Star Citizen Live Q&A: Master Modes

Michael "Bayor" · Director of Player Experience

There's a couple of different reasons we do that. Part of it is our job is to provide context for folks like Yogi and Rich. When we see players say, hey, this particular feature isn't working as well, or we see them talking about anything, we need to get into game, we need to test that. But it doesn't create a fair test if we're on a CIG account. Say for instance, if I go into Master Mode Squadron Battle and I'm on Bayor-CIG, everyone's gonna focus on me, right? They're immediately gonna go, oh my gosh, the CIG person, I'm gonna go attack them. That's not a player experience, right? That's not what other people are seeing when they join those matches. So it's important for us to go in on incognito accounts and test that that way.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

It's the whole, the scientist doesn't want to disturb the experiment kind of thing.

Michael "Bayor" · Director of Player Experience

Exactly. It's the prime directive.

Brent "XLB" · Live QA Team Lead

I was going to say, we definitely see that, especially in live QA. If we're on a server, people are asking us questions, but we get hunted down. And so being on incognito accounts, we can go and reproduce the issues that you guys are having. And that can even be with master modes, like Bayor said, we join a match or something, we get pounced on pretty quickly.

Michael "Bayor" · Director of Player Experience

We want to get what players are seeing when they actually go into these modes. So we want to use as authentic of an account as we can.

Yogi Klatt · Principal Vehicle Programmer

Okay, let's start with the big elephant. So in general, there is no difference between how we're treating combat ships and non-combat ships. If you want to have a consistent gameplay system, it needs to make sure that all the ships follow the same rules. So although we have combat-focused and non-combat-focused ships, we still need to make sure that the non-combat-focused ships are basically fitting that scheme. And so the effect that master modes brings for non-combat ships, let's just talk about maybe miners and salvagers, it's just the same. You're going into NAV mode to travel somewhere and you're going into SCM mode to do whatever you need to do in your normal gameplay loop. So navigation or NAV mode is just for traversal. And this does not mean that industrial ships are easy fodder or something like that. If we see some kind of imbalance in our data, then we usually react to that. So if we have, for example, a Gladius that's fighting against an Aurora, the Aurora is, of course, not a fighter, right? But it will also not be super easy fodder for a Gladius. So what we usually do is we give it a little bit more health or bump up some other defenses. But in any case, you don't need to worry. The ruleset is the same for all ships. And the other thing with NAV mode that came up was whether or not you can always escape a situation. So yes, if your navigation mode is completely spooled and your quantum drive is ready, you can usually quite quickly escape whatever combat situation you're in, unless there's some specialized ships that snare you in some way or keep you there. But this is dependent on a case-by-case basis. Rich, do you want to add something?

Rich · Lead Game Designer, Vehicle Experience Team

Yeah, sure. A big thing with Master Modes for us is it's not just about combat. We can keep saying this, but it's not just about the combat ships. We have reworked every single ship in the game right now. And we've got a base archetype we use, so there's a difference between archetype and role for us. So archetype is something we use internally to start a baseline with a ship. But then as we move forward, we start to look at the role of the ship and what that kind of individuality of each ship means. But yeah, every single ship in the game is going to have a rework and feel different to what it has done in the past. And there's been a big focus not just on the combat side of things, but what makes a good cargo ship and what makes a bad cargo ship, and to make sure that the overall balance between these ships is fair for everyone. Because we do realize that in our game, there are some people that love combat, but there are people that don't really want to do combat. So we've got to tune ships for an environment where it's fair for everyone playing the game. And that's been a big focus of ours. Because we don't want people that don't want to do combat to feel like combat is always a threat. There's always got to be something to balance that out. There's going to be a big learning process when it first goes out. There's a good chance we might not get it right. There's definitely a good chance we'll make some changes, and we'll definitely listen to the feedback, and we'll start making iterative changes on these. But our overall goal is that the game is fair for everyone, no matter what you've come to Star Citizen for.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

