Rust is a fun game at the beginning. As time goes by, though, the feckless update cycle becomes frustrating. And while the mechanics are constantly tweaked and reworked, there's very little depth to offset the repetitiveness.

For example: mechanics changes have made resource collection more tedious over the last few months. If Facepunch sticks with the recently-introduced inventory stacking limits, building -- both for security and creativity -- is going be more effort than it's worth. If people have to grind just to build a rudimentary house, they won't have much incentive to accumulate items. That, in turn, disincentivizes raiding: all the effort currently required to raid will result in progressively smaller payoffs.

You could forgive an early-access game for going through a period of tweaking and breaking stuff, but the problem with Rust is that it doesn't seem to have any direction. "Survive" is all the context you get, and it's fun enough at first. But once that gets old, there's nothing to motivate you. There's no high-level play, and there's no end game.

And there's no sign from Facepunch that they want the game to be more than that.

Rust is a fun game at the beginning. As time goes by, though, the feckless update cycle becomes frustrating. And while the mechanics are constantly tweaked and reworked, there's very little depth to offset the repetitiveness. For example: mechanics changes have made resource collection more tedious over the last few months. If Facepunch sticks with the recently-introduced inventory stacking limits, building -- both for security and creativity -- is going be more effort than it's worth. If people have to grind just to build a rudimentary house, they won't have much incentive to accumulate items. That, in turn, disincentivizes raiding: all the effort currently required to raid will result in progressively smaller payoffs. You could forgive an early-access game for going through a period of tweaking and breaking stuff, but the problem with Rust is that it doesn't seem to have any direction. "Survive" is all the context you get, and it's fun enough at first. But once that gets old, there's nothing to motivate you. There's no high-level play, and there's no end game. And there's no sign from Facepunch that they want the game to be more than that.