Time for a new meta Scourge servers

[Catatonic21]

I've been playing on US Sourge for 3 years now, and the meta has always been dominated by massive hemp (now orchid) farms and factories crafting Explosives. Here are a few ideas I have floating around, but I’m not sure how they might fit into the current server dynamics:

Limit the number of plots
We could cap the number of plots a player can have to reduce the extreme farm setups that take up a lot of server resources and create imbalance.

Limit the number of Bee Hives
Similar to the plot limit, limiting the number of bee hives per player would encourage a more balanced economy and reduce the over-reliance on automated resources.

Adjust Explosives Market
Lower the buying price of Explosives. This would make it less profitable to mass-produce Explosives and encourage more diverse strategies for making scrap and trading.

Increase prices of other items
Raising the buying prices for other items would create a better variety of ways to earn NW (Net Worth) and encourage players to diversify their approach to farming and trading.

New ways to generate Scrap
We could explore new ways to earn scrap outside of traditional farming methods. One idea is to buff horses and fishing, while also limiting how many each player can own to prevent mass accumulation.

Reconsider Orchids
Sadly, I think orchids need to go. While they are currently the best method of earning scrap, they require four times the water usage compared to other plants, which is too taxing on server performance, especially with the current state of mega-farms.

 

[ASAPGabriel]

I like your idea catatonic, also with a new meta or change of pace from farming, will lead to more player interactions and a more tight nit server. Looking forward to see what new things might be implemented

[Jamesy]

I personally agree with everything you have listed. The server feels more like a farming simulator now than a Rust server. People just build big, soulless, square boxs and fill it with planters and do nothing else. The drop off in player numbers shows that we badly need more things to do, and more ways to earn networth.

[BigDave]

The root of the problem is the goal, not the means to acquire it.

Change the 'meta' for networth farming from x to y and you just get a focus on y, same problem just a diffent crafting / farming focus. Lower the sale price of the resource and you just need a bigger 'x' farm base to reach the same profit.

The goal, apparently, is networth. You say you have been playing for 3 years but somehow haven't got enough networth? How much is enough?

That's the real issue in my opinion. Perhaps changing the goal not the 'meta' is the answer. 

Networth is the only thing that carries over between wipes, and that is likely why it has become the focus for many. I really don't understand myself, you play for a couple of wipes and you've got more networth than you'll ever need so what's the point? Is it a scoring system? If so then how about changing the scoring system?

What if there were achievements/medals you could get that scaled exponentially. Like 'zombie killer' - kill 10 zombies for level 1, 100 for level 2, 1000 for level 3 etc. No farms needed and people are out fighting zombies on a zombie server. A strange concept I know.

You could have ones for monuments, like opening the crate on oil, scanning the red card in military tunnels,  participating in heli and bradly kills etc. You could have crafting and farming ones or selling items in in vending machines for people into that. The monument ones could be team linked, whole team gets achievements for opening crate or scanning door to encourage cooperation.

Networth would still be useful for buying random stuff on the black market but wouldn't be the be all and end all of the game for everyone.

Or we could just keep farming networth endlessly and just change the 'meta' occasionally. 

[Catatonic21]

6 hours ago, BigDave said:

The root of the problem is the goal, not the means to acquire it.

Change the 'meta' for networth farming from x to y and you just get a focus on y, same problem just a diffent crafting / farming focus. Lower the sale price of the resource and you just need a bigger 'x' farm base to reach the same profit.

The goal, apparently, is networth. You say you have been playing for 3 years but somehow haven't got enough networth? How much is enough?

That's the real issue in my opinion. Perhaps changing the goal not the 'meta' is the answer. 

Networth is the only thing that carries over between wipes, and that is likely why it has become the focus for many. I really don't understand myself, you play for a couple of wipes and you've got more networth than you'll ever need so what's the point? Is it a scoring system? If so then how about changing the scoring system?

What if there were achievements/medals you could get that scaled exponentially. Like 'zombie killer' - kill 10 zombies for level 1, 100 for level 2, 1000 for level 3 etc. No farms needed and people are out fighting zombies on a zombie server. A strange concept I know.

