them from killing
- Circumstance affect encounter (log 9): Player playing a certain role are more likely to act peacefully or violently. Gathering party may be more peaceful than base defender
- Violent may escalate and prevent peace from occurring (log 10)
Result[]
Data is being gathered. I play roughly 1 hour per day but not everyday. Data was stored using notes, but the library in the game is destroyed. Current storage is on google sheet.
Analysis will be performed after considerable amount of data is gathered.
Note[]
I really do hope there is a way to make peaceful contact with players in PvP, because if there are none then what are the hope of mankind in time of crisis? What can people in war-torn area, where trust is harder to find and there are more to gain from robbery, hope in interaction with other people?