Dedicated Server Admins: Nitrado needs your opinion (+FAQ!)

[NitradoAndre]

Survivors!

My name is André and I'm a software developer at Nitrado. As you probably know, Nitrado is the official server provider for ARK: Survival Evolved and from this week on we'll be providing private, fully configurable servers for ARK on PS4.

Before I go into the reason for my post it's important to understand that we, as a company, have a very simple motto that we apply to everything we do: Quality first.

Quality is easy to measure when it comes to CPU, RAM, network latency, all of these hard, reliable numbers. But delivering high quality user interfaces with all desired configuration options, and to make handling of your servers a smooth, seamless experience means one thing above all else: Understanding the needs of your users.

I'm not gonna lie: We, at Nitrado, are mostly PC gamers. Pretty much all games hosted by us are PC games. But we acknowledge and embrace the fact that we don't really know our friends on consoles just yet.

And that's where you come in. ARK on consoles has thrived in a rich ecosystem of passionate server admins who dedicate their time and their consoles to ensure a fun gaming experience for their friends and often even complete strangers. All that with its unique obstacles, challenges, and needs.

Long story short: We need your help, advice, and feedback. You are very welcome to provide it in this thread, however, if you're currently running a dedicated server on your console, we might want to get in touch with you directly to get your personal opinion on certain topics.

If you're interested in helping us directly, please sign up through this Google Form by providing some very basic information about the server you run, so we can ensure a good mix of different perspectives on the matter: Link

TL;DR: Nitrado wants your feedback, please sign up above if you're hosting a server community on your console.

 

See you The Island,
André

 

FAQ

For your convenience, here's a selection of frequently asked questions about Nitrado servers for PS4. You can always find the updated FAQ in our Wiki.

What are the advantages of having a rented server at Nitrado?

Full control! You have the ability to edit the server configuration through our user friendly web interface, without having to dig through cryptic configuration files.

On top of that:

* Full CrossARK support
* Regular, easily restorable backups
* No "tethering" to the player hosting the server
* The best and most reliable hardware available, certainly offering better performance than a console dedicated server can
* Friendly and helpful customer support in nine different languages

When will servers be available for rental? 

PS4 servers will be available on Wednesday, August 16th. We currently cannot provide a more specific time. You can sign up to be notified of availabilty at https://nitra.do/arkconsole

The release date for Xbox One servers has not yet been published by Studio Wildcard.

Are pre-orders available? Are the available servers limited? 

PS4 servers cannot be pre-ordered, because we expect to have enough capacity to fulfill everyone's needs! If certain locations / data centers receive an unexpected amount of orders, orders may be temporarily unavailable at that specific location until new hardware arrives.

What are the prices for renting a server? 

Prices for PS4 will be the exact same as for PC. Servers start at 13 US$ for 10 player slots (where "slots" means maximum concurrent players) for 30 days. You can check our prices here.

Prices for XBox One have not been finalized yet.

Do I have to purchase a Hardware Performance Upgrade? 

No, the hardware performance upgrade only applies to a few selected games - ARK already gets all the resources it needs by default!

Why is there a minimum of 10 slots? 

Compared to some other games, ARK has a high base hardware usage, regardless of how many players are playing on the server, which results in more hardware being needed. Instead of simply charging higher prices, we decided to also give our customers something in return, which is the higher slot count.

What are the available configuration options? 

Except for a very few minor exceptions, configuration options for consoles will be the exact same as for PC!

Where is the server hosted? 

The server is hosted on top of the line hardware at one of our four advantageous hosting locations. You will be able to pick your preferred hosting location while ordering of your server.

Data centers available for ARK on consoles will be:

* Germany (Frankfurt)
* Great Britain (London)
* United States (Los Angeles)
* United States (Miami)

Do I need to keep my computer or console running? 

No, the server is on Nitrado hardware. You only need your device (Mobile, PC or console) to connect to the Nitrado Web interface.

Is there CrossARK cluster support? 

Yes! You will just need two or more gameservers, which can then be linked through our web interface. Cluster servers can belong to different Nitrado Accounts, have different configurations and slot counts, and can even be located in different data centers!

Can I rent a server now and then switch to the new Ragnarok map once that is available? 

Yes! You can switch the current map of your server at any time, without additional cost.

Can I transfer my save data from an offical server or an existing dedicated console server? 

Short answer: No, save data will not be compatible.

Long answer: There ''might'' be a way to transfer characters, dinos and items if your Nitrado server is not in a cluster yet. We ourselves are still waiting for a final answer on that topic, so please don't rely on it.

Can you play with friends on PC if you are on console? 

Not directly. However, Studio Wildcard has announced to support PlayAnywhere for XBox One and PC. More info coming soon!

Will you be able to use mods? 

Mod support is currently limited to Primitive+ Official.