You could have ones for monuments, like opening the crate on oil, scanning the red card in military tunnels,  participating in heli and bradly kills etc. You could have crafting and farming ones or selling items in in vending machines for people into that. The monument ones could be team linked, whole team gets achievements for opening crate or scanning door to encourage cooperation.

Networth would still be useful for buying random stuff on the black market but wouldn't be the be all and end all of the game for everyone.

Or we could just keep farming networth endlessly and just change the 'meta' occasionally. 

After 3 years, I’ve got about $3 mil net worth—no crazy farms, no wipe-to-wipe grind. Just vibing and playing my own pace.

Edited April 28 by Catatonic21

[BigDave]

20 hours ago, Catatonic21 said:

After 3 years, I’ve got about $3 mil net worth—no crazy farms, no wipe-to-wipe grind. Just vibing and playing my own pace.

Pretty similar to my play style I would say. I think I have like 2mil on AU Scourge after also about 3 years on RustEZ. Similar amount on US Elysium and like ~20mil on Survival, which is mostly due to the personal quarries on survival. I've clocked up 11,000 hours on RustEZ and most of that has been spent doing monuments etc. 

I do a 6 plot farm just for cloth, teas and now pies, plus the fun in the cross-breeding process. I love how Rust handles farming.

I think that the people who make the giant farms are more focused on networth though. Not saying it's wrong, just that the giant farms etc are the NW mills that add entities and contribute to lag, particularly on older computers.

That's where I think a different option of a goal, from NW to something that can be acquired out playing the game, may reduce the amount of giant farms.

Not hating on anyone's playing styles, each to their own.

 

[Celsus]

It is arguable that the net worth and black market system are what defines these servers. A lot of thought and effort has gone into carefully balancing the prices in the /shop. It is also necessary to give careful consideration to any changes to that system. Death has been making changes to stack sizes on the new flowers, for example, and is using a light touch because balancing the ingame economy is akin to balancing the real-world economy. Player enjoyment is directly correlated with how easy or difficult the game is. I can only assume the last few wipes have been rather challenging for the team because some of the corrective measures taken to improve performance over the years have needed to be reverted.

I do understand the desire to have the server run better than it has been. But the reasons players give for the performance issues has always been and remains opinion. It is not uncommon to have players complain about bases that use Wind Turbines, for example, whether or not they are actually responsible for inducing lag in a given area. (Believe it or not, the jury is still out on that)

In my case, I have noticed that a large cause of lag on these servers is the deployment of multiple 'Heli Signals'. The server heaves each time they are deployed. There is a rule that only up to three can be deployed at once [citation needed] Not sure if that is the actual number, or if it is enforced. However, I wouldn't like to see further restrictions on their use, given that they generate income for the server and the players who deploy them are great people and are genuinely having fun fighting 'the Karens'. lol

The only direct instance of a base type that has provably been responsible for lag that I know of were early horse manure farms with massive numbers of horses, and that was dealt with by changing the math to reduce manure production and changing the rules to restrict the number of animals a player could have. So the idea of changing things up in that way is not unprecedented.

But it remains to be demonstrated that large farms are responsible for the poor performance. However, it has been suggested by Admin that players who build farms should do so without adding windows in order to minimize performance impacts. So there is at least some recognition that farming is a potential cause.

I'm open to the idea of changing things to make sure everyone has more fun with less lag. But as I already mentioned, the reasons players give are so various they might as well be arbitrary.

For what it's worth, farming is all I do. Period. I don't visit monuments, board Oil Rigs or Cargo, I don't fight Karen or Bradley, hell, I don't even really run the roads breaking barrels. I build a farm, I collect hemp seeds, crossbreed clones, grow hemp, sell the cloth (or rope) to the shop. That's it. So any changes to the number of planters permitted would directly impact me. Having said that, I wouldn't in principle be opposed to having limits placed on the number of planters I could deploy. My current farm setup has 320, four floors with 80 each, fully enclosed. That might be excessive. I can generate 200K cloth ($26K) per harvest. I would be fine with a rule that reduced that. But it would be a shame if such a rule were put in place only to have the lag continue and the blame be shifted onto the next arbitrary culprit.

Essay over. Sorry to be so long-winded. I agree in principle. But we need some numbers.

Edited May 2 by Celsus
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