So you want more players on your Unturned server? Don't we all...
In this article I will be covering some useful tips and tricks that range from getting your first few players all the way to growing your server network to as big as possible. All the information from this article is purely from our own personal experience and should just be used as a guide to get your server off the ground. Without further ado, lets get into the important stuff!
Make Sure Your Server Is Public
One of the very first things to do before you even worry about getting players is to make sure people can even find your server. An important (but often forgotten) step is making sure your server has a login token setup. Follow this guide here to setup your login token and make your server show publicly on the internet list. Once that is all setup double check that your server actually shows by searching for it on the internet list. Sometimes a broken plugin could cause it to not show up on the list which would be the reason why you are struggling to get players. Once you have confirmed that it is actually visible to everyone then you can move onto the next steps in this article.
Calm Down On The Mods
Mods are cool, everyone loves some crazy vehicles or modded guns, but sadly they are a major reason as to why your server might not be as popular as you might like. Workshop mods take up a lot of space and thus need to be downloaded by the client when they try join your server for the first time. Unturned has quite slow load times at the best of times, adding a large amount of workshop mods can deter new players from waiting through the long load time, especially if they have a slow internet connection. As a general rule of thumb, try and keep your workshop mods to a minimum filesize in total in order to reduce the average amount of time it takes a new user to join your server. One of the most important goals is to just get people in your server, once they are in-game you can grow your server much quicker.
Vanilla Maps = Players
If you are an experienced Unturned player I am sure you are sick of seeing the cities of Washington or the mountains of Russia. Sadly, there is a reason almost all popular servers run on vanilla maps... People like them! This tip should be taken with a grain of salt as there is often exceptions to this rule, such as curated maps or popular workshop maps that can bring in a lot of players while they are trendy. If you want to play on the safe side then it is almost always Washington that will bring the most players into your server. Once you have a decent sized playerbase feel free to experiment with custom maps or other maps but generally newer players will always search by vanilla maps on the server list and thus vanilla map servers are going to get that extra advantage in the player department.
Get On!
Grab a handful of friends and get on your own server. This is probably one of the most important things to get your server off the ground. Nobody joins empty servers so you need to be on before anyone else will start to join. Sometimes you can even just sit on your server and wait for people to join. As people join make sure to greet them and treat them well. If they enjoy your server and feel welcomed they are more likely to stay or even invite their friends. After you get the first few players on your server it will start to snowball and you should slowly see your server grow day by day.
Patience Is Key
Build the server you would play on and continue to slowly improve it but don't feel discouraged if you do not have hundreds of players right away. Everything great takes time, as long as you are putting in the effort and having fun along the way you will slowly build an audience. It has taken months before some of the biggest servers got off the ground. Don't feel pressured to quit if you haven't had any players yet. Keep making a server you enjoy playing on and you will be surprised at how quickly others start to join your server.
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