The relaxed theme, the charm, and the simplicity has been beaten out of Rust Legacy. Now this sluggish and chaotic version looks good but is such a harsh experience in comparison that it's practically a different game.

Bloated with so many things that the initial experience consists of rubbish like being prompted to wait for skins to download, and being killed at spawn by animals and other players(if you didn't die before you even had control over your player) while trying to get to grips with a steep learning curve.

Not being able to run Fraps and the Steam Overlay in the same launch is souring. The saying "less is more" seems to escape the devs, where they could have spent these years making the game functional(as a program, and in its mechanics) rather than say "hey wouldn't X be a great idea!" and now you need an SSD to have anywhere near proportionate loading times, but remains fairly slow even on an SSD.

Why add a chopper if it will blow up your base when nobody's even in it? Or when you can't even figure out why it shoots you as you try to hide from it. Why have a bear in the game for such a long time when it kills players through walls? Why add fatal temperatures and radiation when the distance of a few metres take you from warm to freezing, or fine to fatally radiated?

I've survived bleeding to death while underwater for a minute at 20hp while being shot, and other times died because I was running through an open field and got radiated. Game mechanics like this are a mess, and are being left in their current state, rather than reverted to something workable until they're fully realised.

In Legacy you could slap a building down anywhere(even late into the wipe) and produce some revolvers. But now to have even a slim chance you have to start as soon as a wipe hits, otherwise you get flame raided straight away, and it has to be close to barrels(weapon components) or you won't be able to even produce revolvers. And you'll need to build a tool cupboard quickly, otherwise you can get griefed now much worse than what would happen in Legacy.

You now have to build a code lock to lock your door, which makes the game much more difficult starting out compared to the Legacy door which locked for you as soon as it was built. Anyone can steal your door even if you have a tool cupboard down. If you can't build a code lock(which takes metal) then you're stuck with a wooden key, but you have to keep it on you to open the door. Maybe this mechanic isn't seen in other games because it's complete trash?

As a solo player you can't have a base anymore. As soon as you die with your key on you, someone can take it and steal your base. Even in a group, someone has to stay inside the base to be a door opener, which reduces the experience of one player to sitting there being bored. In Legacy you didn't have to worry about these things, which I think makes this version of Rust an objectively bad game. How do you manage to get a code lock if the wooden keys you rely on until then are a failure of a mechanic? Why make bases so difficult to make - yet so easy to raid?

You'd think hiding in grass/behind rocks or skulking around at night could make things easier until you're in a stronger position(code lock + guns) but trying to be sneaky will get you killed by what seems to be an epidemic of wallhackers. If you want to report a cheater then you need to go through the unstable recaptcha system. Wallhack prevention seems to be stuck on the shoulders of server admins, but surely with all the money in gaming a better system could have been implemented.

Seeing at night is in itself a broken mechanic, as one of my friends complained about not seeing anything, while my other friend in the same moment next to us on different hardware/software could see clearly. Leaving base during the day can be a hazard as there's a chopper that goes around shooting players for no reason - even spawnkilling them. The jump puzzlest are bad, some being downwards(makes jumping not work half the time) and some cave ones are blocked by the rocks above you. I've done jumping competitions in Counter-Strike for fun and still loath the Rust jumps.

When I play the game more towards the balance of roleplay I won't be able to produce good weapons, and even if you get a bow headshot - someone can easily survive that. If I play the game more towards the balance of deathmatch meta(get in first, build near components) I can amass guns which easily overpower other players, but those mechanics are so out of balance that nobody joins a server after the first 12 hours of a wipe, so what's the point of having guns on a dead server?

Even the survival element of Rust which took its DNA from Gmod Stranded and DayZ mod has been squeezed out by the addition of poor mechanics. There's sentry guns, and an AI tank, and a chopper. The tank was supposed to help fix the game, but left it feeling even more like a Battlefield title. They've shown the vehicles on the store page, but the experience is actually closer to just getting killed by arrows while you're trying to make a bow...

If you run out of torches and can't see, just suicide to get one for free. Need animal fat? Suicide. Low on health/hunger/thirst? Just suicide. Don't like your random map spawn? Suicide. The survival theme loses its immersion by the mechanics pushing a deathmatch/suicide meta at every turn.

After all these years of development surely the game should be welcoming, streamlined, optimized, and intuitive by now. But instead, among all the gripes I've left out, it's a mess that only offers rewards to the experienced groups which control the high value areas of the map with dozens of guns with; which they'll find worthless when they have nobody to shoot on their empty server the next day. The game caters solely to those competitive groups, yet for some reason large clan bases were nerfed by "upkeep", so there's no playerbase this game now satisfies properly...

It's a step up from Legacy in terms of graphics and combating flyhack cheats, but otherwise it's a complete disaster. I've played it with friends, but they had to be competent deathmatchers for us to get anything done. Even if you start on a trio server with 2 skilled friends as soon as it wipes and head to a quiet spot, you'll still get attacked straight away.

If you spend your time building then you'll get flame raided before you upgrade from wood. Many players are only interested in attacking what others build, and not building themselves, so why were they given the tools to attack so easily? Then the new community pushed the roleplayers out - saying that the roleplayers weren't even playing the game anymore but still visited the forums to "complain."

What Legacy had with easier starting and hard raiding, Rust is now about difficult starts and easy raiding. It's no surprise that servers only last a matter of hours, when Legacy offered an experience that would go on for days or weeks. The inclusion of roleplay items like signs makes no sense in such a competitive game. You might enjoy this strange deathmatch oriented version, but what's to stop them changing the gameplay dramatically again to attract a completely different playerbase to buy copies and leave their old playerbase behind?

