Unturned's capability as a milsim/TDM is amazing

First off, no, I’m not about to go on a rant about how Unturned should be more PvP-centric than it already is, or add a suggestion for some half-broken mode that could be executed better in a different game, or even suggest a weapon/vehicle idea. I’m just giving my honest thoughts and frankly don’t expect to make a solid point, more a stream of consciousness ramble about some stuff from my past. Either way I hope you enjoy reading this.

I have a lot of friends who enjoy games with extensive tactical or strategic aspects. This extends far and wide from games such as CS:GO, EFT, Arma, and RS6 to more nostalgic things like WoT, AoE, Civ, and Rising Storm. And I used to be absolutely obsessed with that kind of thing, large scale or team-based planning/endeavors. As a former strategy buff, it was when I entered the world of Steam in 2014 that my world changed forever. When I discovered the genre of survival, and when I made the transition to becoming a massive survival/sandbox enthusiast as well.

However, my roots have followed me. I’ve noticed that the communities of games that are not tailored to team strategy have begun to adapt large meta-communities of RTS and team deathmatch. For example, in PUBG there are lots of custom servers where people enjoy 4-team, 40+ player battles that are coordinated in a very fresh and interesting environment. I totally have a blast doing stuff like that, and that’s when it hit me - out of all the survival/sandbox games I know, Unturned is one of the best at achieving this milsim-like mindset and level of gameplay, yet there’s barely any kind of community for it.

In Unturned, we have a massive, unparalleled variety of weapons, vehicles, game mechanics, locations, and even an active Workshop community. This kind of environment is perfectly tailored to accommodate team deathmatch or milsim, especially in comparison to more niche games in the genre like Rust, DayZ, and Ark. Even the aforementioned PUBG doesn’t match Unturned with our array of vehicles and armament, both combat-oriented and not so much. While my friends who don’t play Unturned are puzzled with how on earth this could be, I’m proud of how the game overall has been executed in this regard.

I guess all I’m saying is, Unturned isn’t meant to be a milsim or RTS or TDM for obvious reasons, but it works stunningly well for such a thing, just like the massive roleplaying community we’ve already garnered (be it the wonderful RP that works or the trashy RP that doesn’t), and I think this kind of adaptability with the game should hopefully not be lost in future iterations of the game. I am alluding not just to future 3.0 updates or even to 4.0, but wherever the road ahead may take us. I personally enjoy this amount of freedom and possibility, and I hope our modders and players do as well.

Thanks for reading. I’d totally appreciate any discussion on the topic, especially in-depth stuff. That stuff felt really good for me to get off my chest!

TL;DR: The sheer beauty of Unturned and how open it is to imagination by the community, and gameplay diversity.

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That’s what pisses me off about unturned so much. It’s a PERFECT SANDBOX GAME but is themed as Zombie Apoc. I have no qualms about that and support Nelson’s choice 200%, but there’s so much possibility that’s going to waste. As much as I love purposely ruining RP servers for shits and giggles, I’ve yet to see another game come close to the depth and sophistication Unturned gives RP servers without being themed as an RP game. The Workshop only furthers this, meaning that at a certain point it’s just a community-fueled rollercoaster of custom content.

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While that is actually pretty true, in my eyes 4.0 will give us all the ability to totally make it a perfect sandbox game. The petty complaints made by everyone I know who doesn’t like Unturned should be solved the way I see it.

Ewww Roblox graphics

4.0 will have far better graphics based off of what I’ve seen, but I don’t even care because I’m a potato gamer anyways. Also gameplay > graphics anyday.

doesn’t have anything original or creative

4.0 looks like it will really focus on this. Also 3.0 has plenty of unique stuff that you can’t find in any other game, and when the stars align you will have a time like no other.

not even a real survival game

Also the main focus of 4.0. I expect far better realism but not to a point of meticulous and tedious day-job levels.

To be honest, I really have to give credit to Nelson. He’s without a doubt the best solo developer I’ve ever known in the gaming universe, and he literally dedicated a sizeable portion of his lifetime working on Unturned. If his age wasn’t impressive enough he makes more amazing development decisions than I can even count. @SDGNelson if you’re out there, I want to sincerely thank you, and I hope you’ve enjoyed developing Unturned as much as I have playing it. You have shown what you can do in front of us, hopefully the rest of the world sees it too.

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I’ve seen both aspects (survival, and more milsim/TDM) at their full potential. It’s pretty cool either way.

Survival-wise, making a group out of randoms and then actually getting to know them (and then them all ditching you later on and resulting in a group discord being deleting due to inactivity) on a map like Yukon is just great. It’s even better when supplies are actually seriously needed, and you have to split up to go to different locations.

TDM/milsim-wise, I’ve played a crap ton of Unturned Wars (aka star wars). Tons of fun there. Getting in an x wing and causing havoc among the Imperials was extremely rewarding.

Something that blended the two was a project I was personally apart of called Warzone: Crossroads. It revolved around several unique factions, including the Coalition, reemerging Russian soldiers, a group of bandits, and even a mafia group. Each had its own shop NPC and vehicles (which for the most part had to sadly be spawned in by admins under certain rules due to a lack of plugins and/or NPC support). There were several vanilla styled mods used as well. Survival was still a concept; you’d lose your gear, and food and water was an issue at times. However, it was much easier for bigger factions to actually obtain gear and wage war. I remember driving in a sedan with some hastily put on freeform barricades with some group members (I was the leader of the bandit faction) going to assist a faction with its defense against the Coalition. Out of nowhere a fucking Coalition Little Bird started strafing us with a minigun, and we only made it because of the barricades one of my faction members placed on (he was odd in that way).

I definitely do think there should be more capacity for stuff like this in the future. In no way should the core survival game ever be affected by this, but the tools should be available.

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