[Suggestion] Remove research kit and make blue-prints not learnable - Rust

One of the biggest problems in the game is how EASY it is to learn how to make EVERYTHING. I spent 8 hours on the game this past week when the East Coast server came back up and in that 8 hours I learned how to make EVERYTHING except "metal wall". EVERYTHING else I was able to find. I had a massive stash of all SORTS of stuff including enough materials to build a 13 story tower (which got stolen before I could test my experiment in the rad zone). Basically it was just too easy to get EVERYTHING. If I couldn't find a blue print for it, I'd just use the research kit (which I had like 5 and stopped collecting them an hour in), to learn it. It made the game feel incredibly trivial. It would be nice to not be able to just "research" something if I didn't know it. Also, instead of blue prints teaching you HOW to make something, it would be nice if blue prints just SHOWED you how to make them with a very SMALL chance of learning how to make it. In other words, you would need a blue print each time you wanted to make it unless you got lucky and you learned how to make it. Or you could make learning how to craft something done through a proficiency system where it takes some number of craftings before you remember how to do it. Each time, however, until you remembered how to craft the item, you'd have to get a new BP (since each blue print isn't reusable). The less complicated the item, the less it would take to "learn" how to make it. What do you guys think? I do think there needs to be a better system in place for crafting things outside the basics. It could even lead to people "specializing" in stuff they make since I keep seeing people talk about the game moving to where you have small towns.

I think about this a lot to be honest since I agree and disagree, I think it's too easy and I've said before that there isn't as much sense of loss when you die in Rust as opposed to getting raided I guess but, Maybe you need to take an extra step in crafting things that would require blueprints like weapons, like maybe you need to craft a weapons kit or something weird, probably not very helpful but it's late, I'll watch this post though hopefully some genius comes along with a good idea!

[QUOTE=DrABK;42670705] Or you could make learning how to craft something done through a proficiency system where it takes some number of craftings before you remember how to do it. Each time, however, until you remembered how to craft the item, you'd have to get a new BP (since each blue print isn't reusable).[/QUOTE] This would have to be given much more thought, I think. It could work, but would have to be changed (having a blueprint not be reusable doesn't make any physical sense)

[QUOTE=KillaMaaki;42670771]This would have to be given much more thought, I think. It could work, but would have to be changed (having a blueprint not be reusable doesn't make any physical sense)[/QUOTE] I know it doesn't make sense but sometimes "doesn't make sense" is required in the name of balance. To be honest, if an apocalypse happened, everyone would start out at the same time, you wouldn't have people just get added to the post-apocalyptic world a few at a time.

how about if you learn a BP, you need to make the item loads of time before you perfect it, say you learn how to make a metal wall, there's a slight chance you fail at making it the first few times which in turn breaks the materials used, until you reach the maximum learning 'level' which only has a very low/no chance of breaking the item you are making. because let's face it, nobody wants to run around finding blueprints all the time, sure it might make the game harder, but also more annoying in a sense. and also to make crafting harder they could add say nails and hammers to make buildings. and triggers etc for guns, because just getting some metal scraps to make a gun is just unrealistic and far too easy. just overall we need more materials for the things we are making, and some should be quite rare, for example materials for guns. because shit is way too easy to make, like you said, i could be completely geared up in a couple of hours.

Simple fix: Research kits are for 1-5 time use.

I agree, just get rid of the research kit, it defeats the purpose of blueprints and I feel it makes the game too easy since they spawn so often on zombies. I am all for blueprints, but not research kits, unless they are an extreme rarity and are single use.

The research kit may just be there to let everyone be able to manufacture everything, and find any bugs with the items. In the final game It may be a very rare drop. This is just the very beginnings of items and crafting, so the balances will be made. This is far from a finished game. I'm sure they know where they want to go with the items, and what they will do about crafting. Right now it isn't so much about the game play, but about making sure the mechanics are right.

