Star Citizen: Reverse the Verse LIVE - Service Beacons

Rob Reininger · Lead Systems Designer

So designers are the guys that are coming up with all the work for these guys to do, really, and making these guys' lives hard. We come up with a system, how we want it to work, the rule set behind it, the conditions that we want the system to operate in, and then we ask these guys to go and implement it in the game code, backend services, and then they give it back to us for us to kind of tune and make it all kind of work at the end of the day.

Chad McKinney · Lead Gameplay Engineer

An important part of that process is where we tell you that you're actually wrong about something.

Rob Reininger · Lead Systems Designer

So the service beacon system is a player-generated mission system, essentially. So we've got the framework of it, and there's only a couple of beacon types right now, but it allows players to create content for each other, which allows them to form alliances or friendship bonds. It brings people together in what is an incredibly large universe. Yeah, it allows them to set their own reward price, dictate the conditions of the contract, although there's very few options right now. We look to expand that. The players are going to be able to filter the beacons that they're notified about. These are all things that are intended for the system at the end of the day. So it's going to be something where you shouldn't really be able to tell the difference between player-generated content versus the content that we create. We really want it to just feel like it's another contract out there. It's another thing that you can go and do. Eventually we'd like to have NPCs be able to respond to these as well. So if your beacon's up and it's for a reasonable price and nobody's responding, we'd like for an NPC to come and help you out.

Chad McKinney · Lead Gameplay Engineer

Yeah, just to kind of drive home that original point there. For me, I think the service beacons are actually really important, and they actually make the game more like what I want Star Citizen to be. It brings an amount of interaction with the players that you don't get in other games. You see these other games, and yeah, they have lots of people in the game, but a lot of times you're basically playing a single-player experience alongside each other with a lot of people online. And you just look at this and you think to yourself, there's so much that can be done with this that you just leave on the table. You don't get it utilized at all. And I think the service beacons are a really good solution to getting the players to play together and to make content for each other and make unique situations that can't be scripted, couldn't be dreamt up by some mission system or whatever. So I think it's actually going to be a pretty fundamental part of what makes Star Citizen a special game.

Michael Dillon · Gameplay Engineer

I agree with pretty much everything both of them said. I think this really pulls a way for players to interact with other players and build that, not necessarily economy, but that social envelope that goes on there with all of that. So you learn, oh, these players are really good. You start building those bonds in the game, or enemies in the game if certain things happen. But it starts building out from being just, okay, I'm flying my ship through space, to I'm in this environment with other living people and you get this more dynamic interaction.

Rob Reininger · Lead Systems Designer

That's a collaborative effort that I don't know how you protect against. There is a rating system that is part of this. So if this is a consistent thing that keeps happening, eventually these people will get weeded out. And if you only want a four-star rated or a five-star rated person to escort you, then clearly they have a reputation for getting you to the other side safely or performing the service that you're asking for to a high level of completion. So I think that the rating system will be a big part of filtering that out. It's hard to imagine a rule set that we could program to prevent something like that, although we're definitely going to try and do our best to catch as many of these edge cases as possible. But that's a really complex situation.

Chad McKinney · Lead Gameplay Engineer

I think what I would give as a counterargument is, yes, I think that the rating system does help weed that out and smooth out those experiences, but I think it's actually important that we don't remove them, because I think it's actually a very interesting part of it, that you're not guaranteed. You're dealing with actual people, and in space, when you're dealing with actual people, there's always that little bit of danger. How much do you know this person? Can you trust them? If you just get picked up by a random person, yeah, there's a little bit of a social contract there, but that's not a guarantee. And I think that's actually an interesting part of the experience. You have those guarantees whenever you engage with the mission content. Now, yeah, you might get ambushed, but it'll be part of the mission. With this, yes, you know that the person has a particular rating, so more than likely you're going to get an experience that you expect. But you will have times when you'll be surprised. And I think that's actually a good thing.

Michael Dillon · Gameplay Engineer

It also allows you to build up the idea of this economy aspect to it, because if you're known for being reliable for escorting people, you can charge a little extra for that, because, hey, you know I'm going to be good for this, versus, oh, I'm kind of broke and I need help, well, I'll take someone that might be a risk. So you kind of build this. The longer you do it as a provider, you start going, okay, I'm proving I can do this. I'm building a reputation, and that reputation can have monetary impact.

