Rust (video game)

Gameplay

The objective in Rust is to survive in a harsh open world environment. Animals, such as wolves and bears, represent a threat to new players, but the primary danger comes from other players. The player vs player combat is accomplished with bows, melee weapons and craftable guns. Bullets and other projectiles travel via a ballistic trajectory. There are multiple different types of bullets for each gun. Damage is calculated using hit tracking, meaning shots to the head are more damaging than shots to other parts of the body. Weapon attachments, such as holosights, can be used to give players an advantage. In order to survive, the player must craft tools, build bases, and team with other players. Unlike many other sandbox games, Rust only features a multiplayer mode.

Upon starting a new character, the player will have only a rock and a torch, the former of which can be used to cut down trees and break apart stones. In order to survive in the world, the player must gather resources such as wood and stone and use these resources to craft tools, weapons and other gear. The player can gather cloth, food, stone, metal ore, sulfur ore and wood by killing animals, mining rocks and chopping trees. The player is able to craft every item in the game immediately, but they must use consumable items called "components". Components are scattered around the map and cannot be crafted.

An important element in Rust are airdrops. These happen randomly, or may be called in by players using rare consumables called supply signals. Airdrops are parachute-equipped pallets of supplies that are delivered via a propeller plane, and can be seen coming in over extremely long distances, resulting in players sometimes running towards the airdrop. Another important element in Rust are attack helicopters. Helicopters spawn in at random intervals and shoots players that it sees.

The player must stay well fed or they will die of starvation. There are other challenges the player may face during gameplay, such as drowning, hypothermia and attacks from wildlife (primarily from bears and wolves). Specific locales around the map are radioactive. There are three levels of radiation: low, medium, and high. Players must wear the correct armour or clothing if they wish to enter these areas, as they risk dying if they do so without. A prevalent concept in Rust is to form a "clan" with other players. These clans usually create housing for their members, provide items and supplies to each other and partake in organized raiding of other players and looting.

Development

The development for Rust began as a clone of DayZ, a popular mod for ARMA 2, as well as featuring elements of Minecraft. Garry Newman, the CEO of Facepunch Studios, said "Rust started off as a DayZ clone. But then we decided that we are sick of fighting zombies. And can't compete with the Arma island in terms of landmarks and towns". Following its initial alpha launch, updates for Rust were released, adding mechanics such as animals, hunting, armor and weapons. In February 2014, zombies were removed from Rust and replaced with black bears and wolves. Early on in the development, the choice was made not to try to populate the world with interesting locations to explore, but rather give the players the ability to create such places. Newman described it as "we give them the tools, they make the world".

One of the aims of the developers was to create a world which doesn't encourage any particular kind of behavior from players. They considered implementing a system similar to DayZ in which players who kill other players get unique outfits that identify them as 'bandits', or possibly a rating or color-coded system. However, the developers ultimately rejected all of these, as they felt it would detract from player freedom. Instead, they found to their surprise that the implementation of voice chat had a noticeable effect on player behavior. With the ability to communicate, many players would no longer kill each other on sight out of fear.

The game is currently in alpha stages of development, and is being distributed via Steam's Early Access program. In late 2014, an "experimental mode" for Rust was released and the game was ported onto Unity 5. The experimental mode featured a new anti-cheat system called CheatPunch, which banned over 4,621 cheaters. In October 2014, the experimental mode became the default launch option. In the original game, the heads-up display featured statistics such as health, hunger and radiation level. These were later replaced, the radiation level was changed to thirst and hidden statistics such as hypothermia were also added. Monuments used to contain radiation hazards, but the hazard was removed in a later update because of the annoyance it was causing players. Radiation, having been removed earlier in 2016, was reintroduced in November, but was "reprogrammed from the ground up", in the sense that instead of each location having the same levels of radiation, different levels were added, ranging from low, medium, and high. Initially, no areas were designated as being high, due to the risk of "it somehow breaking the game".

In July 2015, female models were added to the game but were only available for server administrators in order to test them. Similar to the skin color attribute, users will be automatically assigned a gender which is permanently linked to their Steam account. Later in 2015, cosmetic items for guns, clothing and other objects were added to the game. When Valve introduced the "Item Stores", Rust was the first game on Steam to use the feature. The Steam Community Market was also selling the cosmetics, resulting in clashing prices, with some being cheaper in the store and some being more expensive.