[QUOTE=Nore;42671021]Simple fix: Research kits are for 1-5 time use.[/QUOTE] I found 5 research kits in 10 minutes of scavenging in a rad town. Right now there are less than 30 things to learn from BP's. Even if Garry makes an EXTENSIVE crafting list (say 200 items, and you only start with 20), it means you'd only need like 35 kits to learn EVERYTHING, which would take [I]one person[/I] like an hour of scavenging, at MAX. That's too easy to get. [editline]28th October 2013[/editline] Another idea would be that if learning how to craft things is to stay relatively easy, then you "forget" x number of items every time you die. What you forgot would of course be utterly random. That would add value the objective of "living" because it creates value to your ability to craft items.

Solution can be even easier... make them spawn much more rare.

Why not a mix of what's been suggested here? BP's aren't consumable, but made more rare. You have to have one on you to craft something, and have a small chance of learning it every time you craft the item. The chance being determined by a memory stat, which increases as you learn stuff in the beginning, but decreases as you get close to learning the last several blueprints. They have a chance of being destroyed when the person carrying them dies, or they wear out over time when used to prevent the game being flooded with them.

[QUOTE=ViBDotCM;42671590]Solution can be even easier... make them spawn much more rare.[/QUOTE] The kits are unlimited use and paper is really easy to craft (40 wood = 1 sheet). It would put more power into the hands of raiding parties that steal them. Nope, the point is to make having the ability to craft something [I]actually valuable[/I] rather than trivial. I wouldn't mind having an RNG applied to each time you try to craft it as you "perfect" the crafting ability. If the dice roll doesn't favor you, then you craft something unusable. If you get favored, then it's the item you were trying to craft. However, it doesn't mean the next time you try to craft it, that it'll wouldn't turn out to be unusable. An even cooler way to do it would be to do a dice system where each time you attempt to craft something you don't "know", you get some random % of the skill learned (it should use an exponential distribution with a low mean and median), and then it has a separate dice roll to see if what you crafted is "usable" or "unusable". The dice roll to see if what you crafted is usable/not should be based on how much you have "mastered" the skill. This would mean that the more you try to craft it, the better your odds are that what you will get will be "usable" until you have "mastered" it, at which point you'll get it every time. To make it fair, there would be a floor to the odds, say 2% that way if the dice gives you something like 0.0001 odds (0.01%), you get a reasonable chance to get something. This means some people will be much luckier than everyone, but that everyone would all get AT LEAST the same "fair" chance. That way nobody learns at the same rate (which is MUCH more realistic and means you can't just "wiki" the information) but EVERYONE gets a chance that something will come out EVERY time they try to craft it (even if it's a really shitty chance early on).

Simple solution would be to take time to study the blueprint instead of it being instantaneous and you have to be at a workbench to do it. The same would apply for the research kit. Instead of learning it immediately you make a blueprint of that object at the cost of the object. This opens up some things, it gives worth to blueprints and gives the player a feeling of actually accomplishing something. Players can make blueprints to sell to other users at less of a risk then actually giving them the item itself.

[QUOTE=DrABK;42671638]The kits are unlimited use and paper is really easy to craft (40 wood = 1 sheet). It would put more power into the hands of raiding parties that steal them. Nope, the point is to make having the ability to craft something [I]actually valuable[/I] rather than trivial. I wouldn't mind having an RNG applied to each time you try to craft it as you "perfect" the crafting ability. If the dice roll doesn't favor you, then you craft something unusable. If you get favored, then it's the item you were trying to craft. However, it doesn't mean the next time you try to craft it, that it'll wouldn't turn out to be unusable. An even cooler way to do it would be to do a dice system where each time you attempt to craft something you don't "know", you get some random % of the skill learned (it should use an exponential distribution with a low mean and median), and then it has a separate dice roll to see if what you crafted is "usable" or "unusable". The dice roll to see if what you crafted is usable/not should be based on how much you have "mastered" the skill. This would mean that the more you try to craft it, the better your odds are that what you will get will be "usable" until you have "mastered" it, at which point you'll get it every time. To make it fair, there would be a floor to the odds, say 2% that way if the dice gives you something like 0.0001 odds (0.01%), you get a reasonable chance to get something. This means some people will be much luckier than everyone, but that everyone would all get AT LEAST the same "fair" chance. That way nobody learns at the same rate (which is MUCH more realistic and means you can't just "wiki" the information) but EVERYONE gets a chance that something will come out.[/QUOTE] So something like this, perhaps? For each craftable item, we have a "proficiency" which starts at 0. Crafting an item has a chance of failing (which consumes the resources and results in "junk"), based on proficiency with that item. 0 might have a low chance of succeeding, while 100 always succeeds. Every time you craft an item, even if you fail, you gain 1 proficiency with that item. So if you attempt to craft an M4 100 times you'll finally be able to create one without fail. If you die, you lose 1 proficiency in all items.

