There was an era in the multiplayer survival/base building scene where violence was restricted. A Garry’s Mod Stranded server from 2009 had rules stating that you may “Only kill if you have a valid reason or purpose“, and “Don’t declare war for no reason.” If someone was trying to get into your base, you might get kicked from the server for shooting them, which would result in your base disappearing. Similarly, the Cider and DarkRP gamemodes often had server rules preventing you from shooting base invaders – one server had an auto-kick limit of 8 kills per hour, and while it allowed you to shoot a player that placed a breaching charge on your door, you weren’t allowed to actually kill them. The rules may have been enforced to protect a sense of roleplay or creativity, but these rules were often abused to murder players, with the murderer (after killing other players all day) then hiding behind the technicalities of those rules – complaining to an admin if one of their victims shot them back.

Having strict deathmatch rules didn’t guarantee to make a server’s culture better. You could join a server that had an extensive rules list, but still get routinely troubled by rich players armed with the most powerful weapons a few seconds after you spawned (while you were clearly unarmed). If the rules were written to protect roleplay, and protect a culture of building creative shops, or perhaps try to make a server more social, then the rules failed. What made a good server was it having a good playerbase. A good playerbase was attracted by a server simply having a good admin team (that could rely on sound judgement – not even needing rules). When Rust came along it managed to offer deathmatching freedom, whilst balancing the violence by making it cheaper to build bases than raid them (helped by the large maps, and the equality offered by routine server wipes) – which eliminated the need for admins to interfere with the culture (although admins were still useful for dealing with cheaters). The development of Rust over the years may have gone too far in the direction of violence though, as updates leaned towards competitive gameplay to the extent of losing much of their creative playerbase.

While only 0.3% of Rust bases were creative structures by 2023, it was still possible to do creative things in the game. Reptar proved this with buildings like his Sky Club, which are highly creative designs that promoted social gameplay – anyone caught trying to raid his “roleplay” buildings felt the wrath of the entire server. The scene has few players like Reptar; a lot of creative buildings (like art galleries) get vandalised (and it’s difficult to even build them in a violent space). But if anything, the restriction against violence had proved to make it awkward to defend your base during that prohibition era, and the popularity of equal deathmatching is evident.

For years, communities running serious roleplay servers had optimistically introduced rules and features to protect and encourage roleplay, but there were always players (and even some admins) that abused the changes. Any creative development ends up being attacked in these kind of games. The rules may have helped reduce staff burn-out, because it reduced arguments by allowing admins to just point at a rules list, but there didn’t seem to be a formula of rules and mechanics that consistently delivered a stimulating blend of creativity and competition on a server. You could copy the rules list from a popular server and paste it into another, but perhaps it’s ultimately the people, and not the rules that make a server interesting. I think all a player can do is hop around and appreciate creative effort and sportsmanship when they find it.

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