Doing this is ridiculous.
2 Likes
To input, As requested.
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.
âP2Wâ = âPay to Winâ, AKA accepting money that could provide an advantage ingame over other players, This is also what we are discussing banning.
Iâll use numberâs to make it easy to reply.
-
Players want to spend money for rewards, Thus supporting the server. Many âNon-P2Wâ serverâs either struggle to stay around, or have costs funded from external sources that can be unrelated to the server or its revenue streams. Iâll expand,
-
Serverâs, 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 Ownerâs would be pushed away by the fact they canât make money off of purchases / ingame purchases.
-
Vague Statistics. Take a look at Unturned Serverâs List sorted by player count. Currently, at 6:07 EST, and quick glance, All servers fall under the category of Modded PVP, Roleplay, (Pandahutâs #3 Vanilla+ has no mods, is PVP but has custom content still). On the first 3 pages, ALL of these serverâs (Ones who have a store or accept payments) are âP2Wâ as some would call it, Generating revenue from purchases of ingame content that is non-cosmetic. This can show that serverâs that build with the money they earn, can grow and expand far faster and greater than Non-P2W.
-
On a SDG perspective, Regulating serverâs that are P2W would involve a lot more time, A page or forum section would need to be made for submitting P2W serverâs, which would have to be removed and âBannedâ by SDG staff. An appeal section would also be required. SDG Staff would have to review and process these, or go through all popular serverâs 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 serverâs to charge for entry, but still does not allow P2W content. As a player of Arma 3, There is a massive separation between serverâs that spend Hundreds, and sometimes thousands of dollars compared to serverâs that donât. Unturned would see a major separation between serverâs that are basic, compared to heavily customized serverâs 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 serverâs.
-
Unturned only permitting sale of cosmetics would become something similar to Fortnite in my eyes where players are considered âHigh tierâ for having no benefit cosmetics, or also âMoney wastersâ for spending money that provides really no benefit. (Itâs 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, thatâs their interest. If playerâs are getting maybe bored, or want to spice things up since they have spare money around, theyâd 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. âWhy is this server allowed, but Iâm not?â. Banning P2W would either become a very fine line, that people would argue, complain, and potentially leave the game over. Or would be a âWelp, your shit out of luck, find another way to fund the costly serverâ.
-
Banning Serverâs. 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 serverâs that could be running on a host. GSLT can be changed via a new steam account, Name could be changed. Serverâs unique Identifier? But whatâs the made from? Combo of IP, Port, GLST? Still seems REALLY mess when you ban serverâs. It also becomes even harder to solve the issue many run into of âWhy is my server not on the server listâ and adds another thing that you canât really test or easily find out why your server isnât showing up. So youâd have to add a ban lookup of some form.
- What about serverâs 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 serverâs such as GameGhost, Epic Romania and more. I have closely worked with MANY Server Ownerâs and discussed how they run their serverâs. Some have been open with me about their revenue streams and how they make money. Only 1% of the Server Ownerâs 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 Unturnedâs ran Serverâs as you canât get anything better than whatâs already achievable in any server. Thus more leveling the playing field in Unturnedâs ran Vanilla Serverâs advantage.
I do also believe there is serverâs out there who a especially for-profit, where the serverâs 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. Serverâs 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 serverâs show improperly). Unturned could manage an override for those who lie (Again, more effort) or ban that server specifically.
Thank you,
Modern
4 Likes
lmao take the L no more P2W for you buddy
13 Likes
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
8 Likes
This may finally destroy pay-to-win servers once and for all.
THANK YOU NELSON!
13 Likes
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.
3 Likes
I think this is already answered based on what serverâs are popular. You see serverâs that have players are P2W, but you still join whether or not you intent to pay anything.
Making this change restricts more, makes more problems for everyone and still doesnât benefit for anything. The only regulation I see possible is specific reasons why someoneâs purchased content can be removed.
Players should be able to spend money as they wish, for the content they wish. Server ownerâs can also charge whatever they want for said in-game content.
This restriction
Does not benefit the Server Owner,
Does not benefit the Paying Player,
Does not benefit the Non-Paying Player (as content can still be gathered from multitudes of other ways(AKA Loopholes), Purchase a kit of 5 guns, go to the NPC, sell guns).
Its a waste of everyoneâs time to have to enforce and manage correctly.