Rob Reininger · Lead Systems Designer

I was just going to say, it's going to be hard to maintain that five-star rating. The ratings will constantly be trying to normalize down to a zeroed-out level. So if you're not consistently performing these actions and getting rated highly for your service, you're not going to be a five-star person. So when you put a contract up, you need to be really careful. It's like, huh, how many people with the five-star rating are in my area or even willing to take this job at this time? So it's going to be a little bit of a balancing act for the players to kind of figure out, hmm, do I put this up and only require a higher level, or do I want to maybe open up the field a little bit to maybe a little bit of that trolling for the sake of having more opportunity for people to provide this service? But that's up for the player to balance, if they want to maybe not get their service or be escorted or picked up or delivered or whatever for a while. It might take a while for somebody with that rating to come through. That's up to them. And so that's where they just get to decide how they want to deal with it. I agree with Chad's point. It's up to the players to kind of figure this out. And it's part of the game. It's part of the fun.

Chad McKinney · Lead Gameplay Engineer

Actually, that's something that we're looking at. One of the things that we're looking at next, I'm not saying that's necessarily going to go into the next release or not, but distress beacons are something that we're very interested in. In fact, whenever we first started working on the feature, it was always part of the discussion that there would be some way that you could fire up some distress call and get help. And it's not necessarily that there's a price associated with it, though there could be. But it's just to say, hey, I'm in the middle of nowhere, I just got ambushed or whatever. There's some quick, maybe a hotkey, maybe an interaction that you can just automatically throw it up. And if somebody's nearby, they'll get the notification. They can go help you. It's just a way of saying, hey, I need help. And if someone wants to be kind, they can, but maybe they're a pirate.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

I feel like I understand one of the reasons why we haven't decided one way or the other, because there are advantages and disadvantages to having it cost something. If you have a distress beacon cost something, then you cut down on abuse, the fake calls. The fake calls are going to cost that person something to make. If they're all just free willy-nilly, then you can have people spamming and just setting traps for free with no recourse to themselves.

Chad McKinney · Lead Gameplay Engineer

Although they're going to be a service beacon like any other, so they will have a reputational feedback associated with them. So they can't just keep doing it. Maybe they'll do it a couple times and they'll get it. But if they keep doing that, they're going to get a reputation for it.

Rob Reininger · Lead Systems Designer

And there is also whatever criminal rating that you're going to get because of the actions that you do. So you trap somebody, you take their ship, you steal from them, you kill them, whatever. All those things are going to eventually have some sort of criminal rating associated with them that just builds up, and you get bounties, you potentially get thrown in jail someday. Those are all not outside of the realm of reason of the universe. So there's consequences to your actions, and some people are going to be okay with being a pirate and being that guy, but they're going to be hunted. They're going to be highly sought after. They're not going to be able to fly in UEE space. There's going to be consequences to those actions.

Chad McKinney · Lead Gameplay Engineer

But again, we don't want to completely remove piracy from the game. That's part of the game.

Rob Reininger · Lead Systems Designer

Those are some things that we talked about quite a bit originally when Tony Zurovec first came on board several years ago. We want people to be able to say, hey, I want you to take this cargo from this planet to this planet. I fronted the money for it, and I need somebody to take it out there. And ships are not outside of that. They're going to be pinned to a spaceport somewhere. So you're going to be at this planet, you want to get this ship over here. How do you do that without constantly ferrying your own stuff around? You're going to need somebody else to fly it, somebody you trust or somebody that is known for doing a good job at that. So I think that's absolutely going to be something at some point.

Rob Reininger · Lead Systems Designer

At least within the design team, we've been talking about some sort of trade window, trade mechanism where players can do exactly that. So the service beacon is the first thing in the game where players are allowed to trade services or money. But this is just the beginning of this type of feature. So it's definitely coming. I'm not sure when that's slated, but it's actively being talked about.