You mentioned that archetypes are not the same as roles, and this was one of the bigger misunderstandings that came from the episode. Archetypes are not about the overall purpose and intention of the ship. Archetypes are about a flight profile. It's building out a number of flight profiles as a starting point, as a first pass assumption on a vehicle before you go in and do individual specific tunings. So yes, the archetypes tend to be combat focused because that's where the essence of balancing between the different fighter types is most important. We don't need a mining ship and a salvage ship to have individual flight characteristic archetypes. They will have their own individual tuning so they won't handle exactly the same. But there doesn't need to be an entire archetype made for the way that all mining ships fly and turn. So there was a big misconception here that archetypes and roles are synonymous. They are not. When we were referring to the Idris as this or that, those were for the flight archetypes. And yes, some of the names match and some of the names don't. But it's important to know that archetypes are not the roles. They're not the intended function of the ships. They are simply a starting point for the flight profile that Rich and his team and Yogi and all of them then go to drill down and balance from. It's just a start here, then customize.

Yogi Klatt · Principal Vehicle Programmer

So the reason how that came together is practically based on our day-to-day work, right? So in general, the fighter gameplay is the most challenging one, so naturally we are going for that first. But we could have also called a light fighter archetype a small wiggle ship archetype or something like that, right? But it's not as descriptive for us. So when we were focused on fighters, we just called it fighters. We're also calling something light fighter bombers, which are not bombers. They just for us internally describe something, just like as Jared said, a flight profile. It does not mean that this describes the role.

Yogi Klatt · Principal Vehicle Programmer

Not yet. No, obviously quantum dampening and snaring, and in general keeping or trapping players within the SCM speed, is something that has a big impact on combat itself. But the thing is, we have not specifically implemented that part yet. It's on the to-do list for 3.23. Whether we're going to make it for 3.23 or not, we don't know yet because there's a couple of things we still need to iron out. For example, do we simply say you cannot boost away? Do we need to take the size of the ship that wants to escape into account? Do we just change the spool timers? These are all just small details which we haven't tried out or internally tested yet. I mean, this also leads to the point that 3.23 is not the full experience for master modes, right? It's just the first step. There will be stuff missing. The ships will not be as varied as we would like them to be later. So we will build on that work. But exactly if quantum dampening et cetera will be there on day one when master modes releases, I do not know yet. It depends how the normal work progress continues in the next few weeks. We'll see.

Yogi Klatt · Principal Vehicle Programmer

So you will be able to always stay in NAV mode. Whether it's suitable for you to do that is a different question. You will just not be able to access certain operator modes from NAV mode. So things like scanning, for example, you can. But the guns operator mode, the missile operator mode, mining and salvaging will not be available in NAV mode. So you can just go around. But this also means your shields are not effective. Which means, unless you're currently quantum traveling, you're still vulnerable to attacks. But when you're spooled and you are under attack, you still have the option to, I mean, not for now, but later when the new quantum travel experience comes online and you have quantum boost, you can actually get out of this thing very fast. But still, there's a clear no to the question whether or not you're invulnerable to combat. You're not. If you're flying around in normal space, you can be attacked one way or another.

Yogi Klatt · Principal Vehicle Programmer

I think this has more to do with the realities of how games are developed. Things like quantum interdiction speak very strongly to the quantum travel experience. And when we created master modes, we did this roughly in parallel with a new quantum travel experience for Squadron. The thing is that although these things work together, we're bringing them separately to the PU. And quantum dampening is not a thing that is of big importance in Squadron. So that feature in combination with master modes was just not ready. But the thing is, if we don't move tech that's ready over early, then we're dragging a lot of legacy with us all the time. So basically for master modes, let's say for IFCS, that means that large parts of the code are doubled there because we know which parts we can throw away when master modes is active and we know which parts we can keep. If we keep too much legacy stuff around for a long time, it just increases the maintenance effort a lot. And also, the game is not finished, so these things just happen. Engineering and game design is hard. It's really, really hard.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

What Yogi said is there aren't other players using QD in Squadron 42. And we're moving a Squadron 42 feature over to the PU. So it wasn't in the original master modes mandate because it wasn't necessary in Squadron 42. Now it will be considered and now it will be addressed in the PU, is what he said. He did not say it wasn't important.

