Some server hosts have been commenting here:
How do you feel about this change? Do you agree that it is overstepping and should be disabled?
4 Likes
NOTE: Weâve rolled back the server listing change made in this update following some community feedback.
Weâre planning to review some ideas and other avenues with respect to incentivizing the creation of fair and positive server experiences.
Feel free to continue sending us feedback below.
1 Like
This will be fun.
1 Like
I mean as long as it doesnât give a advantage free players canât get it I donât think it should be allowed
1 Like
I think a good way to help discourage âp2wâ is to give more ways for server owners to make money. This has also been brought up on the GitHub thread, but there just arenât that many good options for making money from hosting servers that arenât classified as p2w. Allowing workshop skins via plugins could possibly open up some options (selling skins, a battle pass type system, etc). Realistically not many people will put 1k+ hours into making a server (or pay people to) for little to no return.
Another thought I had (although it would take quite a bit of effort to implement) is a kind of server reputation system linked to the GSLT key, so players could decide whether a serverâs paid content was âp2wâ. Servers with low reputations would be harder to find on the list or would show up under a separate monetization category.
Edit: You would probably want to make sure servers canât see who has voted so they canât âbuyâ peopleâs votes.
I personally dislike most extremely pay-to-win servers, but after co-creating and owning a server for a while and seeing how much time and effort goes into creating and running one, taking any server that tries to make a little return on investment seems a bit harsh. As mentioned on GitHub some kind of warning when joining like Minecraft now has when you join a non-realms server could be a better option until there are more ways to make money without being considered âmonetizedâ.
3 Likes
Gâday Nelson, I just want to add my opinions. Iâm sorry if its a bit messy and rushed, I am in a rush lol but here goes.
I see why you want to limit âp2wâ servers and how that âcouldâ benifit Unturned, but I hope when you continue to push the next update to limit âp2wâ servers (as it seems inevitable atm), please can you go about it carefully few reasons being;
(Keep in mind I am a server owner so it may be bias but ill express as unbiased as possible)
1, There is a massive cheating problem. We buy plugins to deal with the problem, spend time allocating, finding and sometimes hiring staff to deal with the cheating problem. We cannot do this without a way of making income to make it worth spending the time and money we do dealing with it. Making income is already tricky as is most of us only make enough to pay for services and sometimes no profit.
2, limiting âP2Wâ Will affect the plugin developers and workshop developers that are helping with keeping the game alive as they help bring new content and ideas.
3, The last update that was reverted made our âP2Wâ servers hidden from the server list, while vanilla stayed up. Most of us only host vanilla servers (without ranks) as we have made income from our main âP2Wâ server to pay for the services / machine and have extra space to host a vanilla server. If our income from our âP2Wâ servers were removed or dramatically affected, there will definitely be less âvanillaâ servers and especially less of us focussing on dealing with the cheating problem ourselves.
4. Obviously p2w is subjective so finding what is and isnt p2w will be good but ideally donât limit us server owners too much as it will harm our current communities massively.
5. Adding some ways for us to monetise servers will be great. example, Possibly coding / adding different crosshairs into unturned where if someone purchases our packages they will have access to different crosshairs. (It will be good if we can have another thread made up to all suggest things for you to implement into unturned for us to monetise.)
(edit when I say âvanilla serversâ I mean servers that donât have any monetisation)
Apologies if that was hard to read, Iâm just in a rush atm.
4 Likes
(copy of a post from blog post)
Hi,
First of all thank you for listening to the community and rolling back the update regarding monetization. I think we all (server owners) agree that, it would have been a destructive change.
I personally do not seem to understand why people consider âp2wâ as a problem. There are more players playing the game then ever before. And there is hundreds of server options to chose from. If a server which monetizes the game is popular enough to be on the top of the server list, why to punish it for that. If players enjoy the server then I do not understand why would such server be punished in any way, by restricting its reach in any way or form.
Thanks to the ease of opening server there is plentiful of options for everyone to chose from. One can find server that does sell perks, and also ones that do not. I am a believer of giving players a choice, to decide what to play instead of hiding some option from them.
If standard vanilla server doesnât get enough attention, it is for a reason. Maybe the âstandardâ way to play Unturned is not amusing enough for most players.
Removing or restricting server that sell perks and ranks in my opinion is counter productive, as it will result in inability to fund servers, mods, plugins etc for most of the servers and thus an overall decrease of server count.
I think that the current state in which there are many servers, and large competition created environment of healthy competition. Each network strives to be better in some way than another, to attract players in unique way and constantly grow and develop to bring players in. This healthy competition is what made Unturned what it is today. Without it, most of the plugin would never be created, as so do mods or custom game mods like Unturnov or most recent example being Blackout.
I think that exactly that healthy competition is what allows game to grow and expand beyond the initial boundaries. And changing it will damage the game and community.
