Community Update 68

Damn that Shadowfrax. I spend most of these blogs building him as some sort of 'comedian' and he goes and releases 'Cold November Rain'. It's really not the sort of video you'd expect from a channel about a horse-headed man with a pie obsession. It's not silly. He's not role-playing a George Lucas character. It doesn't end on a joke, nor does it analyse the game. He doesn't mention a pie once. It's a tight, beautifully edited short film about loss. Really one of the best uses of Rust's tools and structures I've ever seen. Now do one the length of November Rain.

Rusty Pirate Gaming has been killing it, lately. This is no exception. They recently held a CTF event on their server, which meant figuring out how to turn Rust's base killification into something more rules-based. There's some really cool moments in this, even in the setting-up. How they figured out both flags and spectators is very satisfying, and then there's the match. It's not wholly arena-based, so the battle uses the natural flow of the landscape combined with high walls for people to run through and use for cover. There's some painful commentary moments, and oddly piped in crowd noises, but it's a neat use of Rust. I especially appreciated the fact that it was covered by two cameras. Just don't force the other stuff, guys - you're doing well. In fact, RPG released two interesting videos. The other one is just an hour and one second of Rust in real-time, encouraging players to take the time to stop raiding and just enjoy the world. You can probably use that video to fall asleep after a long night defending against raiders.

With server wipes currently being a fact of life, some people think the wipe could be made part of the core game. That the wipe isn't just a command brought upon everyone by the server owner or Facepunch, but that there's a possibility that players could trigger a cataclysm and reset the world. UltraWideGamer's reddit thread is about that. They've neatly taken a lot of the game's elements and momuments and tied it all together into an event.

Main thought behind this is that instead of admins wiping the server manually every month, there would be an event allowing players to wipe server with nuclear strike. It shouldn’t be possible to accomplish this until very lategame with full gear. You’d have to complete a couple of smaller PVE events such as the helicopter or the scientists, which would have a chance of dropping an item for the Nuclear strike event. If you’d get all the items, you’d have to have a team of people capable to hold both Dome and Satellite for some time (let’s say 20 minutes). There will be alert on the server when this happens so that everyone else can try and stop you from succeeding + there could be AI waves of enemies trying to take satellite back.

My own preference for this sort of thing would be at a time when wipes aren't mandatory, because making wipes wholly player driven would give people something to strive for. But the game isn't there yet.

Phaedo82's strength has always been his sharp analysis, so it's really good to see him starting up a series that's focused on players just starting out. It shows how to quickly get set-up as a solo player, where to put a sleeping bah, what to build, and best practices for what to do with resources. It's pretty breathless stuff, so you might need to watch it a couple of times to get the full benefit. Take a breath, dude.

Unintentional comedy is the best comedy.

Think you're working on something awesome? Tell me all about it. Now's the time to share your base designs, or get into the growing Raid Cam business, or show off a game-mode from your server. There's a dedicated forum post, or you can fish for upvotes in the Subreddit. I also shuffle around the the Steam Community, so feel free to show me to things from there. You can follow and respond to Rust on Twitter, and I'm on there as well. I can't respond to everything, but I read every comment and take it all in.