How about different colored blueprints? Some you can learn and some you can use only when they're in your inventory or a special slot in the workbench while crafting. - Blue: Can be learned - Red: Can only be used in your inventory - Grey: Can be used a single time only and so on... that'd be really cool.

[QUOTE=DrABK;42670813]I know it doesn't make sense but sometimes "doesn't make sense" is required in the name of balance. To be honest, if an apocalypse happened, everyone would start out at the same time, you wouldn't have people just get added to the post-apocalyptic world a few at a time.[/QUOTE] Use your imagination. Rust Island is infected/irradiated somehow, but we don't know about the outside world. Maybe other places are better, or maybe they're worse. Maybe Rust Island is the safest place to be at the moment so new survivors from the outside world are coming in every day. Now it makes sense.

[QUOTE=CrunchNomNom;42671690]Use your imagination. Rust Island is infected/irradiated somehow, but we don't know about the outside world. Maybe other places are better, or maybe they're worse. Maybe Rust Island is the safest place to be at the moment so new survivors from the outside world are coming in every day. Now it makes sense.[/QUOTE] Maybe it's a post-apocalyptic government, and when prisons are overfull, convicts are exiled to the outside world, an island in the middle of nowhere, nicknamed "The Isle of Rust" for the tendency for structures to decay quickly.

[QUOTE=KillaMaaki;42671670]So something like this, perhaps? For each craftable item, we have a "proficiency" which starts at 0. Crafting an item has a chance of failing (which consumes the resources and results in "junk"), based on proficiency with that item. 0 might have a low chance of succeeding, while 100 always succeeds. Every time you craft an item, even if you fail, you gain 1 proficiency with that item. So if you attempt to craft an M4 100 times you'll finally be able to create one without fail. If you die, you lose 1 proficiency in all items.[/QUOTE] Kinda. I was more thinking when you start out, you have 0 proficiency with an chance floor of 3%. Each time you learn, you have a chance of learning between 0% and 5% (using an exponential discrete distribution, forgot what it's called...stupid random processes class). Lets say this first time you fail but you learn "2%", so the next time you learn, your odds are now 2% that you will get it. Because 2% is below, 3%, you still get that 3% chance. The second time is a failure still but you learn 1.5% this time. So the third time, you now have a proficiency of 3.5% and your chance of success is 3.5%. Basically you could match the "proficiency" with the odds of success just for simplicity and fairness. That way the closer you got to "mastering" it, the better your odds of getting it right. I wasn't even thinking of the dying part, but that could DEFINITELY be included. Even better would be that a skill would never be "mastered" because you could lose "knowledge" points even if you're at 100%. So if you have "mastered" making a metal wall (100%), and die, you could say lose 5% of the skill and now have a 95% proficiency and 95% chance of not getting it right. Overall, I think it should be a ceiling of like 97-99% that way a skill can never be truly "mastered". That way, just like in REAL life, mistakes get made when crafting and what you make is junk. At say 98%, you will almost ALWAYS get it right but there is the chance that you just screw up and make junk (which I'm not sure about you but I do screw up at work, here and there, even on my best of days). EDITED: I changed base learn from 0.5%->0% because of course there is the chance when you do something you DON'T learn anything from your attempt.

