Community Poll - Enabling Upkeep for Pure

[Sugar Daddy]

14 hours ago, RKF1 said:

Big builds have lots of entities and create lag. Lasers and wind turbines don't cause lag on their own, it's all about how many items you have. Like 24 large planters full of plants for example, with lights, and sprinklers, water catchers, that is a ton of entities, just with farming. Then you add a place for friends...who have their own builds.... and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger. If they decide to add upkeep, then you either build smaller or become a farmer of metal and rock. I think it's a great change. Vip, the store, and the perks that go with it are just a way to support the server, I don't see a problem with that. But the random player should come in to a full true Rust experience with the exception of pvp and building damage off. This is of course my opinion.

Some of us don't enjoy the toxic antagonistic "true Rust experience" which is why they've come to this server. There's nothing wrong with building community areas so new people can LEARN how to take Brad and Karen instead of hiding from them. I for one love teaching noobs how to fight the big guys and the new fighters are so grateful to learn.. People have their own way of playing on this server and to force one to become a farmer of metal and rock shouldn't be one of them, IMO. And I completely disagree that lots of turbines combined with lasers and music don't cause lag. 

[Sentinell]

As someone who has put in a staggering amount of hours of gameplay on US Pure and EU Pure, I've long considered that adding decay would be beneficial to the server, even before the pipes. Now that we have industrial automation, I think those who are able to handle the basics of it will hardly see a change. I build some pretty large bases from time to time, and I've had the chance to sample (current) Scourge decay on my long vacation there as of recently. I've also built one or two mega structures on Elysium in the early wipes on that server (my much loved HQM tower on the ice lake the very first wipe). Even for bases of the size I build, I can with four or five ore teas spend three hours *total* farming materials to keep the TC filled. That's at least true for the 25x7 adobe factory I built for my friends and team this wipe. Granted, I've built larger, but I think the big issue with no decay is that building mega size doesn't require much of an investment. Thus, we see lone twig foundations polluting the wilderness, mega twig towers that are immediately abandoned racking up minicopter kills on the daily, and various other general eyesores. I know that decay will force some people to learn a bit more electrics and industrialization than they would like, but in my experience sampling decay servers it hasn't slowed me down too much. Forcing mega builds to have a modest time investment to not be temporary does not seem like a big ask, and while I think for some people there will be growing pains, it will help stimulate community interaction and trade which for me has always been the big appeal of RustEZ servers and especially Pure.

[Deathmated]

On 5/30/2023 at 6:03 PM, Net-Viper X said:

I run a very large vendor mall and that is my main focus and enjoyment when playing. This requires a large base to house all the storage for materials, the pumpjack, farms, refineries and all that. The grind to sustain this is massive already, having to add another grind just to keep my base from vanishing would be a huge blow to my enjoyment and likely be the end of The Viper Pit vendor mall.

The decay can be 200 percent more than normal and you will be fine Viper. I play on other servers where decay is normal. 24k metal shards, or 5k to 8k HQM a day is easy to come by on RUSTEZ, and on other servers where decay is normal. I build 21 by 20 massive buildings with 420 vending machines and I can keep up the decay by myself. That is why I think it is pointless to discuss it at all unless advanced changes are made overall.

Edited June 1, 2023 by Deathmated

[BigDave]

Perhaps the best thing could be to just run a trial wipe or two with a small decay amount (maybe 50% for 1 wipe and then same as Scourge for the next) and then get feedback prior to anything more permanent?

The feedback Death gets would then be based on direct experiences rather than speculation or extrapolated  experiences from other servers.

[NonZero]

Hello Hello,

Well here are my thoughts about enable decay:
Pros:
- people will play more till the end of the wipe because they need to take care to get the mats for their bases not to be destroyed.

Contras:
- players will start building big farms and due to the industrial update also massive machines to refill the TC and handle the decay. That imo will lead to more lagg than we have now.
- due to the industrial update it won't change the fact that players will still build big bases because with it you basically can outsmart the upkeep like there is none. So big bases + big farms/machines for upkeep = more lagg
- it will cut the creativity of the players that love to build (like I am) and some with focus on building will eventually leave servers they loved
- there will be a huge gap between players that can play a lot (because they have the time) and players that won't be able to play a lot (work, reallife and so on and so on). If you work 40 h a week you won't be able to have big bases anymore because all you will do in your short time you have to play is handle the decay. 
- you might loose a lot of players if you activate the upkeep because a lot of them I know are on the server because there is none.