Chad McKinney · Lead Gameplay Engineer

You can kind of already do this. So if you throw up a combat assist beacon right now, you can just pay someone, and there's no end to it until either side cancels the contract. So if you want to give just money to somebody, they can accept it, and then you can just pay them however much money over the period of time. That said, if you want to give a fixed amount to a particular person, guaranteed, this isn't the right methodology for it. The service beacons are broadcast, and you can filter that down, but it's not really, I think, so much directed, at least yet. So I think maybe something like a more formal trade experience makes more sense for exactly that.

Rob Reininger · Lead Systems Designer

We haven't really talked about that. It's technically possible. It's not outside the realm of reason. We're dealing primarily with UEC, or Alpha currency, right now, just because that's what's in the player's wallet and that's how we do the transactions. But once we get the trade system in, where players can open up trade windows and stuff, there's no reason why we couldn't expand, like, hey, take me here and I'll give you a thousand of my units or whatever.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

It makes sense to keep it to Alpha UEC right now because we're attempting to fine-tune how much UEC is really worth in the galaxy. We want the testing to be there. But it makes sense to me at least that at some point you're going to want to be able to offer, here are components, here's my personally tuned component, and whoever does this for me, I'm going to pay you in goods.

Michael Dillon · Gameplay Engineer

The biggest thing we have there becomes our interfacing. How do we provide that to the app becomes a big part of it.

Chad McKinney · Lead Gameplay Engineer

Well, I think the tangible experience is interesting. In the game, we're trying to reduce as much hand-wavy magic as possible. Where is this gold and how do you give it to them? Normally, whenever you have a commodity, it's in your cargo grid. It's a physical thing. Now, I want you to take me somewhere and I give you gold. How do you get it?

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

Yeah, like you have to store stuff in a bank and you only do bank-to-bank transfers, that kind of thing.

Chad McKinney · Lead Gameplay Engineer

Yeah, maybe something like that. Or maybe you have to have the other ship and it gets transferred, and they both get taken to ATC. I don't know.

Rob Reininger · Lead Systems Designer

CR's always been really big on the tangible nature of it, and he wants to see cargo being moved from one thing to another. So once we get the tractor beam in, which mining is kind of the first implementation of, the cargo mover is not going to be far off, so you'll be able to get your paw tool and move some boxes, or hand-carry them to somebody else's ship, assuming that it's a good that can be moved that way. And then items are probably not too far behind that, with just being able to physically move them. But I can almost guarantee that CR is probably going to be interested in that item being physically there for the trade to happen.

Rob Reininger · Lead Systems Designer

I've always kind of liked the idea of having the comm arrays be something that can help carry the signal or boost its range. Or if you go out into dead space, out on the outer rim or something, you're outside the comm arrays, so your comms in the ship need to physically reach the distance that they cover. Otherwise, if you're within the comm network, then you can pretty much send it as far as the comm arrays can broadcast. But we haven't fully figured out exactly how the transfer of information or that signal is going to be transmitted through the system yet. But that's kind of how I see it working at the end of the day, and going from system to system. Do you really want to send a service beacon message to someone three systems away? Is that a beneficial thing? So it depends on what it is, and we just have to play around with it and really find that cool middle ground.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

Because what instantly came to mind is the old 2.0 gameplay of going around and disabling the comm arrays, and whether an assaulting force might go around and disable the comm arrays that are surrounding a particular moon before going down and raiding somebody's homestead. That's what I would do.

Rob Reininger · Lead Systems Designer

Yeah, and I thought about this just as far as the economy info, and how do I understand what the prices are on a different planet. Well, I would like that information to be transmitted through the comm arrays, so that if somebody goes and takes that down, then all of a sudden the Herald has a really important role, which is bridging the gaps between these communication breaks in the network. So trying to make sure that we've got a purpose for all these things is really on my mind quite a bit. I think that's really interesting as a player too, for an information runner: yeah, there's a Herald out there and he's allowing service beacons to go through, or the economy info, or just missions or distress calls or whatever. I think that would be really neat for the players.

Chad McKinney · Lead Gameplay Engineer

For me, I think it goes back to what I was saying earlier, which is this is the kind of thing that drives the players together. And whether that's collaboration or opposition, it's making the environment much more interesting and dynamic. If we're making service beacon distribution tied in some way to some physical element in the game, then that means that that's something that can be attacked. And that means that now we have this interesting kind of interplay between the player base. So I love that idea. I really hope that at some point we do get around to doing that kind of stuff. I think it'll be really cool gameplay.

