• Ramblings of the casual observer with an interest in the dynamics of gameplay
    13 replies, posted
Firstly, Facepunch; nice great game. I've had a heap of fun despite the agony (thats the best sort of game), and my experiences so far have lead me to make a number of observations and to make a few suggestions. My Perspective I've played games for a long, long time. Possibly before you the reader were even born, so I've seen the full gamut of play types and "get" whats happening in Rust. It's not a carebear game. I'm not a whining pussy. I simply have an avid interest in game design. My comments below are not about taking anyone's toys away or "ruining" someone's play-style, but I would love some clarification about Facepunch's intentions regarding the vision splendid so I can accurately answer the question: am I wasting my time? I am of course not an entitled little prat and therefore don't expect an answer either, but here goes. My Observations On the servers I've played there seems to be, in the present state of play, a very common theme. Spawn, build a base, get to the point where you are about to start making something not primitive, go offline (I have a life) come back, and see your base has been raided. Every.Time. Without fail. No matter where I go, how the base or the terrain looks, how small or crappy my sh*t shack might be or how intimidating my tower may appear, busy server, empty server, its raided out. The worst part was figuring out how easy it is for people with guns and explosive ammo and/or some mates to do it... guh. I used to feel safe when I got a sheet metal door up. Clearly I'm an idiot. This present state of play seems to be that for those that have the gear, offline raiding everything they see is rather profitable, and for no risk. None! Even worse I am seeing those that are online avoiding serious confrontation when raiding because that's "too hard" OMG who's the pussy? Question: is the profitable no-risk offline raiding of players (particularly sh*t-shack busting for sulpher/frags - which nakeds can have lots of as they can't make guns yet) an intentional design decision? There seems to be an interesting conundrum; players during low population times are so bored they literally scour the nearby map clean of all bases that are not actively defended. Those people leave the server. Then there is even less for the powerful and bored to do, so they scour the map further and further away from their home, raiding as they go. Pretty soon the whole map is clear of anyone without a 24x7 guild behind them, and the players left (the raiders, ironically) are whining about how empty the server is. It seems to me this is not a good gameplay outcome. Is it intentional? My Suggestions No one thing would make everything perfect in one shot, a combination of these ideas could be a good mix... and of course these are just suggestions. I'm sure FP has plenty of ideas and thoughts on the subject too and for valid reasons they may think my ideas are rubbish; I can live with that, my ideas are often rubbish and you are free to disagree if you like. Of course if you disagree please take off your "I rule the status quo" hat and engage your brain before making a rational comment based on good gameplay outcomes. If you think rolling around the map conducting no risk offline raids is good gameplay, you support the status quo; don't bother replying. You really just want a big button labelled "I win" which you can press as often as you like. Overarching Concept: Put risk into offline raiding I'm not saying there should not be offline raiding. However with a low bar to achieve a successful offline raid it can easily become pointless and petty and just bad gameplay for all involved - even for the raider even if they win, and even if they don't see it that way; its not an overall terribly satisfying or rewarding experience in terms of the intrinsic satisfaction. Not all raids should by default be successful. I've seen a few now... haven't seen any fail. This is bad IMO. #1 Offline Raid Alerts When certain conditions are met, drop a pin on the map / color the grid where an offline raid is taking place with a tone/message alerting everyone that the raid is taking place. This would invite PvP and actually not directly stop the raid at all. What this means though is that you'll very possibly have a fight on your hands to claim the prize rather than a senseless smashing of some poor offline bastards hard won treasure. It'll also mean spending 2 or 3 in game day cycles to pick through the base becomes very risky as people zero in on your activity. #2 Harden Offline Bases Over Time Make it more expensive/risky to raid offline bases, and make it cheaper to raid online bases. After a certain period of time of no base activity (doors not