Michael "Bayor" · Director of Player Experience

It's also important to consider that our team is part of these conversations pretty early on, and we call out this stuff really early, and it could be developed in a way that, let's focus on master modes and then figure this stuff out later. But we mentioned these things earlier. We mentioned how do you tackle a ship? How does the Mantis work in this context? And Yogi and Rich are already thinking about that ahead of time, even if they're not necessarily solving those problems right away. They're like, how does this fit into the overall picture anyway? And so we already consider those things and we call those out extremely early in the process so that they are part of the overall design, even if we don't get to them right away.

Rich · Lead Game Designer, Vehicle Experience Team

Nope. So it's going to fly the same as it does currently. So if you take a ship in NAV mode into atmosphere, you're going to suffer the same drag consequences of that. And then if you switch to SCM, you're going to be limited to those speeds.

Yogi Klatt · Principal Vehicle Programmer

No, they're definitely different. So the swap time is defined by two things. One is a value which we currently set per ship. The other one is defined by the quantum drive that you're using, because when you go into NAV mode, the quantum drive spools up and this is the thing that unlocks the high speeds. Specifically, I don't want to talk about engineering gameplay because another team is handling that, but it is a value that can potentially be changed by tweaking your quantum drive. As I said, I don't want to talk specifically about this because this is not my area. But in the initial master modes release for 3.23, the ships will have different values in terms of spool times. Specifically between fighters or interceptors. Interceptors, for example, they spool just faster because we want them to be fast and to actually work as interceptors when they need to. So, yeah, there will definitely be different times. And specifically, the larger the ship, usually the longer the time becomes to spool, to swap the modes.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

That is not true.

Yogi Klatt · Principal Vehicle Programmer

But OK, it's a little bit true. So in general, the new MFDs and the new ship layouts and so on, which you've seen in the CitizenCon presentation, they won't be in 3.23. What will come to 3.23, however, is the visor-based update, meaning all gunnery improvements, target brackets, all the 3D stuff that is projected to whatever it needs to be projected to at appropriate distances. That stuff will make it in. This also means we're removing all these old 2D-based sprites that you have on the aiming UI. There's a partial UI update for it.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

And it should be noted that, as you'll see with other things, it's impossible to work on all things at all times. And many members of the UI team have very important work with the mobiGlas, the Star Map, the internal maps, all the work that's coming into 3.23. So it stands to reason that there are some things that are going to have to be delayed and come later.

Brent "XLB" · Live QA Team Lead

There's definitely a lot there. It can even just be on balancing, whether it be the tuning of the ship, how it handles, or just even health pools, or even the weapon gunnery changes that are coming. There's definitely a lot of things that can contribute to why 1v1s sometimes don't feel the best, but the furball or the Squadron Battle feels really good.

Michael "Bayor" · Director of Player Experience

I'll mention a couple of key observations that I think players are having with it. Because we limited the velocity space with master modes, you're seeing people get this locked-in feeling where they're hitting these max speeds and they can't go beyond that, and their opponent is hitting the max speeds, and you get kind of stuck in a position where you can't get an advantage over them. That's that locked-in feeling caused by the velocity space itself. In addition to, a lot of 1v1s are what we call mirror matches, where you're facing the same ship. So the most common is going to be Gladius versus Gladius, right? And when you're facing the same ship, you have the exact same performance characteristics, so you can counterbalance one another pretty easily, and you end up with a head-on situation quite often. And this is something we're observing a lot of when players are talking about it. And we're advising Yogi, advising Rich that this is something that we're seeing. Players are talking about it a lot. And as for solutions, I'll let Yogi and Rich talk about that a bit more. But that's the information we're passing on.

Rich · Lead Game Designer, Vehicle Experience Team

Yeah, so we do a lot of iterative testing here on the vehicle team. So we're constantly testing new things. And Mike and his team did a really good job of adding the feedback. And then we discuss that feedback. But then we action that feedback in testing. And we try and find out what causes it. And it's never just like, oh, just move this thing here. It's always a really complicated combination of things that are quite difficult to get sometimes, and also difficult to basically implement in the game. Because we've got very complex mathematics behind a lot of the systems in the game. So is it just a case of just tweaking one number here and there? We've got to really break down and really understand the problem of what's causing it. As I said, we do a lot of play testing, we get a lot of feedback internally, but we also go to Spectrum and the forums and everywhere else to get a lot of feedback to understand the way and why the combat is the way it is.