I play on EU:Pure and for me its about the abbility to build farms, to grind the hqm and cloth game and to have fun with players. When my base once is set I love to be able to just enjoy the game. Do monuments, kill Helicopter and Bradley and just have a blast.
As you can tell by the points that I put down (the important ones, there are more but I want to keep it "short") its a big fat NO for me for enable upkeep!

Cheers, NonZero

[Luke02]

I was gonna simply vote no and ignore the thread.  Then I read the opinions.

There are great reasons to implement upkeep.  I hate the mega twig structures a football field wide that touches the stars.  Those are low effort big builds, and they're an annoyance, and an eyesore.

However, there is truly amazing creativity at play on our server also that you otherwise wouldn't see with upkeep enabled.

The Viperpit being one of many, too many to name...  Okay Brad's house is pretty effin' dope this wipe too but moving on.

I was gonna say a lot... like a wall of text but I'll just leave it this simple:

In my opinion as far as the PURE VANILLA experiences go these are the worst:

1. Building ultra efficient and climbing over everything you own with furnaces for floors, bags in doorways, picking up your repair benches and research tables and putting them in boxes when not in use, etc... I've built many an efficient base, and while it has a certain creativity of its own it isn't pleasant to the eye or really very fun.

2. Upkeep is a chore and it just isn't fun.

I returned to this game after many years off and tried a lot of different "pve" servers.  You know... teleport, and kits, and blah bla blah, but for me this one got it juuuust right.  Like that sweet spot.  Hell I even started spending money on the game again, skins and such, and, on the server as well just because I enjoyed it so much.

Not an easy fix, I don't envy the folks making the decision here.

- Kill for Khorne

[Brictoria]

I'd love it if there was some middle ground (Having built some sizable community structures and towns in the past [1])...

Upkeep required for Twig:

• Cuts down on the foundations people dump and leave all over the map (to avoid animals, or planning a build that they decide they no longer want to complete but won't tidy up) and means staff aren't needed to remove them, as they'll naturally decay and disappear.
• Encourages people to upgrade their builds, rather than littering the servers with huge twig monstrosities.

 

No Upkeep for other materials:

• Allows for creative builds, and encourages people to put more effort into their builds.

 

This way those who want to make something large or fancy know they can do so, but that they still need to put the effort into finding a sizeable amount of resources as well, not just the tiny amoount required for twig.

 

[1] This was from a publicly accessible castle I built (including furnished houses\shops and dungeon\labyrinth) a year or so back, which would never have been possible with upkeep enabled (It didn't have any noticable frame-rate or other impact for players, either):

 

[GoSlow]

I vote yes, today I happened across a "Base" presumably belonging to a team as there were multiple bags on the floor through the window. it was 18 squares in length and 7 squares in width, not too bad I hear some say however on the other bank of the river this monstrosity was upon had been placed numerous TC's to obviously stop any further land development.

Just my opinion and not always liked.

[InfernalJustice]

So, I know I'm late to the party, largely because I have for the most part abandoned Pure for a number of reasons.  I still care about the server, and I would love to come back more regularly if the server gets back to its roots (at least from what I understand its roots). 

I guess I would reframe this whole discussion around the idea that Pure has an identity crisis.  This is the description that brought me to Pure: "Pure is a well-balanced, high-performance vanilla server that offers players a pure experience so they can play the game as it's meant to be played without the fear of other players." 

Pure no longer lives up to the above description.  It isn't a well-balanced vanilla server.  It is a server that caters to builders.  From what I've seen in the forum and game chat the most contentious disputes are ones that are driven from builds.  Builds being too big.  Builds having to many entities.  Builds that have windmills.  Builds that have too many lasers.  Builds that are too close.  And on and on.  This must drive admin crazy.

And I give Death a lot of credit for bringing this up as it ultimately hits on the ideas of: Who is the server's audience? And how does server ownership and admin reinforce that message through game play?

