InfernalJustice

Okay getting back on topic. There are three reasons why a true Vanilla PVE Experience would be good for Death and EZ as a whole. 1) A Pure Vanilla version is significantly different than what is currently offered on the EZ other servers and positions you in a different category when creating a unique identity from other people hosting Rust servers. If people want a more protected version of Rust, you have other servers that can offer that currently. In other words, EZ's offerings only provide small variations in their servers. Going full Vanilla would separate it from its competitors and provide a truly different experience. This means bring back standard Decay. Allow for people to trespass and steal. Keep the no PVE damage to players and builds. 2) Mods could spend their time onboarding new players as opposed to policing stolen goods. They could get out of policing and focus on the service side of their volunteer jobs. This would allow them to get to know everyone on the server by explaining how Rust is designed. As a new player I had no idea what a monument was, or how puzzles were solved. It would have been really helpful to have a Mod help with this as opposed to the policing role they have right now. 3) My final point is focused on game design. I have been an avid gamer of all types of games (PC, Board, and Card) for decades and I've learned that every game has an underlying element that makes it entertaining and engaging. Rust at its core is a game designed on Risk and Reward. In PVP the Risk and Reward is often time dictated by your ability in PVP combat. Can I farm one more node or tree without getting killed by another player? Or when you hear footsteps in a monument do you stay or run? In PVE, there is very little Risk when you remove decay. When you remove theft. When you provide a ton of thank you gifts. When you allow Mods to come help players with their builds. When you have free resources in a Rec Center. Risk is the driving element in a Survival Game and Rust is a Survival Game. Pure has no Risk which is why people constantly farm, Monuments, Brad, Karen and/or Oil. It is the only place you can get a little Risk and after doing it a couple of times even that loses its luster and people will stop playing. Bringing back decay means there is now a risk to building to big or upgrading. Bringing back trespassing and theft means I have to think about what I'm doing instead of just gunning into a guarded monument or leaving something unlocked. Conclusion: At the end of the day Pure offers little long-term engaging gameplay because there is little to no risk. It provides a horrible entry point to Rust because it fails to reinforce the key element of the game Risk. Mods have been forced into a policing entity focusing on limiting risk instead of focusing on onboarding new players. These decisions have resulted in Pure being indistinguishable from other PVE servers and even other EZ servers.

Look up the Pepe meme. Whether it is reflective of your treatment or beliefs, I do not know. I have no experience with you at all. That being said you are using iconography that has been identified by the Anti-Defamation League as a Hate Symbol. Nothing personal about it just the facts. ADL Adds “Pepe the Frog” Meme, Used by Anti-Semites and Racists, to Online Hate Symbols Database | ADL I don't think it is reflective of what Death or Facepunch would want to be associated with. Also, just because you were using it before doesn't mean you shouldn't change it. The Swastika was used before the Nazis used it, but I don't think it would be okay for you to use that either.

Yeah, it is sort of ironic that the staff of EZ is using the terms "integrity and community" while also using a profile picture includes an alt-right symbol.

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.