opened, no spawning inside, deployables not touched, no shooting inside perimeter, no building, etc) start increasing stats for the building objects (walls, floors, doors etc) up to a point where it becomes unprofitable to cheaply bust sh*t shacks. This won't stop anyone from raiding, but it will mean people become more selective in what they take down. Remove the profitability of raiding primitive players which ruins server populations. Scale the base hardening to the maintenance cost; the cheaper the base the more it hardens. However be careful to not allow exploit of that mechanic, track players door code usage and merge that with TC authlists to create lists of players associated with a building network. Tally up the building network value to set the offline hardness thus preventing the building of small high value storage facilities by guilds because storage huts will have the same base hardening as their main base even if the builders are not on the same auth lists. Coinciding with suggestion #1, create a new item the "breaching charge" which greatly reduces or even removes offline base hardening. Make this item somewhat difficult to make, and built from resources which are unlikely to be farmed by nakeds (to reduce targeting of primitives by high tech players). Use of a breaching charge kicks off the Offline Raid Alert. Once used, the base starts to harden again over time so there will be a time limit placed on the easy (easier) win. Additional breaching charges may be needed if the raid takes along time. Also, it would be handy if when a breaching charge used against a base sends an email to the account holders on the base auth list informing them of the event. Give the buggers a chance to defend themselves. Reduce baseline hardness of building objects to make them a little easier to damage in an online raid. Go PvP over offline raiding. Not sure if online raiding or PvP is the goal, but if it isn't why did we get weapons? To shoot bears? Pigs? Nakeds? Allow offline bases to gradually self repair After raid activity ceases in the perimeter and based on a timer. I mean gees, the offline base resists an attack, unmanned, credit to the builders they get their base back unmolested next time they log in. Any loot that's stolen is lost of course. And blowing the TC cancels that... its not a base any more, so you can remove pesky neighbors if required. However if the raid is completed and the raiders chose to NOT blow the TC (or they dont get to it) the base will fix itself up instead of being left vulnerable to vultures to pick over its remains, ensuring the builders hard work is lost. Failure to reward good base design and time spent on its upkeep is a disincentive to even building a base in the first place (I don't any more...). Building a base should be risky but also rewarding if it works. #3 Snapshot Inventory Once a Base is Damaged To prevent online defenders spoiling a raid Snapshot a base's storage and allow the raiders to have access to that inventory (which hasn't been used/spent/transported away since the base was damaged) by the victors once the TC is taken down. Reward the attacker for persisting to victory. This may be tricky, but don't let defenders spoil an online raid by just destroying their loot - its just lame gameplay; don't allow stuff to happen which breaks the risk/reward balance. #4 Remove explosive ammo Explosive ammo can be gained by farming nakeds once you have the BP. Nakeds, will likely have a large amount of sulpher and frags that they haven't been able to turn into armored doors and walls or guns yet, as they push to get a level 2 or 3 bench up. So while it may not be the most efficient way to raid, it overall becomes the cheapest and fastest way; simply shoot your way into a nakeds house and steal it all. These players won't have BP's for better than sheet metal doors, and they are pretty flimsy to explosive ammo. They can have a lot of loot... enough to power the next raid. Removing explosive ammo would likely force the farming of drums/boxes (for parts for explosives) rather than just raw resource nodes. This makes busting a sh*t shack a little more risky in terms of reward. #5 Well, I'll stop here I could go on and on, but I won't... In Conclusion Overall the game is super cool, but I feel it does need some tweaking of the risk/reward/difficulty of the offline raiding mechanic. I'd love to hear what FP says about the matter; its simply not possible to tell what their view is by reading the web site. Mr Pain
Nice read. Much work for them, though. I, for one, would accept offline raiding if my base (or what's left of it) would remain there until after I login and decide if to repair and rebuild or search greener pastures. Actually, what hurts the most is the scrap cost for the lost workbench.