I don't like the idea of a visible skill proficiency (thinking back to how GTA:SA had it's skills.) I feel like yes, learning and researching new items is to easy but if it were harder to find what you need to survive, like a metal door, it would just be bandits ruling and less about those smaller groups trying less to raid and more to survive. Balance wise I think it's alright for meow but later on I could see a change being made about always knowing everything and other then losing what you have on hand making death a more serious punishment for the more dedicated(time spent playing) players. however I could see people just killing others for griefing purposes and making people less inclined to want to play if they forget or unlearn something important to them. it's less about learning crafting then it is about just trying to survive in the already ruthless wastes of rust.

[QUOTE=illusion1;42671767]I don't like the idea of a visible skill proficiency (thinking back to how GTA:SA had it's skills.) I feel like yes, learning and researching new items is to easy but if it were harder to find what you need to survive, like a metal door, it would just be bandits ruling and less about those smaller groups trying less to raid and more to survive. Balance wise I think it's alright for meow but later on I could see a change being made about always knowing everything and other then losing what you have on hand making death a more serious punishment for the more dedicated(time spent playing) players. however I could see people just killing others for griefing purposes and making people less inclined to want to play if they forget or unlearn something important to them. it's less about learning crafting then it is about just trying to survive in the already ruthless wastes of rust.[/QUOTE] Illusion the PvE will probably end up for the casual guy that wants to spend 1 hour a week doing something. It has also been discussed about doing "stage areas" where you can spawn and have relative safety for when you're new. However, for a longer term material game, you have to think about the people that may put 300 hours in over a single year. If you don't draw the game out long enough, people will get VERY bored with it VERY fast and revert to grieving others out of sheer boredom. This is going to be another sandbox game with no real end game. Now with private servers, you may end up with "competitions" where you could do something like [URL="http://www.die2nite.com/"]Die2Nite[/URL] (which I personally think would be AWESOME). But overall it won't be up to the dev's to create an endgame but rather for the players to decide how they want the game to "end". One of the great things about Die2Nite was that it got a group of 40 guys together (mostly through playtime) and you attempted to survive as LONG as you could. The games would start once you had your group together and you would all enter a town at once (towns created and started once they filled up with 40 people). Once a group got a plan down on how they would work, their town would easily last 3 weeks before stuff actually started to get hard. So you'd have the group logging in EVERYDAY for weeks at a time so they could do their part. I imagine this game being a LOT like that. It doesn't mean you have to spend HOURS each day (most of us would spend no more than 25 minutes a day getting our stuff done) but it means you aren't treating this like a round of CoD that you can just pick up and drop willy nilly. So I would rather the devs create a game where it requires you to invest more than a week to get everything you want. I in fact, would be happy to see it where it takes a long time, and even then there is a cost for stupidity (such as running out to grief/raid others).

[QUOTE=DrABK;42671824]Illusion the PvE will probably end up for the casual guy that wants to spend 1 hour a week doing something. It has also been discussed about doing "stage areas" where you can spawn and have relative safety for when you're new. However, for a longer term material game, you have to think about the people that may put 300 hours in over a single year. If you don't draw the game out long enough, people will get VERY bored with it VERY fast and revert to grieving others out of sheer boredom. This is going to be another sandbox game with no real end game. Now with private servers, you may end up with "competitions" where you could do something like [URL="http://www.die2nite.com/"]Die2Nite[/URL] (which I personally think would be AWESOME). But overall it won't be up to the dev's to create an endgame but rather for the players to decide how they want the game to "end". One of the great things about Die2Nite was that it got a group of 40 guys together (mostly through playtime) and you attempted to survive as LONG as you could. The games would start once you had your group together and you would all enter a town at once (towns created and started once they filled up with 40 people). Once a group got a plan down on how they would work, their town would easily last 3 weeks before stuff actually started to get hard. So you'd have the group logging in EVERYDAY for weeks at a time so they could do their part. I imagine this game being a LOT like that. It doesn't mean you have to spend HOURS each day (most of us would spend no more than 25 minutes a day getting our stuff done) but it means you aren't treating this like a round of CoD that you can just pick up and drop willy nilly. So I would rather the devs create a game where it requires you to invest more than a week to get everything you want. I in fact, would be happy to see it where it takes a long time, and even then there is a cost for stupidity (such as running out to grief/raid others).[/QUOTE] I like the idea of staging areas but I'm not sure how it would play out. In reply to grieving out of boredom that is what basically happens anyway. As for skills I could find enjoyment in the way skills are done in Eve Online. I like how it takes more and more time to learn skills, it would keep players online for a very long time to want to get a specific skill trained and maybe even having only so many things everyone can learn spreading out what you know and making trading of goods and services by other players using that a skill you choose not to study. Training books numbered from 1-5 for something in a specific skill scattered all over the world and then take longer to study then previous books.

