TL;DRMissions tying into salvage, mining and similar professions are expected down the line, not in the first release, which is described as the most basic form of distribution centers.
I think down the line, yeah, certainly. I think distribution centers are obviously an enormous location and they needn't just stand alone on the surface. There's no reason why potentially in the future they could have outlying structures that supply them and house the people that work there. So they could be very large, and with a large population there's a lot of scope for lots of different gameplay. So like salvaging, like mining, expanding the delivery missions and the hauling missions so they have more variety, more scope. There's tons of stuff to do as well. So for me, the 3.23 release of distribution centers, it's like them in their most basic form. This is where we start, where we take it in the future.
That's the first iteration. We were talking about this before the show, actually. We were talking about ideas like the distribution center was raided and now they don't have the ore that they were supposed to have in stock in order to fulfill an order. So they might send you out to go mine this ore and bring it back and we're just going to put it in the box and pretend like it was always there. Or maybe the distribution center can crank out some kind of detritus. Not toxic waste, but some kind of refuse that then needs to be broken down. Like, 'Hey, we could sure use help. Go in the back and, using salvage, break down all this excess garbage that we're producing through whatever.' There's definitely opportunities to come up with additional mission types and have it tie into other professions in the future.
Well, there's the hauling. That's the major one. They're distribution centers, after all. So they tie into this new hauling loop. So you're taking massive quantities of cargo between different places. There's all the various what you might call the courier, like the box delivery missions. We're hoping to rework those somewhat so you're more of a FedEx driver than you are now. So there's scope for those. There's scope for delivery missions. Just internally, these distribution centers are so large, you can have delivery missions just inside them, like taking the cargo from, let's say, the storage room to the warehouse, the warehouse to the freight terminal, freight terminal to a little base on the perimeters of the center. So there's tons and tons of scope for just moving stuff around, distributing stuff within the center, you might say.
TL;DROrganization ownership or operation of distribution centers is possible in the future in theory, but it would need a supply chain, and there is no plan for it at this point.
Oh, I mean, in the future, I think, yeah, there's definitely opportunity for that. You could have it so that the organization that operates it is just the initial owner of the location, and then really it could potentially just come down to manpower, who can actually defend it. Who owns it is just like, well, who's got the biggest gun?
I think when they talk about operate though, I mean like generate missions. Besides just 'I want to hold this and nobody else can have it,' is there room here for the idea that these might be operable, that these might benefit an organization?
I think one thing that the resource network might eventually lead into is the opportunity to generate stuff. The distribution center, for example, if it's a Greycat distribution center, it could potentially manufacture things. There's no reason why not. So if there's a player organization out there which essentially owns this facility, then they would have the de facto rights to manufacture that stuff. But then that kind of bleeds into the question of, well, where do they get the materials from? You can't manufacture things out of thin air. So you need a supply chain, and obviously these things that you do manufacture, they need to go somewhere. So you need a buyer. So it's this whole supply chain. Owning the distribution center is just one piece of the puzzle.
So I think the first thing to bear in mind about distribution centers is they're very varied. Some of them will welcome players, some of them won't, but they're also varied in terms of level of security. So some of them will have security at the lower end. If you imagine an extremely well-fortified bunker, that's like the lowest level of security for this distribution center. For the highest level of security, you're talking something alongside a rest stop, that kind of level. Lots and lots of turrets, probably a green zone, missile turrets as well. They're going to be about as well fortified as we can make them for 3.23.
This is the broad sort of gameplay flavor. So we've got distribution centers which we're terming friendly. And on the opposite end of the scale we've got distribution centers which are hostile, and then in between you have a whole range which are just mixed. There's some combination of all the different factors put together in different levels.
A hostile one, so it's separate to the security level, but a hostile one basically does not welcome players. If you enter, regardless of who you are, what you've done, what your reputation is with any kind of faction, they're going to shoot at you with whatever kind of weaponry they have around. They will have turrets, they will have trespass zones, they will have security guards all over the place. That's a hostile one. It's like Chris when he sees me coming.
TL;DRFriendly distribution centers admit players with neutral reputation without restrictions, and in 3.23 they will have green zones for security, though the game won't tell players which centers are which.
The friendly ones are much more welcoming. They will allow players in, as long as they have a neutral reputation with the owner. They will allow players in and you can just go in, you can land, you can request landing access, you can get in the hangar, you can walk around, no restrictions, no holds barred, just go wherever you please, no problem.