To be transparent I voted for upkeep.  Frankly because I don't play Rust to build large, complicated builds.  I don't need to build large landing pads, or vendor malls, or multiple Karen towers.  I don't play rust to gather all the resources I possibly can in a month.  I played on Pure and I continue to play Rust for the challenge of a survival game without any or extremely limited PVP.  For the record my play style isn't better or worse than anyone else's and I don't fault builders for wanting to do what they do, but in the end Pure really isn't Pure anymore.  It is a builder's paradise.  One where they can do multiple builds.  Build as large as they want without really many if any mechanical consequences.  If that is what Death wants to do, then I encourage embracing it.  However, if that is not the correct direction, then some rebalancing needs to occur.  No matter what direction I wish Pure the best.  

[throbbing_moist]

if upkeep is enabled, i'd prefer if it was very low

[Death]

Just now, throbbing_moist said:

if upkeep is enabled, i'd prefer if it was very low

The rate will be less than vanilla and adjusted as needed.

[Megalodon]

Absolutely.     

    

Barring no killing and raiding, everything should be as close to Vanilla as possible.

People complaining they don't want to farm for upkeep are the same people building 20x20 monoliths that tank the server while locking off a whole grid with TCs on twig that they never have to worry about again.

I say good riddance, server will be much better if this change goes through.

[deltawerker]

My two eurocents:

Rust is a tough game, until you take PvP out, then it becomes a totally different and quite an easy one. As a result people get bored. This boredom flows into two things; people leaving without actually playing the whole wipe, or they find something to do. We give ourself a challenge or we are able to just enjoy the time while using the game without any clear goals. Not many people are able to do the last, in all honosty, most of us get bored if we progres through the game naturally. With a team you can "complete your wipe" in one or two days. So "the game" (read developers , or @death and co) have no choice but give us something to do. Or things get out of hand, without need, just because it can.

Resources are very easy to find, there is no pvp and there are public and instanced (for your convenience) pumpjack ánd quarries. There is no real resource sinkhole other then the bases we build and the odd fireworkshow. After a week you see markets overflow, inflation (scrap devalue rapitly). All signs of gameplay out of balance. This indirectly results in a unhappy community and a lot of work for the team.

I think its wise of Death to adress this matter. Althoug Decay will only partly solve this issue it will at least make it a bit more engaging and get some resouces flowing somewhere.

Keeping in mind there are two types of players, the casual and more dedicated type: Once you are setup and have the quarries running, its easy and decay will make almost no impact on your game, unless you go absolutely bonkers on a build, but even then a small team can maintain that easally. If you are alone and play casual in a smalll base there is no issue either. you dont have to go HQM, you can go for wood, just as safe with dmg off. Its oke to make an effort to build something to experience end game content (fighting a heli from a HQM tower).

All in all it is the casual player alone in a big base that will get hit hardest, and that is what we want. It has to hurt somewhere.

What makes Pure perfect in relation to the other servers is two things imho: the community and the inconvenience. The last might seem strange, if you play EU pure you will know what i meen with the first. There is  reason for the community being stronger: we need eachother more. There is no revive (people help out with guarding bodies, replenish lost resources , team up because the dont want to die etc etc.) Also bases are less secure, boxes need locking, tc can be stolen when unlocked (people advise eachother, help out building, warn and keep an eye out for eachothers bases). My point is , if it gets more inconvenient, we need eachother more and we have another common enemy: Decay, and we will solve it like we solve everything. Hardship and challenge (within limits) creates community if maneged well, and this community manages itself quite well already and admins do the rest.

There is one real downside to decay: the decaying. Everything has to connect in the right way or it will go, this meens you are less flexible in building and you run into more problems with overlapping TC's and building on cliffs and slopes (it will show as connectedd but will not repair). I doubt though many people run into this cause a normal flat buid wont show this issue. It is just something to take into account while building, making it harder and as a result more challenging (not necc a bad thing).

I would opt for returning everything back to vanilla gradually including decay, remove quarries (or have them run on diesel), remove custom monuments with to much loot (and also, while we are at it, to remove techtrees as well as outpost ánd banditcamp, by that ; creating a serious player market (impopular  opinion, i know).

Everything that adds to building a community and making the game more of an experience gets my vote.

 

 

Edited June 14, 2023 by deltawerker

[Celsus]

1 hour ago, Death said:

The rate [will be] less than vanilla and adjusted as needed.

¯\ (ツ)/¯

[DeRoo]

I have no idea how much control over all the variables you guys have while running an "un-modded" server, I can only tell you what I've seen over the years.

