Why?

The release brought in a lot of negative attention to s&box and this subreddit, we've seen a substantial increase in posts from users outside of the community, usually criticising or straight up complaining about points that Facepunch went over in recent blogs.

While one of our rules is allowing criticism, there's many duplicates that do nothing but flood the subreddit and overshadow the posts made by the community.

Therefore we will contain common complains with Facepunch's response in this (and following) megathreads.

Dead on Arrival?

The release didn't see a significant increase in players compared to the open preview era, this is understandably upsetting but there could be a few reasons for that:

1. The game went from Free-to-Play to $20 with no extra content. At this point most who have heard of s&box already got access and tried it out so they had no reason to buy it.
2. A Free-to-Play game will always have higher numbers compared to a paid one, s&box is planning on going F2P after the engine and platform are more complete, so take this as an "Experimental" stage. Why Facepunch didn't release as Early Access is unknown, you can give them shit for that.
3. Facepunch asked Steam to not feature the release on the store since they wanted a quiet release and to build from there. Facepunch has an entire marketing team and regularly works with influencers on Rust, they're not novices, if they wanted motion they'd know how to get it.
4. Developer Preview was stagnating and didn't expose the real issues with the platform, the release brought a lot of feedback from the real world which Facepunch is addressing. This was a necessary bandaid to remove.

Sausage Characters?

The Citizen (Nicknamed Terry) is ugly, they're a thumb, they look deformed, they will tank s&box, nobody wants to play as them, they look like Fanboy & Chum Chum characters, just bring back the HL2 characters.
Much of it has been addressed here: https://garry.net/posts/mailbag-sausage-men

Fortunately, nobody is forcing you to play as these characters, s&box is a game engine and platform, you can just play a game that doesn't use them.
And if all else fails, you can play as a Humanoid, the final solution to Terry: A realistic playermodel, with realistic proportions, and a realistic style. You can switch them on the main menu and character creator.

Besides, if you join s&box not for the vibes but for the games, you eventually grow used to them.

FOMO/NFT/Cosmetics?

Addressed here: https://sbox.game/news/update-25-11-05 (Cosmetics section)
Short story: Playfund is not going to pay itself, if s&box eventually goes Free-to-Play the money needs to come somewhere.
This is not gambling, lootboxes, battle passes, a subscription, you pay for a virtual item which you can wear in some games. Buy them if you want to support Facepunch, or ignore them, nobody is forcing you.

Terry is an all-in-one player package, if you're a developer making a game you can use any and all cosmetics for free, they're assets like any other on the cloud. Add a racer NPC with the helmet and jacket, a lawyer with the suit and smart shoes, a clown, a vampire, a zombie, a skeleton, a teacher, or yourself.

If there's a monetary incentive, artists will make cosmetics, and the more cosmetics there are the better it is for developers and their games.

Should've made Gmod 2?

Garry's Mod is not going away, but it's also not going anywhere. There's only so much you can do with a twenty-year-old game, it's already a miracle that Facepunch is still pushing monthly updates.

Facepunch announced s&box would be Gmod's spiritual successor, not a direct sequel. That was a mistake because people these days can't read and get mad when you point it out.

When people say they want a Gmod 2, what they really mean is they want the HL2 assets, because if you look inside of s&box you'll find everything Gmod had and more, albeit most of it being a WIP. Sandbox, the toybox, DarkRP, ragdolls, sledbuild, flood, and even game mounting, so you can still have all the HL2 assets you love.

AI Slop?

Addressed here: https://sbox.game/news/post-release (AI Slop section)

Grifters and creatively bankrupt people are everywhere on the internet now, and if there's a chance to make money out of something they'll try to take a piece of the pie.

AI slop is becoming more common everywhere, this is not just a s&box problem, it's on YouTube, it's on Roblox, it's on UEFN, it's on TikTok, it's even in Garry's Mod but you might never have realized it.

After release, Facepunch has been working hard on giving reviews more power to push down these type of games, and manually deranking the AI thumbnails from the algorithm.

Unfortunately good games take time to make, and by then you'll have 100 games made by AI.

Like most other issues, this will be fixed with time, and if AI slop does make it to the front page, maybe it's the player's fault for enjoying it!

Performance?

Addressed here: https://sbox.game/news/post-release (Performance section)

Performance is shit, we know it, Facepunch knows it, everyone knows it.

Facepunch's plan was to first make an engine then optimize it, and it's these past few months that they've gone full in on optimizing it. By the public metrics you can see that the average frame time went from 58fps to 83fps in the past 6 months.

If you can't play s&box on your crappy laptop right now, come back in a year and you might be able to.

• There's currently a 6 days window for drops
• The items are tradeable
• It doesn't use the Steam drops system so they can decide when and what to drop
• In the future you might get items for leaving reviews or even pick from a list of items
• You could get rarer skins based on playtime

Taken from this thread on the Discord: https://discord.com/channels/833983068468936704/1504755794816532621