In all seriousness, yeah, thats a great step in the right direction. But servers are still going to sell things like
MaxEXP,
vehicles,
or well of course, as you said, still sell kits (which have items in them?).
maybe I’m misreading, but IDK why you would ban selling individual items when you would still allow selling kits full of items.
It makes sense to ban purchases of “paid unfair advantages”. In order to prevent it from being too broad, you can list things that would be a paid unfair advantage (like exp, kits, items, vehicles) and add a “subject to change” warning.
Except muh p2w servers can still continue to do their thing.
Watch them circumvent this via not selling individual items for cash but one time use bundle with worthless shit everybody just buys for that one item.
Muh individul freedom
Yeah, odd that. Guess he’ll either readjust or remove this, because in its current state this seems like a shitty compromise.
Congratulations to Rain for getting this added. He may be a masssive dork but this is a phenomenally good change imho and we have him (and Nelson) to thank for it.
I back up Deus on the fact that you should be allowed too see such servers provided you enable it in Preferences.json.
I also think that this should also apply to vehicles, experience, and ways that are used to circumvent the ban, namely kits and ueconomy currency.
P.S.: When are weapon rebalances coming? The only three viable endgame PvP guns are Zubek-Maple-Matamorez, almost everything else goes towards scrap or into horde beacons. Oh, and maybe a Horde Beacon rework? Maybe have it drop you Special node loot and not 0.5% chance raiding gear and guns in obscene amounts?
Kits or perks like additional vault space would be unaffected.
New sales of in-game items for real money would not be allowed. For example in-game item shops selling guns and ammo for real money. Servers continuing to sell in-game items for real money would be removed from the server list after a warning.
Any in game benefit bought through irl monetary transaction should be prohibited, it wouldnt make sense to allow them to have kits but not individual items, or other direct benefits like “vault space”.
With the way gunplay works in U3 it seems impossible to fix certain weapons into being “viable”. If anything, we should be thankful that there isn’t just one meta weapon - instead as you said, its three different weapons.
I commented it on another post, that if Nelson wants to “rebalance” guns so that all guns are viable, then he shouldn’t nerf existing meta weapons to be worse, but rather buff or improve scenario-specific weapons like SMGs and Shotguns in some way to be useful for their respective situations.
This way, lazy people like me can continue to do a jack-of-a-trades generic maplestrike loadout, while others might get an edge on me by using the most effective weapons for the situation.
I suppose thats a bit off topic but yeah, complicated subject.
anyway. Although vault space is obviously still a paid advantage, atleast its not as obvious or painfully advantageous. However, if Nelson chooses to ban some advantages and exclude others it will simply put greedy server owners in a position to maximize on the few paid advantages available for them to capitalize off of.
EX: A lot of pay to win servers might have never thought about, or ever used, a vault system. But with the introduction of this good idea, if implemented in this way, it will simply push them to add vaults so that people who pay either get access to a vault (aka normal people dont get vaults at all) or pay for ridiculously large vaults
This would happen across all of these servers, so the vault paid advantage would only become more popular and commonplace across all P2W servers.
Is that a good compromise? Well idk. It would get pretty ridiculous for huge un-raidable inventories to become the norm on the remaining P2W servers. We’re trading a terrible system for a system that would be better but not quite best, in my opinion of course.
To clarify: the initial goal here would be to stop exploitative consumeable purchases. Items, vehicles, currency, experience all being examples of in-game consumeables.
These in-game stores are some of the most egregiously pay-to-win, and are also problematic because players can spend an infinite amount of money on them. Comparatively a one-time purchase to support the server in exchange for a rank / benefits seems fairer.
I also think this is a good place to start because stopping the sale of consumeables does not affect any existing server customers, i.e. it is not taking anything away from anyone, only preventing future purchases of this type.
Most people on [redacted] seem to think that a fat disclaimer and warning on these servers would be the better way forward instead of a server list ban. I personally said:
I guess if we put a “This server practices predatory behavior or has content that will be downloaded onto your computer that may be harmful” in red then id be happyish
If there is a disclaimer i want it to be big, red, scary, and very hyperbolic and generalized to scare as many people away as possible
After being a player for 5 years, and 3 of which running a server myself, I believe that this could cripple the community factor of Unturned.
“P2W” = “Pay to Win”, AKA accepting money that could provide an advantage ingame over other players, This is also what we are discussing banning.
I’ll use number’s to make it easy to reply.
Players want to spend money for rewards, Thus supporting the server. Many “Non-P2W” server’s either struggle to stay around, or have costs funded from external sources that can be unrelated to the server or its revenue streams. I’ll expand,
Server’s, No matter what, cost money. Whether that is with a host, Your old laptop or your electricity. With smaller revenue streams, it makes it crippling to run a community server. Players can still run their own server for their friends, but after which they want to make it publicly available, and run properly. It becomes harder to grow and maintain their player base, Expanding below,
Lets assume you can cover the cost of running a old computer at home and maybe as commonly seen, parents pay for the power. A vanilla, Generic server costs nothing further. But if you get into anything unique, that expands the game such as Roleplay, Modded PVP, Minigames, It typically involves custom, or paid content from sites like Imperial Plugins.
Many people going into or looking into running their own Unturned Server look at the costs, and how quickly they can cover them. Those new Server Owner’s would be pushed away by the fact they can’t make money off of purchases / ingame purchases.
Vague Statistics. Take a look at Unturned Server’s List sorted by player count. Currently, at 6:07 EST, and quick glance, All servers fall under the category of Modded PVP, Roleplay, (Pandahut’s #3 Vanilla+ has no mods, is PVP but has custom content still). On the first 3 pages, ALL of these server’s (Ones who have a store or accept payments) are “P2W” as some would call it, Generating revenue from purchases of ingame content that is non-cosmetic. This can show that server’s that build with the money they earn, can grow and expand far faster and greater than Non-P2W.
