@whohirestheseidiots: you won't take another review on this website seriously because you're a fanatic and scared of seeing the truth for what it really is. Sorry, but that's as real as it gets. The fact that you created an account with that kind of account name proves your fanaticism and shows you are upset someone said things you didn't like, regarding the game you love so much. Oh the toxicity in the Rust community.
@karma: right, because a base game that is supposed to have good official support has next to none? Everyone should have to dance and run around in circles to find that perfect server because the game is so poorly balanced and designed at the base game level? Seriously, give your head a smash against the wall to loosen those cob webs. Base games should be designed a hell of a lot better instead of being thrown out of Early Access in a shameful state. They couldn't even come out of Early Access with a complete game for frig sake.
@miltonic: You're going to get flogged and flamed definitely. I agree with you though. Having played this game many hours and administrating servers for quite some time, I have gotten to see things that should just not be in video games at all. This game is taken beyond way too seriously by some and the community pretty much shoots its own knees out with arrogance and ignorance. This is by far among the worst games I have had the displeasure to become involved with. I came back to Facepunch Studios after many years. I was told the company had changed a lot and things were looking up. So, I got involved to see what all the fuss was about. It was great for a while and a lot of fun, but then as always, the directionless developers (who just slap things together like people lather syrup on pancakes) pretty much destroyed their own game by making the atmosphere even more harsh and catering to groups and highly toxic player bases.
Eventually I threw in the towel. Rust is not a game that is going to bring in a substantial audience. For being a game that has made more than a triple A title budget, the product is laughable. Its community is way too toxic, it's not newbie friendly, the progression requires you to have no form of employment and if you log off, prepare to be offline raided.
Conclusion: Rust is bust and will be left in the dust.
@so_hai: Pretty much everything stated was true and accurate other than the building system part people are freaking out about. I think the author got sidetracked thinking about something else (perhaps a busy week, tired, etc.), but aside from that minor detail, most of us who've played the game for years know there are still building system issues that remained Post Early Access.
Well folks, I have to say even though a couple points were off about building, (it was probably a sidetracked thought mistake and will be corrected) but this is all pretty realistic.
30 hours, 100 hours or 1,000+ hours, it's not going to change what is. 30 hours is enough time to get a feel for the basic concepts of Rust and get a feel for the community atmosphere. All the people claiming you should have a huge stack of hours to be able to make a review of this game are being absurdly silly. You should not have to invest thousands of hours into a game to come to a review conclusion. If you do, there is clearly a huge problem with game the game's design.
The problem here is that a lot of this review is pretty much dead on in what it conveys to the reader and fanatics find it offensive because it's not what they want to read. This review sums Rust up in a nutshell - the game and the community all at once.
Anyone who thinks it's OK to release a game as official in a bug infested and broken state with an obsoleted network engine at it's core is more than irresponsible. RakNet (which hasn't been maintained for more than 4 entire years) is only one of many problems at the core of Rust. Garry Newman chose RakNet because it was a FOSS (free open sourced software) solution he didn't have to pay licensing for. After Jenkens Software sold the engine to Oculus, they then made it open source. The community left it abandoned because it simply wasn't worth maintaining anymore because it's obsolete. It had its run and it was a good engine at the time, but fact is it's dated, obsolete, insecure and to this day suffers from many unfixed issues. RakNet was licensed for a decade and it was time to be let go. That's the whole reason Jenkens Software retired the engine in the first place. Garry however took the cheap route out figuring the FOSS community would do the work for him to keep it current and fixed up. Surprise! That never happened and thus Rust got stuck with a big Trident in its side.
Aside from Raknet, there are several obviously apparent flaws in the core game code (such as the network library bridge so the game code can talk to RakNet) and in the mechanics as well as many other areas of the game. Many things have been rinsed and repeated over the years and it's just gotten stale for a lot of players. When technical and mechanical issues that have plagued the game during its entire existence still exist, it's prudent those things be ironed out prior leaving Early Access rather than post Early Access. Post Early Access is where the is supposed to have a complete and polished product.
Between the road map changing constantly and the ridiculous statements made on their website About page, what do you expect people to say about this game and company? It's not as though they didn't ask for this. Look at their customer and community relations. They don't give a damn about either of them (other than select groups and individuals) and on top of that, they blatantly troll, lie or absolve themselves of any responsibility. How can you expect consumers to swallow this crap and like the taste of it?
You would think a company that's been around 14 years would improve, but nothing has changed significantly in that period of time. The company is still just as irresponsible, unreliable, undependable and certainly not honorable based on their actions. From 2004-2018 and nothing has changed in those areas. In 2004 Garry's Mod released. It's still messy to this very day. 2008 they released Facewound which was a complete flop. It took Garry so long to finish the game (2003-2008) it became a game out of time and was made freeware. Nobody would buy or even play the game because it was so dated.
February 8, 2018 Rust releases in a mess. It's 2018 and Chunks is still in Early Access coming 2 years as of April, after they said the game would be finished in 2-4 months (in the developer description) from initial release into Early Access of April 16 2016! It received an update in November of 2017, but that is only to keep the project looking active because people started talking about it.
Then there is the matter of the company cancelling half a dozen projects in 2017 they'd been working on for years. All that wasted time, effort and money - time, money and effort that should have gone into Rust or Chunks. There has been zero project priority in this company since the it's very beginning. They become distracted way too easily, objectivity is lost and the mentality is that of children when they know they've screwed up and lash out at the community with trolling them or just being flat out arrogant.
Now here's the real kick to the genitals ladies and gentlemen. If all of the above wasn't bad enough, before Rust had even left Early Access, Ruin appeared in their project development schedule all the while Rust is nowhere near finished! Keep in mind this same company cancelled half a dozen projects late 2017 and now they suddenly have a brand new project they can afford to pick up? Can you smell another Early Access title coming? Are you ready for more rinse and repeat? Is your money like toilet paper to this company? I can't say what it is to be honest, but I can conclude and tell you that funding is definitely being squandered away by Facepunch Studios and not going where it should be to complete projects in a timely manner with completeness.
Valve is just as much to blame too for the state of this game and many Early Access games on Valve's game distribution platform, Steam. The Early Access program is a disaster that needs reassessment and redesigning. All the Early Access program is doing at this point (and in past) is damaging the gaming industry and the credibility of developers who actually take the Early Access program very seriously and want to succeed delivering a quality product people can be happy with.
In the end folks, this is all the fault of the customers and communities for allowing this to all transpire by supporting this sort of behavior. If you want things to change and improve for the better interests of the video game industry itself, the change is going to have to start with you closing your wallet to companies who practice this kind of business.
Support what is right rather than what is wrong in the video gaming industry.
I'm sorry folks, but this is the cold and rock hard truth.
Borg's comments