Star Citizen Live: Q&A Contested Zones and Asteroid Bases
Developers explain Pyro's contested zones (about five, with short-, mid- and long-term branches, traps, timed gates, ship-component rewards, the Ghost Arena) and three asteroid base types: encounter, exploration, progression-linked. They also cover group size, level design and resource network.
TL;DRAsteroid bases are planned in different categories (sandbox mission, exploration, contested) to vary gameplay, with always-populated bases to explore and puzzles and treasures, though this is described as "the plan going ahead".
I mean, asteroid bases are a bit like Bunkers 2.0, more or less like a development. It's, in the sense of, it's a more condensed space, but we try to segment them a bit more like in different categories in this regard, like also encounter design, like encounter asteroid bases that we have or that we plan for, covering more like sandbox missiony designs. Then we want to have more explorative ones, and then also contested ones that tie more into the contested zone experience that Khan and John are working on. But yeah, we try to cover more different gameplay types, more different player interests, or player interests in certain game mechanics or types, so yeah.
Can you give us an example of something, I don't want to go through every aspect of the experience, we just did an ISC on it, but can you give me an example of something that players will do in asteroid bases specifically?
I mean, if you go to one of the encounter asteroid bases, you can find bodies, you can kill X amount of guys, that's more like for the mission ones, but they will always be populated, so you don't need the mission to go there, you can just go there and check it out yourself. But these are more like the playground for missions, but you can also find other ones that are inhabited, and you can just explore and do puzzles in them. At least that's the plan going ahead.
If you go to one of the encounter asteroid bases, you can find bodies. You can kill X amount of guys. That's more for the mission ones, but they will always be populated, so you don't need a mission to go there. You can just go there and check it out yourself. But these are more like the playground for missions. But you can also find other ones that are inhabited, and you can just explore and do puzzles in them. At least that's the plan going ahead.
TL;DRThe designers plan multiple entry points and exfiltration routes to spread out bottlenecks, but say camping cannot be fully removed and some friction is intended, since these are PvP spaces.
I guess I should go for that one, John, right? We're looking for multiple entry points, like establishing multiple entry points that can come from the interior, but also from the exterior of the station, so that we just don't have one bottleneck. I mean, I guess you kind of spread the options out a bit. We can't fully eliminate the possibility of this, but at least giving players the option and giving them some sense of opportunities in and around the station to enter this contested zone will definitely help it out.
Yeah, exactly. I think whenever you have an entrance into a place like this, where PvP is possible, it naturally creates a bottleneck. You have to be able to enter the space, and there could be people camping that space waiting for you to enter. So what we can do as designers is try and offer alternate paths in, as Khan said. There are side elevators, there are ways in from the exterior of the station. So we're just trying to provide as many different opportunities to enter that space so that it's more difficult to use those bottlenecks if you are of a griefing mindset.
Yeah, what's also important is that there's like exfiltration points inside these contested zones. So if you hit a specific depth of the contested zone, you can get to a part that offers you a one way exit that brings you to the social area, so back to practical safety.
Interesting. And you're talking about things that we can do to battle or defeat the bottlenecks and stuff that the camping and stuff like this, but some aspect of that is intentional. Some aspect of that is not a bug. It's a feature. These are still intended to be PvP zones. They are intended to still have a certain level of friction. The balance in all of this is in finding the right level of friction, not eliminating all the friction altogether.
Yeah, ultimately, it is a PvP space and griefing, unfortunately, you know, is something you try to design against. But this is a kind of a whole philosophical debate we could get into about griefing versus PvP. But griefing is just PvP, ultimately, at the end of the day, there's technically nothing wrong with someone finding a defensible position and using that as an advantage over another player. And that aspect of being on the defensive in the PvP kind of equation is you dealing with those kind of bottlenecks and those camping positions, you know, which cover do you use? How do you approach a room? Do you breach the room? You know, do you use like grenades to flush out a room before you enter it? You know, scouting opportunities. And there are things we can do as designers to kind of aid that as well with like cover placement and, you know, lighting and things like that, that can alleviate these issues. But ultimately, you can't get rid of them. And you probably shouldn't because ultimately, this is pyro and this is a PvP space as well as PvE.
