Free no.
Time+money. In a game where time is more valuable than money in certain scenarios, waiting for it to be created is the worse choice to make when you can buy it to craft much needed duct tape which you end up using a TON of while leveling up weapons/vehicles. I purposely skip every other tier I unlock simply because the cost in duct tape makes it not worth it.
As far as player count. I have seen servers with 64 players. To say this is only relative to 8 is missing the point. I just did a search for MP and there are dozens of servers above 20. All that to say. Water is incredible value and when it take a lot of time to wait when you don't have all the time in the world, it becomes worth it to buy as a player who needs a TON of duct tape for their next weapon/vehicle upgrade.
It doesn't matter whether you see servers with 64 people. TFP does not balance for that scenario and therefore has no motive at all to do anything about it, even if water were a good money source on those servers. This is official information from TFP that anything above 8 players is outside their "zone".
There are also servers with DF or UL mods and TFP does not balance for them as well, and it would not matter how many there are.
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