Welcome to Thunderdome

Dope, I will have to check all the new stuff out when I get back. I lasted a good two weeks on the Official Seattle server before getting griefed, and I needed to get my head into the travel game anyway.

Official servers will be wiped next Thursday, so I'll probably take another run at Seattle unless we could get a crew to play somewhere specific.

I've had way too many issues of admin's fucking with community servers. At least on the officials:
1)there is a never ending supply of new people to kill(no matter when the wipe was) and
2) there is no admin abuse
negatives:
1)there are hackers (though they get banned/kicked automatically/regularly now and its very satisfying as it's publicly broadcast)
2)there is no admin help (for griefing or fucked up base)
3)It's normally full 200/200 pop and queued in the first few days of the monthly wipe

The officials just feel more... alive? I guess. On community servers there is usually one group of really good players(that know the admin), and the rest are sheepish. On official it's a total shitshow, experts, tons of terrible players, people in between.

I've played on official servers and enjoyed it, but my best times have come on Community or modded servers. Some are as or even more packed than official ones.

Some cycles I want to fight and scrap to get by. Other cycles I just want to build.

I think the next cycle I'm going to take it easy. Might even hit a 5 or 10x resource server just to work on building a good heli tower.

13 unlogged days later on Seattle official and somehow my main base and weapons caches are still standing. Some outside walls and buffer cabs down. The griefer gave me an extra level of protection and refreshed my shit. My metal foundations are pretty low though.

I've been having a hell of a time with the heli on this server. I don't have the cabinet trick going so he's shooting rockets and tearing my tower up (separate from my base). However, what's really been confusing me is I'm hitting him non-stop and can't even get him to start smoking.

I think I made this tower too wide. I think my focus next wipe will be building the best heli tower.

Official Server monthly wipe today. Took a run on 200 pop US West 2 when I got home. Nailed my base placement at a triangular rock outcropping despite the flood of nakeds. Only defensive murders so far!

3 pack of neighbors nearby, but they seem friendly(??). Only one level of base, there's nothing out here resource wise. Trying to get a few walls up before I log.

I made the mad dash too. One of the servers I played on late last cycle disappeared, so I'm focused on Super Chill Rust Chicago. Built a small 2x2 cave base.

One advantage I have is I can play at work sometimes. Today I'm doing the grab chests then sleep until next spawn thing at the top of the sphere. My goal is to get parts for guns, autoturrets, and C4.

Someone opened a hotel in Rust.

Jeez that is a ton of work. Pretty cool though.

Visually showing the dangerous weapons a player has on their body very game changing. It's much easier to ID enemies now.

It occurred to me today that Rust has made Thursdays an "event" day just because it's patch day. That really says something.

Hey, if any of you former Rust players want to see what's new, just holla. Troy can show you around a violent server, and I'm on a much calmer server.

This is awesome

No patch today, but a wipe.

Long story short, they upgraded to Unity 5.6 and it fucked shit up. They're now working to get things repaired, but it won't happen today. They're still wiping, but they'll wipe again when they're ready to push the update.

So this will be an interesting wipe. No month long build. This wipe might last a week for everyone.

The new AI is in!

Due to the patch being delayed, the wipe happens today. So, it'll be a short play cycle this month.

Big changes in the patch today.

- Servers were wiped.
- The game now has scrap and the research table is useful again. They're trying to make scrap the game's cash.
- Animals got fast and smarter.
- Tier 1 buildings and ladders can now be placed within the radius of someone else's cupboard. This is huge. They say they want to force people to design better buildings. People will have to because a fresh spawn can now build a raid tower and get into the top of your base.

Here's a new addition to the game:

Stepped on a landmine near someone's house. Respawned and ran back to see a bear where my body would be located. It started walking away so I could creep in and all my stuff was laying on the ground. My body was gone.

Bears and wolves now eat you...

Posting this for Stranger

There's a guy on YouTube by the name of Shadowfrax that makes videos explaining the weekly updates. He recently started a series about "forgotten concepts", which is basically things discussed in dev logs that aren't in game yet.

I'm watching one with vehicles, and he touches on something really interesting. Gary stated that the team never saw Rust as a bunch of servers that act as different worlds, but rather a bunch of servers making up one universe. What's that mean?

It means they've toyed with the idea of players traveling between servers. So you'd jump into a plane and fly to another server to raid folks there or fight with your friends.

No details beyond that, but that concept is pretty awesome. It adds a whole new element of danger to the game. Even if your server is slow, that doesn't mean some raiding party won't show up to ruin your day. It also means solo players or smaller groups could flee servers where they're outgunned. It also makes other things possible like RPGers, PKers, Anti-PKers, etc.

Not that those things don't exist now, but RPG servers, for example, are strictly RPG servers. Now you'd be able to mix worlds. Before you say, "That'll ruin the game for _______." Keep in mind that servers admins will be able to do whatever they need to do at the beginning of each cycle. So they could quickly build a "town" or whatever and arm the shit out of it with turrets or whatever. I've seen servers with all sorts of modifications, even "anti raid" areas where you're not even allowed in or have the ability to hold a weapon.

The real abuse could come from servers that allow 100x farming and peeps doing that there, then taking those resources to a vanilla server. Or worse, getting stuff on a server they run and using admin powers to spawn stuff and then using it to attack folks elsewhere.

I imagine this will all be moot initially as it'll only work on official servers. The problem there is those are routinely full, and the majority of Rust players are on Community and Modded servers. Point being, those 20K+ other players wouldn't be able to fit onto the Official servers. Thus, I imagine there'd have to be some rules to it. Perhaps server admins could apply to include their servers in the "official" list, BUT it would require them to abide by certain rules? That might be fun. Each player run server in the official list could have players transporting to it and off it, but each has its own rules that must be followed? Maybe even put limits on the amount of items that can go with you to each server? Admin abuse is automatic ban of your server from the official list and bans for the cheaters from the game?

It's a fascinating concept and far different than any other MMO.

When could this hit? Gary says after Early Access is over, which is a goal they want to hit. Game development will continue, but the "base features" will all be in place.

Possibly as soon as the next wipe new AI enemies will be introduced to the game. They will carry good gear, have great weapons, will hang out at monuments, and be smarter than the animals.

This guy does great videos explaining the week's updates and covers them:

Tiny update today and there's still another Thursday before July.

I wonder if they're trying to hold off on the rocket site memorial and the new AI enemies until then...?

Devs released the roadmap which can be found on their site. It breaks down everything they must do before EA ends, what will come immediately after, and future plans, including the "holy grail" goal of no more wipes.

Hey Troy! This might be the Rust server you've been waiting for...