Personal pumpjacks are nice, but when I buy one I rarely leave my base to do anything besides filling/emptying quarries and processing ore/making fireworks. They equate to infinite resources so it's extremely easy to make a huge base in the first week, get bored and end up logging on just to keep it from disappearing.

This month I decided to play without buying one and ended up running roads and a monument for the first time in probably over a year. With a pumpjack I'd just sell HQM and buy whatever I needed, now it's taking me longer to build everything and encouraging me to get out of my base more and set up vending machines again (being short on scrap all the time). I also can't build as fast cause I can't fill up Stone and HQM quarries in the first 2 days.

I can see from flying around that Pumpjacks sell pretty well, but they seem to contribute to a lot of the larger problems on the performance side. Not being able to look into all the large bases I can't be 100% sure, but I'd guess a lot of it is furnaces and planters for making tea. Everyone wants pure teas, so making it less resource intensive to get them may help (fewer planters, composters, etc), if you even have control over that. Also, I like the idea of a limited number of TCs which combines well with the bag limit. You have to be more thoughtful about placing them. Player placed items/building decaying when not under a TC seems like a good idea too.

I'm sure you guys could come up with something to replace Pumpjacks in the store, maybe just encouraging subscriptions. If the server is more lively later into wipe, people might buy other things more often. I hope everyone will keep in mind that running these servers isn't free, we all have to contribute a bit to make sure they're here when we want to try out our ideas or new features. 

For me, if upkeep is enabled, I lose half of what draws me to this server, the No Upkeep. Some weeks I'm too busy to spend a lot of time farming, but I still play here cause I know my base will be there when I have time as long as I drop in now and then.

Again, I don't know the numbers behind the scenes or how much control you guys have over how the game works on this server and still counting as "Vanilla," this is just from my observations over the last few years playing here.

[XtremXe Steel]

I think if there is a way to reduce upkeep and decay for upgraded walls, that would be much appreciated.
Twig can go out as 2x speed + 2x upkeep.
Wood can be normal.
Stone being -2x speed + -2x upkeep.
Sheet metal -5x speed + -5x upkeep. 
HQM -10x speed + -10x upkeep. 

Whenever I play, I upgrade my base to Sheetmetal and HQM but keeping my huge HQM base topped off with that much upkeep would be a pain

The main problem is the twig laggy bases that no one uses after a day or 2. 

Edited June 15, 2023 by XtremXe Steel

[WooKiE_MaN]

Is there a way to place entity limits? Eg small furnaces max per player is 20, large furnaces 20, wind turbines 10 etc. ? Would this increase server efficiently and decrease lag? 
 

[Celsus]

Large corporations will often do something that makes no sense: Lobby government to apply more regulation in their industry. This only doesn't make sense until you realize that more regulation is something a large corporation can easily deal with, and pay for, while it squeezes small and medium sized businesses out of the market entirely. It's a legal way to get around monopoly laws.

Similarly, advocating for upkeep on a server when you have no issue running multiple quarries or lots of free time to mine resources for hours nets the benefit of having less competition for building spots and less lag from large structures. But it sqeezes out players with less time to gather resources and disincentivizes participation on the server.

Scourge is the only server that has upkeep enabled and it is by far the most laggy of the three, and has the most large structures. Implementing upkeep on Pure doesn't seem like it would do much to reduce lag in the first place, and would only achieve a lower user participation on the server.

[Brictoria]

On 6/14/2023 at 11:22 AM, deltawerker said:

I would opt for returning everything back to vanilla gradually including <...> remove custom monuments with to much loot (and also, while we are at it, to remove techtrees <...>, by that ; creating a serious player market (impopular  opinion, i know).

Everything that adds to building a community and making the game more of an experience gets my vote.

I'd say that the "techtree" is the biggest impediment to the "Pure" servers - Where once people were forced to find the items they wanted\needed for a build, which forced people to either explore the map searching for them, or to trade among themselves for the needed things (often congregating into small communities), now it's simply a "grab the scrap" game, encouraging the inconsideate act (quite common on AU) of people taking the scrap from loot containers and leaving everything else in them rather than taking other items\dropping them on ground to "despawn" the container. This "scrap hunt" also means that after a few days, people can have the tech tree researched, removing a large part of the game (exploring and searching for items) leaving only building bases or running monuments, causing player count to drop off as the wipe progresses.

