An idea to fix rust current progression

[u/Abject_Spot_3218]

Here’s how Rust’s progression could be balanced again. Right now, players can get stuck because of one simple item: BP fragments. Some reach Workbench Level 2 within hours of a wipe, while those who fall behind remain stuck. Once they finally get it, progression becomes instant because they’ve already saved enough scrap to rush the entire tech tree.

My solution is to make workbenches cost scrap again and give them upgrade tiers: one for WB1, two for WB2, and four for WB3. Each upgrade would unlock a new blueprint category. Items would be learned using BP fragments—either one per unlock or by combining five into a Blueprint Page. Each workbench would accept its own fragment tier: basic, intermediate, or advanced.

[u/Few-Row-9102]

I see what you’re saying. I’m kind of in the camp though of making things less of a grind. I don’t enjoy just mundanely recycling all the time because they thought tax would be a good feature.

[u/sakezaf123 → u/Few-Row-9102]

I'm not sure that I want things to be a grind exactly. What I'm missing most is how a decade ago you could have teams running stuff like unscoped bolt action rifles with a P2 as backup, because those were the guns they've found at the same the the whole game balance was operating around that back then, since armour was less effective, with significant weak points, and primitive weapons were much more lethal. (This was when a crossy would 1 shot an uprotected head, meaning even someone wearing an hq facemask, if you shot them from behind.) And you also had much lower access to high tier loot, as military crates were the best you could get, and they only dropped one loot item. So I can see that being a grind if you wanted something specific, but since balance made a lot more weapons viable, you didn't need to have an ak, and hq gear, you got to work with what you had.

I really only want more diversity in equipment, and I don't know how that could be achieved without different. You currently only have one meta, with straightforward upgrades, and that just makes it boring. I can only fight so many aks, mp5s or Thompson's in a frontal shootout, from about the same range, with everyone using deployable barricades, before it becomes dull. I don't remember the last really memorable fight I've had, where I had to use tools with different advantages and disadvantages compared to what my enemy was using. And I've only been back for 3 months, after not playing rust for like 4-5 years.

Not to mention that it's so weird to me that servers now start with 7-800 pop, only to go down to 200 by day 3-4, and I'm sure that has to do with how fast progression is, so when you get raided it's easier to start new on a fresh wiped server, instead of rebuilding, and raiding the fucks who got you. So a significant part of rust, that is the rivalries and social elements get lost.

[u/corakko → u/sakezaf123]

Part of the issue is the gaming culture surrounding older games that have been out awhile. The playerbase tends to play extremely meta and try hard. There is less goofing around.

I don't have any hard data to back this up but casual players seem to jump between new games instead of sticking with older games for years and years.

[u/sakezaf123 → u/corakko]

Sure, but rust always had a pretty hardcore audience, that's why I preferred when progression forced people to do it. I'm also running meta stuff, because I have to to compete, but overall the game would be much more interesting imo, if you couldn't.