My experiences with running a Rust server as an owner and then admin - Rust

So last week I had quite the interesting experience with Rust beyond the player side of things. Having had about a 1000 hours into the game and my group of friends either constantly getting over run by hackers or admin abuse I set out to create an environment free of hackers/glitchers/admin abuse. I took on two of my more trusted friends as admins and we began our venture. Between creating threads on the right websites and running through our contact lists we were able to get the population to over 80 people out of the 100 slots in just a few hours and I felt like things were going well. Little did I know... In less than 6 hours we had already banned 80+ hackers/glitchers as well as constantly dealing with ban evaders as your average rust script kiddie now has numerous steam accounts and the more creative ones are buying steam accounts with a lot of games/hours to make it seem like they're legit players. Also just about everyone and their grandmother seems to be abusing the sleeping bag glitch these days changing out their wall textures. One person now has to be fully dedicated to monitoring people that are suiciding while the other two have to go around fixing grief + rooting out the speed hackers, no clippers, aim botters, and togglers. The other lovely thing that I realized is that the minute you don't have an admin on things typically go to shit so now it became a system where we were working in shifts to try and root out all the hackers instead of having any enjoyment at all. Ironically the rest of our friends quit the server because they found it to difficult to get started without those of us that were admining playing and it was clear as day that you could never play while being an admin on an active server. So along comes this guy offering to buy me out and to continue paying me to run a server for him and willing to pay me to bring my population over to his server. I agree seeing as how if I'm going to be doing all this bullshit I may as well get paid for it rather than be the one paying to work for a bunch of toxic kids (which if anyone thinks the Rust community is anything else they're bat shit insane). In the 4 days that I ran the server for this guy there were numerous ddos attacks from groups of banned hackers, over 300 people banned for hacking/glitching/association, and then a series of console specific attacks that shut down the console from making it have a spaz attack courtesy of the prefab unity scripts that Rust currently uses. It was during this time that I also was blamed for ddos'ing other people's servers to keep the population high on the server I was admining even though I never did such things, it is rather apparent to me now that the people behind the scenes may have been doing some rather fishy things. All in all it left me with a few final thoughts... 1) People in Rust should stop complaining about hackers as there is seemingly at least one in every group. 2) It's utterly ridiculous that the sleeping bag glitch through walls hasn't been fixed. 3) Everyone who posts in here about how they have trouble populating their server doesn't know what kind of poison awaits them if they do get popular. 4) While I've enjoyed my 1100 hours in Rust, I can't fathom a reason to reinstall the game until the experimental is fully operational, anti-cheat is running, vac bans are handed down with greater swiftness, and more time is spent making the game glitch/hacker "free" (as much as possible) rather than reanimation of the fauna.

so it went well then...............I do feel for ya man.

[QUOTE]2) It's utterly ridiculous that the sleeping bag glitch through walls hasn't been fixed.[/QUOTE] I was an admin/owner of the Noxis server while it was still up. This is the number one thing aside from hackers that made people leave, including myself. It is so rampant now in servers it is ridiculous. That and crouch-running. Such lame players out there.

i get that it's frustrating. but you are running a server for an abandoned version of rust. likelyhood is that the glitches and hacks in legacy will never be fixed...if they are, well after experimental goes publicly hosted, and closer to completion. good luck anyway mate. you have my sympathy.

[QUOTE=mrknifey;45563885]i get that it's frustrating. but you are running a server for an abandoned version of rust. likelyhood is that the glitches and hacks in legacy will never be fixed...if they are, well after experimental goes publicly hosted, and closer to completion. good luck anyway mate. you have my sympathy.[/QUOTE] I am very apprehensive to be excited about the experimental branch because while I think the overhaul and the fact that they won't be using prefab scripts is great, the fact that so many things were allowed to go unchanged and I never really saw anything being done about hackers flying around from day 1 in Rust that I don't see how the game will be in any way improved other than aesthetically in the overhaul. oh and on a completely different side note, shout out to the guys that developed the Rusty console plug in, I don't even know how people run a server without it.

[QUOTE=Boxa;45564574]I am very apprehensive to be excited about the experimental branch because while I think the overhaul and the fact that they won't be using prefab scripts is great, the fact that so many things were allowed to go unchanged and I never really saw anything being done about hackers flying around from day 1 in Rust that I don't see how the game will be in any way improved other than aesthetically in the overhaul.[/QUOTE] From day 1 on they added VAC, GAC, and patches to break hacks lol. Don't be so dramatic. They will of course continue to address hackers as they've recently shown with the addition of EAC.

Yup I used to play in Noxis and they were the best admins to date.. But with lack of development it made it a full time job to root out hackers. Once devs catch up to the legacy version then maybe we won't have hacks for a week... Or maybe since everyone has access to the game as they are making it.. Maybe the hackers can program faster than the makers themselves.. It takes much less work to make slight changs to the code for hacks than it is to create a whole new game.

Agree 100% with everything said by the op. Same experience myself.