On a SDG perspective, Regulating server’s that are P2W would involve a lot more time, A page or forum section would need to be made for submitting P2W server’s, which would have to be removed and “Banned” by SDG staff. An appeal section would also be required. SDG Staff would have to review and process these, or go through all popular server’s finding P2W status, removing from the time that could be better spent towards developing the game.
Bohemia Interactive applies something similar towards monetization rules on their Arma 3 and DayZ games which restricts the sale of ingame benefits / perks / advantages over non-paying players . Bohemia Interactive permits for approvals of server’s to charge for entry, but still does not allow P2W content. As a player of Arma 3, There is a massive separation between server’s that spend Hundreds, and sometimes thousands of dollars compared to server’s that don’t. Unturned would see a major separation between server’s that are basic, compared to heavily customized server’s that have already been around for a while. Arma 3 also has variations in player-bases on servers, where either the server is completely full, or has minimal / no players connected. This emphasizes on the varying level of enjoyable content between server’s.
Unturned only permitting sale of cosmetics would become something similar to Fortnite in my eyes where players are considered “High tier” for having no benefit cosmetics, or also “Money wasters” for spending money that provides really no benefit. (It’s like wearing Gucci to a club to have better social precedence). (This is really a small point)
Unturned currently is a great free game, that attracts players from being free. Many people within the community want to spend money for advantages, that’s their interest. If player’s are getting maybe bored, or want to spice things up since they have spare money around, they’d spend it on a server they enjoy, supporting the server and its continued content creation. Otherwise they may show interest in putting towards a new steam game, thus loosing the player on Unturned.
Defining P2W. This is SUCH a hard issue, and will cause a lot of arguments. “Why is this server allowed, but I’m not?”. Banning P2W would either become a very fine line, that people would argue, complain, and potentially leave the game over. Or would be a “Welp, your shit out of luck, find another way to fund the costly server”.
Banning Server’s. What are the options to ban a server?
IP
IP & PORT
Name
GSLT Token
If you ban via IP or IP & Port you are blocking potentially multiple server’s that could be running on a host. GSLT can be changed via a new steam account, Name could be changed. Server’s unique Identifier? But what’s the made from? Combo of IP, Port, GLST? Still seems REALLY mess when you ban server’s. It also becomes even harder to solve the issue many run into of “Why is my server not on the server list” and adds another thing that you can’t really test or easily find out why your server isn’t showing up. So you’d have to add a ban lookup of some form.
What about server’s that primarily require payment to have more than 60% of entertainment capabilities? I think its wrong to have the majority of entertainment charged for. But again, You cannot regulate it as per my point #6.
I think before I conclude, I should outline myself to further backup my experiences and claims.
I have played Unturned for 5+ years now, Owned a server for 3+ years that charges money for Cosmetics, Speed advantages (command cooldowns) my server does not charge money to join, does not charge money to achieve something others cannot (I do sell a /heal command that normal players cannot access, but again is a speed advantage as they can already spawn food, and medical items on my Creative RP Server).
I also have been running Modern Hosting for over 1 year now working with big server’s such as GameGhost, Epic Romania and more. I have closely worked with MANY Server Owner’s and discussed how they run their server’s. Some have been open with me about their revenue streams and how they make money. Only 1% of the Server Owner’s I know, Host, or have talked with have beliefs against Non-P2W or run a Non-P2W Server.
I personally believe it is completely wrong and would not improve the community.
Restricting this, helps only the few players who search for Non-P2W servers, or as mentioned in the future would benefit Unturned’s ran Server’s as you can’t get anything better than what’s already achievable in any server. Thus more leveling the playing field in Unturned’s ran Vanilla Server’s advantage.
I do also believe there is server’s out there who a especially for-profit, where the server’s generate large amounts of profit, with a very limited amount of it returned back to the server itself.
Upon the topic of P2W, at most I think should be changed is a sort option added onto the Master Server List that defaults to ANY. Server’s would have a config option to set the their server as P2W or Non-P2W server inside the Config.json that defaults to P2W (To prevent unconfigured server’s show improperly). Unturned could manage an override for those who lie (Again, more effort) or ban that server specifically.
To try and further clarify the purpose of this proposal:
One-time purchase for a permanent unlock = OK
One-time purchase for a permanent kit = OK
One-time purchase for a permanent rank = OK
One-time purchase for a permanent benefit = OK
Repeatable purchase $1 for 1 Eaglefire = BAD
Repeatable purchase $1 for 1 Fighter Jet = BAD
Repeatable purchase $1 for 1000 XP = BAD
Repeatable purchase $1 for 1000 Server Bucks = BAD
That is much nicer. Thank you,
But I still think you run into a grey area issue.
If I sell you a kit, With 5 guns. Thats fine according to the outline.
If I sell you a kit, With 2 guns, 1000 in-game currency. Is that okay?
If I sell you a Rank, with 3 kits, and 5000 in-game currency. Is that okay?
If I sell you a Rank, with 5000 in-game currency each week. Is that okay?
Please outline the term repeatable. Is that recurring payment each month, or is that for a single time return, where to gain again requires re-payment?
I still strongly think this should not be regulated as it involves a lot of work from you, especially with grey-areas and constantly changing outlines to suit.
Please reference my primary reply about to understand my full opinion and facts.
@Modern_Mo Under this proposal the kits and ranks would be okay as long as the player permanently unlocked them after purchase. As for the currency, it would depend what it is used for.
By repeatable I mean that as-is there are servers where you could spend $10,000 to purchase 10,000 guns. That should not be possible.
