I have two different Steam profiles that I bounce back and forth between, and combined, I have more than 2000 hours of Rust on the books. Started in Legacy back in February of 2014, I think.

When the option is available on a modded server, why do people consistently and almost unanimously choose to /voteday? I'm not making fun, and I don't want a flamefest of responses that all essentially boil down to "just because, DUH, isn't it obvious?" Because that's what I've gotten by asking in server global chat in a small handful of modded servers that I've visited in the past month or so -- some I only visited for a few hours, some I've invested a whole wipe cycle in.

One of the single biggest and easiest to explain reasons that I prefer at least the idea*** of vanilla is that, as a survival game, it strikes me as odd that people would choose to vote away literally half the game experience.

Here's what confuses me about this. If the server is modded to begin with, why have it be a function of potentially-random chance that you MIGHT experience a single odd night-cycle in the game every few real-time hours because at some red-eye hour, enough logged-in players were afk-crafting their gunpowder / low grade fuel to have missed the timeout on the /voteday prompt? Why not instead have a server simply auto-abort night cycles entirely as a global setting, without any inputs from the players?

More core to my confusion, however, is why there is such obviously-consistent player preference to skip nighttime play opportunities? In other words, why is environmental darkness essentially relegated to either a "cost" of playing vanilla, or playing vanilla is a "cost" of playing with a full day-night cycle?

Full disclosure, I'm a fan of the Better Than Wolves mod of Minecraft, which emphasizes "hardcore" survival as a word built into the very terminology of all of the mod's changes to that game's balance. In that mod, as with here in Rust, the nighttime survival challenges are embedded as an essential and unavoidable aspect of gameplay.

I'm not suggesting that night-avoidance mods shouldn't exist, as I think it is a very good idea to be able, as a player, to have nighttime avoidance be a potentially valid gameplay option when browsing for servers, or even when deciding to host one of your own. I get that nighttime in Rust does indeed present some annoyances, and I will admit that roughly 5% of the time, if I'm on a low-pop survival server or on pretty much any creative server trying stuff out, I'll break down and /voteday just out of annoyance at not having packed a flashlight on my weapon. Note, I've never chosen to avoid nightfall on battlefield servers, because why go on a battlefield server if not to practice and perfect the skills and tactics of PvP Rust, and nighttime is a valid aspect of that practice and learning.

Indeed, two years ago this time (back in the glory days of pre-frag BP system, where you had to craft tons of paper to research, and wood-slave hotels were a thing that could allow solos and small 2-5 player groups to actually be viable on mainline zerg-fest servers) I admit that on coordinated raids between three or more friendly or allied groups, I'd have my Windows display settings control up on a side monitor so I could slam the gamma settings up and generate night vision for myself. But Facepunch is rather conspicuously preventing that from being a thing, so it is quite obvious to be that nighttime visibility is both a tactical and a strategic consideration that they are trying to craft into the Rust experience. Frankly, I'd care to see more of this expanded upon, perhaps once Rust leaves alpha and enters beta: nightvision equipment being craftable or upgradeable / infrared strobe grenades / auto-homing weapons that are designed to home in on a laser-sighted target beacon / etc. I suppose if we ever get driveable or flyable vehicles, those onboard vehicle packages could potentially contemplate vehicle-mounted sensor equipment for high-tier or long-wipe server contexts.

This is especially tantalizing, given Garry's thoughtmap from yesteryear where we've been teased with notions of inter-server play, watercraft, or even servers with specialized ecology / economy (some servers might be very rich in metal and poor in wood, or very productive for oiljacks and quarries but almost devoid of native vegetation and wildlife, necessitating inter-server trading and economies.) If I have some sort of driveable rowboat / canoe / speedboat / drug smuggler's submarine loaded to the hilt with a million metal frags headed for a clan-base buyer on another server with poor metal but high in, for example, loot barrels and components... you bet your damn ass that I'm going to do my best to make sure that my shipment is at the most vulnerable chokepoints only during cover of night, and preferably during adverse dynamic weather influences like fog and preferably high winds that alter bullet trajectories and driving blizzard and snow to increase HP penalties and increase the durability lossrates on weapons and armor and equipment. In such a scenario with high winds and projectile firearms not entirely viable (or at least not tactically predictable beyond spray-and-intimidate levels of inaccurate) the convoy-poaching possibilities would likely focus on things like intelligence tips, playing seamines / landmines, inside-man betrayal scenarios, poisoning someone's food to cause them to be low hp and die at the helm of the transport vessel with no sleeping bag on the same server, or sabotaging the equipment needed at the receiving end.

***I said that I prefer "at least the idea of vanilla." What I mean by that is that vanilla servers are more starkly divided into two distinct camps, and at least modded servers have more likelihood of a sweetspot middle in between. The first type is an extinct server with rarely more than 2-5 players online at the same time, which is no fun because this is Rust. The second, and more nuanced category is the mainline high-pop servers that always devolve into ZvZ clanwar arenas. While the second has more potential to be fun once you have a bag / bow / shitshack to show for yourself, good luck navigating the smell of KOS in the air scrounging for whatever wild hemp has respawned since the last clan-driven slave team passed through scouring an area long enough to manage both a bow and a bag at the same time and in the same location. Between that and my general longing for the sweet days ahead when I hope against hope that we'll experience a divine hybrid of BP and component systems on mainline servers that have viable performance for wipe cycles of multiple weeks being a thing, this past month or so has be jaded on vanilla for the time being.

tldr; I play a lot of strategy games like Risk, StarCraft, Civ, Total War, etc, and pitch-black first person pvp survival with meta-tactical possibilities is something that no other game (even that Minecraft mod I mentioned) has yet delivered in current-generation high-graphics simulations and gaming. Rust comes the closest.

Am I really the only person who likes the potential gameplay implications of that? Because the meta cannot fully form if people keep literally turning off the "hard" setting to keep playing first-person Sims in their bases.