So it's also part of opting in, right? It's just like, you want to do PvP. And then I mean, that can also spark like new things. Imagine like back then in the days in WoW Classic, right, when Crossroads was raided, and then suddenly you try to ally with some friends or like people and just like try to push back on things. And I think that can be really interesting.
Yeah, yeah, we obviously we obviously do want to, this is not the place to do a giant Griefing versus PvP discussion. We've actually done that on SEL a number of times. It's, but ultimately, just because I can already I can already see the chat now. Hi, Twitch chat. And I can already imagine the YouTube comments later. At the end of the day, I think a baseline here is is that there has to be an alternative, there has to be a solution available to the player who's being attacked in order to turn the tables when there's not a solution when there's not an any an option that's accessible to that player to continue to go on and have a good experience to continue to do the things that they want to do. That's when PvP turns to Griefing when you when you when you when you take away the gameplay experience, not not just make it difficult. That's PvP. But it's a fine line. And I think every you sit here, we could we could march a parade of 500 developers in front of this camera, you'd probably hear a solid 400 different answers about what that is. So for those of you for those of you who are already working up your YouTube videos and stuff saying CIG says this or CIG says that, that's not what's happened now. We're hearing a couple of people express some individual opinions on what the difference is. And again, I promise if you brought 400 people in here, you get 300 different answers. So it's at the end of the day. It's about our job here in this situation, right? And this is me where I'll put on the CIG hat and speak on behalf of CIG here. Our job in those situations is to find alternatives for the for the players who are suffering at the hands of PvP, find ways that they can counter it, provide ways that they can counter it provide alternatives that still provide the same experience other places where they can go other things like turrets and things like like factions that NPC factions that can come in and help defend to find the things that can help when when a player runs out of options. And the only thing they can do is be killed over and over and over again. That's where there's a problem. So I said some friction is intended, but it's all about finding that point.
TL;DRAbout five contested zones are currently planned, fairly evenly spread across Pyro, with some locked behind progression or keys, and the longer-term branches require ingredients found in other places.
So currently we are planning for about five contested zones and these are in a select few stations all pretty evenly spread along the Pyro system. Some of them being in very specific places that are only be able to be accessed once you progress to a specific stage or once you have actually gained a couple items you can get to that location and unlock the interior basically. So multiple contested zones might not be immediately accessible to the player. There's some that will require you to complete others to to then find the keys to others basically or to specific branches within these contested zones. So it's a mix and match a bit.
Is there any sort of is there anything intended or planned that would start you in one contested zone and make you go to another contested zone to finish or complete? Or are they just contained experiences within each one?
John can explain this a bit better after me, but the intention is that we have contested zones or we give certain categorization to to certain branches or sections of a contested zone. So we have a short term kind of branch. For example, we have a midterm and a long term one and in the long term it is a requirement to find specific ingredients in other places to be able to access that long term branch right and whilst short term or midterm ones are there to complete the dungeon itself or basically go in there and do some farm runs or loot runs.
Yeah, gotcha. So there's not going to be too much advantage to just holding up in one. You're not going to be able to complete the the ultimate objectives of these contested zones by just staying put in one place and holding it forever.
Yeah, you might do it to take away somebody else's enjoyment, but you won't gain anything as far as the progression for your character and stuff by doing so.
TL;DRContested zones have short-term, mid-term and long-term branches, and the long-term branch requires ingredients from other places, so players must visit multiple zones to progress.
John can explain this a bit better after me, but the intention is that we have contested zones, or we give certain categorization to certain branches or sections of a contested zone. So we have a short-term kind of branch, for example, we have a mid-term and a long-term one. And in the long term, it is a requirement to find specific ingredients in other places to be able to access that long-term branch, right? Whilst short-term or mid-term ones are there to complete the dungeon itself, or basically go in there and do some farm runs or loot runs.
