We discovered an awesome game the other day called Rust. It’s from the makers of Garry’s Mod, and it’s available right now in pre-release form via Steam for $19.99. Rust is all about surviving in a world driven by player interactions. The world in Rust is a hostile one full of dangers like bears, hunger, and 12 year-olds masquerading as internet tough guys. Starting with just a rock as your only tool and weapon, you are alone in a world where even the nicest human being will revert to a vicious cave man and kill you for your shirt.
Gathering resources and hoarding supplies are the key to survival. Chopping trees gets you wood, smashing rocks gives ores, and killing animals yields cloth/leather/meat/etc. Refining resources and using crafting recipes will allow you to turn wood and stone into a hatchet, metals into revolvers, and all sorts of incredibly useful tools to give you a leg up on everyone else.
Our first day in Rust was all about learning the ropes, gathering supplies, and learning the hard way that you can’t log off in a building with a wooden door. Wooden doors can be chopped down to reveal your vulnerable body sleeping. That’s right, you don’t disappear when you log out and your stuff is never safe. Every wall, post, door, floor, ceiling, etc., can be and placed and requires you to farm the materials. It’s a lot of work but oddly addicting.
Our second day we learned that a metal door can only be destroyed by explosives, and the odds that someone will waste their explosives on your humble abode are slim to none. We actually lucked out… a guy we settled by forgot to shut his door before logging out and, well, Graev paid him a little visit while he slept. Hey, don’t judge! If we didn’t do it then someone else would have, and we wouldn’t have found enough resources to get us a metal door. So now as I write this I pray someone doesn’t blow up my house and take all our hard earned stockpiles of raw chicken.
If the constant rush of adrenaline and heart-pounding, nerve-racking cutt-throat gameplay is what you crave, then Rust won’t disappoint. If you’re not quite up to it, or have blood pressure issues, you can always play on a server without PvE. There are even servers running mods to add functionality and remove some of the frustration. My plan tomorrow is to give these other servers a try.
Though still in “alpha,” Rust is worth the $20 and I expect it to be quite a hit as features continue to be added. We will continue to follow Rust during its development and tell you about any fun or interesting adventures.
It sounds like the kind of game I would love to play, until of course the large griefer guilds turn it into a Salem ghost town. I’ll see how it pans out before I commit, which in part means I’ll be following your exploits, but I’ll bet by Crom in little time if griefing is left unchecked it will feel like the first day of early access in AoC.
“Yet another FFA PvP sandbox” > http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/12/20/some-assembly-required-yet-another-ffa-pvp-sandbox/
I’d like to see someone build this type of game where co-operation is somehow beneficial. I don’t want to force people to be nice but currently the rewards for acting like a mass murder in Rust and DayZ is greater then the rewards for being civil.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of PC Gaming friends and this type of game is not solo friendly. Due to this I can’t see myself buying it. If I had 2 plus more friends playing I could see Rust being really fun and different.
And when I say co-operation I mean with strangers. Obviously there is a benefit to having a crew of friends playing.
@Fergor: Graev wrote a post about games encouraging people to be behave socially acceptable. It pretty much agrees with everything you said. We both agree that there needs to be a a benefit for co-operating that equals or outweighs the benefits of being a turd.
@Gankatron: The ganking is already as bad as it can possibly get. Graev says the game feels like you take 3 steps forward and two steps back every time you play. Literally anyone who CAN kill you WILL kill you.
…I must admit feeling like a bit of a hypocrite criticizing such a game given my chosen name. 😛
It could provide some interesting game types though, if say 6 random teams of 2 were placed in a new world that persisted until only one team remained.
I hate the attitude of “the game allows me to kill you – therefore I must try”…it reminds me of the AC Darktide server or other FFA servers in equivalent games. I find that super boring because there are rarely any interesting social dynamics…rarely any interesting choices by people.
That is what I appreciated about UO where the default was usually to not kill even though the game allowed it…the possibility of griefing in a world where griefing is not the norm is fascinating to me…however, once griefing or randomly attacking is the default it is like letting the air out of a balloon and it seems so boring.
ffa pvp = what the hell do you want the rest of the game? Is like someone have a brilliant idea to create something interesting and then put fire on it (ffa pvp) and burn it…
When sandbox games will stop being created by monkeys, they will be the most successful game genre and will outperform themeparks.
How hard would it be to add some regular laws in this game? You attack and kill someone you are flagged a criminal. You steal from someones property you are flagged a criminal. Criminals have an escalating $bounty on them depending on the crime and recurrence etc.
Some simple moral system with crime and punishment and it sounds like this game would have a lot of social potential along with tactical strategies.
@romble: But the people who already kill on sight wouldn’t even be deterred by the bounty system. It would only egg them on.
Logged in dead. Guess someone really did waste C4 on us. We should get a group going with as many of us as possible. Who’s in?
