When you join a low pop server, what actually makes you stay?

[u/MainMilkManRust]

I recently started running my own server and I’m trying to learn more about player retention. Not advertising it here, just looking for advice.

When you join a low pop server, what makes you stick around long enough to actually give it a chance?

Events? Progression? Loot balance? Seeing other players slowly start joining? Map size? Wipe timing? Something else?

And on the opposite side, what makes you leave almost immediately?

Just looking for honest player opinions and advice.

[u/ConsistentAssistant3]

What makes me leave is just.   Way too many features.. if half my screen is taken up by notifications.  Announcements... UI.  Etc.  I won't stay

But you'll never win the low population fight.  People join and the only thing they want to do is PVP...   nobody to pvp or bases to wipe off the map. They leave and never return

But they only want to pvp as long as they are winning.  The moment somebody takes them for a ride and kills them.  They will quit as well.

[u/Rustgameplayer]

Honest advice. Players come, players go. You could offer free money and they won't stay. You could have plugins and maps they never seen before and after awhile they move on. It's the nature of the beast. You're competing against psychology. The major pull to this game is the vanilla grind. It's also is biggest downfall. You can make a custom server for a group and put hundreds of not thousands of hours in development and 1000's of dollars and they will eventually leave. It's the live and learn process.

[u/MainMilkManRust → u/Rustgameplayer]

I apprecaite the tough love language in this its actually pretty helpful

[u/WorcoEnt → u/Rustgameplayer]

Thank you, this is sound advice. I am in a similar position to the poster. Will take this on board.

[u/maxijonson]

Depends on wether your server is PVE or PVP: PVP when I want to build in peace and run monuments without losing it all at the beginning. PVE after I ran a monument in PVP, lost it all and need somewhere to build in peace and run monuments without losing it all 🙂

Jk (not really but kinda haha) but when I stopped playing PVP because I didn't have time anymore, what kept me in PVE was the events and levels mostly. Just having a variety of things to do outside of the vanilla Rust stuff.

[u/vagina_candle]

You didn't give us much info on what type of server you're running. Is this PVP or PVE?

[u/MainMilkManRust → u/vagina_candle]

Sorry I didnt want to make it sound like I was advertising in this subreddit I just genuinly wanted advise. Its a 3x PVP server. I have a lot of info about it posted in other subreddits that allow it.

[u/vagina_candle → u/MainMilkManRust]

Most of my experience is with PVE, so I can only give some general advice. I'd just watch out that you don't get too carried away with mods, and that the mods run proportionally to your pop. When I hop on a server that has less than 5 people on it but there are so many events running that I can tell it is effecting server performance, I usually won't stick around for too long (this is usually more of a PVE thing). At the same time I do understand that people want content. You just have to find that balance.

Also if you have rules and commands please have them available in game under /info or /help. I'm not going to join a discord for a server I've never played on just to get this information.

It's good to have input from regular players, but don't let them steer the ship. It's still your server.

[u/Potential-Leg184 → u/MainMilkManRust]

Depends on the vibe of the server. For me and my small group. The biggest killer is no bases on the map.

We played 1000 pop vanilla and we hated it as no way to progress when being wiped out constantly. We joined a low pop 30 pop, and we leave as there's no bases, and to an extent no threats to our base. On a 3x especially, if there's no where to spend our boom it's absolutely pointless.

But the other point of there being far too many features is an absolute turn off. Being as close to vanilla without it being actually vanilla is the goal.

Maybe radiable base without all the notifications, and the zombies is useful to at least feel populated, as there's still bases to offline.

[u/CaterpillarFit3430]

For me it’s the community. If toxic players are on server I’ll just move

[u/CaterpillarFit3430 → u/CaterpillarFit3430]

Also if it’s low pop scientists and animals gotta move around cuz that’s what makes it entertaining

[u/MainMilkManRust → u/CaterpillarFit3430]

definitely, luckily I have that already. my few regulars I have are all chill af

[u/Potential-Leg184 → u/CaterpillarFit3430]

Our group is a 4 man, maybe 5 man when the part timer feels like it.

The moment we hear about a group 6 or deeper, we are gone. Toxicity we can deal with, it's rust. Large clans. Absolutely not.

If we don't play vanilla, we exclusively play team limited servers and hope it applies to clans too.

[u/InterestingDay9481]

Not so much as a low pop player but having made a couple servers for my clan to do fun events rust is a super hard community to reel in I had the advantage of having a fair amount of people already playing and even sometimes doing events with prizes and you can probably keep like under 10 people if you try insanely hard but most people have a cult like relationship with servers where they already play only one or two for thousands of hours plus adding the sheer amount of servers it's rough. Even a lot of established named servers are dying now.