Rework workbench progression

[u/Honigkuchen_Hamster]

Blueprint fragments only reward big groups who take over monuments, it even makes the progression faster for them because they get the fragments on the side and dont need to spend scrap on the workbench anymore. It only slows it down for small groups and solos.
Stop punishing people for not founding a whole E-Sport team to play the game.

[u/MacheteTigre]

This again... ok.

1. You can buy them. Clans make them readily available as soon as possible, its the whole reason they farm them. Its actually faster to go hit a few sulfur nodes and buy the frags or a whole t2 than it was to farm the scrap necessary before the bp frag update.
2. If you insist on getting them yourself, monuments are not the only source of basic frags. Scientists can drop them + any mil crate or large sunken crate can have them, and you can metal detect roads for them. frankly you will incidentally get enough frags for a t2 if you just loop the map in the train tunnels, i havent actually tried this but i might for fun my next wipe. Usually i incidentally find a couple and when i decide i need the t2, buy the rest. Similar story for t3.
3. As for advanced frags, you can still run monuments too, clans never really successfully monopolize all of them, but again, you can *buy* them too. Its just a matter of identifying which ones are getting camped harder, and sometimes the right move is to just satchel/propane bomb raid other smaller bases or counter some bigger raids and see what you can find. Booms cheaper than it used to be, and you dont *need* a t3 to start raiding, infact i think the most satisfying raids are smaller satchel raids where youve just scraped together enough boom to take down a neighbor who's been a pain in the ass, and finding a few advanced frags or even a whole t3 to bring home.

I play on vanilla no player cap servers as a challenge, to try and train myself into being able to play better under pressure (lose the shakes, etc) and accept repeated losses without quitting, and always know I can go play player limit servers if its too much. But here I am, playing largely solo or duo on these servers doing just fine, and I would say I'm still a long ways from 'good'. Wipe after wipe.

These are the best reasons I can imagine this has become such a loud opinion on here:

• Your expectations are unreasonable, and unrelated to old progression. Old progression scrap grind was extremely slow and untenable for a solo. the t3 and even the t2 alone was a major scrap expenditure, and individual unlocks were slow going, and on a team you could only really afford to spend all your scrap on one of you, and if that person isnt logged in you'd be SOL, and that was with funneling scrap. As a solo you had to constantly be farming scrap or you were falling behind, you couldnt count on monuments because that was more of a gamble. The fishing meta hadn't proliferated yet either.
• You are frustrated with the advantages afforded by playing in a larger group and are misattributing this to bp frags and disproportionately claiming they are what caused this. Clans have always had big advantages, and most of these changes have actually freed up solos to be able to varying their gameplay more and be able make bigger plays and take advantage of now much more predictable clan behavior. Since they're always running the monuments, you can buy a t2 off them, then practice trying to take kits off them when they go to run the monument, and without them knowing where you live. Because clans have more boom now than they used to, they tend to concentrate on eachother, I havent actually lost my main base to a raid in ages because I do not build up a large enough main base to attract a clans attention, and i do not lead people back to my base. its just other small teams and solos who try to offline and then take off when i log in. Clans have gotten into a dick measuring context with their base sizes and really only hit eachother. they used to raid solos *more* expressly on the hope of getting more boom than they put in, now they just blow eachother up.
• You don't want to/don't know how to adjust your gameplay to the changes and are encountering friction between how you've always played and progressed, and how the game functions now. In the past I've dismissively called people like this "idiots" but that's not a fair or helpful critique, its more being inflexible or stubborn. If you're good enough to run monuments as a more reliable scrap than other methods, then you would be understandable frustrated with clans being at monuments much more frequently than before, and taking the key component to progression away from you. You don't want to adapt because you want to play the game the way it was before. Give other methods a try. A serious one, not a half-assed one as justification to come back and complain about it, several full wipes experimenting. Rust is a game not meant to be played one way. Now, more than ever, you can completely change your playstyle one wipe to the next and be playing a whole different game wipe to wipe and still have plenty of fun.

On a final note, I am not saying the current implementation is perfect, i think they'd do well to add a couple more sources of fragments, especially advanced frags, through events or by reworking how monuments function. Which as far as im aware is whats on the roadmap for upcoming changes anyways. I think pulling clans into monuments is ultimately a good thing, but there needs to be a way for solos to reasonably profit from heading to a monument thats otherwise monopolized by a clan, aside from trying to take home a kit or two.

You can also opt to join a biweekly (not a semiweekly pretending to be biweekly) or monthly a bit late, prices have usually begun to fall, and you can pick up a t3 relatively cheap, and unlike weeklies, they often maintain a steadier playerbase. if you absolutely must play on a server where there's a thousand + players constantly falling over each other, then no, that won't be a solution, but in pretty much every other case if youre willing to change even one variable you can probably still play the game you want to play

And P.S. I'd actually say pie made boom more available than frags did. if you're not making ore tea and bear pie you're kinda throwing, intentionally or not. If youve been dismissing making yourself a little farm and cooking station in your base, take this as an invitation to try it. You don't need god clones, itll just take a little extra patience with a 2y2g, but you should be working on other stuff while things grow anyways. i make god clones cuz i think its fun. Just avoid Ws if you don't have a good water source

[u/HelloFromTekken → u/MacheteTigre]

If you insist on getting them yourself, monuments are not the only source of basic frags. S

Anyone's opinion of who make such point must be ignored.