Generally, enemies will get together if there is a greater threat. So making it much much harder to survive or having some threat that WILL kill you if you spend a lot of time ganking and not working together would lead to more co-operation naturally rather then in an enforced manner.
That’s the great thing about these indie games, there is a lot of room for experimentation. I hope the developers actually take advantage of that.
See such games as Rust and Dayz have their charm, but could be so much better.
I agree the incentive to do other things then kill other survivors need to be increased in such games.
Not punish those that want to play a certain pvp way. That is their choice.
But showing other people they have crossed a line is a good.
For example…
See some time back in the Dayz mod they had a feature that if you killed your fellow man, your player skin would show as a bandit to every one else. (this is no longer tru these days)
Thus you could not afford not to shoot any bandit on sight.
Everyone else was like a flip of a coin.. Could you trust them? That is what brought tension and fun to the game.
From what I still remember…
5 or 6 guys in a Mexican standoffs. Guns pointed at each other. Any suspicious sound would be enough for them to start blasting away.. and then here I was looking from a tall building nearby at the spectacle below and fired the first shot to one of them in the leg to see what would happen. They all panicked and a gunfight broke lose. (they did not notice me)
In the end 1 guy I remembered fighting zombies with 20 mins ago and a bandit remained.. guess who I came to aid? And no not to shoot the guy myself in the end. We shared the loot and parted in a friendly way.
Another time I was helpful aiding a guy on the run from a horde of zombies. I help shoot all his pursuers and was he grateful? No.. he shot me after the zombie threat was gone.
That feeling of never knowing if someone is friendly is a good thing. (even if that was an ungrateful piece of @&##)
If I know 98% of the players will kill me on sight, then what is the point playing the game if I want more from such a game then simple pvp?
For that reason I will not play Rust or Dayz in their current state.
They should rename the games shoot on sight.
“Generally, enemies will get together if there is a greater threat. ”
I actually haven’t experienced this, more the opposite where people try to join the organized griefer groups. I think it is even less likely to occur without some bounty system; for instance how are Keen and Graev going to avenge their deaths other than by killing everyone that crosses their path and hope the virtual gods sort it out in the end?
I have heard rumor the Plymouth server in Salem has a large player organized vigilante system, but that game has mechanics for tracking down murderers. Even so it sounds like Salem is in a downward spiral and Paradox has washed their hands of it.
I think the FFA idea works much better for a themepark than a persistent world sandbox (persistent deathmatch seems a bit of an oxymoron); as I mentioned above, while I won’t likely be playing this in it current form, limited deathmatches pitting groups of 2 against each other would be appealing, somewhat reminiscent of this episode of ST only without such a philanthropic ending (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxQqJbW-ohw).
Actually more likely like this episode:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEDLI3baJpw
Today confirms I need to play this game with friends. If anyone wants to team up, let me know. Rust requires an army.
It sounds like a homoerotic griefer’s paradise.
I do enjoy the Steam comments, although it gives one insight as to the nature of the “community”, especially with the rise in hackers:
“Killed a deer got chicken meat out of it, BEST GAME EVER. 20/10”
“You spawn completly naked and only have a stone, torches, med kit. Sometimes you meet other players that tell you in voice chat that you got a nice penis and then they shoot you in the face.”
“In the mere hour or so I played of Rust, I died more times than I can count on my fingers from players. Not ONCE did I suffer a death of hunger, cold, or at the hands of any NPC. This is no exaggeration either. Literally 2 seconds from joining my first server, a naked guy screamed on his mic as he beat me to death with a rock.”
“I walked up to a player and asked him how do you even craft in this? It was legitimately my first hour or two playing. His answer? “Welcome to Rust” as he gunned me down with his M16 looking rifle”
“A naked man chased after me with a rock over his head begging me to stop running. When i finally ran to the edge of a cliff and turned around. He said, “Alright…OK..” then bashed my face in with said rock. Another naked man asked “Are you an Expert Rock Fighter?” i shook my head no and i took my rock and bashed his face in. This is what i have learned from playing this game. TRUST NO ONE and always strike first. May my male genitalia dangling over your corpse stand as a warning never to cross me and my rock again. Only the strong survive.”
“If you’re looking at the guides, scratching your head, thinking “..but HOW do I get more rocks, I cant find any!” or anything else that confuses you about Rust, I have the solution for you; Find a guy, any guy, cave his head in with that rock. If you see a guy without a rock, cave his head in regardless, hes probably hiding rocks about his person. If a fully clothed, armed man comes up to you and asks if you would like to team up? You guessed it, smash his melon when he turns his back. …I went from nude, rock chucking angry guy to a fully kevlar armoured rock delivery system in just under a day.”
“You whip around only to see a dimly lit half naked man weilding an axe who then yells “DO YOU LIKE ROCKS?” through the mic and smashes your face in to death. You then respawn.”
