The developers cover the upcoming Star Citizen and Squadron 42 split and pricing, the referral rewards, and the store and ArcCorp NPC work. They also discuss ship schedules (Caterpillar, Carrack, Herald, Argo), mining designs and the 2.2 patch with its physicalized EVA.
Aurora, yeah. It's got to be the Aurora. It's the little ship you have no reason to love, but you will. It's got character, and someday when you're 50 ships deep, you're going to remember your first Aurora with its cramped little cockpit.
Honestly, that's easily the most important thing to me. I want character more than ability. I have no interest in being the Red Baron or being the best pilot out there. I want a ship that has character, that's instantly recognizable, and something I can point to and say, that's Lando's.
One of the most difficult decisions, certainly in my life, and I assume in many people's lives, was selling your Tarsus in the original Privateer, because you can never get it back. I mean, it's a piece of crap, to put it mildly, but it was your grandfather's ship that was left to you, and you're going to trade it in for a spiffy new Centurion? It's a tough call.
TL;DRThey say the ArcCorp store and dealership weren't a prioritization over other work, since character animators simply do that job, and populating ArcCorp with NPCs helps make the universe feel alive.
The thing that always gets me is that there's this perception that everybody can do all things. Like, oh, if this person's doing this, they're not doing something else. It's like, no, that person's doing that because that's the job that that person does. It's not taking away from work somewhere else. So we have character animators whose job is to animate characters. And you work with one skeleton for the player characters, slightly different skeletons for the big guys like Bishop and stuff, and then a different skeleton for the NPCs. And so the guys who work with the different skeletons work on the different tasks. So populating ArcCorp and making it seem like a living, breathing place is pretty darn important to making the Persistent Universe a living, breathing place. So people are like, why are you working on that now? It's because that's a very important aspect of making the Persistent Universe... Is this really what people are trolling us about right now?
First of all, this is the act of selling less stuff. We're going to the in-game economy instead of the one where you buy stuff on the website. It's not something we're prioritizing. I don't get it. This is the thing about trolls. With every single thing we do, it's oh, here's the bad version of it. You're releasing Squadron 42? Well, why aren't you focusing on this other one?
In the Luke Pressley interview, we talked about how we were going to add voxel asteroids and they'd be used for mining and for racing. And I got sent a PM, very concerned that we were prioritizing racing at this point. I'm like, no, in the interview we specifically say it's not tomorrow and it's not any time in the immediate future. It's something we're going to do in the long term. And I got PMs about how we were prioritizing this. We can talk about things that aren't the very next thing that we do.
TL;DRThey say changing development and meaningful choices can coexist, with melting, upgrades and limited buyback tokens as a compromise, and they're still discussing help for people who melted ships for a limited sale.
Yes, one of the things I get quoted on most is when I say the only constant in game development is that things change, that development is iterative. That can exist at the same time as having meaningful choices. The two are not mutually exclusive. We want choice to matter, and at the same time we do many things to allow people to reconsider and re-evaluate their choices. We allow them to melt their pledges, we allow them to CCU into different ships, and now with the buyback system, we allow people to go back into their history, almost all the way to the beginning of time, barring the physical items, boxes and stuff, and bring back those pledges. We do many things to allow you to reconsider your choices, because the only constant in game development is change. We recognize that. At the same time, we're not building systems just for today. We're building systems that will take us into tomorrow when the game releases, and we have to consider that choices matter. So there are restrictions on the things that you can buy back and the way that you can buy back stuff.
Absolutely. I'm thinking of the high school class in Starship Troopers now: "Figuring things out for yourself is the only true right anyone has." It's not the exact line. Picking a ship should have a weight to it. It's supposed to be our equivalent of deciding on a car. The ship system was never meant to be switch to this one, switch to this one, switch to this one. We kind of pledged that in there as we've gone along, because there are a lot of people who want to. But the ship should have value. It shouldn't be something you throw away and...
Yeah, so we're looking for a compromise, an area between the two opposing views that best serves both ends. A compromise is never going to be 100%. A compromise is never going to be perfect. That's why it's a compromise and not everybody gets everything they want. So that's what this is with the quarterly buyback tokens. And there are folks that are like, but we've always been able to buy back with store credit. Yeah, that wasn't an official system. That was the fine folks in CS bending the rules.
