Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Rust Warning

"Hell is other people." - Jean-Paul Sartre

After 40 + hours of gameplay, I must regretfully retract my endorsement for the game Rust.

The game itself is still a marvel. But the community, dear reader. The community, by and large, is deplorable. If you enjoy pillaging, murdering the innocent, theft, terrorizing, bullying and just being an all around douche, then please, by all means, go lay down your $20. If you manage to get to a position where you can do all of that, I will be amazed.

Given that the game is still in it's Alpha stage of development, there is a chance that changes will be made that will allow the more social, non-homicidal people to enjoy the game for what it is. But I will show you what you can expect.

When I started the game, I was one of the first people to settle a relatively isolated part of the main corner of the map. Not too populated, but close enough that there were still resources within walking distance of my base. If you go further out, there are no resources, and you are doomed to starve to death endlessly. I tried to keep to myself, and for the first few days, I succeeded. Oh, there were occasional attacks, but I just shrugged and said "ah, well. I shouldn't have had all that loot on me." Within three days, the game has become unplayable. Every time I spawned, I was killed within minutes, even though it was clear that I had nothing of value on me. Every attempt to gather any kind of resources to continue to improve my base were met with unprovoked attacks.

My base is pretty well stocked with weapons, supplies, and materials. It is also out of the way of main traffic, up in a deserted and resourceless part of the map. I was on my way back to my home with a few pieces of stone and a hatchet when I was ambushed by a running man with a rifle. I opened my outer metal door (my foyer has TWO metal doors, an inner and an outer), and before I could close it, the hoodlum dashed in. SLENDERMAN, his name was. The beauty of my system is that no one can open doors in Rust except the person who placed them. So when I was able to quickly close the outer door, my attacker was faced with the prospect of being trapped inside with no way out.

He asked me to open the door. I said no, he shouldn't have tried to attack me.

He demanded that I open the door. I said no, he should think twice about entering other people's houses uninvited.

He offered to give me all of his stuff. I knew from the moment he said it that it was a lie. Because he could have simply killed himself with a key command and all of his stuff would have been left behind anyway. No, the fact that he wanted to be let out meant he did not intend to give me ANYTHING. He dropped a bunch of stuff on the floor (not his rifle, I noticed) and stood by the door, begging me to open it so he could leave. After a few minutes of telling him that I was a friendly player who didn't want trouble, I just wanted to be left alone, and that I objected to his attack on me, I explained exactly what was going to happen.

"I am going to ask you nicely to never come back to my house, and to please not attack me should you encounter me again. You are going to pick up your possessions. I am going to open the door to let you go, and you are going to turn around and kill me. I guarantee it."

I was 100% right.

He even tried to claim that he was shooting at someone else who ran into the room when I opened the door, that he was not with them. Well, when I spawned back in, naked, and with nothing but my default rock/torch/bandage kit, I was in the middle of nowhere for some reason (the game's respawning mechanics sometimes ignore when you have a spawn magnet in your house, like a bed or a sleeping bag (it's Alpha, what can I say)). Miracle of miracles, the first person I encountered didn't kill me on sight, until I said "you'd be helping me out if you just killed me, actually." So he said "Good luck, buddy" and shot me in the head.

I respawned in my bedroom. With three people waiting to ambush me in my house when I opened my third, innermost metal door. I saw them through the cracks in the walls, but we couldn't do anything to each other so long as those walls remained. Then they starting hacking at the walls.

Eventually, I knew that they'd outlast me. I would either sign out, and when I came back I would find my base destroyed, or I would watch as they continually brought a supply of food from the outside world and stayed alive while I starved to death, and they'd eventually get in by hacking away at my last wall. I equipped my shotgun, opened the door and took my chances.

I spawned once in the bedroom again, and was immediately killed by the prick who had helped the guy. A later spawn put me back in the field again, at which point I resigned from the server. I may sign in again in a few days, just to keep my account access (I've heard stories about inactive accounts being deleted, despite the fact that people have PAID for access), but if I do play this game again, any trip I take to that server will simply be to denounce the bandits, describe what they did, and warn others to avoid them at all costs. I have a buddy who purchased the game just as all this was going down. We may try another server. But until Facepunch Studios (should the studio name have been the first red flag about what type of player I would encounter?) enables some sort of protocol that prevents random murdering just for the fuck of it, I cannot let anyone waste their money on it.

Unless you are a violent sociopath who wants to meet new douchebags but you can't make it to the next Cannibal Corpse concert, then I say sign up today while the douche still flows freely.