“If you don’t build your house properly a naked man will be able to repeatedly smash into your all too fragile wooden door with a rock, phallus swaying with each stroke of his fell instrument.”
“If you’re into naked,masculine men trying to hammer you with rock hard rocks,then you’ll love this.”
“Dongs, rocks, and getting shot in the face by strangers repeatedly. A++ game would buy again”
“Psychologists could save themselves 8-weeks-worth of getting to know their patients if they simply recorded said patient playing Rust for a mere 10 hours.”
…and my personal favorite:
“I love this game, I built a house around a guys house and made him my prisoner, I fed him cans of tuna and cooked chicken when it was available, and some times I would drop in spare logs of wood(when they were available). The best part. he talks to me, keeps telling me his clans going to raid my structure and save him.. I simply respond with .†It puts the lotion on its skin, or it gets the hose again†and by hose I mean I dump charcoal on him. – Great game hope the servers come up soon, I think my pet may need to eat.”
Wait, the bandit system is no longer in DayZ?! What a stupid idea, it was an excellent and simple way for me to judge players I came across. I think the idea that someone who kills a lot of people is obvious to other players via a skin, just makes a lot of sense to me. I don’t think its a huge disadvantage to them, because if they want to hunt players and kill them, they can still be exceedingly successful regardless of what they look like, I think.
Rust is really interesting, but when I did try to play on my own I was unlucky as I was immediately getting clobbered by other rock-welding survivors before I’d even started figuring out the initial gameplay.
The learning and survival curves are incredibly steep early on but start to level out the further you progress. I honestly feel the hardest part of the game is being safe when you log out. It’s hard to hide from 200 people when your body is just laying down on the ground while you sleep.
I’ve been playing Rust for several weeks now and think its a great game. Reminds me very much of a modern UO, to an extent. Playing with others is def a huge advantage. My group of friends, 3-4 people, were doing ok but eventually our place got raided. We learned from it about weaknesses in structures, etc.
Quick tip, a wooden shack with a metal door can be chopped down with pick axes. That might be what happened to you? Build a wooden foundation base to make it, more secure. But nothing is safe in Rust, except your learned blueprints.
We have since grouped with some neighbors and recruited a few lucky souls that were not blown away during a resource gathering mission. We built a mini-town, and have, fingers-crossed, lived a few days without being raided.
I highly recommend Rust for anyone who enjoyed UO Forever last year. Btw, what server are you guys on? I’m on US Central 1.
We built a foundation with 4 platforms, lots of walls, roof, and metal door. Was a spacious building. It got raided.
Maybe someone C4’d us?
We haven’t settled on a server. Still looking for one to call home.
Sounds like a C4 job. Also, could be alot of grenades. Best base designs have multiple doors to access the loot room. However, wooden walls can also be C4’d, so that requires multiple walls to back the non-doored entrances. This becomes very problematic when trying to make a multi-person base, due to one-door one-person policy 🙂 Hopefully, friend controls will be implemented for doors soon.
One solution is to have everyone build their own base, in a community fashion, making construction more manageable. I’m attempting to make a one person multi-level base, with metal doors on each level, to provide more security. Still takes a decent amount of resources though.
To me, this “security problem” is what makes the game fun and interesting. I have seen more co-operation as people play more, and anticipate that will continue. Let me know if you’re interested in joining us on US Central 1. We don’t have much structure and our tactics are somewhat ruthless, but everyone needs to be on edge in a game of survival!
So is the crafting a recipe driven system that just transfers to your next character when you die? What I mean by that is part of my problem with Day Z was the lack of persistence from one life to the next. You die and lose everything and start over with nothing. At least learning recipes/skills that remain is one way to add a bit of persistence to the game.
@romble Bounty systems never work out in the end. First, who pays the bounty? The player who was killed? So they die and get penalized in the form of a bounty they have to pay. If the server pays the bounty it opens up a system of abuse we have seen before. You and I are friends. I kill you and drive up my bounty then you kill me and we split the bounty.
I love the Salem method of tracking a player killer and think that is really fair and interesting. You kill a player you leave a trail for a certain amount of time. Of course even a system like this can and will be abused by someone.
Crafting is a recipe driven system that persists to your next life. Learned recipes are the only things that will carry over. There are 2 ways to learn recipes, one by getting a blueprint drop. Two, getting a research kit which allows you to learn any item you have in your inventory.
The servers are relatively small. Standard server is 128 people. Also, chat is global. So, the current deterrent for griefers is a global admonishment by the community. That being said, griefing in Rust is a grey area, because combat is fairly common. However, cheating and hacking will quickly get one black listed by the community.
@JJ:
“So, the current deterrent for griefers is a global admonishment by the community.”
