Quote Originally Posted by InsaneJ View Post
We get a bunch of donations from the TFC servers. They are nowhere near enough to cover the costs of running a server. But they do help and they add to a feeling of community. Since the ARK servers use up quite a lot of time and server resources and since we seem to be doing OK with them, I think it's time to consider adding donor perks.

  • Do we want this?
  • Is it possible to do without making it pay to win?
  • Are there are any plugins/mods that can be linked to a shop system like we have for the Minecraft servers to automate the process?


To give everybody an idea of just how much resources the ARK servers use. We currently have three ARK instances which we have to run on Windows. Our Minecraft servers are running on Linux. This means that the memory and CPU we allocate to the ARK server can't be used elsewhere. This makes them relatively expensive. Currently the ARK server has 32GB of RAM, 8 CPUs and two SSDs allocated to it. This is roughly a third of our server capacity. If we could run them under Linux the CPU and memory that's not actively being used could be assigned to other servers, but now they are exclusive to ARK whether they are used or not. Of course we can always move CPUs and memory around between virtual machines as needed.
This is a concept the staff has been discussing for the last month and a half or so. In that time we've come up with a list of potential things that can be used for perks, but not how to implement them just yet. We have ideas, but we'd like to see what the people who play the servers think of the project.

List of cosmetic items -

Player skins:
Santa Hat
Witch Hat
Bunny Ears
Party Hat
DodoRex Mask
DodoWyvern Mask
Manticore Helmet
Clown Mask
Vampire Eyes
Werewolf Mask
Chieftan Hat
Top Hat
Birthday Suit Shirt
Birthday Suit Pants
Wyvern Gloves

Weapons:
Candy Cane Club
Fireworks Rocket Launcher
Torch Sparkler
Manticore Shield
Scorched Spike
Scorched Sword
Scorched Torch

Dino saddles:
Rex Stomped Glasses
Dino Witch Hat
Dino Santa Hat
Dino Bunny Ears
Dino Party Hat

Dino Costumes:
Rex Bone
Carno Bone
Raptor Bone
Bronto Bone
Stego Bone
Trike Bone
Giganotosaurus Bone
Quetzalcoatlus Bone
Jerboa Bone
Wyvern Bone
Megaloceros Reindeer
Procoptodon Bunny
Bionic Giga

Something else I found that some other servers are doing are custom dino paint jobs where the admin would change the paint region on a dino X number of times. For example: Let's say there's a custom paint package for 3 paint jobs, the player makes the donation and selects the dinos to be changed. The admin would change the paint regions on the dino as requested.

Another idea I have been playing with is a little less cosmetic, but not necessarily pay to win. More of a gray area. It's dino insurance. The way this works is that a tribe would insure a dino through a donation. The dino would be registered so there's no mistaking which dino is insured. If that dino were to die then the tribe would be given a special item that could resurrect the dino back to life with the same stats and level from when it died. This process would require a mod and some config tweaking for it to work properly, but it is an option.

Special considerations also have to be taken when considering the type of server, like Primitive Plus. Most of the cosmetics can be used without problems, but other items could also be used as cosmetic when they aren't considered cosmetic on the normal Ark servers. An example of this would be scissors which aren't obtainable on Primitive Plus, but could be used as a cosmetic donation perk on a Primitive Plus server.


So what are your thoughts on this? What do you like or dislike? What do you think needs to be changed, modified, or added? Would you, as a player, be interested in this program?