TL;DRThe current plan is that material quality cannot be increased, to keep rare materials valuable and player trading meaningful, while lower-quality materials stay useful as secondary refining inputs.
I'll start with a hot question. Current plan is no. You won't be able to increase the quality of the material. And there's a few aspects that go into that. Firstly, we would like rare materials and valuable materials to remain rare and valuable. Concern being that if I can take a large chunk of low quality, condense it into high quality, given enough time, players will have high quality everything. And that greatly devalues the future player trading opportunities, where we really want to see the scenario of a player finds a super rare, high value ore deposit. And perhaps on their player base, they set up a shop, and then you have people coming to your shop and buying from you, and you get to interact with them and so on. The second part is there is a need for the lower and mid quality to have greater value. At the moment, because bigger number is better, everyone's searching for the higher quality. So to resolve this, our plan is with the refining updates that you have two ingredients when you're refining. One of them will be a primary — it could be two or more, to be fair — two or more could be secondary. And the quality of the secondary determines how much of it you need, whereas the quality of the primary is used for the refined material. So if it's iron — we always go for the steel example — if you're making steel, primary is iron. 750 quality iron makes 750 steel. Carbon, the quality is not too important. So you can get a massive amount of carbon, however much you need, of terrible quality. Shove it in and get your steel.
Not quantity. It's just for the secondary inputs. You need less of it if it's high quality, but you can still use any quality. So you can farm up loads and just shove it in as secondary.
So there's a purpose for the lower quality. And to be very honest, it's something that we discussed a lot, if we want to go down this road. And as Dec already described, one of the main reasons why we want to stick with this approach of you not being able to upgrade the materials is that we still want you to search for higher grades, that we don't want you to hoard lower grades because at some point you will be able to upgrade. And for that reason, we came up with some solutions of making the lower quality actually worthwhile holding onto, especially then once we have the refining process in.
Yeah, and when you find those really high level ones, we want that to be exciting, we want that to feel like a moment, and if you could just get higher easily, you would dilute that experience.
It seems to me like you're finding a nice compromise here then. For the people who gather casually, there's a path, there's a use for the lesser quality stuff they get, but for the people who dedicate themselves, like "I am going to be a miner, that is my job," because you're going to keep those higher resources more valuable, that effort is going to be more rewarding to those people because they're going to be able to sell that stuff.
Exactly. That is the point. Because with that, we open up the opportunities for players to sell it. If every player is able to upgrade their materials, then we swamp the market with high quality.
TL;DRPlayer trading is a priority for getting to as fast as possible, planned first through in-world trade centers, but it depends on social features being built first and is balanced against other work.
Yes and no. It's something that's really important to me in particular. I got on stage a couple years ago and talked about how important I think the player-driven economy can be, especially now that we're finally getting crafting out. If you can't do player trading, it's not what I want it to be. So I'm going to get there as fast as possible. We've got to balance it against some other things like social features and so forth. But what we want to do is give players a space in the world, taking advantage of the trade centers that we already have, and locations where you can go there and you can take anything in your local inventory and put it on the local net and pick your price and sell it for what you want. Or anybody else there that's done the same, you can buy their stuff and get what you need. So we have those actual in-world commercial centers. And then eventually we'll have player places, base building, where you can do that locally and build your own town.
I'm glad you mentioned social right there. That is the precursor to this. The work that Benoit and his team are doing on developing social tools — which I don't think anybody that's ever played Star Citizen for more than five minutes will argue is not incredibly important and incredibly needed — the work that they're doing on social lays the groundwork. It's a necessary foundation for then building player trading on top of that. You have to be able to effectively communicate to people before you can start player trading. So the social tools are what they're focused on right now.
TL;DRSeveral initiatives are underway for inventory image quality and responsiveness, with progress on a significant cause of slowness, and the stated desire is to make loading instant.
Yes. So for the images, there's a handful of initiatives underway. There's no anti-aliasing on the images, so that's one of the things we're going to look into. There's improvements to the framing. You'll see some things that are zoomed out or zoomed in compared to the box. There is lighting and shadows. And then for the responsiveness and the snappiness, it's a work in progress. It is our desire to have it instant.
I'm in a number of chats for visibility. There was a big conversation. They found a big cause — not the only cause, there's never only one source for something — but they made a nice big leap in some discovery earlier this week. And I wish I could remember what the heck it was now. But yeah, they're currently making progress.
TL;DRThe team says it monitors drop rates and will adjust the balance each patch cycle so found materials feel meaningful, and doesn't call mining tedious, though acknowledging it won't suit everyone.
I think the other part of the answer to that is, the question is like, "All I'm finding is boring stuff. Where's the excitement?" We will balance that over time. If we're not supplying enough for the players to feel satisfaction in that process, if we're not supplying enough to have a good crafting environment, we will adjust the balance to what we think gets to a good place, both for the economy and to make sure that all the other game systems come together for a fun environment.