One other thing I'll say about the buyback tokens is that it's not the permanent, last decision we'll ever make. There may be plenty of decisions in the future where we want to say, okay, here's an extra token. Especially, it seems like the use case we're running into that is a legitimate problem is people who melt all their ships to buy a capital ship when we have a limited sale. That is something that comes out of our system. So we're looking at ways to counteract that. Maybe have a free day after we do a capital ship, or issue a couple of tokens afterwards. I think this doesn't actually let you issue multiple tokens. We're talking about next time we have a limited sale or something like that. If there is a next time; we don't have any on the books. Even the decisions on how we deal with things are iterative, just like game development. They're based on people's responses. That's the big legitimate issue I've seen from those threads.
Yeah, there were a lot of people that melted a good quantity of their ships to try to get a shot at buying the Idris, and they didn't make it in for whatever reason, and now they're left with a bunch of store credit. We want to do something about that. We're still discussing it. It's in the process.
Pretty shiny. Yeah, a lot of our materials work lately has been rather shiny. I think when the time comes to build the 890, there's a good chance it'll probably be shiny.
Yes, we're going to have more rewards. With the referral program, we definitely want to have more rewards, but we also want to make them good. So it's a time versus... If we want to do something quick, we can say, oh, everybody gets an Orion or something. But we want to do some more unique content, which takes production time, and it takes an artist and a designer. So it's all about scheduling, making sure we can do everything else we've promised. More rewards are coming. Keep your fun, folks. If you cross the threshold for one, and I'm glad you have already, we'll give it to you later.
If you want to follow the development of persistence, pay special attention to the Jake Ross segments, the Austin segments of Around the Verse. That's where you're going to learn most about the progress on persistence. And grabby hands, I imagine you'll probably hear about in either the UK or the LA segments.
TL;DRThe split doesn't affect existing backers; only packages bought after the stated date change, with one game at the base price and the other as an add-on, and early backers get both.
Oh, right. So, by the way, five minutes before this, I wrote up a little FAQ we're going to post tonight. I shot it over to Ortwin and Sandi to review. It'll have all the details about how much things cost and what this split actually means. A big concern I've seen out there is people saying, why are you taking Squadron 42 away from me? Why are you doing this as a cash grab? None of that is true. It does not apply to any current package. It is only packages purchased after February 14th, 2016. So what we're doing now is telling you, oh, the price will go up at this future time. We've done a free fly so everybody can get in and see that we're making progress before then, so you don't have to pay that extra for the other campaign.
Yes, it is a perk for our early adopters. Early adopters being those who backed in the first three years. If you backed in the first three years, you get both games at a ridiculous cost of $45. After February 14th, new people coming in will have to choose between Star Citizen for $45 or Squadron 42 for $45 or a special...
So how this is working is, it's not quite literally... These are separate things now. It's more of an à la carte. So it's going to be $45, same as right now, and you'll choose one or the other, Squadron 42 or Persistent Universe, and then it will be a $15 add-on for the other one. So if you buy Squadron 42, $15 gets you the Persistent Universe. If you buy Persistent Universe, $15 gets you Squadron 42. So you get both games for $60. Yeah, just like a modern game. And that'll go up down the line again, but it shouldn't be too much of a change right now.
As we approach standard pricing for video games. As we get closer to release, the pricing will increase to market standard and whatnot. So all you guys that believed in us and backed us early, congratulations, you get both games for $45.
They are coming. In fact, I was talking to Todd Papy about that just this week, as we look at some additional ship concepts to go with them. So expect more about mining; that's probably going to be the next big one.
We are looking at some additional ship concepts beyond the three that we have talked about before. And there are some cool options. We can't talk about them yet, but we're looking at the schedule as some of our artists free up.
Yes, the guy who's working on the Herald is not on it right now, so it's just kind of floating there. It's slotted back into the schedule; it's just a little bit further back than we originally intended.
The press gets to see Chris play a lot more, because whenever there's one of these big conventions, there's the public show floor and then there's the business booth, and Chris is always back there showing it to journalists and so on. So he gets a lot of that.
We want to let it get fleshed out a bit before we show you, because they're still experimenting with changes. We don't want to keep playing with your emotions until we have a solid lead on where it's going. It's not changing dramatically or anything. We just want to know that what we show you is what we're going to use.
But scheduling-wise, that should be a matter of weeks rather than months or years. Should be. Fingers crossed. Until somebody's like, oh, we need Gurmukh to work on the Bengal, and they take him off for two weeks or something.
