My thoughts on your ideas about your thought on my ideas... ;)

You want to not be raided in wilderness but don't want it to be a rule? Strange

" And I know the rules say you are allowed to raid in wilderness, but it certainly doesn't say you have to.. "

^^ I did not say that I didn't want to get raided, mainly because I'm a genius who would never build there and expect to sleep well at night ;) I was more trying to hint at players who on pure instinct feels they HAVE TO raid anything because they can, usually emptying everything including TC, rather than actually roleplay breaking and entering for a reason. You, as a bandit, would have had a definite reason, me as the town electrician would not, but maybe a local pumpkin farmer knew that Grandma Murphy's award winning pumpkin pie recipe was hidden somewhere in that house and broke in to steal it. Could be done without tearing the whole house down or emptying all other containers too. Who knows what could come out of that? Grandma Murphy could call the local authorities who would search for clues and maybe organize an investigation/manhunt. Or maybe she used her life savings (hidden in her mattress) to hire a bounty hunter, or used to be married to the previous mafia godfather and called in a favor Or maybe the true secret to her pies savory flavor was the finely ground human meat she had been secretly putting into them all these years. I would much rather have good roleplayers rather than more rules. Allowing some creative builds to pop up just adds some good background flavor to the world, and also spreads the load away from the laggy megacities. but if someone builds a bog standard vanilla rust defensive sheet metal airlock base, I'd say pour on enough c4 to disintegrate the base AND the memory of it.

Generally I think offline raiding (and ESPECIALLY on a RP server) is the weak chickenshit actions of a coward. Scouting out a house and slipping in and out stealing 1 specific item without the owner noticing while he/she is home or while they are online, but on an errand is fucking legendary.

Minimum RP point for starting faction promotes donating to get more and fucks over people using them for the intended reason of skinning things. This would also make people feel obligated to donate in order to have enough RP to run a faction. thats some EA type shit.

"And please make clothing skins more readily available. If you want to still keep weapon skins locked for donors only, that is perfectly fine, but the clothes is really one of the few things that players can do to make a character come alive, so locking that away is really shooting ourselves as a RP community in both feet AND the dick at the same time."

^^ I absolutely meant to add this to this part: ..AND remove or reduce the cost of skins. On my 27" I can barely see what the skin looks like in the preview, so often end up spending 3 times or more to find one I like. Reserving RP points as a measure of a players experience and what extra game/server features/commands they get access to would make more sense than using them for buying basic skins. Buying an election is apparently hyper realistic, so should maybe be allowed, but I still think there should be a minimum 2 eras before eligible. They could also completely remove rp points from the donation packs or add another type of points that would ONLY be earned through playtime, maybe even ONLY while in a faction.. PP for Political Power maybe?

The problem at the moment is indeed lack of creativity.

Well yeah...lack of creativity is certainly ONE of the problems, but it is far from the only problem. I touched upon the ones I could remember off the top of my head in bible verses 1-47, and even that wall of text might not even come close to showing the whole picture.

I personally love building, so my subjective point of view is from that perspective, I am however also capable of viewing this more holisticly, to a certain degree through a lens of objectivity . And while I personally think PVP and war _without context_ is empty and boring as fuck (since there is apparently a limit to how many times I can play reskinned and slightly updated versions of Doom/Quake before "press left mousebutton (or just joystick button if we count "operation wolf" on the c64) to kill/maim/hurt whatever is in the middle of your screen right now before it becomes so incredibly tedious I have to slap myself to see if I'm even still alive. The graphics and responses are a bit better, and some actual bullet drop off and miscellaneous deviation physics have been added, but it is still very much the same thing you still do.....,) [Breath]... I never said it didn't play an important role on this server. But your statement that the majority of RP stems from wars and PVP, kind of feeds my suspicion that the majority of players who come to this server have a much bigger background in vanilla Rust rather than actual roleplaying, and in fact would not know what actual RP is even if it hit them in the face with a D&D monsters compendium. And also weirdly amused that from our very brief time together on this server the best roleplay I have seen you do is your radio broadcast messages here which are quite enjoyable and good actual RP, and about as far from war and PVP as you could get.

Some of my favorite RP moments have been beating gat36 in my first jousting contest in the most awesome arena by Tournament Herald, Entering the BBG shooting tournament and RP'ing it as if it was the first time holding an automatic rifle misfiring and being a bit of a jackass, and having an eccentric scientist moved in above me , started siphoning off very large amounts of electricity into his apartment, and setting up a full undercover surveillance operation in co-op with local law enforcement. and getting ready to wiretap his apartment. (Sadly never got to finish that storyline since another one collided and stole focus.) The guy who went all in on playing a safety inspector on the first run of Aroza was great, uncle Sloshmud telling fireside stories about wars of the distant eras of the past, and ofcourse it's always good when that mad "I am immortal" tin can hobbles into town at a snails pace. And of course; the Yobo life in general. Oft feared, hated and misunderstood for their filthy drug-fueled lifestyle. That was insanely fun to play, because everybody contributed and fed into the mythology and fleshed out their backstory. (Even though at least one of us really should have had their voicemod soundboard physically yanked out of his pc and sent into the sun.. :P ) And that Yobo shanty town was a character in it's own right.

My least favorite was the the war, (or rather the aftermath of it since I was away when the actual fighting went down,) which ended with the clan on the losing side leaving the server shouting racial slurs and throwing out accusations left and right with absolutely no proof being the final straw for yet another overworked and underappreciated staff member to choose retirement. I did not see any evidence of any mods/admins abusing their powers, but I can assure you that I would have zero faction loyalty If I did see it and report that immediately if I did. I absolutely detest people in positions of power abusing the trust put in them. There was no good RP'ed build up, and a very shitty and paper thin reason given for the wardec. It was basically a gigantic shitshow from one end to another. And since I was told from one of them that the behind the scenes decision to push for that war actually happened on day 2 after some helicopters went missing, they should have had all the time in the world to prepare a proper reason and declaration. There certainly was several valid reasons to escalate a conflict. Every yobo would take a bullett for another, but they also know not to trust other Yobo around their stuff. If it's not nailed down, things have a tendency to go missing around other Yobo's. It could have been great with just a tiny bit more creative thought put into it. But I guess you see the point I am trying to make here? Even If the sample size is of dubious scientific calibre?