I'm a huge fan of the graphical tweaks and item re-modeling Rust has gone through lately but I have to admit what they did to the Bone Armor kind of stumps me.

It looks absolutely bad ass, but it went from a somewhat relevant item to complete garbage tier. The old bone armor was a super cheap alternative to other mid tier armors because it was the only real use of bone fragments. I didn't give a shit about losing a set of Bone Armor because it was incredibly easy to reproduce but still held it's own in a fight. Now that statement does, to some degree, explain why it's effectiveness as armor was dropped, but why so dramatically?

Instead of bridging the gap between wood armor and road sign, where it should have been moved to, the new Bone Armor is complete trash. You are better armored wearing full hide. I feel like it would be in an okay place if it wasn't a stand-alone set of armor. You can't wear shirts, pants, gloves, or boots alongside it, so it just has it's completely mediocre armor values and whatever helmet you're packing.

Obviously this isn't a major balance concern. A large majority of players wore road sign or metal armor, even before the change. I just can't help but wonder why spend all of the time graphically re-working an item only to make it completely irrelevant in terms of game balance and, as such, something that will rarely be seen?

Further, it just adds another useless resource to clutter up boxes and inventory. Bone Fragments now have no practical use past the first few levels when a bone knife is the better choice for harvesting animals than a rock or stone hatchet.

I may be the only one who remotely cares about this, or I may be missing something. I'm a 1000 hour player on and off since legacy and I could not be more thrilled with the direction the game is going right now. I've just been puzzled over this change since the patch and haven't come up with an answer. Thoughts?