I don't think 'Most "other" games sub forums fail, so why bother making new ones' is a very good argument.
This type of thinking hinders forum growth.
Forums all over the internet are facing a population/activity crisis, jsp is no exception, the #1 goal should always be to
get new users followed by
get them to keep coming backI also don't think the whole "people stealing back their items after a trade" is a very good argument either.
PVE is very popular on ARK and solves this issue entirely, it provides more of a cooperative environment for people to work in, such as bartering, working as a team or a tribe to take down an island boss, or big alpha.
With that said, JSP and the mechanics of PVE ARK fit very well together.
There are many official servers and even more un official servers with various settings.
You can transfer your char from one unofficial server to another, so say you are new to ark, and you want to start playing it, you have XFG to spend, you make a thread on the Unofficial ARK forum, and request gear, maybe some dinos, or some kind of service, like structure building.
The costs would likely be low, because of the ease of gather materials, I would even say that big FG earnings for ARK could be along the lines of base buildings, you pay someone XFG for their time and or resources, to build you a GG base or War raft or something along those lines.
The person doing the building would/could/should have pics/videos of other stuff they have built, so the buyer can have confidence in the builders ability.
I do agree that in PVP there could be issues, but even so, JSP already has systems in place for dealing with such things.
Say you make a purchase for some gear and mats and a couple dinos, you pay XFG, and the guy just bails, or kills you and the dinos and takes everything back, the propper action would be to report as scammer, have them locked, etc etc.
-edit
I don't think we should dismiss this idea entirely, ofc its my idea so naturally I am going to say that.
Sorry, got kinda long winded there.
This post was edited by Ep0ch on Feb 10 2017 03:12pm