 

I'd also sugest that removing the "drone delivery" (and minicopters\large helicopters) would be a great move as well, as it would force people to make the decision to either build a "community" with\near others to work together, or to have to make a significant effort to get access to things others are offerring. It would also prevent instances of people being able to quickly jump directly from monument to monument and force a "time delay" between monuments (with associated risks from animals that are otherwise not present to those flying\using drones) as well as stopping people "escorting" the chinook between monuments, racing ahead to be "first" for crate if it drops... It can become very frustrating when you build a base near a monument, and every time you run to it, you see minicopters fly to\from the monument and the "puzzle" started\containers all looted when you arrive there shortly after, or see the same names popping up to say they are "hacking the crate" as soon as it drops and a minute or so later a minicopter flies off from there... or minicopters flying in to grab the random airdrops before players can run to them.

 

Regarding upkeep, it would be nice if it could be calculated based upon the number of TC's a player is "auth'ed" on, so a player with a single TC doesn't have upkeep, but every additional TC adds 25% (for example), so a player with 2 TC's\bases pays 25% of the "vanilla" upkeep on each of their TC's, while a player with 4 (or more) has to pay full upkeep - Even perhaps allowing the ability to extend above the "100%" to deter multiple bases around the map. Anything not connected to an "auth'ed" TC should decay at the vanilla "twig" decay rate to prevent people placing and upgrading structures without a TC to avoid having to pay for upkeep.

[Paigemaster]

What if similar to WoW, there was a Rust Classic server? With less of the quality of life things that make wipes progress wayyy to quickly.  All the newer things are cool, but definitely ruined the community aspect of trading, socializing, etc.

[Death]

One final argument on this topic as the poll wraps up, I see a lot of players exaggerate the implication of upkeep, implying it would add too much tedium. Even with vanilla upkeep, you can cover an entire wipe with less than a day of farming.

Another argument is players unable to build large community centers. I disagree. If it's community-oriented, you can utilize drop boxes to receive donations from players who utilize your space. You should have no problem covering upkeep on a large community center when you've got several players contributing.

The key takeaway from upkeep would be the elimination of random empty bases, randomly placed foundations deployable throughout the map, and the natural limit to the player's ability to build outside of their means. I understand a lot of people play this way, but in this case, you'd either need to put in an effort to maintain your large base or try a more creative-oriented server.

 

So consider your vote and ask yourself if adding a couple of days of farming to cover upkeep is worth the elimination of thousands of useless entities and abandoned bases cluttering the map. Also, for our more survival-oriented players, the lack of massive buildings tanking their fps as they go around the map.

It's important to understand that if you're on the fence about this change, this is something that can easily be retracted if it has adverse effects on the server. So if you're learning over, I'd recommend giving it a chance vs. playing it safe.

[Darylarn]

Not a fan of upkeep. Was one of the first mods I used on my server. I am getting larger in my builds and if out of a 5 hour session I need to farm for 1 - 2 hours just to upkeep the base, I think I would lose interest. Farming because I want to, not because I have to. I can work with either, so, meh.

 

[Legion]

I can see the benefit of not having upkeep for huge structures, but the way I see it, rust has an upkeep system for the very reason that if you're building something huge and it's costing you way more than you can afford, maybe you should look into shrinking down or redesigning the structure for less upkeep. I have seen some very crazy builds in rust with very low upkeep by just having some high-quality metal, some metal, and the rest stone. So when it comes to feeling like you're now on a farming simulator, try redesigning the base, seeing if using the different build stages helps with material cost per hour, and looking at it as a challenge to yourself to come up with something cool and unique. All in all just give it a chance before denying it if a majority hate it later then maybe have a re-vote to remove it agian

Edited July 1, 2023 by Legion

[Postanou]

What ever happened to the plan on splitting Pure into 2 servers? ie. the plan to have a server that is the same as Pure is today, and a completely vanilla one? Then you can keep Pure with no upkeep and the vanilla one with. That way players can choose which they prefer.

[Death]

6 hours ago, Darylarn said:

Not a fan of upkeep. Was one of the first mods I used on my server. I am getting larger in my builds and if out of a 5 hour session I need to farm for 1 - 2 hours just to upkeep the base, I think I would lose interest. Farming because I want to, not because I have to. I can work with either, so, meh.

If you need to farm 2 hours per day to upkeep your base, you may be the problem