My beloved TOPS, a question to the community

[Pascaloubicou]

1 hour ago, Brian Lemans said:

Yeah, I agree, also, instead of finding another server, we have so many choices of so many other games…but I’d rather be here.

It’s a blessing and a curse, growing a business.

Well i need to report that today the experience was very good, rc8 fixed a lot of things i feel like, no crashes, queue is crazy in the afternoon but manageable in the morning for Europe. Even now i checked and it was 60 plp so that ok. But yes VS is to good just to good i have been playing solo en multiplayer if one of the two bother me i just switch and the experience is immaculate 

[Makeshift]

I went looking for a server with a few things in mind:

- Vanilla, or almost vanilla. Small things like CarryOn would be fine
- Rare resets. I want a server that won't reset the map every (IRL) year or more. 
- A decent size player base. Despite wanting to be a hermit, I enjoy occasional company, reading what's going on in chat when I'm doing mundane things, and sightseeing what others have done. This is easier with a sizeable player base.
- Lax rules. I don't want to be forced into any certain gameplay style. 

TOPS just happens to hit all of these almost perfectly. And from what I've seen in my limited time here, the mods are mostly pretty cool and they actually have been taking feedback. I enjoy it so far. Queue and all. 

[Ultum]

22 hours ago, Makeshift said:

I went looking for a server with a few things in mind:

- Vanilla, or almost vanilla. Small things like CarryOn would be fine
- Rare resets. I want a server that won't reset the map every (IRL) year or more. 
- A decent size player base. Despite wanting to be a hermit, I enjoy occasional company, reading what's going on in chat when I'm doing mundane things, and sightseeing what others have done. This is easier with a sizeable player base.
- Lax rules. I don't want to be forced into any certain gameplay style. 

TOPS just happens to hit all of these almost perfectly. And from what I've seen in my limited time here, the mods are mostly pretty cool and they actually have been taking feedback. I enjoy it so far. Queue and all. 

This 100%

[Devkrin]

I warned people of this when they were crying for a queue for the official server of TOPS in the Discord and was STRONGLY against it but was completely ignored.

Previously, all you had to do was click the server for 5 minutes and you'd be able to play.

You have what you wanted now.

Enjoy waiting for hours.

I saw this coming from miles away.

[Zaph42nd]

On 4/5/2026 at 9:50 AM, Ultum said:

First off, I enjoy this game, respect the developers, and have played 100s of hours, and am writing this in the hopes of a healthy discussion.  I am concerned the TOPS server is a bad idea, and I simply want to see what others think.

By offering a highly sought after, but limited experience, players are sharing their frustration (see Discord).

I’m simply asking a sincere question, is it better to have played, than to have never played at all?  Should there be an official server?

Thank you in advance for being respectful, and thoughtful in your replies, so that we are able to have this discussion.

I think TOPS is conceptually a good idea for live feedback and player engagement, but the execution sometimes leaves much to be desired as being a single-server it has its player and bandwidth limits. Namely my issues with TOPS have always been: limited server capacity, latency (mostly an issue because of my location/proximity to the host-server being as I am in the US), and sometimes certain game-behaviors differ (since TOPS is where testing takes place anyways) but that's a minor issue at most. For just playing, I'd actually say single player or self/community-hosted servers are the better option and much more stable, plus you can easily play around with mods in these environments which is nice. Now if I had any suggestions, I'd push for either an additional server or more proxy-servers, though I don't think it's expressly necessary since TOPS targets players who want bleeding-edge builds and are open to being play-testers (still, I'd argue it's worth briefly exploring TOPS if you get the chance, maybe not playing on it as your main-way of playing the game but plenty of builds I like and use for inspiration in my single player worlds)