So there's not going to be too much advantage at just holing up in one. You're not going to be able to complete the ultimate objectives of these contested zones by just staying put in one place and holding it forever.
I'm not sure about peace, but but yeah, certainly the current intention and goal we have developing these is like as previously touched on a bit before the encounter ones are solely the sandbox environment for the whole mission stuff. So people who want to engage in missions and want to engage in combat and do these things, but I also want to have this like more safer spaces. I mean, you can't prevent PvP from happening obviously, but the exploration ones are more dedicated to solving puzzles and finding like rewards by entering rooms that are not so obviously like enterable. Like you have to do some things like not hack a door, but find means around the space and then get more like higher rewards in there. So yes, that's like no NPCs and anything is planned in there.
TL;DRAsteroid bases that aren't run-down are possible and expandable, for example as refuel stops or social spaces, but they are not part of the initial release and the focus is on the current archetypes.
I mean, yes, the whole concept of asteroid bases is quite expandable and it has lots of potential because it's a very small scale and doesn't need that much development time like a big flagship location. It's not for the initial release right now. So we are focusing more on the free archetypes that we are currently looking into, but there are certainly a lot of potential and stuff we would like to do going forward in the future and expanding on social spaces as well.
Yeah, one thing when we prototyped these, one aspect that we envisioned was for refueling. Like instead of needing a large station, you could have these astro bases like strategically placed around where you could, for example, refuel, rearm. So we definitely envision this as an expandable feature, but yeah, it's something we want to do.
In ISC just yesterday, you know, which was about the more social aspects, not the combat stuff, but we mentioned that, you know, the Pyro system is so much bigger than Stanton, that the distances between planets are such that having to strategically figure out where you can stop and refuel along the way just to get to the outer ends of the solar system is an important part. And that's what you just mentioned is a great kind of follow-up thing. I mean, obviously we've been adding to the Stanton system for years and years and years. We'll continue to add to the Pyro system after the release of 4.0 and that's an easy consideration. You know, well, maybe there's an asteroid-based gas station there and that'll help deal with a stress point along that travel route stuff.
Yeah, I think that's more interesting as well because, you know, we have these gigantic stations, but you know, when you travel down the motorway in the middle of nowhere, you hit a little gas station and I think there's some fun there. There's some different kind of style and aesthetic we could use, a different experience than, you know, having to go into a station and everything that comes with that.
TL;DRDeeper areas give better rewards, and returning to a body takes more than a quick run because of re-arming, respawning enemies and hazards, plus exfiltration routes, though this will be watched in testing and may change.
So, the way that the contested zones is, by design, the deeper you go, the better rewards there are to find. And if, for example, you encountered a PvP situation or you yourself were killed by a PvE encounter, you know, getting back to where you were is not so straightforward. It's not just a case of a one, two minute run in if you were, you know, deep within the contested zone. Not to mention that, you know, you'd have to rearm yourself. I mean, you could run in with your, you know, your suit and a pistol, but will you be able to successfully get back to your body if you don't equip yourself well? And similarly, if, you know, in a PvP situation, if you kill someone, you know, you succeed at PvP, you take their stuff. Are they going to pop up a minute later? I doubt it. You know, within the contested zone, not only are there, you know, traps, you know, hazards, lots of PvE enemies that will be respawning. So even if you cleared out and, you know, your path behind you, they're going to be respawning in like you would see in a typical dungeon. You also have exfiltration routes available to you, as Khan said earlier. So, you know, you could decide that that person might be coming back for you again. They might turn up, you know, in five minutes and 10 minutes. They might bring friends. Now's my time to get out. I'm going to head for that exfiltration route, leave, get back to the social space and, you know, take my loot home. So I, this is something that we obviously want to see play out. We want to see how players, you know, in testing. And if any changes are required, we'll look to do that. But I think the design currently will hopefully avoid that.
I think I can say, speak for everyone when I say that we would love to develop a whole range of traps and hazards. You know, we are implementing ones that we have currently like trip mines, explosive canisters, hazard zones, radiation, fire, but a mimic chest would be amazing.
