Path of the Devoid (Patreon)

Over the past few months I have been thinking about player retention and the best way to reward people for playing Sector's Edge.

I was talking to Fora about this and he said the thing that makes Rust so fun and addictive is the fact that you start with nothing and work your way up. You could be on your 1000th playthrough but it will still feel satisfying to unlock new things.

For Sector's Edge, it would be incredibly harsh to have new players starting with a pistol and no MiDi attachments, fighting against players with full loadouts. It would feel great to finally unlock stronger weapons, but it would be torture getting there.

Battlefield 4 circumvents this by having 10 of each weapon type (Assault Rifle, Carbine, Shotgun, DMR, etc) and giving you one of each to start with, but we don't have that amount of guns.

I suggested that this be an optional 'Hard Mode' for Sector's Edge, where you start with a pistol and no attachments and you unlock everything else through gameplay, but that wouldn't feel as rewarding as other players would already have everything unlocked.

It would be best if everyone had something to unlock, so I asked Rocket what he thought of every player starting with two guns of their choice. He said that was too limiting and players enjoy trying out multiple guns in multiplayer.

I was now back at square one with our initial idea of having all attachments locked by default, but wanted a more difficult option to be available.

When starting the game, players have the choice of starting in Easy or Hard mode.

After selecting an option, they are taken to the Path of the Devoid:

The Path of the Devoid is a grid-based progression system containing weapons, utilities, attachments, grenades, mods, powers, boosts and points.

Each coloured allegiance sector contains 1-2 guns, their attachments, and either a utility or a grenade type.

These sectors are connected to one another through the outer region called the Path of the Devoid, which contains the minigun, pistol and revolver (and their attachments), midi attachments, mods, boosts and loadout points.

If the player selected Easy Mode, every weapon - with the exception of the minigun - will be unlocked, but they will still need to unlock their attachments.

If the player selected Hard mode, they must select an allegiance sector to start at. This will unlock the two weapons within that sector and nothing else. They will start with 10 loadout points and must unlock 5 more throughout the path.

Progression

The Path of the Devoid is generated using genetic algorithms, meaning every player will walk a different path. The contents within each sector remain the same, but the layout will be different each time.

Players will be given points each time they level up, which will be used to unlock items in the grid. Some weapons and attachments will cost more than others, and unlocking everything in an allegiance sector will grant the player a Power that they can equip in their loadout.

Players can reset and select a different difficulty or starting allegiance, but they will lose their current progress.

When everything is unlocked, the player will be presented with the option to prestige and start again. Their level will reset back to 0, but they will have a fancy icon on the scoreboard that changes with each progression.

Each successive progression will have a unique twist on the layout of the Path of the Devoid, which reflects on relations between the Allegiances.

Lore

This system will explore the motives and stories behind each allegiance, investigate the origin and death of the Soltrium star, and what Devoid is all about.

That's all I have to share for now, I'll have two new Punch Deck tracks to share shortly and I'm excited to discuss this system with you all.

Thank you for supporting us on Patreon, I hope this post has been worth the wait!