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Posted: Jul 7, 2023 in Rust
By Kevin Lott
At its core, Rust has been and will always be a PvP-focused experience. The interplay between the players and the mechanics that allow them to kill each other, raid each other’s bases, and craft new weapons is what keeps people playing. And part of that experience has always been a meticulously designed spawning system that allows the players of the server to spawn essentially anywhere so long as they prepared a spawnpoint beforehand, typically in the form of a sleeping bag. Well, recently, sleeping bags were changed in the most recent update, along with heaps of other improvements. Today, we’ll be going over the latest Rust’s bags to battle update along with all its features. Let’s begin.
RUST’s ever-so-beloved team has implemented a change that limits the maximum number of respawn options to 15 per player. They acknowledge that this change may inconvenience some playstyles, but they believe it will ultimately make the game healthier and more engaging. In October 2020, they made changes to the death screen, unintentionally allowing players to manage a large number of bags easily. This resulted in situations where players could quickly respawn and rejoin battles, undermining the significance of death in the game. The issue I foresee is that players have become accustomed to this style of play, and it has been part of the foundation that RUST’s gameplay loop is built upon. The developers want respawning to be a meaningful decision rather than a frequent occurrence, and they explored alternative solutions such as adjusting respawn radius or implementing grid-based approaches, but these were ineffective or too complex to communicate to players. To assist with managing respawn options, players can now see them on the map while alive and have the ability to unclaim unused bags.
In an effort to create a more balanced gameplay experience, the game developers have decided to set a limit of 15 respawn options per player. While this may not seem like a strict limit, high-level PvP in RUST can typically involve sleeping bags all over the map, offering players a sort of superpower that allows them to respawn anywhere on the map. The devs acknowledge that this change may not be welcomed by all players but believe that adapting to this change will ultimately improve the game. The developers explain that a previous revision to the death screen unintentionally made it easy for players to manage a large number of bags, enabling rapid respawning and rejoining of fights. These changes aim to make the decision to place new respawn points more strategic and prevent respawning from becoming too frequent and trivial. As a side note, I think this also helps with clans taking control of large portions of the map, locking off resources from other players.
Fortnite, anyone? Apparently, the developers felt that the building upgrade effect was dated, and so they updated the animation. Made by Helk, this new animation has the construction of upgrades happening piece by piece over the course of one second upon an upgrade.
Apparently, this is a client-only effect and the upgrade still happens immediately on the server. You can also disable the new animation in the menu, as some may find the noise or animation distracting. The developers did say that they may consider expanding on this effect in the future in unique ways. For example, perhaps very large deployables such as watchtowers don’t just appear instantly but need to be built over time. There are a lot of possibilities so we’ll have to see if they keep this as a cosmetic novelty or a legitimate game mechanic.
Ok, so as with every update, there have been many fixes and improvements that just improve overall quality of life. Nothing major, but stuff that just makes you go “Huh, nice.”
Anyways, handmade shotgun ammo now has a world model! Neat. Vending Machines now drop debris when destroyed, preventing replacement. Pylon placement was fixed so that it no longer is floaty or causes weird wire visuals. There was a glitch that caused building blocks to be fully repaired when switching building skin, so that’s been fixed. Harvested player skulls in streamer mode now display streamer names. Wooden signs and banners now have a higher resolution, so they should look a little more crisp.
The Hammer Radial Menu has also received a small tweak as a result of feedback received. Now you can switch between building skins with Q and E while hovering over the various building tier buttons. These keys can be configured in the options menu.
Map Markers, eh? A recently added feature, finally starting to see some fleshing out as a result of the community’s feedback. On the top left of the screen, there is now a new list of current markers. Clicking on these will move the map to that marker, and you can delete the marker from that UI without moving your camera. The developers say this should be helpful if you need to clear a marker quickly to place a new one. Marker visibility has also been improved when placed over snow, and you can now hide your team leader’s markers on the map and compass via the top left menu.
The Ping system, yet another relatively new feature that has needed some love. To help with pings that were placed out of a teammate’s view, the compass will flash briefly to indicate where the new ping has been placed. Each ping also has a unique sound now. General usability has also been improved, allowing pings to be placed immediately when the binoculars are equipped, but not requiring you to actually zoom in with them. Neat!
The servers are getting a buff too? Are you kidding me? The devs claim they’ve improved the way their internal memory pool handles thread safety. What does that mean, exactly? Well, they say this should allow them to ensure they don’t introduce resource contention performance issues as the multithreading scales up, particularly around networking and serialization. What does that mean? Uh, something something game works better!
Ever thought the horse idle animation was repetitive or boring? No? Well, you’re not a perfectionist developer! Alex Webster from the dev team thought that, and so he decided the new animation needed more variation. There is now a short base breath animation and lots of small idles that play randomly after a few seconds or so. Larger actions like body shakes or head tosses are also combined with smaller ones like a tail swish or ear flick. This results in a more natural-looking horse, which is pretty cool.
Introducing a brand-new building block skin that allows you to experience the thrill of constructing a home from repurposed containers offering the appearance of shipping containers! Ever wanted to build a base out of those things you see on cargo ships? No? Well, too bad!
When you start building with this skin, the container blocks will have a randomized initial color out of 16 different options. But here’s the exciting part: if you want to give your dwelling a fresh look, you can now use the spray can’s alternate function (right mouse button) to access a selection wheel of available colors. This way, you can effortlessly repaint your walls to your heart’s content. It’s important to note that the last color you spray-painted with will become the default color for subsequent shipping container blocks you build. Definitely one of the more creative skins, in my opinion. You can cop this skin for fourteen bucks on the Steam store.
Wow! What a jam-packed update. Rust brings significant changes aimed at enhancing the game with quality-of-life improvements while making major changes to the meta.
Overall, these updates strive to balance gameplay, improve immersion, and provide players with fresh experiences within the Rust universe. Get your Rust server hosting now! And with that, I wish you all the best!