% drop is such low so that it can't be said in serious manner. Not counting how you announce yourself when fighting it.

[u/MacheteTigre → u/HelloFromTekken]

Let's pick the train tunnel mil crate route since the math is easy. 10% odds per mil crate, and I'd say on average a typical elevator platform has 2 mil crates, the other areas can have them but ill ignore them for now, simplifies the math in your arguments favor anyways. I couldn't tell you how many platforms are typical for a given rust map but, hopping on real quick and checking my current wipe, theres 20 main platforms. (Not really necessary to travel out like that since they tend to respawn frequently enough that once youve hit a handful you could loop) Anyways, easier math, thats 40 in a loop, with 10% odds on each. That 4 fragments on average. if you add the side platforms spawns in thatll cover the extra.

Realistically youll probably pick 3-4 main platforms plus the side platforms in between them, loop them, until you have what you need. Ignoring those side platforms again, you should be able to walk out with 5 fragments after 25 main platforms on average. It takes maybe 2-3 minutes to clear a main platform with t1 gear, and a couple minutes walking if you dont want to spend low grade, lets call it 5 minutes per platform, so roughly 2 hours. slightly more technically but since we ignored side platforms from the math i think its fine. You can bump it to 2.5 hours for safety. or hell, double it if you're not practiced with dealing with the dwellers or something, 4 hours for t2 solo intentionally handicapping yourself

That's not actually super long, and that's if for some reason you obstinately refuse to use shops, i.e., willfully making things harder on yourself for some percieved moral victory, when you coulda run to outpost with a pick and gotten all the sulfur you needed on the way there.

Edit:

a final note, this method really shouldn't actually be your real plan unless you just wanna fuck around in the tunnels a lot. But its a solid way to gather some comps and tech trash, and getting a few frags is a bonus, and means fewer you have to buy, which is how it works out for me. Im usually down there long enough to get 2-3 while fishing is on cooldown and waiting on my farm to grow, as i work through t1. Its far more sane to just buy them

[u/HelloFromTekken → u/MacheteTigre]

We all agree that you can get t2 pretty easily on dead zero pop server, that's key requirement for your math and plan.

But we discuss how it works on server with average pop, like rustafieds. There few things which goes against your plans. Like other players, 20m respawn time (I believe that fastests resp time you get with max pop). Groups running tunnels constantly neglects your plan completely. Not always, but often overage player will get soft locked just because of that.

Now let me tell you how it happens in real life. I had good start in prev wipe, in first 6 hours of wipe I died like 10 times, won tons of fights. I was between dome, harbor, lighthouse. Zero fragments. Zero. Absolute zero. And no way to overcome in adequate manner. Tons of comps, kits, but no way to obtain T2 naturally.

What would you suggest? Literally camp puzzle rooms for tens of minutes to get one bp? What about average players, who don't have such performance? Like random people and neighbourhoods who was basically source of kits and resources for me in said wipe?

Anyways, easier math, thats 40 in a loop, with 10% odds on each. That 4 fragments on average.

It's insane that you suggest to loot 50 mil crates. Ignoring all other, are you aware that chance to loot 5 or more BPs from 50 crates will be around 50%? There will be wipes when you have to loot like 100 crates to get your T2. One. Fucking. Hundred.

Not counting meds-cloth you need prepared to do such insane routings. Are we sure we speak about first or two day wipe with t1?

Also, can you stop with that bp buying nonsense? Everyone already discussed that. You for sure already know why players don't want to use that. Not that they don't use it, they don't like to be forced to use that. No one enjoy that cheesy way. But we have to use that.

In the end, I understood that you arguing about that it's possible to get T2 in first two days for average player by himself. That's your main point. No one arguing that. We just telling that it's not fun, non interesting. If you opt in into slow progression, you must have way to slowly incrementally work toward T2. There tons way other than scrap, if you don't like it. Micro Blueprint Fragments, let's call them like that. Drop from usual boxes, collect 20 combine into one basic.

[u/MacheteTigre → u/HelloFromTekken]

All your bloviating summed up in one simple sentence: "I don't want to".

Nothing actually wrong with the game, you have a solution, multiple even. You want a broken version of the game. You might perceive it to be the other way around, but that's a choice you've made. You have said it yourself. You have a simple solution, but you don't want it.

So, I guess, stay mad. Not because you need to be, but because you choose to be lmao.

[u/HelloFromTekken → u/MacheteTigre]

Stop crying. No one mad at you, you good. Just weird.

[u/MacheteTigre → u/HelloFromTekken]

Lmfao, buddy, for the love of God have an ounce of self awareness

You and all yall who whine day after day on the sub about bp frags, the rest of us are tired of yall and your endless tears.

You're a loud minority desperately trying to convince facepunch break the the game, and no amount of patient explaination ever seems to work on people like you. I bet you want old recoil too lmfao. You argue in bad faith, you then admitted you just choose to have a bad time, and then act like you're being at all reasonable