So for 3.23, because we don't have the full law and order system, some of these distribution centers will have a green zone. And that'll protect the players, those lawful, unaggressive players. I don't think we'll outright tell them which is which. It's one of those things we like people to discover on their own. But you'll discover, okay, missions to this distribution center and this distribution center are safe. I can be a lawful, unaggressive player and not get harassed. And then there's the super aggressive, where it's just, 'I just want to be a pain in the ass for somebody,' and then there'll be the collection of ones in between.
TL;DRThe law and order system and crime stat are meant to become more robust, persistent and scaling in punishment, with a detailed plan in place, but no patch timing or specifics are given.
Players saw it in the Pyro Playground. Some of these stations were supposed to have faction-oriented NPC guards that are supposed to stop griefing. That's all part of this law and order system that's still being developed and still coming online. But this crime stat system, even that's going to evolve to the point of having harder crime stats and crime stats that don't entirely wipe away. Or you got rid of your crime stat, but there's a database that still remembers that you had one, and you start getting too many of them, it's like, maybe you're just a permanent criminal.
I think there's a drive to make the security side more, how can I put it, robust in their pursuit of justice and more persistent in it. And once you are caught, to make the punishment more severe and fitting. So it's not flat. It scales.
And I want to say, what we're talking about right now is not the theorycrafting stuff that we talked about before. There is actually a very detailed law and order plan in place. Things that we're working towards; I can't tell you what patch, one patch, two patch, three patch, four patch from now, whenever it's ready and online. But obviously we saw what happened in Pyro Playground. We can see what's happening in a lot of these places with griefing. And there are many things in place that we want to attempt. People will then naturally ask, well, why don't you just tell us about it? Because we need to try things. We need to try this, and if that doesn't work, then we're going to try this, and if that isn't working, we're going to try this. You don't just have one idea. You have an A idea, B idea, C idea, and you want to test these things. We sit there and say we're going to do this, and then we end up not going with A and going with C, and it's like, well, you told us you were going with A. Well, A didn't work. We had to test it. So let us continue to do some refinement and work on it. And I promise, like all things, considering that it's literally my job to do so, we will inform and share the design and the intention of it when we feel that it's ready to be done so. But I just want to say that that's not theorycrafting. That's on the calendar.
So on the front end, when you first boot the game up, we ask the player, do you want to take part in the new player experience? If they do, then we will set their start location to Area 18, because that's where the new player experience takes place. And then we will guide them through the process just automatically. So as soon as they're in game, the mission is accepted. And we will guide them through, as Todd was saying, all the basics, eating and drinking. And we will guide them through Area 18 onto the tram, over to the spaceport, into their ship, and then flying around. So yeah, we start right at the beginning.
So mobiGlass was another thing that we felt we needed to teach. And also the other thing with this room, the idea is that you're locked in this room. Obviously with the Persistent Universe, there's not too many places that you can actually lock a player into a space. A traditional tutorial would be, let's pause the game, let's make it so that the player has to push this button for it to continue, and so on and so forth. So we have that here in certain areas, but once you walk out of the hab, you're free. And trying to teach that, it's very difficult.
TL;DRThe player is guided to a shop to learn to use the kiosk and elevator, and the team plans to roll similar signposting out to every major landing zone and also work out how to do it in space stations.
So right now the player's exited the hab and we're going to send them down to Cubby Blast so they can get some experience in a shop, basically. The main thing we wanted to teach there was you don't talk to the NPC behind the counter like you do in most games, but you interact with the kiosk. So we're breadcrumbing the player down through the elevator, which will be the first time that they've used an elevator. So we guide them to the little panel next to the elevator itself and teach them to interact with that. And then when they get in, tell them which floor they need to go to. To be honest, they can't really go wrong at this point, because there is no other exit than the elevator. Theoretically, it's literally their first time in game, so it doesn't do any harm to put a little marker over the elevator panel and say, hey, press this.
I was going to say, at every fork in the road through the landing zone, basically, the branding team and the environment art team have gone through and said, okay, if you go this way, then this is what you get. If you go to the left, then you get this other experience or shopping or so on and so forth. So this is something that we will roll out to every major landing zone, and then we'll also figure out how we can do it in space stations, just so that it's very, very clear for the player to understand where they can go and what they can do.
The signage change in ArcCorp is huge. When I first heard of them adding signs, I'll admit, I kind of dismissed it. You're going to add some signs, some directional arrows here and there, and seeing the sheer amount that they've done and how effective each one is, I was like, oh, okay. We're coming up on the first big obvious one, a brand new kind of overhead map of Area 18 here.