Put a cooldown (1 day/12 hours?) on the research kit and make blue prints a little more rare maybe? or takes time to learn shit like on eve, the higher the quality ie... M4 the longer it takes to learn.

[QUOTE=DrABK;42670705]One of the biggest problems in the game is how EASY it is to learn how to make EVERYTHING. I spent 8 hours on the game this past week when the East Coast server came back up and in that 8 hours I learned how to make EVERYTHING except "metal wall". EVERYTHING else I was able to find. I had a massive stash of all SORTS of stuff including enough materials to build a 13 story tower (which got stolen before I could test my experiment in the rad zone). Basically it was just too easy to get EVERYTHING. If I couldn't find a blue print for it, I'd just use the research kit (which I had like 5 and stopped collecting them an hour in), to learn it. It made the game feel incredibly trivial. It would be nice to not be able to just "research" something if I didn't know it. Also, instead of blue prints teaching you HOW to make something, it would be nice if blue prints just SHOWED you how to make them with a very SMALL chance of learning how to make it. In other words, you would need a blue print each time you wanted to make it unless you got lucky and you learned how to make it. Or you could make learning how to craft something done through a proficiency system where it takes some number of craftings before you remember how to do it. Each time, however, until you remembered how to craft the item, you'd have to get a new BP (since each blue print isn't reusable). The less complicated the item, the less it would take to "learn" how to make it. What do you guys think? I do think there needs to be a better system in place for crafting things outside the basics. It could even lead to people "specializing" in stuff they make since I keep seeing people talk about the game moving to where you have small towns.[/QUOTE] Why are idiots like you even here? You just ain't good at survivin'

No changes needed. The game is super hard for new players anyway, especially if they solo. Big group of 12 year olds are raiding solo players bases. Having a multiple metal door is therefore a must. I'm playing since 4 days, and I've got so far 3 blueprints (2 of them from other players) and 0 research kits. We don't want to increase the advantage of geared players and clans even more and I want to be believe that an average casual player like me (can play max 2-3 hours a day) can get all the necessary gear and a good base after some time.

[QUOTE=mattmatt;42672681]No changes needed. The game is super hard for new players anyway, especially if they solo. Big group of 12 year olds are raiding solo players bases. Having a multiple metal door is therefore a must. I'm playing since 4 days, and I've got so far 3 blueprints (2 of them from other players) and 0 research kits. We don't want to increase the advantage of geared players and clans even more and I want to be believe that an average casual player like me (can play max 2-3 hours a day) can get all the necessary gear and a good base after some time.[/QUOTE] wow well your doing something extremely wrong.... I can get 10+ blue prints weapons armour multiple research kits and set up a 1x1 with a metal door within an hour. You just need to hit the zombie areas at the start. You can kill a zombie with a rock in 3 hits without being hit, once you get a pick axe you 1 shot zombies.......... You can do naked runs through loot zones get fully kitted out easy. The major issue atm is hackers taking everything while you sleep (and killing you while your logged out) by porting in to your base and the griefing people can cause to your base with several planks of wood.

Could you then tell me how to kill a zombie with a rock? Usually when I see a zombie I die. Tried to kite them, but every time I hit them with a rock, they hit me as well - so after 2 zombies I'm dead or nearly dead. Sorry for the offtop, but those (apparently basic for most of you guys) things could really help me survive. Best regards

I don't want to deter people from this thread however, i made a thread about this after i read this one. Thinking about it again i should of just posted it in here [url]http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1319357[/url] Maybe adds a better idea than this.