Michael Dillon · Gameplay Engineer

It also builds on that: if that data can be stopped, then that data can gain value. Because if it's not guaranteed that that's getting everywhere, but I can guarantee that, now I've got a service I can make money doing.

Rob Reininger · Lead Systems Designer

No, I don't know of any plans. To me, it's something where you're using your comm equipment. Lore-wise, I envision this as, yeah, it's like me turning on my radio. There's a receiver for it, or it's a mobiGlas, or it's part of the ship's communication hardware. It's the future, and people have the ability to send communications through their way. But to me, the physicalized part is how the comm arrays or whatever amplify that signal through space.

Chad McKinney · Lead Gameplay Engineer

Now, as a gameplay programmer, I think that we could maybe do more to make that experience more interesting if we were interested in that. So we could fire off an effect and maybe some cool sound, stuff like that, and maybe when you accept something, just make it more fun. But still keeping it communication-based, but make it more of an exciting thing when one gets fired off or accepted or you receive one, something like that.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

Maybe a notification on your end when the signal is not getting through. Like, if it does become physicalized and somebody does shut down the comm arrays or whatever, some notification to you so that you're not just sitting there.

Rob Reininger · Lead Systems Designer

Or if your signal is being jammed. Yeah, absolutely. You're going to want that.

Rob Reininger · Lead Systems Designer

That's 100% part of the plan. Right now, the options that the players have are extremely limited because we're putting in the foundation for the system to actually work. But who can see it, whether it's your friends list or your org mates, and we've already got the reputation stuff in. You're going to have the ability to customize the range on it: I only want people that are really close to me, or I only want people that I know have good ratings. It's definitely...

Chad McKinney · Lead Gameplay Engineer

Yeah, you can already do some filtering based on the star rating when you deploy it. So it's obviously something we've thought about. Also, going from the other direction is something that we plan on. It's something that we've been talking about. I can say who can receive it, but also I can say what I see. So right now, it's kind of broadcast-all. You send it, everybody gets it, and that could be potentially noisy, depending on how many people engage with the feature. So we could add filtering options to it where you can say, I'm personally only interested in combat assistance, even if I meet all the requirements that somebody who broadcast a combat assistance beacon is specifying. And I think that will be good on both sides of it, so that I'm not spamming people whenever I make a beacon that don't really care about it. And for my player experience, if there are certain parts of it or all of it that I'm not really interested in, I can make my experience the one that I want to have.

Rob Reininger · Lead Systems Designer

It wasn't really intended to be that. We want you to, the same way that you would hire NPCs in the game, which obviously isn't there yet, but through some sort of recruitment agency, maybe if you're looking to be a crewmate on somebody's ship, you can go in and apply, put your information in, and then you can get hired alongside any other NPCs. Or that's part of the networking and social aspect of the game too. We want people to engage with each other, like, oh, hey, you did a really good job hauling my stuff from here to there or providing this escort service. We're running a big ship. Do you want to be a part of it? It could absolutely be looked at as kind of the proving grounds of, yeah, this is what I'm capable of. And maybe that's how you get hired into some of these bigger organizations or something. But it definitely wasn't intended for, this is how I'm going to hire crew members, staff my ship up. They're talking about some other mechanisms of how you're going to hire crew members with the capital ship gameplay team and the multi-crew team.

Chad McKinney · Lead Gameplay Engineer

And additionally, there's work going on right now actually on the party system in LA. And so that's another way that you can get players together, and they can do things like potentially start doing missions together, maybe even service beacon contracts. I don't know. It's still in development. We're still thinking about what all of it means. But I think the service beacons will be a good way to put players together. And then you'll have experiences, and maybe you'll have a really good experience with someone, and then you'll say, let's actually get in a party together and let's go multi-crew and go do this mission or go do something else. And now we have this more permanent relationship. So the service beacon is a contract that has a duration and a satisfaction. It gets satisfied. But then, if you want to have something that's a little bit longer lasting, maybe you join a party, and then maybe that gets bigger and you start an org or something like that. The service beacons [don't] solve all these problems, but I think it'll be an important part to make it all come together.

