Rust’s New Update Means it’s the Perfect Time to Jump In!
The new Rust update makes the game even more accessible than ever to new players. Rust developers Facepunch introduced a monthly patch to the game last Thursday that reworked the entire recoil system for guns in the game. This update moved Rust’s gunplay away from the pattern-based recoil familiar to CS:GO and Valorant players and replaced it with a “gradient based aim drift and inaccuracy for automatic weapons.”
In Facepunch’s words, “If you didn’t have hundreds if not thousands of hours practicing the recoil in Rust, firing at people in the game would often feel like attempting to align two like poled magnets. Frustrating would be an understatement.” This update, Facepunch says, “compressed the skill ceiling,” effectively making the game more enjoyable for newer players. While the core game mechanics of collecting loot to advance down a semi-linear tech tree, making and defending a base, and engaging in both PvP and PvE combat still exist, this update to the combat system makes it so that barriers to enjoying these mechanics are lowered and maximum skill expression has also been lowered. While skill expression like this led to impressive plays, it also left room for abuse in the form of scripts to compensate for a known recoil pattern. The added randomness of inaccuracy prevents these types of cheats from being used while also adding an element of unpredictability to fights that could swing them in favor of players with less time spent practicing their aim.
Additionally, this update included some features that will make the transition from playing other games easier, such as a crosshair and hit markers. Players familiar with games such as Call of Duty will now find Rust a little more familiar than they would have before this change.
For returning players, the update represents a new gunplay dynamic that will feel fresh, albeit a little frustrating for those who had committed so much time to learning the old model. Additionally, content was added as always to keep the game fresh: a new type of tran car was introduced, AI-controlled scientists were added to the Launch Site monument, a new gun – the HMMG; a new machine gun – was introduced, among a host of other changes. Longtime Rust players will be happy to see the return of fan-favorite map Hapis Island, with some new changes, that was constructed without procedural generation and was instead hand-crafted by a Facepunch mapmaking team.
Words by Nathan Burke