[QUOTE=mattmatt;42672777]Could you then tell me how to kill a zombie with a rock? Usually when I see a zombie I die. Tried to kite them, but every time I hit them with a rock, they hit me as well - so after 2 zombies I'm dead or nearly dead. Sorry for the offtop, but those (apparently basic for most of you guys) things could really help me survive. Best regards[/QUOTE] Click to attack with the rock and start to sprint, you hit the zombie and keep running through past it, he misses u, u hit him. You just keep doing this until it dies. Dont try with a stone hatchet as it attacks to fast. You need to take a run up ps. dont practice on the black zombies they hurt if they do hit you :P

[QUOTE=DrABK;42670705]One of the biggest problems in the game is how EASY it is to learn how to make EVERYTHING. I spent 8 hours on the game this past week when the East Coast server came back up and in that 8 hours I learned how to make EVERYTHING except "metal wall". EVERYTHING else I was able to find. I had a massive stash of all SORTS of stuff including enough materials to build a 13 story tower (which got stolen before I could test my experiment in the rad zone). Basically it was just too easy to get EVERYTHING. If I couldn't find a blue print for it, I'd just use the research kit (which I had like 5 and stopped collecting them an hour in), to learn it. It made the game feel incredibly trivial. It would be nice to not be able to just "research" something if I didn't know it. Also, instead of blue prints teaching you HOW to make something, it would be nice if blue prints just SHOWED you how to make them with a very SMALL chance of learning how to make it. In other words, you would need a blue print each time you wanted to make it unless you got lucky and you learned how to make it. Or you could make learning how to craft something done through a proficiency system where it takes some number of craftings before you remember how to do it. Each time, however, until you remembered how to craft the item, you'd have to get a new BP (since each blue print isn't reusable). The less complicated the item, the less it would take to "learn" how to make it. What do you guys think? I do think there needs to be a better system in place for crafting things outside the basics. It could even lead to people "specializing" in stuff they make since I keep seeing people talk about the game moving to where you have small towns.[/QUOTE] You should not have any problem in learning to craft things, this is not a WoW. The problems is to keep your belongings with you. That what makes it different. Its a free loot game. If i would have made a suggestion it to remove the learning blueprints thing and all people know all recipes. Like minecraft. If you craft a rare and expensive stuff, just try to keep it from griefers, if you can....

[QUOTE=mattmatt;42672681]No changes needed. The game is super hard for new players anyway, especially if they solo. Big group of 12 year olds are raiding solo players bases. Having a multiple metal door is therefore a must. I'm playing since 4 days, and I've got so far 3 blueprints (2 of them from other players) and 0 research kits. We don't want to increase the advantage of geared players and clans even more and I want to be believe that an average casual player like me (can play max 2-3 hours a day) can get all the necessary gear and a good base after some time.[/QUOTE] As I stated, I WAS playing solo. Took me 2 hours to get EVERYTHING I needed to build a base. I had all but the metal wall learned within 5 hours and I had already taken the time to help two other people make a basic 2 room base. Once you stop getting resources and just do some rad town scavenging, you can collect EVERYTHING within 5-6 full circles of a rad town (each circle takes about 4 minutes). The point being that the stuff in this game is INCREDIBLY easy to obtain. Causal gamers that play 2-3 hours a day will have a entire complex built in under 3 days (I ended up making one with sky bridges that ran 10 foundation blocks). The problem is that unlike CoD, BF, WoW, or any other game is this game HAS NO OBJECTIVE. It's a sandbox and you have to create your own objective. If the objective is just to make a base, then you'll be done in under a few days and now you have nothing to do except camp out in it and shoot any 12 year old that comes close. This kind of game will not be able to retain your attention for MONTHS if not years if it takes you 3 days to "complete". By adding a "mastering" system like I stated above, it means that you can never actually completely finish anything (other than building). Beyond this, it also creates a negative effect to dying more than just losing is immediately on you. If you look at my other thread, I suggested adding in weapons malfunctions which adds in more risk for those 12 years in kevlar.