Official Page:
https://rust.facepunch.com/news/common-groundTrailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9BpyXSjrac
After several days' experience with the Apartment Complex, I have extensive thoughts on it.
It completely changes the early game, especially for players struggling either because they're new or because they're in a server that's well over their skill level (or that of their clan's, as happens with CULT since we're always on the busiest server). It allows farming of scrap and components with zero risk in the safe zone, or tiny risk just outside it, and you can do this throughout the game. If you build your base RIGHT OUTSIDE the safe zone, it almost turns the game into PVE, though you will still need some tougher-to-source items from further afield, and you will still need to farm resources, but again, the latter can be found just outside the safe zone where danger is minimal. Your rate of progress will be slower than those of players who can deal with more risk, but you
will progress, and in a monthly server there's nothing stopping you from reaching the endgame at your own pace. All that said, a base right outside the safe zone will be an extremely visible base, so you WILL get raided at some point. But design the base well, and you can survive the setbacks and keep trucking. So it won't be 100% PVE, but it will be at least 50%, which is a huge change for the cutthroat world of
Rust. And yes you'll be missing out on a lot of mini-events and content, as well as a lot of the cooler items, vehicles and weapons, if you stick close to the Complex. But you'll have a low-stress way to establish yourself in even the most vicious server, and from there make forays into the rest of the world to try, say, one or two mini-events or complex features per wipe. So in the long run you COULD experience nearly everything the game has to offer through this method.
What you won't ever experience this way is a huge, sprawling base in a premium location like a cliffside or coastline. For that, you have to distance yourself from the Apartment Complex, but this distance doesn't need to be great. In our current wipe, for example, there is extensive coastline a mere couple of minutes' walk from the Complex. So the risk in ferrying loot across increases, but two minutes is still almost risk-free if you do it at night. Compare with our actual base this wipe which is more like TEN minutes away, and which results in more than 50% of the runs ending in deaths and losing all the loot. It is a major headache bringing components back to base for us this wipe from the Complex, so I've resorted to only doing it when no other realistic alternative is available. However, I can still farm scrap and spend it at the Complex, since the apartment has workbench, at least for level 1. So research is still viable in the early game, even if your base is across the map. This way you're getting 50% of the benefits of an apartment. But if you want 100%, you need to locate your base within a couple minutes' walk at most.
This means that the map layout makes a tremendous impact on your strategy for every wipe. First thing you need to check when entering a new wipe is where the fuck is the Apartment Complex, and everything else follows from there. In essence, this turns the giant map into a far smaller one for the purposes of base location. Eighty percent of the map is off-limits, if you plan to use 100% of the Apartment Complex's features. What if you want a snow base, and the Complex is far from the snow region, as in this week's wipe for us? And we're even lucky that the walk is ten minutes, because it could have been TWENTY if the snow was on the complete opposite side of the map, at which point the Complex might as well not exist at all beyond level 1 teching. You're not gonna survive twenty minutes of walking naked across the most popular
Rust server, not even at night, so the Complex becomes almost useless at such distances.
Finally, the Complex becomes near-ENTIRELY useless if you plan to compete for the absolute COOLEST base locations in the game. In that case you want to stake your claim ASAP after wipe, and you'll be fighting giant clans tooth and nail for the spot from the get-go, so you won't have any time to mosey over to the Complex even if it happens to be right next to you. Which gives us a smooth difficulty curve, depending on how hardcore you and your plans are: casual means you go 100% apartment-first, and build right next to it; and hardcore means you ignore it completely and play the game exactly as before the Complex was added; while most players will fall somewhere in between these extremes, which is also where CULT is. And the bigger and better your clan gets, the less you'll need to rely on it.
It's really a fantastic addition to the game that gives every level of player exactly what they need, but without adding full-blown PVE safe zones WHERE YOU CAN EVEN BUILD as in pretty much every other builder including
Life is Feudal,
Ark,
Atlas, and of course
Star Citizen which will have entire SOLAR SYSTEMS that are effectively safe zones. In
Rust there is now a safe zone to "base" yourself off, but only for the early game, and not even all of that. Beyond it, you must face the other players as usual, and the further from the Complex you go, the less help it will be in that challenge. Absolutely superb balancing from Facepunch, as usual, and there is no developer in the genre that balances as well as them. And they need to have the best balance, since they're making the most competitive game ever.