It can't just be, it can't just be, there's nothing you can do about it. Like we gotta be, you gotta be able to scan it. There's gotta be a way to detect it and stuff and avoid it. You can't just be random. Oh, well I did nothing and blew myself up. But you know, for the people who are in too big a hurry and don't do the due diligence, those people deserve to have a box blow up in their face.
TL;DRSolo play is possible, at least in the early sections, but not recommended; they suggest going with at least one friend, test with groups of four or five, and it can scale up to 40 players.
You can do it solo, but we wouldn't recommend that. Like John just said earlier, these are pretty PvP, PvE centric spaces. Even if you're where there were no players in your vicinity, you'll still face quite a challenge. So our recommendation is to at least go with one friend. We are currently envisioning like a, or in our tests at least, we are going in by four, by five player groups with a recent test also involving another group. So, but yeah, we're seeing it to be able to scale up to 40 players per dungeon.
Now, you said this isn't the first time you said they can be soloed. Is anybody ever actually, are you talking about like, like technically like the way that the inside of a ship can technically catch fire if that, if the temperature outside is hot enough, you think it can technically be done or has there actually been somebody through testing that has managed to just run through the whole thing by themselves?
It's difficult, but I mean initially, you know, in the earlier sections, I think it's doable. It's, if you're good enough, it's manageable, but we do scale up like the enemies, the DP you get. And the intention is that, yeah, you might need to bring some help.
It's difficult. Initially, in the earlier sections, I think it's doable. If you're good enough, it's manageable. But we do scale up the enemies, the difficulty you get, and the intention is that you might need to bring some help.
No, they will be always there, always present for you. As I said, you can also go to them if there's no mission running even the mission sandbox you want to encounter asteroid bases you can travel there without requiring a mission. There will be AI population regardless. The mission stuff will add on top of that. But all of them you can see from the get-go. There might be plans for the future.
TL;DRThe Kopions in asteroid bases are not just placeholders, as the speakers say they make narrative sense as domesticated attack animals for NPCs, though more fitting creatures could be added in the future.
I think they can make narrative sense in there, right? You can have domesticated Kopions, right, they bring with them. As far as I know, we have variants.
They just look feral right now, so that will be more fitting-looking. But I don't think it's a far stretch that they can narratively be around there. But if we have more fitting creatures as well in the future, that's it. But for now, it's what we have, what we are working with, right, as human NPCs and then the Kopions. So we try to utilize what we have to create more variety and more interesting combat with the ingredients that we have.
We don't really talk about it for the rest of the season, but the domesticated Kopions are one of the new aspects that are coming online with 4.0. These are domesticated for NPCs. We're not stealthily adding pet gameplay to players just yet.
Yeah, they're attack dogs, essentially. We have them in contested zones, and the narrative idea is that they have been breeding them and training them, and they will attack you. So as you engage a group of outlaws, there could be a couple of attack Kopions that they have that are charging at you, which I think provides a really interesting gameplay dynamic. You're not just dealing with humanoids now, you also have these fast-moving, low creatures that are attacking your ankles, and it adds a whole new aspect to it.
To go back to what Manuel said, I think we can narratively explain why there are Kopions on the abandoned asteroid bases. I think it would be a shame to remove them just to lessen the encounter variety. And I definitely agree that it would be cool to get those creatures, like the mimic facehugger chest we talked about. These kind of alien creatures that you would expect to see on asteroid bases in the future would be amazing. But for now, I think they do offer something useful.
Yes, we are alternating some of this based on the contested zone you were in. We also have a very specific one which we call the ghost arena, but don't really want to spoil that yet. At the same time, for us what is really important when it comes to the reward stuff is that things are actually substantial and unique. What we put in there has to be has to not be widely available. That's the thing that we want to really balance out with the rest of the universe to make it worthwhile and to balance it out between the contested zones themselves.
TL;DRContested zones support three playstyles: a quick loot-and-leave run, completing the whole zone using keys found inside to reach the final reward room, and wider progression across multiple zones and asteroid bases.