Rob Reininger · Lead Systems Designer

That's a double-edged sword right there. It's not currently being talked about, but it's been talked about in the past. It's not currently part of the end goal, just for the sake of trying to keep the universe a little clean for some of the kids out there. That just opens up a real Pandora's box of expletives and things like that thrown into text boxes.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

I can already see a number of challenges there. One, it's a localization issue. Two, you said earlier in this show, you want the service beacons from players to look just like the service beacons from NPCs. So the very first line in any custom field is going to be, "This is a player request." That will be the first line, to help folks determine whether this is a player. It allows folks to bypass that effort that we're trying to do to make everybody seem like they're all one.

Chad McKinney · Lead Gameplay Engineer

A couple things there. One, funnily enough, we actually had a bug at one point where you could actually type into the money thing. So it actually existed at a point in time that you could do this. But we fixed that. Also, I worked on Elder Scrolls Online, and there you could do mail. You can message other players. The file where you filtered out language was one of the most offensive things in the world. Just imagine all the bad things in the world all in one file to try to filter out language.

Rob Reininger · Lead Systems Designer

That's actually one of the things that we're working on actively. I'm in the middle of writing up those conditions exactly. How do we do our distress call? That's kind of like the Hail Mary: I don't have time to go into my mobiGlas, I'm piloting my ship. So how can we either put a quick button on the comm screen on your MFD, or just have a hotkey that's like, I need help, here's my SOS?

Chad McKinney · Lead Gameplay Engineer

So we're talking about possibly having a concept of a template, or a highlighted beacon contract with all the parameters filled out, so that maybe you could hit the key and that gets filled out and sent off. And maybe it has a price or not. It's kind of up to you. And then you can let the players respond to it. And the thing I really like about this is, I like the feature a lot, and it's similar to other features in the game: I would like to see things where mobiGlas is always there to give you all the full power that you want, but it's not a requirement to engage in the feature. So I really like the fact that we got acceptance of service beacons to work without opening mobiGlas. And it's cool that now we can do the full loop completely without opening mobiGlas. You can fire it off, someone else can accept it, you can go land, do the thing, and it works. But if you want to get really specific about tweaking it to however you want, you can do that as well.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

And I think the misnomer there is that a pirate is like a faction in the game, like when you create your character, am I creating a law-abiding citizen or am I creating a pirate citizen? There's nothing that would outright prevent any citizen from participating in the service beacon system.

Chad McKinney · Lead Gameplay Engineer

Once we implement the tattoo filtering, maybe. But no, it's not like that. I mean, perhaps some of the details that are in the filtering options will naturally filter out some of those people that you would call a pirate. But certainly it's not going to be like, oh, pirate, no.

Michael Dillon · Gameplay Engineer

It won't ever be explicitly shut off from you, but you may not see certain beacons or whatever because your reputation is so low, because you blow up everyone you fly upon.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

I think some of that gets handled by the reputation filter and stuff like that. But again, this is a system where you have to develop how things are supposed to work before you start developing how it can be abused and whatnot. But I think pirates have to have some ability to see. Even if you put a filter that doesn't allow somebody below four stars, I think you still have to be able to see that something's out there. Even though, oh, I've got a one-star rating and they won't let me accept it, I can see from the thing that there's somebody out there. I know there's blood in the water. It's going to be an interesting balance, the challenge.

Rob Reininger · Lead Systems Designer

Well, we don't want the system to be... Right now, we put up nav markers so you can get to the other person. We talked about the fact that people are going to accept a mission, get the nav marker, and then come out, and then drop the mission, and then they're right there. So this is all just part of the gameplay. And what you expose yourself to is like, if I ask for help, I could get this. Is it worth it? And then, so I'm going to offer enough money to attract somebody who's really good at it, or who's in the reputation range that is mostly reliable, or that just goes, you want anybody to answer? Here you go. You're going to get what you pay for. So again, it's just a choice, and it's part of the dynamic universe. We just don't want it to be like a tracking system, though. That's certainly not what it's intended for. But we do want the idea that, yeah, sometimes people set traps, and players are going to do it. And when NPCs can be involved with the universe, that's already like a mission, an ECM mission where you can get ambushed by a pirate somewhere. You get pulled out of quantum travel, or you're just flying around, and guess what? There's pirates. So that's definitely something that's part of the game. And again, it doesn't matter if it's a player or an NPC, it's a fact of the universe.