★☆☆☆☆

The relaxed theme, the charm, and the simplicity has been beaten out of Rust Legacy. Now this sluggish and chaotic version looks good but is such a harsh experience in comparison that it's practically a different game. Bloated with so many things that the initial experience consists of rubbish like being prompted to wait for skins to download, and being killed at spawn by animals and other players(if you didn't die before you even had control over your player) while trying to get to grips with a steep learning curve. Not being able to run Fraps and the Steam Overlay in the same launch is souring. The saying "less is more" seems to escape the devs, where they could have spent these years making the game functional(as a program, and in its mechanics) rather than say "hey wouldn't X be a great idea!" and now you need an SSD to have anywhere near proportionate loading times, but remains fairly slow even on an SSD. Why add a chopper if it will blow up your base when nobody's even in it? Or when you can't even figure out why it shoots you as you try to hide from it. Why have a bear in the game for such a long time when it kills players through walls? Why add fatal temperatures and radiation when the distance of a few metres take you from warm to freezing, or fine to fatally radiated? I've survived bleeding to death while underwater for a minute at 20hp while being shot, and other times died because I was running through an open field and got radiated. Game mechanics like this are a mess, and are being left in their current state, rather than reverted to something workable until they're fully realised. In Legacy you could slap a building down anywhere(even late into the wipe) and produce some revolvers. But now to have even a slim chance you have to start as soon as a wipe hits, otherwise you get flame raided straight away, and it has to be close to barrels(weapon components) or you won't be able to even produce revolvers. And you'll need to build a tool cupboard quickly, otherwise you can get griefed now much worse than what would happen in Legacy. You now have to build a code lock to lock your door, which makes the game much more difficult starting out compared to the Legacy door which locked for you as soon as it was built. Anyone can steal your door even if you have a tool cupboard down. If you can't build a code lock(which takes metal) then you're stuck with a wooden key, but you have to keep it on you to open the door. Maybe this mechanic isn't seen in other games because it's complete trash? As a solo player you can't have a base anymore. As soon as you die with your key on you, someone can take it and steal your base. Even in a group, someone has to stay inside the base to be a door opener, which reduces the experience of one player to sitting there being bored. In Legacy you didn't have to worry about these things, which I think makes this version of Rust an objectively bad game. How do you manage to get a code lock if the wooden keys you rely on until then are a failure of a mechanic? Why make bases so difficult to make - yet so easy to raid? You'd think hiding in grass/behind rocks or skulking around at night could make things easier until you're in a stronger position(code lock + guns) but trying to be sneaky will get you killed by what seems to be an epidemic of wallhackers. If you want to report a cheater then you need to go through the unstable recaptcha system. Wallhack prevention seems to be stuck on the shoulders of server admins, but surely with all the money in gaming a better system could have been implemented. Seeing at night is in itself a broken mechanic, as one of my friends complained about not seeing anything, while my other friend in the same moment next to us on different hardware/software could see clearly. Leaving base during the day can be a hazard as there's a chopper that goes around shooting players for no reason - even spawnkilling them. The jump puzzlest are bad, some being downwards(makes jumping not work half the time) and some cave ones are blocked by the rocks above you. I've done jumping competitions in Counter-Strike for fun and still loath the Rust jumps. When I play the game more towards the balance of roleplay I won't be able to produce good weapons, and even if you get a bow headshot - someone can easily survive that. If I play the game more towards the balance of deathmatch meta(get in first, build near components) I can amass guns which easily overpower other players, but those mechanics are so out of balance that nobody joins a server after the first 12 hours of a wipe, so what's the point of having guns on a dead server? Even the survival element of Rust which took its DNA from Gmod Stranded and DayZ mod has been squeezed out by the addition of poor mechanics. There's sentry guns, and an AI tank, and a chopper. The tank was supposed to help fix the game, but left it feeling even more like a Battlefield title. They've shown the vehicles on the store page, but the experience is actually closer to just getting killed by arrows while you're trying to make a bow... If you run out of torches and can't see, just suicide to get one for free. Need animal fat? Suicide. Low on health/hunger/thirst? Just suicide. Don't like your random map spawn? Suicide. The survival theme loses its immersion by the mechanics pushing a deathmatch/suicide meta at every turn. After all these years of development surely the game should be welcoming, streamlined, optimized, and intuitive by now. But instead, among all the gripes I've left out, it's a mess that only offers rewards to the experienced groups which control the high value areas of the map with dozens of guns with; which they'll find worthless when they have nobody to shoot on their empty server the next day. The game caters solely to those competitive groups, yet for some reason large clan bases were nerfed by "upkeep", so there's no playerbase this game now satisfies properly... It's a step up from Legacy in terms of graphics and combating flyhack cheats, but otherwise it's a complete disaster. I've played it with friends, but they had to be competent deathmatchers for us to get anything done. Even if you start on a trio server with 2 skilled friends as soon as it wipes and head to a quiet spot, you'll still get attacked straight away. If you spend your time building then you'll get flame raided before you upgrade from wood. Many players are only interested in attacking what others build, and not building themselves, so why were they given the tools to attack so easily? Then the new community pushed the roleplayers out - saying that the roleplayers weren't even playing the game anymore but still visited the forums to "complain." What Legacy had with easier starting and hard raiding, Rust is now about difficult starts and easy raiding. It's no surprise that servers only last a matter of hours, when Legacy offered an experience that would go on for days or weeks. The inclusion of roleplay items like signs makes no sense in such a competitive game. You might enjoy this strange deathmatch oriented version, but what's to stop them changing the gameplay dramatically again to attract a completely different playerbase to buy copies and leave their old playerbase behind? ★☆☆☆☆