I agree offline raiding is currently the ultimate server killer atm. I've made a couple of suggestions in threads already to help tackle the problem. I'm totally against offline protection buffs to base parts, I've not seen any game execute this well and i've played the best of the survival base builders over the years - It just makes offline raiding boring and means that there is absolutely nothing to do except grind when the pop is low. It also ruins the balance of the cost of raiding vs reward. I really believe the solution is in the upcoming PVE content that's been added. One way to tackle persistent offline raiders is to introduce some sort of PVE aggro feature. One approach could relate to explosives used. When 'X' amount of explosives are used this starts to alert and excite the scientist so they will start sending out squadrons to investigate via helicopter. Initially the squads will be weak but if the raider persists then the squads will get harder and eventually a helicopter will come if they keep going. Think of GTA when you keep committing crimes you start to get chased by police and eventually the military... A similar kind of system to that could work. Of course this would need balancing but if done right it could dramatically slow down offline raiders and make them really think about their targets rather than just systemically going round the map wiping everyone out. Maybe they will get away with raiding a couple of small bases or one big one before they start to draw attention. We'd need something in the UI to help is keep an eye on our bounty status. It's a double thumbs up as well because not only will it slow down or halt the raiders entirely but it essentially adds a new mini game that players might encounter between raids if they are determined to raid bases one after another. It also plays nicely into the current game lore. It's a natural gate to slow down raiders that is fun. Additionally what Rust needs is more types of PVE activities for players to do when the server is quiet. More reason to explore and loot RAD towns, more puzzles and more variety in enemies to fight. More PVE!! MORE PVE!!!
rust needs batter community. the game itself is almost perfect.
if there was a way to increase the durability of a building while the people were offline that would be amazing in changing the meta, the only problem is of course the exploitation of the mechanic. I have to commend you on your ideas however because i have never heard some of those before and your points in why they need to be changed is completely valid. I guess PVE aspects would help but just like everything else it will get exploited, i can already see clans wasting all of their useless incendiary and HV rockets on a 2x2 in order to gain the attention of all the PVE so that it can be killed and farmed. Truly i believe that reworking the entire UI and and coding of the game needs to be done in order to limit exploitation and offer some quality of life adjustments. Extra space in the cubbard among other things. The problem truly is that the meta in this amazing game is based purely off of exploitation, and the only way to change the widespread exploitation of every mechanic in the game is to re code alot of the inner parts which takes a lot of time and effort which the devs dont really have.
Online raiding is completely broken right now as well due to bunker-roof exploit and ability to instantly upgrade it to Armored if being raided, basically making your base not worth it (and adding 46 satchels on top of whatever the number already was to raid your base). That can make some bases go from 20+ to 65+ satchels to raid in an instant, and completely breaks the game...
Generally this is a false statement. But like everything - the real answer is "it depends". Getting counter-raided is the worst thing ever, especially on well populated servers and in a populated area. That is unless/until you can raid quietly (with tools/spears) or once you get explosive ammo (t3 item). Nothing hurts as much as trying to raid - getting countered (and losing all your explosives), and then seeing the other team/person finishing the raid and getting all the other stuff too plus your gear. Hence knowing when/how and where to raid (and when u can be noisy vs quiet) is another part of the "metagame". (Real story example - we've been offline "silence raiding" a huge compund for bout 3 hrs, and finally at the end we decide to use rockets, 5 min after we use rockets, 3 chinese hackers come and quad-headshot us through walls. We lose the rocket launcher (plus 1 remaining rocket) and any kits we had on us. We reported them and they got banned the next day, but Im never raiding with rockets again. And Im switching server for the record).
Its interesting that twice you counter my proposition by giving an example that involved hackers. Hackers break any game, and I dont think the mechanics of a game should be tailored to counter hackers - the game should simply be able to deal with hacking properly. If it can't the game will always appear broken! I suspect my experiences on the servers I've been playing on are also rather different to the ones you've been playing on, possibly because of the types of players we've been encountering are also very different. Ive seen players literally scour the map (same guy wiping me out multiple times, on very different parts of the map over multiple days). I have not run into hacking (to my knowledge) and therefore don't factor that into my play style. Its sad that you do. Re explosive ammo. Its a tier3 item already, so if you can make explosive ammo, you can also make regular explosives. There are some key performance points that mean the casual offline raider will not go for making explosives as they slow you down, and it hinges on 3 things; the strength of sheet metal doors, power of c4, and the bean can. A sheet metal door cannot withstand a c4 so consequently thats overkill which the raider wont go for as it also requires tech junk (which can't be quickly farmed from primitives). The alternative is satchels/bean can grenades, but these both rely on about 15 bean cans, which is also unlikely to be found in any one raid let alone raiding a primitive. The explosive ammo though, well thats a sweet spot. It only requires frags, sulpher, gunpowder; and the ingredients for that are everywhere. Which is why despite the fact that there are more powerful options available, workbench 3 players will opt for explosive ammo to make chain raiding an option. My personal opinion is that raiding should take some effort by requiring the crafting of specialized tools to get through non-wooden doors. Running around with the tools should be a risk, and it should suck to lose them. However that risk is no worse than a base owner's risk every time they log out - they'd have spent hours putting a base together, and nobody seems to be cognizant of that when critiquing raid efforts. I'd also like to point out - again - that pointing at hackers as a reason to justify no-risk farming of offline players is flawed.