Blueprints, one of the prevalent concepts in Rust, were removed in July 2016 and replaced with an experience system where players could level up after completing tasks, such as gathering wood. Lead developer Maurino Berry mentioned in a Reddit post that there was a chance the experience system would no longer exist in the future. Prior to saying this, Berry wrote in one of the devblogs "the XP system had huge praise until it was released, and then lots of people hated it". In early November 2016, the experience system was replaced with components. Players originally had an initial list of items they could craft, but it was changed to having everything immediately and needing components to craft items.

Reception

Throughout Rust's alpha release, it sold over 150,000 copies in its first two weeks, whereas Garry's Mod had sold 34,000 within the same amount of time. Rust sales hit one million after two months as an Early Access title and by the end of 2015, Rust had sold over 3 million copies. By February 2014, Rust had overtaken Garry's Mod in terms of sales, making over US$30 million. Other games, such as The Forest, H1Z1: Just Survive, Ark: Survival Evolved, and 7 Days to Die were compared to Rust due to the open world survival aspect, along with having crafting mechanics similar to Rust.

Alpha release

Rust's received mixed reviews through its alpha release, with many noting the unfinished state of the game. In particular, Andy Chalk (PC Gamer) said Rust was a great use of Early Access and even though "it's far from finished", it's ready to be played. Shaun McInnis (GameSpot) said that the early 2014 version was "rough around the edges" and "littered with bugs", albeit entertaining and has a lot of potential; he said it continues to improve with every update.

Many reviewers liked the game but couldn't recommend it due to bugs and the obvious unfinishedness of it. Many said Rust had potential. Matt Purslow, (PCGamesN) wrote in his review of Rust he was positive it will be worth the wait even if it's the end of 2015 before it's better than what it was at the beginning of 2014. His verdict was to wait. Matthew Cox (Rock, Paper, Shotgun) said it was good that the developers switched to the Unity engine in late 2014 due to the instability of the game. He found many glitches in the late 2014 version, including unresponsive animals, framerate issues and sometimes servers would randomly disconnect him. Cox said Rust had potential, and the performance issues had been regularly acknowledged in the dev blogs. Rob Zacny (Rock, Paper, Shotgun) said there was more respect and coorporation in the community, compared to what there was a year ago [2015]. He said that after a few deaths, playing seems tedious and "starts to feel like it [survival] might be a punishment, rather than a goal".

The game was compared to Minecraft and DayZ, along with other games by Kotaku and IGN writers. Luke Plunkett (Kotaku) joked at how it's like playing a game where someone thought "wow, wouldn't it be awesome if I could play DayZ and Minecraft at the same time?". He noted the difficulty of the video game and again compared it to Minecraft and DayZ, saying the player will get used to the Game Over screen. Mitch Dyer (IGN) criticised Rust, saying it's a semi-broken game that's difficult to recommend due to the challenging and frustrating gameplay, but later in the review, Dyer said there were some moments that made the game unforgettable and more interesting than its inspiration.

The inability to choose and design the character the player played as in the game was both commended and criticised. The YouTube channel Extra Credits commended Rust for promoting diversity in the way in which the game decides for the player their in-game race; by randomly selecting a player's race and tying it to their Steam ID, the game can force players to experience the game as a different race than they would normally experience, thereby promoting a greater level of empathy for what it might be like to be someone of different ethnicity than the player. The lack of communication between Facepunch and the community when adding female models was criticised by David Craddock (Shacknews), where he mentions he understands Facepunch's reasoning behind the lack of options but the way they implemented it could've been more effective if the communication was better. In response to the criticism, Garry Newman commented that he had felt some trepidation towards adding the racial feature, fearing that it might be seen as just the original character model "blacked up", and stressed how the chosen ethnicity was permanent as "just like in real life, you are who you are". Garry Newman discussed the reasoning behind not giving the option to choose the gender and race of the player's character in an article on The Guardian, saying Rust is about survival, not characterization and identity. When female models were added, sales reportedly "skyrocketed" by 74%.