I think that healthier approach to the âp2w problemâ, which I personally do not see to be a problem. Is more of a topic of transparency. If thatâs something that is important to players and community, servers that sell perks could have a $ sign added somewhere in the server list, so that players joining will be aware that server does monetize the game.
I believe educating players in what is available and transparency is more productive than blocking/ restricting. And I am sure there are hundreds of more subtle way to solve this âissueâ (again I do not see as issue) then by blocking/ punishing server owners.
I implore people who are whining about their cottage ecosystems where they have to âPay so much beyond server costsâ to suck it up, all of your reasonings have been amounted to the following;
- Youâre too lazy to learn server hosting themselves
- You pay others to do things for yourself, leading to a cottage ecosystem of profiteers that focus more on allowing the most currency to flow in between all of them rather than ensuring a fun player experience
In conclusion, please stop feeding the consumer lies about how you really care about them. Hearing things like âWe care about the playersâ and all that is laughable, especially when it is followed or preceded by âWe want a return on our investmentâ. Admit that if youâre trying to preserve an anti-consumer P2W monetization system, then your focus is on getting a return on your investment, not
at all about creating a fun experience.
Also, I will not name names because I know Iâm going to be executed by Unturned server owners however some of the âfeedbackâ has been the result of owners imploring their staff teams to send semi-coherent messages in a letter-esque format to SDG about this or just actual alt accounts.
The messages above are a great example.
The effort people go through to take $20 from young teens is fucking funny, but I ask everyone to rail against the people who do that shit.
Fuck P2W
1 Like
You really think hosting server is that simple???
1 Like
My comment here is that paid admin privileges and consumable server unbans should be banned on server monetisation rules as well.
You should talk with server owners and reconsider current monetisation rules, and if new rules are accepted, then you should apply hiding P2W servers again. Iâm not a server owner so I canât make any further comments.
Not all of server owners who pay for their serverâs commissioned mods improve the community with their serverâs quality. Often thereâs more P2W than gameplay, or thereâs gameplay that was adapted to such P2W system by scalling up the progression, because commissions need to be paid off by something.
But most of the server owners who can handle modding and map making are improving the community, because theyâre doing a hard scheme. They donât want easy money and often theyâre doing their project just of their dreams. Thereâs lack of guides (especially on modding and some itâs aspects like mod hooks) though, and making more guides will make that fragile scene flooded with billion of servers with custom mods, which will make each custom server drop in itâs value.
BUT thatâs what I thought at the first glance. First off, looking on âeach server owner who isnât a commissioner is a helpful contributor to the communityâ argument: thereâs one mistake. Number of server owners who make their assets by themselves is very small. We canât be sure if number of such server owners increases, then there wonât be any greedy people.
Secondly, after modding will be popularised server purchases wonât die off, since money are a thing that almost always backups the interest in work. Paid work, by the way, is the large aspect of modding. I canât name a modder who doesnât want to do commissions, if we will exclude curated map makers (you wouldnât believe me but theyâre still interested in money, as making your own skins is what motivates them).
Thus, I can see the scheme repeating itself: modders are interested in taking commissions, people with money making their own server, commissioning mods and paying off their price by making server purchases. Clap-clap, Unturned communism just ended there.
1 Like
Itâs not that weâre âtoo lazyâ to learn how to host a server, itâs for reliability that consumer-level services canât offer (internet/electricity), better ping if you want your server hosted elsewhere (or donât have the best service where you live), or privacy and protection from DDOS, etc (which can also be solved through other methods, but they also cost money so the point still stands).
Paying someone who specializes in a service is a good solution for those that donât know how to themselves, or simply donât have time. I donât see how getting someone who is very good at what they do to make mods/plugins/assets/etc reduces how enjoyable the server is, compared to a mess made by someone better at server management than modding. That being said, on the server I co-own, we have made most of the stuff ourselves, until recently we hadnât commissioned anything. The only difference between making it yourself and commissioning is we paid time instead of money. I couldâve spent that time at work making money that I then used to pay someone to do the work for me. Assuming you are clear enough about what you want and you pick a good dev/modder, thereâs not much of a difference.
Nowhere in this thread has this been used as an argument. You canât genuinely expect people to put a considerable amount of their own money or thousands of hours of developing and modding into a server without at least something in return. Thatâs just not how it works.
The messages above are all from different server owners from different networks:
adLay - OzziGaming
SmallBerry - LDG
me - Uncreated
Are you also disgusted by game developers on Steam and other platforms selling their games for $20 plus? Sure there are some elements of server monetization that can certainly be limited, and Nelson has already implemented a good start, but there just arenât enough ways for server owners to make money without selling items.
This is a good idea.
3 Likes
I just hope this doesnât escalate into a Developer-FinnaBust Global Conflict.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed 28 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.