it is indeed interesting, yet so true (and so sad) and further shows your lack of...exposure (experience?) with various aspects of this game. Again, I dont take this the wrong way. See here - why I bring up hackers so much: Official message to Facepunch (and EAC) Every official server is ridden with hackers, and the problem just got worse apparently (even I used to be skeptical as to how many hackers/scripters/cheaters there are, but I keep seeing more each week)
heh you'll get a kick out of this: Regarding your base build - the only way a person may "hunt" you down like that all over the map is if: 1) You really made someone salty 2) You talk too much trash 3) You build in "some" way that is easy to raid and that is easy to become a target. So assuming that 1 and 2 are out of my control - could you elaborate (without giving out obvious secrets, if you have any): -How and where do you build? -Do you have at least 5 doors to loot/TC? Do you use sheet metal walls at least on the core of your base? -Do you honeycomb? -How far from monuments (and which monuments) do you build? -Finally - do you build in the snow, or some other areas? 1 - most assuredly not 2 - I actually almost never say a word to anyone 3 - tried a bunch of different techniques I've built in the most desolate and distant part of the map away from any monuments with scarce resources and in a desert or in the snow, using either a small hidden 2x1 / mulitple small hidden bases, and also tried a full honeycombed fort of metal, out of sight of any thoroughfares, using roundabout and random ingress and egress to my bases, and still raided. So, I'm not an idiot, I've learned to be max stealth, which results in no base, as a way not to get raided... but its pretty lame.
Rust is now a mobile game, logging in to maintain a shit shack Numbers look good cos people are forced to log in Its well and truly dead
Thanks for the feedback. And you play on a vanilla server? (because a metal base on vanilla is pretty strong, on something like 5x, its probably useless). Also you still did not mention how many doors to loot. In either case, here are some base ideas (I started with a few of them and didnt get raided for the whole wipe): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWchwE2UiOU This was my fav for a while ^ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XXdCum6BQE This one has 2 versions if u look on his channel. Again - these bases are something to "start you off" and give you an idea... I suggest modifying them to your liking after you build the exact copy, also practice on the sandbox (freebuild) server to get base ideas and their weak points. Raid your own base on the sandbox, so u see how easy/hard it is to raid.
This is basically a distraction from my observations and suggestions. However it's been 100% vanilla, and fortified attempts last featured all metal honeycomb with 6 entries 5 of which were false. Min doors to enter the base was 6 if you picked the right door. Total doors was around the core was 15. I don't know how many were taken down before they went through the roof instead... This base was taken over before I could add a second ceiling to prevent that however I'm sure it wasn't profitable... Unless you keep the base which is what happened. I'm not salty about it though if they keep your design it is a backhanded compliment.
Hardly a distraction. I already commended you for your feedback and observations. Im just extermeply baffled by your experience (bad luck?) on the vanilla servers in contrast to my experience (good luck?) on what seems to be the same vanilla servers. Altho I do see the possibility of your scenario emerging I suppose, becasue whenever my team-mate and I establish (on day 1 of wipe), we proceed to raid everyone around us (1x1's or 2x1's or 4x4's - doesn't matter) in a never ending battle for resources, survival and zone superiority... We raid on average probably 40-60 bases per wipe...
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