Can I use the Nitrado website with my console? 

Yes. Our user-friendly website is useable with console browsers and mobile devices.

Can I have multiple people administrate my console server? 

Yes! We have an “Allow guest access” option where you can add your friends Nitrado account to get access to your service.

You can apply them specific permissions to help manage the server when you are not around.

Do I need a PC to buy a server? 

No! Nitrado’s friendly website is usable on mobile and console browsers! You can sign up and rent a server right from your gaming platform or mobile device.

Can I use a Nitrado's "Cloud Server" product for a console server? 

No, unfortunately, this is not possible.

Are there regular backups from my server? 

Yes. The game itself creates a savegame backup every 2 - 3 hours which can easily be restored through the "start with backup" option in the web interface settings. 
Also, Nitrado creates a complete off-site backup of your gameserver every day.
 

[Captnmorgan]

5 minutes ago, NitradoAndre said:

Survivors!

My name is André and I'm a software developer at Nitrado. As you probably know, Nitrado is the official server provider for ARK: Survival Evolved and from this week on we'll be providing private, fully configurable servers for ARK on PS4.

Before I go into the reason for my post it's important to understand that we, as a company, have a very simple motto that we apply to everything we do: Quality first.

Quality is easy to measure when it comes to CPU, RAM, network latency, all of these hard, reliable numbers. But delivering high quality user interfaces with all desired configuration options, and to make handling of your servers a smooth, seamless experience means one thing above all else: Understanding the needs of your users.

I'm not gonna lie: We, at Nitrado, are mostly PC gamers. Pretty much all games hosted by us are PC games. But we acknowledge and embrace the fact that we don't really know our friends on consoles just yet.

And that's where you come in. ARK on consoles has thrived in a rich ecosystem of passionate server admins who dedicate their time and their consoles to ensure a fun gaming experience for their friends and often even complete strangers. All that with its unique obstacles, challenges, and needs.

Long story short: We need your help, advice, and feedback. You are very welcome to provide it in this thread, however, if you're currently running a dedicated server on your console, we might want to get in touch with you directly to get your personal opinion on certain topics.

If you're interested in helping us directly, please sign up through this Google Form by providing some very basic information about the server you run, so we can ensure a good mix of different perspectives on the matter: Link

TL;DR: Nitrado wants your feedback, please sign up above if you're hosting a server community on your console.

 

See you The Island,
André

I know we have a lot of users on the forums with questions can you edit and add all of your faq to your message so I may point them here thanks

[Joebl0w13]

For those looking for the Nitrado PS4 and XBOX FAQ:

https://wiki.nitrado.net/en/Console_Server_-_FAQ

 

[tonicky]

 

Hello Goodnight. I have 2 dedicated servers in ps4 for more than 1 year. I'm hoping to be able to rent 3 servers nitrated ark ps4. But I watched the tweet of the ps4. I hope they do not use the psn system as a basis for running the server. For the following reasons: If you block a player's id in psn and try to log in more than 5 times, the server drops. If a player has the id 11111 and locks it, if he has a friend inside the server and connects with the same ip but different account psn creates a new id and can login. If an admin that is not the host blocks a player, the server drops. And many more problems. I am not a professional, I have them for hobby. Surely all this they know and use another system. a greeting! sorry for my english i from spain.

[TheDave]

Just promise me that we will have access to our INI files so we can change our max level like this awesome company mentions here in the pc wiki https://wiki.nitrado.net/en/Raise_the_level_cap_using_the_Game.ini_file_in_ARK:_Survival_Evolved  
one thing that has bugged me about ark on the ps4 is at max level you do not have all engrams, it is designed to force you to work with a whole tribe, but some of us like small groups or solo play and dont want to be mind wiping all the day long so this is essential.
Just be sure to give us complete control of the files as well as the interface so we can adjust what may not be accessable in the web interface

also surprised the server is 10 play max limit is that a typo? 

Quote

Prices for PS4 will be the exact same as for PC. Servers start at 13 US$ for 10 player slots (maximum concurrent players) for 30 days

and when you say further down 10 is the min due to hardware restraints of ark....isnt the pc server software for ark min lower? Myself im willing to pay $13 to be able to get rid of that level limit and have a good server for me and my mate but to be honest i only need 3 slots lol

Also its now 3am, i keep refreshing the site what time do the servers become available to buy, i know you say there will be enough to go around but i really do not like the idea of having to wait for new hardware to arrive in my area when the only site who can sell servers runs out of capacity

[Hyruu]

So can we go ahead and rent a server to be ready for when it goes live? I was sent a youtube video and they guy already had the server going just waiting for it to go live.