What about subscriptions? For example, paying $5/month to unlock some kits/in-game money.
I realize you did already kind of define ârepeatedableâ but I think monthly subscriptions shouldnât really be included in that, as they arenât abusable to buy 10,000 guns or anything like that.
1 Like
There are some servers that pop up / have been around for a while that still just sell items straight from the shop.
It does benefit non-paying players as they cannot have their experience ruined by someone just paying tons of money for items. Sure right now itâs not perfect, but itâs a step in the right direction to get rid of the most blatant abusers.
It looks bad on Unturned if people join the game and find servers that just straight up sell items for money from the shop, some players of abstraction like having ranks and such to limit purchasing (to a degree) can go a far way in making it look more reasonable.
This kind of same debate was had over Minecraftâs EULA, but in the end, I would say it was effective and forced servers to change their monetization patterns to make things more fair/reasonable.
I really donât think itâs hard to enforce either, most servers have to have webshops/websites, just going to their website linked from their server in-game, verifying it is their website selling that stuff, and adding their server token / IP to a blacklist isnât exactly difficult. Probably something Molton and the community as a whole could help with as well.
2 Likes
When you look at any type of regulation, the small businesses suffer more than the well established companies. Amazon is currently pushing for minimum wage increase because they know they can take take the hit, but their smaller competitors cannot.
Preventing some forms of monetization of servers will not affect big servers with established playerbases.
These restrictions will kill smaller servers who do not have the means to break even. They will kill servers owned by people who are less fortunate, and cannot afford another expense.
These restrictions will be another hurdle which young people will have to face to host their own servers.
Sure, you will take a small amount of money out of Ascivv, Modernâs, and Bradâs pockets, but at what cost? Is it worth it?
1 Like
I think this is already answered based on what serverâs are popular. You see serverâs that have players are P2W, but you still join whether or not you intent to pay anything.
This is kind of the laissez-faire approach I have taken so far, that good servers will naturally attract players, but some amount of regulation may be necessary.
What about subscriptions?
Good question. These sorts of clarifications will be important to make in any finalized wording. I think monthly subscriptions would be fine. In the current post monthly subscriptions would quality as âpermanentâ.
5 Likes
I do agree with the point of over-sales.
Some serverâs do it too much.
But how do you define âtoo muchâ Right now many server ownerâs help others, such as in the Unturned Discord. But you add something like this, Someone gets affected and âbannedâ, then they complain âOh why was I banned when so and so does it alreadyâ Then they get banned and its just complaint on complaint, others killing others for minimal benefit.
1 Like
Should that really be done. I close all servers. I donât let a game dev tell me what I can and canât sell. Whatâs next? Do you want to determine the prices in the shop?
1 Like
Iâm worried that people will use the obvious loop holes
4 Likes
Elaboration?
4 Likes
I think:
Disallowing servers to sell straight up one-time consumable purchases like unbans, items, direct money, is pretty reasonable and not going too far, in my opinion.
Some people will and already have argued that it should go further, perhaps closer to the Minecraft EULA Restrictions, but I think itâs important to just get a start on it and see what the community does / reacts.
There are a few obvious loopholes, but some very particular wording and attention to detail could easily remove those, and like said above, this is just a start.
I donât get what you mean by your second paragraph though, some owner gets their server restricted and reports other people? If theyâre all breaking the rules, then them turning on each other and reporting each other would make the rules more equally applied, not really for minimal benefit.
I can kinda see how it could get out of hand, but that can happen with pretty much any restriction, and that argument can be applied to pretty much anything.
4 Likes
As someone who has played this game for so long now and has seen the predatory practices that some servers go to so they can squeeze as much money out of their player base as possible is downright despicable and Iâm glad itâs being addressed to a certain degree now. This was a good step forward for the future of Unturned.
8 Likes
That is how most of the server owner pay their servers.
1 Like
Sorry Nelson, I just donât see the positive benefit to any variation of this restriction.
Can you outline your thoughts on how it benefits?
I donât see how it solves a potential scamming issue, a over priced purchase, or unfair serverâs.
Unfair serverâs will exist by their design. If players donât enjoy how its unfair due to an easily found OP gun, or a easily purchased OP gun, they wonât play, and as such will find another server to join, play on, and maybe support.
1 Like