From what I have read in Rust griefing is the rule, and non-griefing is an exception functionally punishable by death. In practice how does the community deter griefers through admonishment in a KOS game, …certainly not by adding them to a KOS list. If anything I would think griefers live for the moment of global admonishment as acknowledgement of their infamy.
Many times prior to launch of FFA games I have heard the idea the sides will naturally be drawn and systems of justice will be adopted by the community to police themselves without the need for dev intervention; I have never actually seen this happen past infrequent guild events in isolated zones, and stories of server-wide established systems are rare in my experience.
All too often the “community” in deathmatch sandbox games is largely comprised of griefers such as well armed and armored spawn campers waiting to kill near defenseless rezzers regardless if they gain any virtual benefit or not. The comments I have read support this is the case in Rust, but have your experiences been substantially different?
Do you feel that is the inherent nature of this genre or are there any tangible reasons to suspect that this is currently due to the newness and transient nature of current server communities? Is it due to lack of any real content other than to make smash with rock?
While certainly an adrenaline rush for a while, deathmatch sandboxs have the potential to rapidly devolve into griefer premades relentlessly rolling any new players with interest in trying the game, which in turn leads to a downward spiral in server population of the hunted carebear population leaving the griefers without prey, who will in turn get bored and themselves eventually exit the game.
It seems to be a fatal flaw in the deathmatch sandbox genre, but one the devs might be clouded to given the almost fanatical devotion of the “hardcore†early adopters praising the game on their forums. When one creates an environment where new players are harshly punished from the moment they enter the game it seems a given the influx of new players will not match the outflow. It will be interesting if any game mechanics such as safe zones, traceable kills, or NPC justice systems will ever be established.
Reading the comments it sounds like zombies are not the primary hazard in games like Rust or DayZ, but relegated to generic environmental hazards modeled in the form of zombies, that is, these are not survival games against zombies where one tries to establish communities to survive the undead onslaught, but FPS’s that don’t have parameters established for match conclusion.
I wonder what would happen if they ramped up the number and lethality of the zombie population so that killing someone else would be in one’s worst interest as they would be unlikely to effectively fight off the zombie hordes alone.
http://www.dorkly.com/comic/58310/dayz-ed-and-confused
“I wonder what would happen if they ramped up the number and lethality of the zombie population so that killing someone else would be in one’s worst interest as they would be unlikely to effectively fight off the zombie hordes alone.” You know having a zombie horde get attracted to a recently killed player is a mechanic I have never thought about for these games. That could make things very interesting very quick. The more players killed in an area the more zombies get attracted to the area as well. I know in Day Z they can be attracted by the sound of gun fire but killing someone just to steal their beans all the sudden becomes less attractive if you know 10 or 20 zombies are going to converge on the spot quickly.
…absolutely!
To avoid confusion I should have used the more general term “environmental hazards” when mentioning Rust and DayZ in the same sentence, as the zombie hazards are DayZ specific. 😉
Great right up. My hand is hovering over the add to cart but I am a bit concerned with Hackers. Any chance there will be a K and G Community server one day?
Well pushed the button so to speak and only played about 20 minutes of it, but it runs pretty smooth for Alpha. Got killed a few times by Zombies, only one other person on the server I was on and he was pretty nice though we never meet up. I really like it. I played a bit of DayZ Mod and got to say that I like Rust a lot better from the start. Thanks again for the nudge to pick it up.
…oh so there are actually zombies? I didn’t read that in their game description. These post-apocalyptic FFA sandboxes are all sounding superficially quite similar.
They admitted that their original goal was to make a better DayZ. Then they decided to make it different, but left some zombies in. There are areas in the world that are irradiated and there are zombies nearby. Run and hold shift to sprint and make for a big mountain rocky area to lose them. Don’t fight them without guns and armor.
Wanted to play some tonight but I don’t think I am going to feel up to it. Maybe I will watch some let’s play videos and learn more before my next jump in. I picked a server that just had one other soul playing on it and we had a nice talk. I was looking at server prices at looks like they run pretty started $20-40 a month. I am going to mess with it for a bit and if I continue to find it pleasing I think I might get a small server and invite some of you guys to it. Personally I am looking more forward to just grouping and building things over the PVP aspect at least at the moment.
“I picked a server that just had one other soul playing on it and we had a nice talk.”
I was half-expecting you to say “…and then he crushed my head in with a rock and did the wiggle dance over my corpse.” 😛
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwgSqz5J2B8
Good game for the first few hours, but man oh man, Griefing to the extreme. I’ll wait for a few patches.
Are you guys playing on a specific server?
I was planning on waiting for a few more updatesto the game before I settle in on a specific server. I’m open to anything right now.
Gotcha. I just keep bouncing around servers as I get comfortable with the controls and crafting.
Everytime i get anyehere i get wolves or griefed i’ll wait a few.. lot more patches and try again
They need this in addition to wolves:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN2QUhaKN2Q&feature=youtu.be