"Players should decide" how to play Rust, says Newman

Garry Newman has said he doesn't want to restrict player freedom in Facepunch Studios' new survival sandbox, Rust.

"One of our main aims with Rust is to not control how people behave directly. For example some people want us to implement something to discourage people killing each other. Some kind of rating. Or turn killers red to warm you they can’t be trusted," Newman wrote in a blog post.

"I hate that. It’s not giving the players freedom. The players should decide how they play the game."

Newman said players should be fearful of others, as that's the whole point, but if they decide to trust and play with each other it should be because they want to, not because of the game's mechanics.

"That means so much more if you both had the ability to kill the other at any time and didn’t. And you weren’t just doing it for a green +1," he said.

"So what’s to stop you from going around killing anyone you want and taking their s**t and becoming more powerful? Nothing. What’s stopping it from becoming a PVP killfest? You. Our job should be to give the players the tools they need.

"If you’re sick of getting killed – start a town. Build town walls. Give all the town members red clothes. Put warning signs up outside the town. Set up trip wires and alarms. Watch each others back. Our job is to give you the tools to allow you to protect yourself."

It's a similar problem to that facing DayZ, which Rust began as a clone of, which creator Dean Hall hopes to combat by giving players more to do.

Newman noted that the team were somewhat surprised by the sudden popularity of Rust since the alpha released, with project lead Helk going on vacation straight after releasing it.

As for the future, Newman's team hopes to get a lot of big fixing done, put in their own assets, work out a start state for players (naked, probably), and start thinking about release plans.

Thanks, Joystiq.