Yeah, it took us a while to go through and work out. Obviously, for every major landing zone, we want it to feel unique to itself. So, for example, an airport sign in Germany is different than an airport sign in the UK versus it's different in the US. But it still has something to do with an airplane. Same with food. In Asia, it would be different than in Europe. So there's certain terminology and certain things that we look at to basically say, okay, hey, this is something that we can carry through, but this will feel special for ArcCorp versus, all right, when we do Lorville, it'll be a somewhat different icon pass, but it's got to fit still in this box.
Well, yeah, I was waiting to bring that up, but I was just noticing in that moment that Sam seemed to be possessing some knowledge already that I need to go to my inventory to do this stuff.
So right now, we encourage the player to buy a helmet, and maybe in a future iteration, we can sort of incorporate that into part of the flow. But yeah, Sam's got special knowledge.
Yeah, so previously hints would be kind of at the bottom, in the center. We've got some tech which kind of dresses them up a little bit, moves them up and to the right. And just below that we've got the new contextual hint system.
So for the new player experience, we've basically gifted the player a rented Pisces. The reason we do that is so they have a suitable ship to learn in. We don't completely lock them out from any purchased ships. They get unlocked at the end of the new player experience. But for the very first flight, and if you want to, the flights subsequent to that, the player's got a nice ship. It's easy to fly. It's very small. So it's kind of suitable for the very first experience.
Well, this is why we teach them to hold the Z key down and just look around before they actually take off. Because for Todd, it's always Hangar 3, but for the public, it could be anything. So it could be the front door, in which case you see it fine. But if not, if you've got a top-loading hangar, then you need to know to look up.
TL;DRThe player gets a short, fairly straight flight around the city with objective markers and pop-up hints, so they learn basic ship controls on their first time in the ship.
So they've left their hangar and we're giving them just a basic flight around Area 18. It's nighttime at the moment, so you don't get to see very much, but the idea is that you get an idea of how to fly your ship, because this is the first time that the player's been in their ship. So the path is pretty straight. You can see objective markers appearing, giving them new places to go to. So we keep them pretty much in line, so they're not appearing off to the side and you're having to sort of swerve your way around. But we're also popping up hints that give them basic controls. So at the start it'll say, hey, you need to raise your landing gear, and this is your throttle and how to adjust your speed, and just various basic hints like that, just so they get an idea of how to fly.
TL;DRThe flight teaches the basic process rather than skipping to quantum travel, and the team has also trimmed the missions offered afterward and wants them to unlock gradually from a small starting set.
Yeah. So again, for this, Sam's going through and trying to make it look pretty, versus as an average player, you're going to be looking at it from your cockpit. You're going to be trying to speed through it, I think, or do a speed run for it. And usually our reviews take 30 minutes, and maybe 10 of those are calling out notes and talking about any sort of blockers or anything like that. So I think James and I can get through this in what, 15 minutes, if that?
So it's usually a pretty quick experience. So for example, here, right now you have a whole bunch of QT markers associated with this. Again, one of the things that we were trying to do was strip away all of these, or have it be that you didn't have enough fuel to fly over there. So then he would have to come here, refuel, and then things are open to the player. There's other aspects in regards to the amount of missions that are shown to the player and everything.
Yeah, we were conscious, once the player finishes the tutorial, of the missions that would be available immediately afterwards, and while we couldn't get to all of them, we've cut down the number and we've hopefully cut down some of the more difficult ones for new players. So they should have a more suitable selection than they would previously, let's say.
If we talk about this, let's say you are a new player, or maybe you've played this one patch. If we do any sort of resets or wipes or anything like that, the idea would be after you finish the new player experience, that gets you to the same baseline that everybody else starts the game at if they don't choose the new player experience and they just started and everything's reset. It gets everybody the same baseline. And so again, for our missions, we want to make sure that they branch out. It's not like you get 40 choices in the very beginning. You'll have three, and then you do one, and then now that opens up two more and now you have five available. So it's slowly doling those things out.
So when the player lands, they get out of their ship and you're sort of asked to store it. And as soon as you store your ship, you've landed at Baijini Point, you've learned all kinds of stuff, and that's the ending point.
Yeah, so it allows you to go through and read about any of the things that we teach the player, so you can refer back to it. And obviously, in case you missed something or want to read up more information on that, then this allows you to do that.
One thing we do throughout the new player experience is point players towards the journal, because the journal is a really good source of information, not just during the new player experience, but throughout. It will teach you about law and crime stats and all that kind of stuff. So pointing players to that early on gives them a tool which they can use throughout their time with Star Citizen.
I think the other thing that needs to be stated there is on the front end, there's an actual button there. It's a hyperlink that will take you out and it'll take you to the guide on the Roberts Space Industries website, and you'll be able to request a guide if you want.