As part of the resource gathering revamp I've made some changes to ores and how they work. The first thing you'll notice is ore nodes are specific to their type. This means stone nodes yield only stone, sulfur only sulfur, and metal only metal. This is the first step in improving resource gathering and making it less grindy. As it was, you were effectively a moth to a flame as soon as you left your base. Any node you saw you had to hit or you felt like you were losing out, and nothing felt like an achievement because you got a bit of everything from everything. It's very muddy. I want people to make active decisions about what they need and take the time to find areas that provide it.
Another change you'll notice is the fact that ore nodes look nicer while they're being destroyed. I've added a much needed particle effect and sound to mask the visual change that happens as the node stage changes.
I've also added something called a "finishing bonus" to the ore nodes. The final hit will yield a bonus of about 20% of the total, which is not only satisfying but should mitigate cherry picking and just leaving half finished nodes around the map. It should be noted that you can only receive this bonus with a proper tool. Bone clubs and stones do not trigger it.
Lastly, in what is sure to be a controversial decision, I have removed HQM from ore nodes with the exception of the metal one. You will instead receive 2 HQM in the finishing bonus of a metal ore node. This means if you want to pump out guns you're going to need to build a quarry. I plan to revisit how quarries work next week, and make them not only more viable but necessary and fun to use. If you're a lone wolf you should be able to get by via recycling or trading. You shouldn't need to pump out 5 AK47s a day, so getting 2 HQM for hitting a static object in the world for 10 seconds should not be a huge issue.
Look, any time I make a change that fundamentally modifies how the game is played the outrage on reddit is extreme. Unfortunately I fell victim to reading the playrust subreddit and actually took the beratings to heart and got cold feet which resulted in me making kneejerk last minute changes to my work to try and please "the community". It turns out "the community" I was listening to is likely just a few extremely loud mouthed negative people who cannot see beyond the next 5 minutes of playtime. The entire point of me introducing HQM in the first place was to split up the resource requirements for new players and for high-end players. It's the same reason why I wanted to make different types of resources available in different areas of the map. Because I listened to people bitching, I lost sight of my original vision and we've been left with a muddy mess of a resource collection game, where everything is available everywhere all the time. This may be because people just want instant gratification and be the first to have a P250 so they can ruin other peoples days.
This is why we have junkpiles everywhere - because people didn't want to go to radtowns.
This is why HQM was in nodes - people didn't want to do the work to get a quarry.
This is why we don't have the north/south divide - people didn't like the thought of actually having to do more than step outside their base to get good items.
When I sit back and reflect on these aspects it makes me very unhappy with the state of the game. So I'm going to change it. I'm asking for you guys to reserve judgement for a few weeks and really let things play through. I feel like I write this every few weeks, but understand that nothing is set in stone, and if something sucks it'll get changed. The goal here is to make the game as fun as possible, and that is what I am attempting to do. You might be accustomed to a certain Rust lifestyle and when that is changed you may feel slighted, but please try and think about the future and let us try and push it into a better direction.
Another thing I'm looking at doing is making the resource gathering a little more fun with a minigame:
It's not live yet, and I'm working on a few different iterations, but basically what I'm going to do is have some 'hot spots' on the node you can see in certain light conditions or with the miner hat which grants you a bonus upon finishing the node. I'll probably have them chain together, so if you do a good job at smashing them all you'll receive more in the end. I feel little things like this will go a hell of a long way in reducing the mundane nature of gathering resources in Rust (colliqualy known as grinding).
That's all for now, stay tuned. Try not to act like the game is ruined and just trust us. Please?