Dave Haddock and Matt Sherman answer community questions on in-game lore and features: landing cameras, cargo and hangar storage of salvaged parts, a fourth starter ship like the Drake Dragonfly, shared organization-owned ships, and alien tech balance. They also cover alien writing, NPCs recognizing players, and in-game disease.
TL;DRFiction explaining the game's development state was discussed but dropped, to iterate freely on a test bed; it's probably more likely once the foundation and core mechanics are solid.
That was something we'd talked about, I remember in the early days with Area 18, the idea that you could go in stores but you couldn't buy anything. We were like "do we want to create some reasoning behind it so the credit card machine are down or the CCB's offline or something." And then we kind of stopped talking about it. I think part of it was, particularly with the PTU that's coming out, that we're working on, large world, it was supposed to be mostly a test bed so we wanted to be able to try stuff and get it in the game and figure out what would become the PU would work ultimately. I think basically if we started adding fiction to it then we would have to come up with fiction as to why things changed and it just felt like it would probably be easier to just free ourselves from that and be able to iterate rapidly as new systems come online we can start incorporating them and stuff like that.
Even from the design side, as great as those things would be, not having that overhead constraint really lets us make sure that the design and the gameplay can come through. But once we get the whole thing up and running and we've got the real PU all built out do you think think that's something we can probably explore then/later?
I feel like it probably will just because Chris likes packaging stuff in the fiction because it gives you a context that let's you know the parameters of what you're playing with. So I think it is definitely possible down the line. It seems like once we've solidified the foundation more, and the core mechanics, it will probably be more likely.
Definitely a great idea. One of the current challenges with that is just how CryEngine handles picture-in-picture so it may not be the most immediate thing but I can definitely see us almost adding a different view where it is than that belly camera landing view, because a lot of people do like the manual control, the manual feel and everything as opposed to the automated assist. So longer term it is absolutely something we can explore but probably won't be something where you see a panel on your dashboard change to show ...
TL;DRWriting alien races is treated like writing any characters with wants and needs shaped by their culture, though very non-humanoid races would pose extra animation and design challenges.
That is a good question. It's different, obviously once you get into the nuts and bolts of other civilisations and stuff like that, it's always a little tricky. For me it was always the idea that these are still characters and though they maybe Xi'an or Banu or something like that and they come from a different society with different values and stuff like that they're still in a sense characters in a narrative, they still have wants, they have needs, they have things they don't like that and that stuff like that. Some of that might be coloured by the civilisation that they're coming from but it's still just looking at them as characters who are trying to complete a story. It's always been how I look at it.
Yeah and even also on just some of the gameplay side of that something to keep in mind is as, some of our races could possibly get pretty interesting although right now a lot of them have that humanoid form and lot of that is like, if you imagine an arachnid race the kind of crazy culture that would have to associate with it. A lot of extra moving parts.
I remember that's been a popular topic in the ask a dev and stuff like that. You know like having six foot tall, six legged things. Is that, there was some worry about doing it internally, I don't know what the deal is, is it feasible to do that? Is it much harder cause it's a completely unique set of animation or design or?
I need to check with Bender and Riggs on the animation side, but I would definitely say part of it because how an insectoid thing would walk, would move, would act would be much more based on that thing being an insect and not so much being a human, so to have a drastically non-humanoid race it does pose a few extra challenges there.
TL;DRSalvaged items go into the cargo hold and can be unloaded into the hangar for storage, though salvaging isn't always guaranteed and how the stockpile is shown in the hangar is still being sorted.
Yeah absolutely. If you have salvaged or recovered an item off of a ship it would go right into your cargo hold and so the next time you land back in your hanger you can just unload that have that in storage and available for use. The ability to scavenge and recover those parts won't always be a sure thing but it's definitely something that if, you get a stockpile of "Ok, here's some spare guns" throw them away a little bit more if you don't want to keep paying repairs on their reconditioned stuff.
Hangar physicalisation I think is still being sorted because that could lead to something where if you've got a thousand guns, you got a thousand objects that the game has to update and keep rendering but some representation, even if it has to be created up, we should definitely be able to get some way where you can see the spoils of war.
TL;DRThey want more starter ships long term and like the Dragonfly idea, but already-sold ships come first and design questions like exposure and quantum travel remain, so it may take a while.
Yeah, I mean it definitely has gotten a lot of community sentiment because the idea of the "space motorcycle" is really cool. Long term we absolutely want to have more starter ships in the game that just the current three that we are offering. But a lot of it is getting our other ships built out first, that we've already sold you. But I think we have been talking some of the concessions and design setup: "Okay, it's the space motorcycle but do we have an open air pilot, exposed to the vacuum of space? Do we let him go into Quantum?"
Yeah, it's a very tricky thing because if it's really small how big are these components because you're heavily involved in the components process. A Quantum Drive is not a small thing.
Yeah. It's like "How small can it actually be? How exposed can it be?" But things like that, with starter ships in general, we're definitely going to keep exploring stuff down the road but it may take a little bit longer before something like the Dragonfly could happen.
TL;DRThe speakers say the jump drive's origin in the fiction was checked against gameplay, and that ideally many narrative threads and mysteries will be seeded, some possibly never noticed, with hiddenness untested so far.
For perceiving things in the lore, so this wouldn't be so much a hidden mystery type thing to discover just how the first jump drive came about. That started in the fiction of; RSI had this malfunctioning Quantum Drive and from there they were able to use it to tap into jump technology and start travelling through these Jump Points. I remember a couple of months ago we were sitting down and we actually were going over it's like "Ok are these two separate things or are they all in one?" and that was definitely a cool thing, of going through where it was taking the fiction that we have and making sure that the gameplay surrounding it all gels together.
