Soldiers, Explorers and Scientists will likely be a lot more on the move than Settlers, who can build structures within the game world that provide unique interactions for others, explains Frost.
In our talk we ask how they feel players will handle the idea that their creations eventually despawn from the world. Wouldn’t that put people off?
”I don’t think so – when you build up something, it’s great to spawn something in and it feels great to have done it, and over time I can collect resources and come back to it and keep it around,” Frost replied.
”It’s not completely gone – I mean if you really wanted to stay there, I mean that’s the reason we have this Path, it’s for the social gamers who just hang around in Capital Cities and talk.”
”So for those people, if they really want to do something to occupy their time, they can go out, find those resources, come back, build up these things and keep them built for a long period of time. Like you said, if I built a jail, and it’s going to despawn over time, but if it’s already built when a new settler comes a long, they can take these resources and still get credit for their Paths – we’re not going to block you there, and it keeps that building around for a longer period of time.”
”We’ve been playing this stuff in beta – I can tell you, I mean I always play as the explorer, so when somebody does the Settler and they have all these things in the game… I went and talked to a quest vendor, who was on a Settler plug that had been spawned in, and I got that quest and it despawned three seconds later,” he continued. ”And if I hadn’t of done that it would have gone away so I was like “Yes! I got it!”, so, I think there’s something cool about the fact that you have to depend on other people to put these things in, and even if it erodes, you can still come back and someone else can bring that in and they can make that players experience better as a result.”
The game continues to encourage players of all the Paths to go off and find new things to progress, but it’s built in such a way that you can hang back and still have plenty of fun. These kind of roles have proven popular in the past, with Sony Online’s Star Wars Galaxies having had a few classes catered to ‘social’ players who’d spend all their time in cantinas as dancers and musicians, as well as having an architect career to follow building houses.
Carbine wants to make sure there’s something for everyone. Be sure to check out our interview with Stefan Frost, and take a peek at our initial impressions of WildStar which is due out on PC later in 2013.
