I never argued P2W caused the game to be at it’s best phase popularity wise. idk where you got that term from to begin with. i never argued that P2W = caused more popularity, rather it kept the game alive with unique plugins and content that we wouldn’t get in a anti-P2W enviourment
aka. paying a developer, prolly on ImperialPlugins, to make a few plugins for such gamemode, and maybe additionally some commissioned workshop mods. the original network you speak of is completely capable of being the P2W scum network as well. infact they’re more capable of it - they have all the money in the world to fund any gamemode they want as opposed to some random guy hosting off a optiplex in his basement
and you’ve shown that you have absolutely no idea how ImperialPlugins work.
ImperialPlugins isn’t some private entity of circlejerk developers that control supply and demand for plugins - especially since it’s public seeing as any capable developer can sell their content on IP just like amazon. developers can literally contest each other in terms of plugin value. go on their website rn, you can see some developers have higher prices which other developers provide really cheap plugins.
a lot of developers that I was familiar with in my time were university students that used their talent to literally survive. if that’s immoral to you and you suggest banishing the windows they used to make money, then maybe you’re the immoral one
also arguing IP has high prices? those prices are genuinely well priced, i’m familiar with the IP devs, some of those plugins take months to make and test and can be as low as $10 or $15 for a permanent copy that comes with free updates and support.
the uPhone plugin, which has a UI ingame, uses an mySQL table, etc, is $20 and if I had to put a finger on it I’d say it prolly took 2-3 months to make and test, additionally to update it frequently for the sake of compatibility
the commisioned workshop mods were free too? lol
and I’m not sure what the issue is? “that’s a lot of money so it’s wrong” is that what you’re saying?
also an RP server, plugins only, that makes 1.8k a month, must have plugins wayyy over the $100 budget. if not i’d laugh at anyone who paid for VIP on that server cuz I know RP servers that have over $500 on plugins alone that dont make half of that a month.
what makes you think there will be an incentive in a P2W restrictive enviourment? spending money on hosting every month, workshop mod commissions, even plugin commissions, only to not get rewarded for the time and money put into it,
again, yes, people will still “donate” but as you said, unturned is a game with a young community and it’ll remain like that for U2. the majority of these kids are using their parents money. i wouldn’t put chances on hoping that you can break even at minimum from just donations.
don’t get it twisted now – you can still host a non-P2W server and get popularity. my RP server was a #1 indie server in winter/fall 2019. i paid around $250 for plugins for it and $16 a month on rent. i initially didn’t want to monetize my server as i did it for fun and the server was popular before there was any form of donating, then i just couldn’t find paying for it equitable as I wasn’t really having fun myself and I didnt wanna constantly pay for something I didn’t play so i started monetizing it, so i didnt have to shut it down.
you don’t need big ■■■■ P2W VIP roles to make a popular server. you just need money. and you know, the easiest way to get that money for a lot of hosters is big ■■■■ P2W VIP roles. or just be me and have money cause I worked for it irl.
Again, because everyone just has a high quality hosting PC with high upload speeds and in popular areas in the world (LA, london, new york, etc) for maximum performance.
which obviously won’t be the case - the significant majority of home hosters use older generation hardware, on residental internet speeds that can barely provide acceptable upload speeds for hosting.
if your vision of U2 anti-P2W at the cost of heavily weaker community server quality is fine to you, then idk what to really say lol. community servers will be dead if they’re all 150 ping whereas official servers would be the move. only for official servers to die after 1-2 years when everyone is bored playing vanilla.
oh they are bro. just depends what you’re hosting.
they can go from only needing ~500 MB RAM (vanilla, no plugins) to nearly 5 GB on a populated RP server (aka mine, had to upgrade my system from 3 to 5 GB cause it was crashing lol)
the average residential internet plan in the US provides at best 5-10 upload speeds, as upload speed is hard af to provide to non-urban areas.
to optimally host a demanding server, that’s not gonna slide.
lol, you know im not gonna even bother disputing this one. if you want to know what wrong with it, repeat what you just said 3 times to yourself
dawg… where did you get $1.60 from? http://mzunguhosting.ml/ type beat
dude you’d rather be literally unable to play a server as opposed to playing on a server that offers a kit of some lame gear you can farm easily? hear urself out on that one, or go play the servers that charge per slot in other games and enjoy being kicked lol.
what type of razorblade do you use if they’re more expensive than your hosting machine? surely you factored in the several hundred, nearly a thousand dollars, of a hosting PC that can compete with what third party hosts provide, additionally the electricity plan and the internet package that also competes with third party hosts
or perhaps they don’t compete. but you know what rain? i’ve never seen you ever host a somewhat popular server that was ever able to compete with third party hosts, matter of fact. so it’d be realll corny if you compared your hosting machine to servers on third party hosts.
and i dont even intend on dissing what your servers provide. but i’m willing to bet money the ping sucks, the performance isn’t an optimal level and the server list ping time isn’t good (the thing that affects how quickly a server will pop up on someone’s server list when they queue a search, my home hosted servers would take half a minute to show up on them lol.)
My overall conclusion:
I want you to hear out every point you provided with yourself. your vision of a P2W-free U2 came at the costs you admitted, of lower quality hosting, less plugins, less workshop mods, etc.
you pretend that being so anti-P2W, you do it for the betterment of the game, but you’re moreso so anti-P2W because it opposes your politically fueled beliefs, and at the betterment of the game you’re willing to sacrifice literally everything that kept U3 alive for so long, just so people can’t make some lame bread over it
seeing people invest money and time to receive money back disappoints you for some reason. you should try it rain.