Before blueprints, here's what's happening today:

3:13pm EST - Noticing some distinct changes to the hammer after this update. I feels faster (not confirmed) and has a different sound. Also, thankfully, the pink is gone when going from level 1 to 2.

2:30pm EST - And we're back up on a new IP: client.connect 54.164.66.250:28015
This is a fresh map because we're on a different box. Lets see how this holds up. Also, F2 options are not working. See bug here.

2:16pm EST - Switched IP's, loaded back up and the console is spamming this non-stop:

1.1.1.1 (IP's removed) caused an exception when connecting - blocking for 10 minutes

Garry did do some DDoS mitigation stuff before...

2:11pm EST - Aaand we got DDoS'd... let's see if I can get us back up...

2:04pm EST - At around 8pm EST last night basically all servers started booting people and not letting them join again. When trying to join, everyone started getting “server full” messages. Garry has been working for a couple hours on fixing errors, exceptions, mismatched serialization and a bunch of other code heavy shit.

There was recently a server update and I've had a server up and running for about 20 minutes now. 70 people have been able to connect and most have not yet gotten booted. Based on some report on the facepunch forums, it looks like servers are able to start but end up shutting down within half hour or so. Lets see how this goes…

Blueprints

Yesterday, Garry shared with us the plan for blueprints and the community collectively lost its mind. As with most people, I was very turned off by the idea at first blush. Rather than grab my pitch fork and hop on the ‘lets crucify Garry bandwagon’, I decided to sleep on it and see how I felt in the morning. Thankfully, Garry has responded to the community and clarified some things which made me feel a lot better about the whole thing. To those of you who think this is just an awful idea, I'd like to point out a couple things.

Global vs. server blueprints

This is the most important distinction and was not explained in the devblog. Each server will have their own blueprints for the standard items. Global blueprints (the ones on Steam) will be variants of the server blueprints with comparable stats. You will not be able to join and server and craft your global blueprint items right away. You'll have to actually find the server blueprint in game before you can craft its global equivalent. Server wipe? You have to find them again. Join a different server? You have to find them again.

Garry is not trying to fuck us over

A lot of people seem to think Garry is doing this just to make more money and that he doesn't give a shit about what impact it has on the game. This is simply not the case. If it were, he would have launched Legacy as the full version and run off with our money to lay on a beach somewhere. Instead, he's busting his ass daily to make this game awesome and actively engaging the community for feedback. No one wants this game to be amazing more than he does and this blueprint decision was made in that context.

Lots more items

One of the main reasons he insists this is the way to go is because it opens up the possibility of tons more items. Giving the community the ability to contribute to the inventory allows for countless more items than if it were all up to the Facepunch developers.

None of this is set in stone

This is an idea they are trying out. It does not mean you'll be able to buy a c4 blueprint once for 15 cents then go into any server and craft c4 (granted, the first version of the devblog did use c4 in the example, contributing even more so to people losing their shit). Garry admits though, that was just an arbitrary item, even he doesn't know exactly how this system is going to work. From the looks of the conversation today, these global blueprints will be mostly cosmetic and end game items will still be hard to get.

This will probably be optional

I don't think it’s been officially declared, but this strikes me as exactly the type of thing which could be toggled by each server owner. Start the server with the variable “server.global_blueprints false” (or something like that). If the system really sucks, no one will use it and it'll go obsolete.

Final thoughts

I am very excited about the possibilities which arise from integrating the blueprint system in with the steam marketplace. It gives the game an expandability not otherwise possible. Yes, if everyone can go in and buy what they want without working for it, it would ruin the game. But I don't believe that is what this system will be. I urge everyone to sit back, take a deep breath, and, if you have something really pressing to express, share it with the community!

-Bugs
Owner, Rustafied