If they fix legacy who will play experimental? You can't have a survival mmo be successful if there is NO way at all to safeguard your belongings from d-bag cheaters with no skill. Ppl like myself that work 40+ hours per week and choose to put our precious free time into this game are NOT willing to start over as a Newman EVERY time we log in. I'm really fighting the urge to shelf this game until someone gives a skah!

[QUOTE=NEMESIS(MD);45565515]If they fix legacy who will play experimental?[/QUOTE] They won't.

[QUOTE=postal;45565044]From day 1 on they added VAC, GAC, and patches to break hacks lol. Don't be so dramatic. They will of course continue to address hackers as they've recently shown with the addition of EAC.[/QUOTE] You say this without any evidence as to how effectively it will be implemented in the experimental. I'm not buying into the pipe dream.

It seems like the best experience now is on servers with 10-25 players on usually. I wonder if hackers are as bad on the lower pop servers. I am sure there are always a few though. It seems like you can hide a base better when there are a lot less players, and it might be safe. I can't see a hacker spending so much time to find a far away base on a lower pop server.

[QUOTE=cinderstar;45576091]It seems like the best experience now is on servers with 10-25 players on usually. I wonder if hackers are as bad on the lower pop servers. I am sure there are always a few though. It seems like you can hide a base better when there are a lot less players, and it might be safe. I can't see a hacker spending so much time to find a far away base on a lower pop server.[/QUOTE] honestly those size servers are far to boring.

I pray everyday for Rust not to become some sort of WarZ regarding cheaters. Until experimental is playable, I'm getting really addicted to other similar games which makes me sad for Rust. Will I ever play it again? EDIT: [QUOTE=PoorlyExecute;45565127]Maybe the hackers can program faster than the makers themselves.. It takes much less work to make slight changes to the code for hacks than it is to create a whole new game.[/QUOTE] This might be true but it's so unacceptable. Can you imagine how much money they already got from the EarlyAccess? It's definitely enough to sort it out. I guess, until then, the cheat websites will keep making profit.

I know how you feel OP. I've been running a Rust server for months that was very well populated (around 70~100 players). Banning hackers, glitchers felt like a fuckin' dayjob. It never stopped. Over 500 bans later I decided to call it quits because it wasn't paying off at all. Rust legacy is just too broken, that's why I've quit playing and cancelled my server. The funny part is that most glitchers see things like the sleeping bag glitch as part of the game. And really get upset when you ban them because of it. [QUOTE]1) People in Rust should stop complaining about hackers as there is seemingly at least one in every group.[/QUOTE] This is so true.

[QUOTE=Boxa;45562925] 1) People in Rust should stop complaining about hackers as there is seemingly at least one in every group. [/QUOTE] Amen... Still got to believe there are a few groups working hard! lol :-D

[QUOTE=NEMESIS(MD);45565515]You can't have a survival mmo be successful if there is NO way at all to safeguard your belongings from d-bag cheaters with no skill. Ppl like myself that work 40+ hours per week and choose to put our precious free time into this game are NOT willing to start over as a Newman EVERY time we log in. I'm really fighting the urge to shelf this game until someone gives a skah![/QUOTE] I agree. I actually have shelved the game. the tipping moment for me was joining a freshly wiped server, still under 10 pop. Playing to the point where I had a modest house, then having someone C4 into each of the 4 separate rooms, despite no airdrops yet on the server. I had fun and all, but, yeah, got sick of going through the same motions of setting up from scratch every time I logged on. I feel sorry for you people trying to run legit servers (is it possible to set up private/ invite only servers). Hopefully the new version will be better. Fingers crossed.

[QUOTE=One-shoe;45604024]I agree. I actually have shelved the game. the tipping moment for me was joining a freshly wiped server, still under 10 pop. Playing to the point where I had a modest house, then having someone C4 into each of the 4 separate rooms, despite no airdrops yet on the server. I had fun and all, but, yeah, got sick of going through the same motions of setting up from scratch every time I logged on. I feel sorry for you people trying to run legit servers (is it possible to set up private/ invite only servers). Hopefully the new version will be better. Fingers crossed.[/QUOTE] I have seen a few servers with whitelist. As for "C4 into each of the 4 separate rooms, despite no airdrops yet on the server" willing to bet that was an admin doing that.

[QUOTE=wesjr;45604242]I have seen a few servers with whitelist. As for "C4 into each of the 4 separate rooms, despite no airdrops yet on the server" willing to bet that was an admin doing that.[/QUOTE] Could have been grenades? People get creative when there aren't airdrops.

[QUOTE=AlexConnor;45604789]Could have been grenades? People get creative when there aren't airdrops.[/QUOTE] That's 44-48 nades...you've got to really be ultra motivated to do something like that.

[QUOTE=Boxa;45614082]That's 44-48 nades...you've got to really be ultra motivated to do something like that.[/QUOTE] That's what I was thinking. I guess someone COULD have gathered that many resources (or a group of people) and if so, fair play to them. So I don't KNOW it was hacking (or admin abuse)... but I strongly suspected. Strongly enough to be put off going through the rebuilding process (cue self-pitying violins).