To the Devs, you made two bad decisions with these game mechanics recently - Rust

I bought this game in November and put about 250 hours into it. This game was so fun, exciting, and DIFFERENT than any other game I had played before. I was hooked. Two things have almost completely turned me off to the game. Let me also preface all this by saying: I'm fine being frustrated by other players, or my own lack of knowledge, but I hate getting frustrated by bad game mechanics. The more minor one first: Wood chopping. Wood chopping was something that was not that hard to do, which is great for a new player. I can scan the areas around me as I try to get setup for the first time, and before I have 1400 hours like most of you who have the game-mechanics memorized. I felt safer being able to look around and see what's around me as I chop. Then this changes to the same as stone where I'm staring at the thing while trying to harvest. With stone it made sense, you're progressing and things get a bit more difficult, I was fine with that. Now though, Wood chopping is just as hard if not harder than stone because you have to chop so much more of it. It's ridiculously disheartening when I die chopping wood, before I can even get started on a server. Why is the barrier to entry for an entry level action HIGHER than something that isn't entry level like stone mining? That makes NO SENSE. The more major one: Upkeep. I'm assuming this was put in to help the server performance over time. I used to be able to make a base and not worry that if life circumstances kept me away from the game for an extra day I wouldn't lose everything. Again, this is different than getting raided. If I get raided it, again, it;s a player frustrating me, not bad game mechanics. This really ruins playing casually, especially with where you decide to setup your base, since some places have basically no stone - You might see 2 nodes in 3x3 squares. Now I have to worry that if a single wall goes down in the wrong area, because I had to spend an extra 8-24 hours away, that I'm losing EVERYTHING. With 2 week wipe cycles, why would I completely rebuild from scratch? This is happening to a lot of people - and I can't imagine I'm the only one who has played way less because of these shitty mechanics. If you think servers are too overloaded, and this is your fix, maybe it's the wrong fix. It makes this game feel like a complete chore. You're leaving early access now, cool, but it's a big shame you added these bad mechanics as you're focusing on other things to get this ready for release.

"It makes this game feel like a complete chore" i have to agree with that, after upkeep you're forced to come on and mine stone and smelt resources for your tc.

wow you must be really bad I havent died on a 250 pop server (100-150 avg) once yet chopping wood. And I bought the game in November (Thanksgiving) too... was used to the minigame right away. I also like to chop wood at night - as I dont need to worry bout hitting the red "X".

I kill people chopping wood at night. Easy targets with sparks. And yes they made the game a chore

you missed the part where I said I specifically dont hit red "X" at night (to not create sparks), but of course anyone can be killed anywhere and you can still shoot people based on sound (and shine a flashlight in that direction). I was just giving a different perspective - that chopping wood at night can be used as a "stealthy approach". That still does not make you "invincible" at night though...

captainrussia, i have been looking your posts in forums and i really don't see you saying anything good? When you see hostile player, you don't need to fight him, you can walk away or flank him. Does online raiding exist in rustafied servers, no it doesn't. I don't build 2x2 bases with honeycomb, my bases cost around 10-15k stone and 3-5k fragments, so i am forced to come on. You said you have 300 hours, so if you really don't know so much about the game you should not comment on these posts, when it ends up being useless anyways

Keep in mind this as well OP. Most of those areas you mentioned were placeholders and not intended to remain

keep being bad and keep crying... because you're not flexible/creative enough to adjust to the new changes. When life throws something unexpected at you - do you go crying to mommy and daddy as well? Also this comment made no sense: "captainrussia, i have been looking your posts in forums and i can see that your comments are considered as a troll?" - because you spoke of it in 3rd person, as in other people are considering my posts as a troll? Can you please prove that or elaborate a bit more? If its just you who think that Im a troll - well for that I could care less, as you are definitely someone who deserves a baby bottle. If your base costs 15k stone/day - then you're only screwing your own self and making you own life difficult. You can't seem to be able to adapt and understand that a 15k/day stone base might not be needed to survive really (especially if you're finding it to be a chore and are not having fun). I could too build a 15k/day upkeep stone base (doesn't take a genius to slap a bunch of squares+triangles together), but I would never do that, as I would lose all fun and interest in the game due to upkeep grind. So what did I do? I adapted. What did you do? You came and cried. GG

15k/day stone base might not be needed to survive. I'm pretty sure you don't know WHY i need to do that big base, because i don't play in any "roleplay" servers that you might be playing in. In that server, if you kill a group or make someone hate you, you can expect that you are offlined by tomorrow. Before you reply and say "why do you kill people", it's how the game works if you have not yet realized that. About upkeep, was it a chore before? And when you say you adapted when the upkeep came? That's completely wrong, you just gave up and started building 3k/day bases. I never gave up on building big bases like i did before the upkeep, i'm just saying that it was better before the upkeep update