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Cloud Imperium
Yes, so this ties into what Khan was just saying in terms of progression and rewards. On the smaller scale of a singular contested zone, we do also have a bit of variety in what you can do and your goals. We have broken it into three areas, so you have a short-term goal where you just want to go into a contested zone, you just want to get some loot, kill some enemies and get out and that's one quick playstyle we're looking at. A second one is that maybe you want to complete the entire contested zone, so get to the final reward room, complete the entire thing. That takes a little bit more effort and maybe coordination and maybe some help. For example, we have these security doors that require keys, specific keys that you'll have to find from within the dungeon to be able to progress into the deeper parts. That's a second playstyle that we're envisioning. The third one is, as Khan said, this overall progression where you now have to engage with multiple contested zones, with asteroid bases and go along this whole flow and all the rewards are scaled to those, the effort involved in each of those.
So I probably have to disappoint you in this regard. So the initial set of asteroid bases we are putting out, right, we don't do social spaces, so there's no official landings or no hangars or landing pad services whatsoever, right, so that will come later down the line. And even then, if we add the more smaller social spaces like gas stations and so on, it's probably more to smaller and medium sized ships, maybe not the big capital sized ships. You might have docking tubes at some of them later on, so that could be your only access point if that's supported for your ship, but hopefully not. I mean, if you're buying the ship, right, then you have certain stations available to you, that's the fantasy, right?
I think there's always a balance to be had with how you how much you do stuff procedural versus how much you want to control the general flow of things. So we're talking procedural, like in our terms, it used to be a lot like you stitch a room one by one together based on some parameters and logic. But that eliminates our ability to hand craft an experience that flows throughout a multi-room setup. So what we're looking at right now instead is hand stitching certain sections together that can combine into a gameplay bubble and then utilizing multiple gameplay bubbles that we can then stitch together with this procedural tool. So we have a bit more control on the scale of things that is a bit larger than just the room, but accommodates for multiple rooms basically.
TL;DRPlayers won't be able to manipulate things like gravity or power in contested zones initially, beyond keycard and fuse doors, though they would like to add more once the resource network is usable.
Not right now from the get-go right? It's something that can become more interesting once resource network hits. So yeah, not initially. Though that said, we have doors with keycards and fuses. So there's some elements where you can already manipulate but I guess what players might have more in mind with these systems that you can manipulate like power resources and all these things. We'd really love to implement them once we have the systems available to us.
JH:Now you said something there and I want to make sure that we get some clarity on that. At this moment, the moment that we're recording, what day is this? Friday. What's the date? As of Friday, August 16th resource network is scheduled for release in 4.0. These things are scheduled for release in 4.0. When Manuel says when that stuff is in, when that stuff is ready, he means when it's up and running and functional for him to utilize it in the design of this experience. Because these experiences are being developed concurrently. We can't have them sitting around waiting, we can't have asteroid bases sitting around waiting for work on resource network to come along. So the first version will use little pieces of it, like you said, the keycards and the fuses and stuff like that, but as things progress, 4.0, whatever, 4.0, whatever, whatever after that, then as the feature hardens and gets more developed and stuff, we'll be able to utilize more and more aspects of that. You've already seen if you watched ISC yesterday, some of the locations teams are already using aspects of the resource networking system for their charge and drain stuff and for the different homesteads and habitats and stuff like that. So it's just a question of do we want to wait or do we want to put out a first version that can do all of these other things and then add that later? And that's what he's talking about here.
TL;DRContested zone rewards will start with things unavailable in shops, such as exclusive military, stealth or competition ship components in reward rooms or the grand prize, with more not yet shared.
I guess I can give some examples. So for the first part, what kind of rewards you're going to get is our first step is to make things unavailable, like widely unavailable, something that you just can't not get from the shops in Stanton or in Pyro. It has to be something that has only been retrievable right here and what we're looking at right now after talking with System Design about it and other people is that ship components are one of the big steps like that. Like military, stealth class or even competition class ship components will be made exclusive in some capacity. Certain parts of it and only be widely available. Or certain variants of them. Exclusively available in reward rooms or in the final that's called the grand prize.
