[Shavasku]

I feel the population started going down 2 weeks ago. Can we have some actual statistics for this downfall of the population from the last 2 weeks?

Anyway, based on what I have seen, read and researched, here are the main reasons why I think people quit the game:

1) Lack of content
It is the fact that once you can craft M4, kevlar, sniper rifle and C4, there's nothing else to achieve. And yes, you can achieve all that stuff very quickly. On high populated servers, it is still going to be fun, because PvPing is always fun, but let's think about it more carefully. C4 is the most valuable item in game and it is used to raid bases, but raiding bases makes sense only on the beginning/middle of the game, when you are not rich. Once you are rich, there's not much point on raiding people anymore, because you already have multiple M4's, kevlar and sniper rifles. You will start raiding just to "destroy" your enemies, because you are already rich enough! We need more stuff to do!

2) Low longevity of servers
People get frustrated if a server is wiped once every 10 days. And the sad thing is that it is not admin's fault. It is because at the moment, the game can't handle more than 40k pieces of structures. That 40k mark is reached in 10-12 days on medium/high populated servers. Once 40k structures exist, the game starts to lag and pvping becomes really annoying. Admins are forced to wipe it again and some people are going to quit because they will feel like it simply is not worth the effort for only 10-12 days of gaming. I really think this performance improvement should be on the "to do" list. Make the performance 3 times as great and we would have 30 days of decent playability. I am pretty sure people wouldn't mind if forced wipes would happen only once every month!

3) Stupid bugs and exploits that need to be fixed
At the moment raiding is too easy, because there are many exploits out there. The worst of them is the wood pillar + barricade trick. It is the fact that you can climb as high as you want with wood pillars and barricade. No matter how high your building is, people can go to the last floor only by placing barricades on top of wood pillars. This is ridiculous, really. I am pretty sure most people don't mind getting raided via the "right way", but it is frustrating to get raided via exploits. Most people can't take it. They quit.

4) Hackers
Self-explanatory. I know facepunch is working on that and I really trust them, but it is an obvious reason that makes people quit. It's frustrating.

5) Kill on sight problem
Yes, some people quit because of that. I think a quick and temporary solution would be to simply add one or two radtowns on different areas. How is that a solution for KOS, you ask? Because it would SPLIT the population. At the moment, the resources and radtowns are REALLY concentrated in certain areas. My suggestion would be to add a new radtown on the road close to the North Valley and another one far away from the road, on Hacker Valley South, with some red wolves and bears. That way you are going to split the population a bit more and I think more people are going to have the opportunity to actually loot the crates and progress in game. At the moment, the ones who establish themselves around places like Hangar, Small Radtown and Big Radtown are the ones who usually own the server. If you add 1 or 2 more radtowns, there will be more opportunities for the ones who don't live around popular places. Yes, I know this is a temporary map! But this one would also be a temporary solution!

I know this is Alpha and that most people who quit are just waiting for next updates to come back, but I fear some won't come back. Therefore, it will be important for the game to keep a solid playerbase. That's why I think identifying the reasons why people quit and the possible solutions (quick/temporary) are important.

Tell me what you guys think!

[elixwhitetail]

The population has not fallen in the past two weeks. Steam stats show peaks of 45-48k players, and this has remained consistent since the initial launch population of 80k tapered down to a more constant number (and even with ~6000 cheater bans handed out). What has changed is the number of servers has exceeded 4,000. If you assume an even distribution, that's 12 players per server, every server. Obviously, distribution isn't perfectly even like that and some servers will be almost completely empty when the server admin and friends are not on.

1) This will come in time, the game is in alpha.

2) Alpha. Premature optimization is the root of all suffering in this world, as well.

3) Alpha. Alpha. Alpha. If you can't deal with this, you should quit playing Rust for a while and then come back.

4) Alpha.

5) Alpha. Resources aren't distributed evenly across the entire map. Guess what's on the to-do list.

I think you and the playerbase as a whole need to learn some fucking patience and deal with the fact that you bought into a game a year or two before it's finished, and that comes with certain frustrations, drawbacks, and all-out problems. If you can't deal with that, actually go away for three months. Yes, I'm really suggesting this. Go and play games that are fun while you wait for Rust to spend more time baking in the oven.

Rust isn't really a "game" yet, it's more like an incredibly fleshed-out prototype for the game that Rust will eventually become sometime in the future.

Yes, Rust kind of sucks right now. I'm not playing it right now mainly because of that. But the fact that you're not satisfied with the game right now is not grounds for the devs to completely change priorities and go into panic mode to try and finish the game a year ahead of schedule. And before you complain that this isn't what you're saying, it is what you're saying, phrased in a slightly different way.


BTW, Rust beats DayZ on peak player count by at least 12,000. At the moment, Steam stats report 26,381 current Rust players (it's the middle of the day in North America and people have school/work) and 13,917 current DayZ players. And this is the game that removed zombies.

[Shoff]

This post is about 18 months early. Give them some time.

[Mavajo]

The boring PvP has done it in for me. It's a weird conundrum. Without the threat of PvP, the game is boring. But the constant KoS is boring too.

I just wish there was actually some reason to cooperate with players. Trading, for example. I.E., if player actually had different crafting or gathering skills, and you need to trade with other players from time to time in order to obtain things. Then there would be some thought and strategy in PvP. "Hmm, I could kill this guy and take whatever he has, or I can make friendly so that I can cultivate a trading relationship."

Right now, I feel like I'm playing a crosshair-less Call of Duty, except there's no score and no teams, and I can build stuff that people can destroy after I log off. It's fun for a while, but then I just get bored. What is there to log in for tomorrow?

PvP? The PvP in this game really isn't compelling or interesting enough to carry in.

Crafting/Building? Kinda fun, but you never know if it's still going to be there the next day. You can get raided, hacked or wiped. Hard to invest much time or energy into something that's probably going to be gone.

Character progression? There's almost done.

Just no depth to the game right now. "But you try to survive!" Not really. If you 'die' you just respawn. So it's kid of impossible NOT to survive.

[killer89]

Shavasku posted:

I think that rust is alpha

With that much of thinking you should become a philosopher or politician.