[johnkelly3673]

one there twitter they will let you no win there live it heard the probe be live in a lite bite are show the YouTube you probe watching he proble using a norther  console to host the server there not live yet 

[Hyruu]

That is what I thought but the video showed the nitrado site and it said Ark: Survival Evolved (PS 4)... So IDK

[Labrat309]

I'm worried about settings for this, you can host a 70 person server on 4gbs ram according to your setting options, you would be lucky to host a 10 player server with 4gbs ram even on pc. Even on PC servers have tremendous lag at 16gbs dedicated ram with a full server, how will you combat this in a realistic price range?

 

Edit also currently ark uses roughly 3gbs just to boot a server on pc, your minimum offer for 10 people is 1gb, this is not possible for an ark server.

[Chunk1664]

several players I have spoken to are disappointed that they cannot one way transfer their characters, dinos and items from official servers.  The short and long answer dont really answer anything apart from you don't know really know and are waiting for Wildcard to decide...........

As far as I know, a 'save' of your current official legacy server will only be available when it is/has been repurposed?  But this is not 100% clear and and definitive answer on both these items would be very welcome

[Amalar]

1 hour ago, Chunk1664 said:

several players I have spoken to are disappointed that they cannot one way transfer their characters, dinos and items from official servers.  The short and long answer dont really answer anything apart from you don't know really know and are waiting for Wildcard to decide...........

As far as I know, a 'save' of your current official legacy server will only be available when it is/has been repurposed?  But this is not 100% clear and and definitive answer on both these items would be very welcome

You will not be able to transfer anything from previous saves to the Nitrado server.

I can try and dig up the reddit post about it.

Nevermind, just saw the post about it in the FAQ, guess I missed it

[Symonator]

@arkjeremy on twitter estimates 3pm ET for servers

[NitradoAndre]

Good morning form Germany everyone. I'll go through your questions and answer them the best I can. 

 

7 hours ago, tonicky said:

 

Hello Goodnight. I have 2 dedicated servers in ps4 for more than 1 year. I'm hoping to be able to rent 3 servers nitrated ark ps4. But I watched the tweet of the ps4. I hope they do not use the psn system as a basis for running the server. For the following reasons: If you block a player's id in psn and try to log in more than 5 times, the server drops. If a player has the id 11111 and locks it, if he has a friend inside the server and connects with the same ip but different account psn creates a new id and can login. If an admin that is not the host blocks a player, the server drops. And many more problems. I am not a professional, I have them for hobby. Surely all this they know and use another system. a greeting! sorry for my english i from spain.

Honestly: We don't know yet either. The only thing we do know is that we cannot offer editing of whitelists/ban lists/etc. from within our web interface. Everything that's happening inside the game is out of our hands. But we'll make sure to test those things and keep you posted as soon as servers go live.

 

6 hours ago, TheDave said:

Just promise me that we will have access to our INI files so we can change our max level like this awesome company mentions here in the pc wiki https://wiki.nitrado.net/en/Raise_the_level_cap_using_the_Game.ini_file_in_ARK:_Survival_Evolved  
[...]
also surprised the server is 10 play max limit is that a typo? 

[...]

Because console manufacturers are quite a paranoid bunch of people, you will not be able to directly edit the INI files. However, our goal is to provide any desired configuration option for easy adjustment through our web interface. In the end, that means more work for us, but more convenience for you. Just let us know which configuration options you guys are missing and we'll add them ASAP. I've got some good news for you though. 

As for the 10 player max limit: That was simply ambiguous wording. What I meant to explain is that "slots" stands for "maximum amount of concurrent players" - not that the maximum amount of players was 10. I've rephrased that section slightly.

6 hours ago, Hyruu said:

So can we go ahead and rent a server to be ready for when it goes live? I was sent a youtube video and they guy already had the server going just waiting for it to go live.

Server rentals will be available later today. This partner of ours you are speaking of was given access to a PS4 web interface to be able to showcase it, the server running in the background, however, was not on the final/release version. 

 

1 hour ago, Labrat309 said:

I'm worried about settings for this, you can host a 70 person server on 4gbs ram according to your setting options, you would be lucky to host a 10 player server with 4gbs ram even on pc. Even on PC servers have tremendous lag at 16gbs dedicated ram with a full server, how will you combat this in a realistic price range?

 

Edit also currently ark uses roughly 3gbs just to boot a server on pc, your minimum offer for 10 people is 1gb, this is not possible for an ark server.

You're misreading our website (and we could do a better job at explaining it, we're working on that): The RAM slider is exclusively for Minecraft. There are also a few other games that are affected by our "Hardware Performance Upgrade", but not ARK. ARK on PC as well as on PS4 gets all the resources it needs by default. So don't worry: Your server will not run on 1GB of RAM.

 

1 hour ago, Chunk1664 said:

several players I have spoken to are disappointed that they cannot one way transfer their characters, dinos and items from official servers.  The short and long answer dont really answer anything apart from you don't know really know and are waiting for Wildcard to decide...........