I'm going to stop you there. That's plenty of you. We don't want to share everything. But yes, I'm taking next week off and then I'm in Germany the following week to film with Torsten and the gang there about resource networking and one of the neat talking points. God, I feel like I actually said this last week but I'll say it this week too. You might remember an old series of articles that Jon Crewe and I wrote back when I was a community manager 2016, 2017. I've been a community manager five or six years. But back then we wrote a series of articles for the website called The Shipyard where we broke down basically the overall plan for how ships are supposed to work and one of the things we talked about there was the classifications of materials not just in quality but in type. Military, competition, luxury, stuff like that. Along with resource network and I'm not going to go into it too much here because we've got the episode coming is the beginning of that realization of multiple ship components that are actually tuned to different abilities and tuned to different performance thresholds and stuff. So after 4.0 is where the world of, okay, my M50 behaves like this but I'm going to rip this out and I'm going to rip this out and I'm going to go do a contested zone and I'm going to get this and I'm going to pop that in and I'm going to go do an asteroid base and get this and I'm going to pop that in and now my M50 behaves differently than the stock thing that comes off the market. 4.0 is where the start of that begins to happen and I'm as, like I said, as the co-author of the shipyard articles with John Cruise so many years ago. It's one of those things that I've been waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, which is why I'm... You brought it up so I'm going to be like excited about it.
Well, yeah, totally. I mean, this is a live game, so we will continuously update these places with anything any new items that might be popping up, any new systems. I mean, we have to maintain we are constantly as level designers going back to old locations and giving them an upgrade when some change to a system comes up, right? So, the same would apply here for the Contested Zones as well.
TL;DRYes, contested zones will have time pressure from timed gates, locked areas and static AI and traps that can't be fully eliminated, plus respawning and patrolling enemies to discourage camping loot.
There's going to be time pressures. Specific locations even have timed gates. So, during these timers, we attract players to be there. Other times, certain things will be locked, so there's no point in going there. So, yeah. There's going to be timed gates. The other added pressure is just the population that exists there, right? Like, you won't be able to fully eliminate the static AI population or the traps that just exist in this space. There's a physical pressure and then there's also the other side with timed gates.
Yeah, that kind of ties back to early discussions about PvP and camping as well. We want the PvE environment to be constantly pushing against the players as well. So, yes, you could find a loot box, loot it, and then try and stay there to see if you can loot it again later, but we would then want the environment to be pushing back on you for respawning enemies, patrolling enemies, to really not allow that.
For asteroid bases, we're talking right now, we're working on three variances. So, like Manuel mentioned earlier, we got the encounter variant, we got a more explorative variant, which has a lot more, like, of an abandoned theme to it. And then we got kind of the contested zone. It's not specifically contested zone, but it is a location that ties to the overall progression that we are planning for.
TL;DRThe team drew on existing and older MMO dungeons and their map layouts, such as EverQuest-style open dungeons, adapting them to Star Citizen's open, shared design.
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Cloud Imperium
So, when we first started looking into this and we were in kind of pre-production, we obviously looked at all current MMO dungeons. I think between the level designers, we've kind of played a lot of them, so wow, Final Fantasy XIV, all the obvious ones. We obviously looked into the dungeons and how we could apply what they have to what we tried. We did originally kind of internally call them open dungeons. The idea was to have a kind of traditional experience of, you know, there's a start and an end. It gets harder the deeper you get. There are packs of enemies. But because we are Star Citizen and we are a unique MMO in that, you know, these are open, we kind of looked more to the old school MMOs for a bit more of where to pull from, you know, like EverQuest, which had those open space dungeons where lots of players could go in. So we kind of pulled on that thread a little bit, and then we also looked in terms of like map layout designs. We were pulling from like Guild Wars 2 and things where we looked at how they laid out their dungeons, you know, the branches and the way to move players around the space. So we did pull from, you know, existing and old MMOs at the same time. We pulled from these and our experiences playing them as to what we could apply to what we were doing.