For that, we are even monitoring all the rates that we see drop. So we are adjusting. So every patch cycle, the numbers might change a bit, so that we get into a range where the material that the players will find is actually meaningful and has a purpose for them. I wouldn't call mining tedious.
TL;DRShops currently sell resources only at zero quality because of a tech limitation, and the design is for markets with multiple quality levels, with player trading intended to be the best deal.
They'll end up selling materials that have quality. They won't sell the super high quality stuff, and equally, if you sell good quality to a shop, it'll pay more, but the best deal is probably going to be on the player trade market, because that's where people have the most money.
We'll have a market with multiple quality values. You'll be able to go there and pay more for higher quality and less for lower quality. And the same, vice versa: if you want to sell your own stuff, you'll get more for higher quality and less for lower quality. That's absolutely the design, and we'll get there; we just couldn't get there last release.
But what Dec said, and I want to highlight that, is that we really want to have player trading standing out in comparison to trading with NPCs. So we want to make sure that, sure, you will be finding different qualities from NPC traders, but we want to encourage you to actually trade with players there.
And eventually it'll all be tied together. Whenever a player's trading to another player, we'll be tracking that and adding it to the overall simulation. We've talked about having StarSim, the simulation that knows everything that the players are doing, plus all the things that we're expecting the NPCs to do, so that when players are buying stuff for one price, that is reflected in the NPC prices as well.
TL;DRThe team feels good about getting the first tier of crafting out, praising the team effort and the player feedback, while stressing it is only a first step with much more planned.
We asked Dec to do a lot at the last minute, but the whole team came together. It's the first step. There's a lot more that we want to do with crafting, but just getting that first tier of crafting out felt really good. That first step that we needed to take to get it into players' hands, to start iterating on it — and we've got a long ways to go, but there's a lot of cool features coming.
It was nice seeing the avalanche of feedback. You saw some people, they wanted XYZ to be improved. You saw people crafting guns that were 900 quality. And then there was a helmet that was bugged that I had to fix, which I was a bit annoyed by. It was very nice to see it go out.
It even helped internally, because the people working on it were all motivated to get this feature in really good quality, because they themselves are either a fan of crafting or really a fan of tying things together in our game. So that definitely helped a lot.
TL;DRIt is too early to give up on crafting, since this is only the first step, and the published crafting guide lists many confidently planned future features.
I think it's pretty early to wipe your hands of it. We've got a long ways to go, both in crafting itself and the other features that are going to support crafting. It's too early to tell, I would say. This is absolutely just our first step out the door. And while it's really cool to see what players can already do with it, we're far from done.
We did release a crafting guide alongside, and the crafting guide had a wonderful section at the bottom, not just dedicated to everything that was in this one, but a look at a whole lot of things that are already in development for the future. It's not even everything. Anything that was like, "well, we might, whatever," we struck out. We stuck with a pretty short list of the things that we were pretty confident on, and it's an impressive list of stuff coming. If you haven't seen the crafting guide and checked out the section at the bottom of where crafting is going, I would suggest you check it out.
TL;DRMerge and split weren't in the first release because waiting for every planned feature would slow releases and player feedback, though the speakers admit shipping without it is annoying.
But we have to release at some point, don't we? How long do we want to wait to release for all the features that we have planned? If we waited on every little feature that we want to be part of the system, it would take us so much longer to get anything out into players' hands, and it would just slow down the iteration overall. Back to six months waiting for the next patch.
It's hard because if we waited for everything, we'd never release anything. There's a reason why some games go six months between major releases or even longer. They go completely quiet. We are putting new stuff out almost every two weeks at this point. Now, it's because we get feedback on the stuff we have. We need that feedback on the stuff we have. We need that testing on the stuff that we have, because we might learn something about the stuff we have that directly affects the stuff that we're waiting for. And better to know that while we're still working on this than finish this and go, "Oh, I wish I had known this earlier. If only I had put what we had out earlier, that information could have informed this." There's a whole lot of reasons why we operate a live environment in the middle of our game development. It's beneficial in a lot of ways, and it's annoying. It is annoying to have to put out a feature that you know needs merging and splitting, and it's just not ready.
I'll never be happy with any feature we put out. It'll never be complete. It'll be as good as I can get in the time and resources that I have. That's me being a perfectionist. That's nothing against the game.
TL;DRPlans include crafting directly into local storage soon as a stopgap for larger items, and longer term hangar crafting and intermediate ship-crafting steps through base building.