We are barely on the second true 2.1 iteration of the baby PU, or PU Lite, or whatever people want to call it. Tony Zurovec keeps trying to call it the Protoverse. We love you, Tony. But we're not calling it the Protoverse.
We should do a live RTV with an audience. We do do the tours on Fridays. So instead of having a tour, we bring them in a little early. All right, we're going to do an RTV with a live studio audience. That's a good idea.
I actually have an answer to that question. Tune in Monday to Ten for the Directors, where Sean Tracy and Steve Bender will actually address almost that exact question. Let's call it a tease. They talk about that kind of thing and how that's going to work in the video.
TL;DRThe Starfarer is still coming in an upcoming patch, but they can't say it's ready yet, since only content finished by each patch's cutoff goes in and the artists want to polish it.
Oh, Starfarer update. Still coming. We know Chris said January, back at... it was a Ten for the Chairman that we recorded in December. So it's still coming. The way these 2.x patches work is that everything that's ready at a particular time goes in. So let's say we have a date. Let's say January 15 is the close date for content for that month's patch. So everything that's in and working on January 15 goes to the PTU, and then they test in the PTU, and then it goes live. If something is not ready at that specific time, it goes to the next month. I can't say that the Starfarer is ready today. I think they're still doing some work on it, but it will be in one of the upcoming patches.
The artists that I've talked to are all really thrilled with the Starfarer. They just want to make it as awesome as possible, because it is massive. It's a next step. I mean, it's practically a mini capital ship. That's what Erin Roberts talked about. He's like, it's almost a capital ship because of the size of it. It's a floating FPS level in space, and they're just really excited about it. They really want to put every piece of polish on it they can before they get it out to you guys. So it's just a first impression thing. They're really proud of it. They want to put their best foot forward. So they're going to take the time to make it everything they want it to be. It was in the sneak peek this week, wasn't it? We showed three images of the Starfarer, two from the interior, and one of cool damage stuff. It's a concept of proposed damage stuff. So there's no guarantee that that's going to end up being what's in the game, but it was a guy designing what he thought the damage states might look like. So we thought it was very cool.
There should be an entirely Gary Oldman-focused sci-fi game where he flies around in space in the Gary. All the characters are representations of some part of Gary Oldman's psyche. Or perhaps I'm giving away too much about Squadron 42.
Greycats have been available in the hangar for some time now. You just have to buy them in the Voyager Direct store. Although somebody new may experience Greycats for the first time in ArcCorp and not realize that they're available for sale. So yes, the Greycats are available for sale in the Voyager Direct store. I think they're about 5, something like that.
Obviously, we have not hit our day in February that locks everything down, but the big hope, as Sean Tracy said last week, was having the new EVA system in 2.2.
Yeah, it is such a night and day difference, having the center of mass go from your feet to the center of your mass and having it be changeable. It alters depending on the contortion of your body and stuff. So it looks so much more immersive and great. And honestly, the word is beautiful. It looks beautiful. So I'm excited to see it in.
The short answer is that the Argo will almost certainly be on sale at some point. Yes. It's an ultralight spacecraft like the Merlin or the Archimedes. It won't have jump capabilities. It won't have a quantum drive. But I'm sure there are plenty of uses for it. I know they even talked about possible variants. I know there's discussion about it.
Yes, if you watched Around the Verse yesterday, you will have seen me put Luke Pressley, lead designer of Star Citizen Live, on the spot and force him to agree to add Big Benny's vending machines as hangar flair that you'll eventually be able to purchase. So there's no timetable on that, because we just got him to say yes to it. And it's probably not a huge priority. But he said yes. We'll hold him to it.
Well, you're going to want to watch the Around the Verse that aired just yesterday, specifically the Austin segment, where Jake Ross talks about all kinds of stuff they're doing for the social module, including persistence, adding NPCs, and recording all the new animations they need to make the NPCs look like they actually live and breathe in ArcCorp. So there are lots of updates coming to the social module. And then, of course, eventually Nyx.
TL;DRA firefighting ship has been discussed and always comes up in brainstorms, but it isn't scheduled because it needs more elaborate game design and focus is on designs already started.
We've talked about a firefighting ship. You and I did. It's not on the schedule, because you have to have a more elaborate game design to go with it. I think our focus right now is going to be finishing up the designs that we've already kicked off. But firefighting is one of those ships where, whenever we sit down and we're like, okay, let's have a brainstorm session about what cool ships we could expand to in the future, firefighting always comes up. Because firefighting is awesome. In fact, David Hobbins did a cool firefighting robot at one point. I think while he was working here; it was for something else. But if you look up David Hobbins' portfolio, he did a cool firefighting mech thing that inspired us all at one point. And of course, there's Episode 3, where for some reason there are firefighting ships that fly up alongside the ship at Coruscant.
