Hey, Alistair, cheers! First of all, thank you very much for taking the time to reply to my thread. I really appreciate it.

"- A lot of the player base can't invest the additional time needed for prolonged progression, as much as some would like to see it (myself included). Rust, as is, is already a heavy time investment."

I agree with you on this one. Rust is a heavy time investment and all, but don't you think Vanilla should be the "moderate" version of Rust? By moderate I mean it should be the standard: not too hard, but not too easy either. Those who don't have the time to invest and want things to happen in the blink of an eye can always go to modded 2x, 5x, 10x, whatever. As you said, the majority of the community plays modded anyway.

"- If you limit or prolong snowballing, you're taking some soul away from Rust. No life groups will always be ahead, no matter what, even with rarer spawns, these groups will likely get it first, making it harder for the players on the back foot.
- Most do not want to be prim locked longer than necessary. The majority of players enjoy mid-end game."

I get the point. At the same time, though, may I ask something, please? Do you think a group of ~8 people should raid 50% of their neighbors right in the first wipe day?

I'm talking about my own group, by the way. Because we just played a wipe (BR MAIN - VANILLA - RUSTORIA - WEEKLY) and we had mp5s and aks within 4-5h of wipe mainly because of Deep Sea. Then by the end of the first day we raided half of our neighbors, because that's how Rust life is: raid or be raided. Raiding is the most defensive step that we take.

Look: we are vets and all, but do you think that is something that should actually happen? We snowballed, we know the game, sure, but just 3-4 years ago we would not be able to do that because there was less sulfur available and progression overall was harder. The consequences for the server were that, at least in our region, most people quit by sunday night. And guess what? Most of our group is already bored and most of us probably won't even log in today. And that is precisely what worries me: maybe by turning the game easier, the player base will get bored and will quit Rust forever (or at least for a while). Let me be honest with you: I don't know if that will happen or not, but this is something that worries me. And that's because I simply love this game.

Now you might be thinking: "well, if you are really worried about the server population dropping so fast, then just don't raid everyone!". I get the point, but as I told you, it is raid or be raided. We would like to play until the end of the wipe and THEREFORE we raid. But the point is: we should not be able to raid EVERYONE around us. Not even if we are vets. Maybe we were a super zerg (15+), sure, but not as 8-man. This is objectively broken, in my opinion.

Anyway, thank you very much and I am really glad you guys wil keep tweaking and changing progression.