LMAO. Before you jump to conclusions let me tell you that I play on vanilla official servers. US East 2. And before that I played on probably the most toxic and hardcore vanilla server - the Reddit one. The only thing I "realized" is that you like to jump to conclusions (which makes you look foolish), and are stubborn and cant adapt very well. Of course I know thats how the game works... that is exactly how i play it! Nope - I adapted. Because I can still piss other people off and my base does not get raided overnight, and I managed to keep upkeep low in the 3-4k range to actually have fun with the game where it does not feel like a chore. Its a win-win! You on the other hand didn't "give up" - you failed to adapt to the new changes. Isn't this exactly the reason why you are here crying on the forums blaiming the game for becoming a "chore"? Of course it was "better" (you really meant to say "easier") - because anything that requires no/low effort is easy. And now you are forced to start thinking outside the box if you dont want your fun to suffer. How about you figure out how to build a 3k upkeep base and not get raided overnight (or ok - you can get raided, but not lose most of your loot) - then we can talk. PS. You dont need 15k/day upkeep base to survive even on most toxic servers... on the contrary - building a huge base like that will often get you targetted. Of course if you roll 10man deep with a zerg, then its a whole diff topic and 15k/day is nothing to a 10man.

Please try one wipe in rustafied eu main and kill a group of 8 guys, see what happens tomorrow when they already know where you live and at that point and 2x2 base will not save you when they have over 30 rockets to wipe your whole base. And yes i have figured a base where raider will use 12 rockets to go through every door at the bottom floor, then when they advance more up they need to break 1 normal and 1 garage door for every loot room, but they will still need to go through metal low wall.

Love the Update, Its till being tested, it'll get adjustments as it progresses..

I'd like to see the scrap system adjusted slightly, myself. Can be too difficult to solo sometimes, especially on a high-pop server where threat of death is consistent. Other than that, I enjoy the game, the current BP system as a whole and new upkeep system. Thanks for the hard work, Facepunch.

We're starting to get into "theorycrafting" now (which I usually hate and try to avoid, as it can go on without end), but the obvious take aways would be: 1) I highly doubt that I will be able to kill 8 guys, especially solo. Im pretty bad at PvP. If I do manage to do it, that means that they are so bad, that I really doubt they can raid me. Probably a gorup of 8 with bows, spears, in which case they have no guns or explosives. 2) I would never engage a group of 8 in the 1st place. I might just let them kill me and loot me if I run into 8. Self-preservation as a solo means sometimes you have to take the "inevitable" loss to not reveal your position or to not piss anyone off. 3) To elaborate further, I would never try to piss off any large group, or if I do - I'd make sure that they don't know where my main base is...or maybe lead them to a decoy base, or just a small "scrap" base or even a trap base, so that I can kill them further or make their life difficult enough for them to just give up. It all depends on situation and its all about making "smart" decisions and "smart" plays. (again, theorycrafting here) 4) If I were to offline raid a "medium" base and were to discover 8 bodies sleeping inise...I would not kill a single one, to not reveal my name. I would loot the base and strip them and destory their bags if possible (and the TC as well), but I would do everything to not reveal my name. Again - "smart" plays. 5) My 2x2 takes 20 rockets to get through from any angle (including doors). Im not sure if anyone would "justify" wasting 20 rockets on a 2x2 unless of course they have a personal vendetta and don't care bout resources wasted. In which case again - read #2 and #3. Do not piss off ppl who are capable of wiping you out, even if they do not break even in the end and take a resource (sulfur) loss. So in the end - its all about just playing smart as a solo, and following a specific "metagame". Upkeep is fine. No need to cry about it. "size-proofing" your base vs offline raiders whom you have pissed off - is just poor gameplay, caused by potentially poor ingame choices. Remember - there is always "more then 1 way to skin the cat", as they say ;)

In official servers people go usually through doors (i rarely see people going through walls when they made metal wall worth 8 rockets), so my question is how is your 2x2 base with normal honeycomb around a 20 rocket raid? If you use garage doors, armored doors or wallstack then it's possible, but not with normal sheet metal doors.

I stopped reading this fucking suckass's posts. So fucking retarded. Has no fucking clue.

I feel sorry for the guys that spend a week building a base only to get it raided and tool cupboard destroyed and the base decaying to nothing within a day WTF is that all about its like a kick in the balls OK you get raided no problem but the decay is far too quick without a cupboard If you get raided and you cupboard distroyed and you dont log on fairly quickly your game as ended along with all your hard work and fun for the game

Yep and people are quiting because of it. US EAST 1 is literally like 200 nakeds week 3

a bit of everything... do you even play the game, trash kiddo? Can I have your stuff? o...wait... that is the main point of the game - if you haven't noticed. Figuring out how to survive and not get your shit destroyed, while having a life outside the game. And nobody said it was gonna be easy... People need an injection of "git gud". US East 2 seems to be doing just fine. Maybe they need to come over and learn...