So with the current fabricator, we had a specific format that we were going for. That's our first version, where in the future we're going to have the ability to craft directly into local storage with that initial fabricator. So you'll have options to craft larger items in the near future. And then longer term, with base building, we'll have hangar crafting, and we'll have intermediate steps in ship crafting as well as locations. So there's lots planned to expand your options of size in crafting.
Yeah, and crafting into local inventory is more of a stopgap until we can bring those other features into the game. So I don't think that'll be a permanent solution, but it'll be a way for us to start iterating on our larger crafting before we have those other features available.
TL;DRMining modules and gadgets will be craftable at some point, with ship components being added to the craftable catalog, and the intent is that most gameplay-affecting items become craftable.
Yes. A lot of items that we will have or we already have in our game, all of them will be craftable at some point, and we will make sure that every item that is craftable actually is affected by the quality of the materials that you use for it, so that there is a meaningful reason for you to actually craft those items. And for 4.8 we are already expanding our catalog of craftable items. So we are expanding it to ship components, and those will also be affected by the stat improvements that you get from the quality. So you will be able to craft — correct me if I'm wrong, Dec — power plants, coolers, life support generators. Weapons — weapons we disagree on — shield generators. Shield generators are there. What am I missing?
The refueling one's an interesting one. We probably won't get stats for that, but because there are some refueling changes, there will be some craftable refueling elements.
I'm going to roll you back on the statement "all of the items will be craftable." I want to say most of the items. I know somewhere there is going to be some limited edition Vanduul Kewpie doll or something that we give out as an Alien Week thing, and somebody's like, "No, that was the only time you get that."
Yes. We're going to be adding an app to the mobiGlas so that you'll be able to see and manage all of your blueprints that you've collected — not only ones you've collected, but the ones that you could collect and the ones you could upgrade. It'll be a full-featured app that'll probably come out after we get the upgrading in place. So it's more of a future effort, but it's definitely something we have planned. Like a Pokédex, just for blueprints.
There's no plan for that, but part of the upgrading, like learning the next tier of a blueprint, could include missions where you needed to do something like that. We definitely have been talking about that kind of thing. It's one of the two or three main ways of learning how to upgrade your blueprints that we've talked about.
We called it research in the CitizenCon presentation, where we also have other steps that you need to take to be able to figure out how to reach the next tier of the item that you own.
TL;DRHigher-tier rifles give better stats and, at the highest tiers, material choices that trade a buff for a debuff so players can focus a favoured stat; examples are planned before upgrading arrives.
There's another question on the list that alludes to this. Well, one of the things is that not only can you get more stats, but you can get more options. So there'll be a material that you can have either different types of or different qualities of that will provide a tradeoff between a buff and a debuff. So you can really lean into one stat that you really like if you want to.
So not only will the stats get generally better if you increase the tiers, but in the highest tiers you will even be able to affect or focus on a certain stat, with the downside of affecting another stat in a negative way.
Chris is really interested in that kind of trade-off, a plus and a minus when you're crafting, having that choice. So even though we're planning to do that definitely for the higher tiers, since we want to start iterating on that earlier, we're going to try and come up with some examples of that before we get to the actual upgrading.
TL;DRSome boss-associated missions and blueprints already exist, and the team definitely plans blueprints from boss-fight missions and loot; the Apex Valakkar fight isn't in the game yet and was reworked.
The datapads would be great. I think for 4.7 we did introduce — I might be throwing Elliot under the bus here — I think we introduced a couple missions for the Omandi and the Apex Valakkar. So there's boss-fight-ish associated blueprints at the moment. But the datapads and blueprints will be the good use case there.
Associated with the missions that you can complete for boss fights, as well as the loot that you can collect around a boss fight. Yeah, we definitely plan on that.
Well, we got something together that was playable, we tested it, and it wasn't good enough, so we made some changes. That's how you make a better game.
To be fair to you, there's also quite a few non-combat ones that we don't have planned yet because it's a different process, especially when it comes to food and drink.
TL;DRDegradation is meant to be a long-term mechanic that keeps the economy moving rather than annoy players, with slower wear through care and some repair options; the rough, unsigned example is over a week of play for a power plant.