TL;DRMany starter ships won't come with jump drives but all non-snub ships can mount one, and ships sold as companions to larger ships generally lack them; non-snub ships also get quantum drives.
A lot of the starter ships don't come with jump drives, but they can all equip them. I think pretty much everything's going to have a jump drive. They may not come with it, though.
I think this was a Rob Irving thing that we're just not going to think about again. We'll talk more about jump drives. Either way, every ship can do it. Every non-snub ship can mount a jump drive.
Astro Armada. I've seen this question all over the place about jump drives and stuff, and I think the general rule is, if a ship has been offered as a companion ship to something else, it doesn't have a jump drive. So the Argo supports the Idris and doesn't have a jump drive. The Merlin supports the Constellation and doesn't have a jump drive. The 85X comes with the 890 Jump. So if it was sold as a standalone by itself, it probably does.
Or maybe you'll even get a used jump drive at Dumper's Depot. And of course you'll have to upgrade your jump drive over time. You may have a double and then you want to go to a quad jump drive or something. Or one that's stealthy or more efficient. So there are all sorts of upgrades in the future. I know what people are thinking; I know what Rob was thinking back then. It is a fantastic moment in the original Privateer when you have finally saved up 10,000 credits, you make your first jump out of the Troy system, and you get your ass beaten down because the rest of the universe is very, very harsh. Our universe is not necessarily built exactly the same way, so it may not be as much of a moment to earn that first jump. I think it is going to be a moment; the first jump during the build-out of Crusader in the PU is going to be a huge, huge event. But I don't know about scraping by to earn your jump drive.
Privateer was Chris's first game like Star Citizen, back in 1993. It was a spin-off of Wing Commander. Wing Commander was essentially similar to Squadron 42. It's a single-player story. You follow it from mission to mission to mission, and there's a tree, so if you lose a mission, you go to a different one; if you win one, you go to a different one. Privateer was free-form. Basically, you had inherited your grandfather's old ship, you were stuck on a planet, it had a single laser cannon, a single missile, no upgrades, and you had to make your way in the universe. And it's very much the prototype for Star Citizen. Chris did a second game along those lines, circa 2000, called Freelancer. And Star Citizen is kind of the game he wished he could make the whole time.
TL;DRThey aren't confirming grabby hands or anything else for any patch, saying EVA for 2.2 is only most likely and that development timelines are hard to predict until a decision day.
We're not confirming anything for any patch. I think the closest we'll say is that it's most likely EVA for 2.2. But it's all going to come down to that one day in February where we sit down and we say, okay, here's everything that's done and ready for the patch, here's what's not, which includes EVA or not, X ship or not, Y ship or not, and we will let you know when we know, essentially. A lot of people on the forums are like, well, why don't you tell us what's coming? There are two reasons. One is that when it's not certain, people get mad. That has been a constant for all of time. And the second is that we don't know. We have 300 people working on 70 different things at once. Some will be in 2.2, 2.3, 2.4. So there's a specific day when we know more, and when that happens, we'll tell you guys.
It's not always easy to predict whether or not something like this is going to be done. Computer science is a very young discipline compared to almost everything else humanity has done for centuries. We haven't done this for even one century yet. So knowing exactly how long something is going to take when your discipline keeps changing every day is very, very difficult. It's not like bricklaying, it's not like farming; it just changes all the time.
Especially depending on what part of the game it is. Physicalized EVA is just such a huge... it's not a factory line. It's not a factory where you say, OK, it's going to take six days to do this. It involves a lot of experimentation, breaking things, getting it right. So while we say, OK, we want it done at this point, it's quite possible it will be done much later, or sometimes much earlier, like the procedural planets. For other things, such as ships, it's a little bit easier to predict. We've made five dogfighters now, so for the sixth one we can get a pretty good estimate. But even then, there are plenty of times when the artist hands it off to the designer and they're like, wait a minute, you need to redo this and this and this because they don't work. And that changes the timeline.
About the only time something is easy to predict in programming is if you've done the exact same thing before. But there's a lot in this game that no one has ever done before.
How do you predict how long it takes to do something that's never been done before, in a way that's never been done before, and present it in a way that's never been done before?