Chad McKinney · Lead Gameplay Engineer

So a couple of things there. One, bounties are certainly something that we have talked about. I think more likely in the nearer term, assassination is effectively the same thing. But the key thing about this is that with assassination, you have no guarantees about the ramifications of what you've requested. So if I ask you to kill somebody, and then you kill them, then if it was out in a place where you're going to get some criminal rating for it, you'll get the criminal rating and I'll get the criminal rating for it. So there's going to be repercussions for the actions. You could do it, but that doesn't mean there's not repercussions. Bounty, on the other hand, importantly, is going to be through the legal channels. And so therefore, it will allow us to say, okay, the UEE, somebody has mandated that this person has broken the law, and so therefore killing them is actually not only legal, but you'll get paid for it.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

The best kind of legal.

Chad McKinney · Lead Gameplay Engineer

Yes, the best kind of legal. I think they're both interesting and useful, but I think assassination will come first because it's less complicated.

Rob Reininger · Lead Systems Designer

I was just going to say, yeah, that's definitely the easier of the two, because the bounty system implies a certain sophistication of the criminal system that we don't currently have. As we evolve the criminal system and get more of those rules in place, then all of a sudden what you do that warrants a bounty will become more and more detailed and understood by the game, and that will allow us to then say, okay, well, yeah, this guy stole some goods, and I'm going to put a bounty on him for this, and there you go. And then guess what? Right now, we've got all of our different servers. We don't have the server mesh up and running, so when you leave server A and go to server B, that bounty or assassination contract is going to follow you wherever you go. I think that's going to be a really cool element to that kind of contract.

Rob Reininger · Lead Systems Designer

That hasn't been talked about. That implies some devious nature, I think, by the person setting up the beacon. But yeah, that's a good question. I think that's something for us to talk about, because we certainly haven't talked about it. And our mission text, I don't know if anybody's even read the mission text or the objective text for the service beacons, but we actually insert the name of the person or the destination dynamically into the text. So it would have to be incorporated into the system as well. But interesting.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

I can see some virtues in it. You'd never want to hide the star rating; that's the purpose of that thing. But if you're somebody trying to play both sides of the law, or you're generally a law-abiding citizen, but it's like, man, I really need this thing, and the only place it's available right now is in non-UEE space, but I don't want to get blamed for the contraband. So I will offer 10 times the amount that it would normally cost to keep my identity hidden. And it protects me, but it's a greater risk for the player who assumes it. But a greater risk comes with a greater reward. So I can see some virtues in it, but again, not committing to it.

Rob Reininger · Lead Systems Designer

Yeah, maybe we just need some sort of alias system that allows people to post things as their alias or their real name.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

Well, Chris has talked about this. This is even farther ahead than you guys, but Chris has talked for a number of years about the ability to alter your identity at times. If you do generate a criminal record that's so severe, to be able to go through a process, a very arduous process, not an easy process by any means, but a process to wipe your record clean. A more involved version of the station at Kareah that lets you just clear your wanted status. So again, you have to build how things are supposed to work before you start building how you're going to circumvent it. So that's still a ways out, but there are a lot of exciting considerations to this.

Rob Reininger · Lead Systems Designer

Yeah, we talked a lot about identity spoofing as well, just being able to, for a limited time or something, show a fake name above your head, or go by an assumed name for the purposes of getting into a highly secured area or bypassing customs or something like that because you're a wanted person. So those are things that we've talked about; just how we apply it to the service beacon hasn't really been discussed yet.

Chad McKinney · Lead Gameplay Engineer

That is something that we have definitely talked about. There's a little bit of tech that needs to be developed to get that to work, but it's not insurmountable at all. And certainly things like the assassination contract warrant it. So if I put out a contract on Michael's head, because we all apparently agree that he should die, it's not just that one person is going to potentially kill them. There's a race there. So multiple people could accept the contract, and now time is of the essence. So that is definitely something we've been talking about, and there will be real work for it.