So it's something that I think we brought up in different conversations several times at this point. We talked about that when we talked about engineering. I think we talked about that even last time, when I think Elliot and I were sitting here. So degradation, or every system that we do, is never meant to annoy people. We want players to enjoy playing our game, and that also means that we have to be very conscious about some decisions that we take. Degradation is one of those decisions where we are very conscious that if we do it wrong, it can be very impactful in your everyday gaming life. So what we do here is that we still want degradation to play a big part in our game, because it's a way of us having you exchange components, taking care of components, taking care of your equipment so that they degrade slower and the functionality is reduced at a slower rate than normally it would be. But we also want to make sure that there is a floating economy, and like in real life, at some point the laptop that you own will not be as performant anymore as it is right now. Thanks to capitalism, you want to buy a new one because you need a faster PC. And we need a similar system in our game, because we need a thriving economy, and a thriving economy you get by people buying things. And in our case, one of the levers that we have there is actually the degradation, because the degradation impacts the functionality. So the older your item gets, the less functionality it will have. As stated, if you treat it well, the degradation process is slower, so the functionality will remain longer. We will also give you ways to sometimes, on rare occasions, be able to restore some of the functionality of the item. We will make use, for example, of the crafters that you have, where you basically can repair, which might be more sustainable for the component than putting your multi-tool onto it and repairing it. So it might be a good choice to use the crafting repair functionality over the hand tool repair functionality. But overall, at some point everything has to go, and you have to replace it, because that then introduces you to crafting new components, maybe even better components. So there's some interesting mechanics behind that. But we are also very, very aware that sometimes you have this one item that you don't want to lose. So we also want to make sure that we tailor towards those things, that you will not lose it.
And just to give a very, very concrete example, because we have been working on that actually for quite some time now: it's the degradation cycle, because we have been very vague with all the numbers, but it's more like we are talking about game sessions. Concrete example — it's not signed off, it's just me giving you a sneak peek of what we have been discussing — we are talking, for a power plant, about a week, maybe one week and a half of usage, full usage. That means the time you are using it until it reaches zero functionality, so you basically have to replace it.
No, no, it's play time. So you playing, actively using the component, so the component is not resting, the component is not turned off; the component is in an average use case throughout a week and a half. So more than 150 hours before you have to...
That's my point. The high-level intent is that it's not something that you're going to have to deal with every play session. It's a long-term mechanic.
Ibn Crux, first-time chatter, said, "Just don't do it like this other game that I'm not gonna slag off. I can't do more than two hours of gaming without repairing all my gear 20 times." That's what you're talking about.
Exactly. And like I said, the number that I gave is just a very, very rough number. It hasn't gone through any iterations yet. But also, this is the extreme, right? We are talking about 100% functionality versus 0% functionality. Degradation bits in between that we hope actually increase interest in the game.
TL;DRThe team moved away from very detailed design briefs because plans kept changing and caused disappointment, and instead updates guides for features like mining, salvage and crafting, plus shows like this one.
As mentioned several times in the show, we did. Now, not as detailed as we used to. This person might be referring to the olden days, where we would write up this entire thing — we did a design brief on Mixmaster, we did a design brief on an entire game loop about how to make drinks for NPC passengers and keep them happy. And the reality of development is that so many things have changed since then. Systems have changed. People have changed. We've all grown. And the likelihood that that document is anything remotely accurate is... you don't need me to make a comment on it. You should be able to tell. So we moved away from full-on design briefs like that, because all too often it just led to disappointment. Because again, we ended up changing it because we had to, because of some technical limitation, or changing it because somebody new joined the team and came up with a better idea. And it's like, well, we're not going to stick with the old idea if it's not as good; we want to do the new idea. But now we've changed: "You didn't do what you said you were going to do," even though it's something we believe is better. So we did move away from those old super detailed design briefs of yore. And maybe that's what they're referring to. But we have made an effort this last year to update things like the mining guide and the salvage guide and the crafting guide and the medical guide and the cargo guide, and make a lot of our intentions known, make a lot of our philosophies known, and give a glimpse at the future of where this feature is going, like we did with medical and like we did with crafting lately — and engineering. So there is that effort. It won't be as detailed as it was back in the old days.
We have those big new features that we want to explain to people as best we can, especially since we're going to be iterating on them, and we don't want to do in-game versions of those tutorials yet. We want to have those available for people.
It has improved features. So proximity loot is very nice. You can take the one SCU StorAll with you, and you can just hoover up the loot as you go. It needs to be snappy, though. It needs to interact quickly. It needs to be instant. So we're aware of that. And we are proud of the features that it's gone out with, and we are continuing to work on the interactivity and the responsiveness.
Yeah, it's nice to see an improvement to the inventory system. It's frustrating to see some of the things that we wanted to get fixed that didn't make it into the build. It's frustrating to see some of the performance limitations that we haven't been able to solve yet, but we're actively working on it. It'll continue to get better.
Yes, just the whole thing scaled up as far as the inventory icons. And then not in 4.8, but related to that, is we will have the support for widescreen, for dynamically sizing the inventory panels, and you'll have the option to scale up and down the icons yourself. And if you scale them all the way down, they just turn into a text list instead of a series of icons.
For 4.8, we went with the larger icons, just to make it more visible. And then the scaling is coming, and also the improvements to the actual rendering of those icons.
Well, to be fair, they won't have stats. Eventually they would — stuff like weight. But it's just nice to craft your own backpack. So we're adding that blueprint in.