Yeah and fuel and everything, how to, Quantum Drive vs Jump Drive use and fuels and stuff like that, which ultimately lead to the fuel docks and what different fuels you use and stuff like that. The second part of the question; are you actively seeking clues that will lead to a bigger mysteries? Yeah, I mean that's always been sort of the thing. Theoretically ideally we are going to have a lot of narrative threads out there that we could pick up on or maybe no one sees and just nothing comes of it. Obviously once we start testing this out and see how it, exactly how hidden this stuff is, it's nice to think people might not discover Jump Points for a while or then they, you know find them within twenty minutes!
TL;DRAddressing players by name is likely too prohibitive because of the voice recording needed, but actions are expected to be seeded into NPC reactions through the reputation system.
That is a tough one! It's been interesting because that's one of the things that was really fascinating about Fallout 4 was I didn't realise they had done the whole "name recording" thing and I had ended up picking a name the robot knew so it actually referred to me by name and it totally blew my mind. That being said it's a really, really complicated technical thing to accomplish because invariably it feels like you have to do so many voice recordings and so many variables and stuff that people will always feel left out because you're not going to get everyone's name, it's just not a feasible reality.
But now more to a player's actions I can definite see us getting something where, at least based on your reputation, you could have something where you're the "Hero of the UEE" and when you are walking around people might, at least, act a little bit better towards you.
Yeah, I guess it becomes a little bit more strategic. Or how we frame it. The classic example is you are the one who killed the Dread Pirate Roberts, you might be walking down the street someone might go "oh, that's ... they killed ... that's the one ... that's the guy/girl that killed Dread Pirate Roberts" because then you only have two options that you need to record or whatever. But then it feels like the universe is dynamically reacting to the stuff that you've done. So, yeah I think so. It's definitely going to be seeded into the Reputation system and that's one of the things that's been a heavily discussed thing of late, of trying to figure out exactly how deep the Reputation system goes and how it works and stuff like that.
We're definitely looking at some more expanded features and just gameplay for how organisations will interact with each other. I know for a long time we've been building that, at least some way that you can share ships within your organisation. The exact details on how that will structure out is still being sorted and whether or not you'll have an organisation coffer or the organisation saying "Hey we need to buy an Idris everyone just chip into this pool" and that goes through, then be a little bit in the air because at a certain point someone needs to own something so it may just default to ownership of the organisation leader but the ability to share out and allow others to use your ships in a big group is definitely a big thing we want to deliver.
TL;DRMajor alien civilizations are roughly equal in tech level, each with its own specialties, so alien components could differ in parameters rather than being always better, and standardised component sizes let them fit UEE ships.
We've always sort of established a lot of the big alien races/civilizations are roughly around the same technological level just because it felt like if somebody had a, was far advanced than Humanity maybe they would just, if the Xi'an were just a super power basically compared to Humanity they would just wipe Humanity out, and just not be much of a war. That idea that everybody can hurt everybody was important. That being said each one will have things that we specialise in that they are better at. We've already sort of seen it with some of the Xi'an ships that they tend to do be vertical, they have fewer main thrusters, more maneuvering thrusters type of stuff, trying to give them different feels and flavours and stuff like that.
Even down to the nitty gritty of that like parts of the components, there can definitely be some things for you, Banu make and model, things like the scanner could have some different parameters that a UEE make and model scanner wouldn't have favoured. It would always be a give and take, you're going to equip either Banu or Xi'an tech for this purpose and wouldn't so much be just a general always better type of thing.
I would definitely say so, that's also why we did some of the component size standardisation so that we've got the housing and the box for, this is a volume of a small class power plant or a small class radar but what each individual race and manufacturer delivers for that could look very different while the functionality and that interfacing into the ship is still very much the same.
TL;DRThey want to explore a viral outbreak but consider a universe-wide one too destructive and story-halting, preferring contained cases like a single ship or quarantined planet, probably scripted.
So this is actually an interesting story for both of us because, the link Fallunlite mentions at the end, at the time I was actually a customer support rep on World of Warcraft and you were mentioning that you were actually in-game when this was happening.
Yeah, very contagious. So the high-level idea of this, where you do have this uncontrollable viral outbreak is an insanely cool high-level thing, but something to consider with it is just how destructive that is. In this example it even as it says here players-forced euthanasia or government-forced euthanasia. That was how that situation had to be contained. Entire player, well not player cities, but like main hubs ...
... in the game had to be just wiped out, every living thing had to die! So to do that for the PU, having some sort of a viral incident: definitely want to explore that. Having it be something that could contaminate and infect the entire universe is a little less likely.
And also that becomes the story. You can't do "I'm going to pick up three tonnes of iron ore and move it to Stanton because, oh my god, there's a pandemic making people bleed on me". It feels like everything else grinds to a halt. That was a thing like I mentioned: I logged in randomly while that event was going on and I spawned in Ogrimmar and there were just corpses everywhere, and I had no idea what was going on so I just took off because I saw bleeding people and just started running. So it's a great narrative hook, no doubt, but it would be dangerous.
The dangers of it are definitely there. Although even on a smaller scale like having a ship-wide event, that's probably something you could see. So you're doing some research on your Endeavour or other science type ship, and something goes wrong there, that could definitely be more of a case where it's that same kind of fear and same kind of panic but in a much more controllable scale where billions of entities won't have to die just to get things back to normal.
There could even be a planet that needs to be quarantined because they have a thing but then again it feels like it's a very guarded type thing where it's like "oh well they need more resources to maintain this quarantine" then maybe you can have the narrative hook of "oh the quarantine starts to fail". But again that feels more kind of a scripted thing rather than just creating a virus bug and just letting it go and run rampant.
So it's definitely something that we want to explore but it is making sure that we can explore it without being too punishing to everyone else who may not find viral outbreaks the most valuable use of their gaming hours.