We are chugging along here. Much like before, we are currently in the midst of another iteration cycle. This time, our focus is on pushing on the ways in which we want characters in our world to feel like they have a function and purpose, in order to give the player a clearer motivation and incentive to both create a character and to check back in on them.
We have conceived of five roles for the characters. I’ll just summarize them quickly: Engineers fix broken objects around the city, making them useable to others; Researchers work to progress broader meta-goals that represent the scientific progress of the community at large; Entertainers work at establishments like cafes or performance stages to provide a place for others to restore their mood (which affects the rate at which they work); Caretakers raise plants in a greenhouse; Safety Officers patrol randomly.
You might observe, the function of the last two roles seems a little undefined. Well, there’s a chain of reasons for that. It all boils down to thinking about scope, but in the shorter-term timeframe, we’re interested in observing how people understand the roles that they’re selecting for their character, and whether or not they ‘mind’ or even notice if the role they selected for their character actually contributes directly to the same goal as everyone else. In other words, if a player creates a Safety Officer because they want their character to be a cool looking security guard, will they be satisfied if all that entails is that their character looks menacing and stands in front of an important entrance way the whole time? Our experience is largely designed to be something that you don’t watch closely for long stretches of time. It may not be worth it to invest a lot of design time into complicated numerically driven systems if a player won’t particularly care about them or perhaps even notice them.
But yeah. These are the kinds of things we’re working on right now. This is a bit of a short blog this week, because a lot of this cycle of development is going to extend into next week, both over the weekend and on Monday and Tuesday as we work towards next Wednesday’s playtest. So, think of the next blog post as the direct continuation of this one!
Over and out,
The Intergalactic Buttoneers