As far as I know, a 'save' of your current official legacy server will only be available when it is/has been repurposed?  But this is not 100% clear and and definitive answer on both these items would be very welcome

You are correct. The full save file of official servers will only be available when they are repurposed, and we'll make sure to add a convenient way to add that save to your own server. As for transferring of character/dino/item data: You're right there as well. We openly communicate what we currently know, even if that means saying that we're not sure yet.

 

 

[Chunk1664]

Thank you for the honest reply.  I am wishing the day away already to get our server up and running for testing / messing about until Rag is available......

[Amalar]

How about changing what dinos can spawn? There are a few VERY annoying dinos I would like to stop from spawning altogether (Ichthyornis because it just makes items disappear, Pegomastax, and Leedsichthys, Rock Elemental) If we had the ability to stop/limit the number of those spawning I know a LOT of people would make use of it, even if it was just those 4. Honestly if you add the ability to remove / limit the Ichthyornis alone will sign up without a doubt.

And just to confirm, I would need a Playstation Plus account to be able to connect to the server? If so, what am I paying sony for, if I am paying for the cost of the server? Is sony still involved with me connecting to the server to some extent?

Also, dumb question but I have to ask, there will not be the ability to use any mods that are only for PC right now such as S+? Structures plus should be added to all versions of the game IMO...

[NitradoAndre]

5 minutes ago, Amalar said:

How about changing what dinos can spawn?

Good news!

 

5 minutes ago, Amalar said:

And just to confirm, I would need a Playstation Plus account to be able to connect to the server? If so, what am I paying sony for, if I am paying for the cost of the server? Is sony still involved with me connecting to the server to some extent?

As far as we know: Yes, you need a PlayStation Plus account to use ARK's multiplayer features (if that doesn't change with the upcoming update). What you're paying Sony for is a question you'll have to ask Sony. They are the ones making those rules.

 

5 minutes ago, Amalar said:

Also, dumb question but I have to ask, there will not be the ability to use any mods that are only for PC right now such as S+? Structures plus should be added to all versions of the game IMO...

Player-made mods are not supported right now. 

[Amalar]

Thank you for the reply! Will be signing up when it becomes available!

I guess I will have to take it up with sony ;P, but playstation plus is not that bad of a deal for the other stuff you get I guess.

As far as the mods go I see WC might add certain mods to the base game through sponsored mods program, so there is hope. 

[Symonator]

Nice to see we can remove dinos, i find the Leedsichthys damn annoying for people who like rafting and live with the bare minimum.
On official i logged in onto my boat and BOOM it was sunk before i had fully synced with the server due to the whale lol.

[TheDave]

4 hours ago, NitradoAndre said:

 

Because console manufacturers are quite a paranoid bunch of people, you will not be able to directly edit the INI files. However, our goal is to provide any desired configuration option for easy adjustment through our web interface. In the end, that means more work for us, but more convenience for you. Just let us know which configuration options you guys are missing and we'll add them ASAP. I've got some good news for you though. 

As for the 10 player max limit: That was simply ambiguous wording. What I meant to explain is that "slots" stands for "maximum amount of concurrent players" - not that the maximum amount of players was 10. I've rephrased that section slightly.

Fantastic news! 
2 hours till work though and still not on the website

 

Not having access to the files however is very bad, i kind of thought since we are charged the same as pc users we would have the same abilities

[traveler]

1 hour ago, TheDave said:

Not having access to the files however is very bad, i kind of thought since we are charged the same as pc users we would have the same abilities

+ 1

[NitradoAndre]

@TheDave, @traveler

We understand that you want direct access to the game's INI files. If we could decide it, we'd do it differently and give you the maximum amount of freedom (as we do for the PC version), but we have to accept the rules that, in the end, the console manufacturers are making.

[Labrat309]

Thanks for the clarification on the ram upgrades, so to clarify more,only the slider for server count is the correct pricing? Which would be 67.60 for 30 days for a count of 70 people?

[slayerofzombs87]

if i switch maps say from the island or scorched earth or the centre to ragnarok would i be able to keep a back up of the previous server? a save so i could just reload the previous info saved dinos base etc etc. or would that data no longer exist by loading another map?

[NitradoAndre]

@Labrat309 That's correct.

@slayerofzombs87 You would keep that data. Save files on the server are named after the respective map, so a save from a map you switch to does not overwrite the previous save states.

[slayerofzombs87]

32 minutes ago, NitradoAndre said:

@Labrat309 That's correct.

@slayerofzombs87 You would keep that data. Save files on the server are named after the respective map, so a save from a map you switch to does not overwrite the previous save states.

ah thanks thats good to know. i wouldnt want me or anyone on the server if we built all the progress to be gone and wiped if i did change maps