Yogi Klatt · Principal Vehicle Programmer

Yeah, the feedback from master modes was very, very diverse. I mean, just the comments on the YouTube video that we had last time were very diverse. And then we're also monitoring Discords and so on. And what I usually do is I listen to the worries that the players have, but I let Bayor and Brent actually come up with an actual proposal, because for me it's very hard to filter through what's actually actionable feedback. But in terms of what we're trying, we absolutely agree that the 1v1s, they're a little bit meh at the moment, but this has to do exactly with the problem of the velocities. We want to not go into high velocities, because going into high velocities just causes one thing, and this is dragging out the fights more. The only class that really benefited from high velocities were light fighters. And in the legacy systems, there was not a lot of space for medium and heavy fighters. So in terms of what we're trying to make this more interesting in 1v1s, we're trying to break up that specific pattern where you have two ships circling each other and then they're feeling locked in. One of the tries that we did was actually adding more dynamic rotational speeds, so that when you hold boost, your boost pool needs to spool up first before it is expended, and then it actually not just gives you higher accelerations, it also gives you higher rotation rates and so on. That did a little bit, but not enough yet. We do hope that with other things, like smoothing accelerations out a little bit more so you don't get a super strong initial kick, but rather ramp them up, this will create enough diversity in the maneuvering so that we're getting to a better place with the 1v1s again. That said, six degrees of freedom is very hard to balance. Michael talked about the feeling of being locked in. Another worry that always comes up is the feeling of backstrafing. The backstrafing problem itself is just mathematically hard to solve, because you need to have an insane amount of acceleration to actually overcome a target that is accelerating backwards on you just to get around it, right? That's really, really complicated. So we're thinking about trying things out like X-shaped velocity spaces so that you can, for example, not fly as fast backwards as you can fly forwards. But what this exactly does with the dynamics is insanely hard to predict, even internally. Because even when we're playing internally, it produces some results, and sometimes we think, oh, yeah, this might work. But the actual test is only when we're playing with actual players and actually letting them play for a while, for a couple of days or weeks. So we can actually see if the new changes are creating some dominant strategies that then cannot be countered or something like that.

Rich · Lead Game Designer, Vehicle Experience Team

I mean, it doesn't really bring us down. We see it as a challenge, really. Because we take everyone's opinion on board. And it's our job, working with the other teams, to analyze the feedback. And it's fine that players react in a certain way if they don't like it when they first play it. But we've also seen people that didn't like it, and now they like it. So it's important to be balanced with the general view on the feedback. There's definitely some people that don't like it, but there's definitely some people that do. So it's about balance. I don't take the feedback personally, and that's a really important thing. It's not personal. It's about the feature itself, and it's up to us to make that feature as good as possible. So it kind of motivates me personally in a way. I'm not sure how other members of the team feel, but that's the way I feel about it.

Brent "XLB" · Live QA Team Lead

I definitely see a lot of the feedback, whether it be negative or positive. And it's definitely helpful when we get the constructive feedback, when people give us more like, hey, have you guys thought about this? And it gives us a lot to think on versus just, oh, this is awful. So definitely keep that coming. Definitely keep all the good constructive stuff coming.

Yogi Klatt · Principal Vehicle Programmer

I do say, though, that ultimately we need to decide what we're going to do with the game. So even if you think that somebody else said what you think, it's always important. Sorry, I'm talking to our player base here, right? Please always put your feedback in. Write what you have, what you feel. The feel is super important for us, because you can argue about speeds or whatever, but if you forget to describe what your feeling is, then often it's harder for me to understand what's actually going on. But in general, I was very happy with the amount of feedback and the diversity of the feedback that we got. Even some of the negative feedback, because in the master modes AC mode, or experimental mode, we purposefully added some stuff in there just to try out how things feel. And some of the feedback, even when it was negative, quite often actually matched up with our expectations, which also helps us to know that we're on the right track.

Yogi Klatt · Principal Vehicle Programmer

Oh, that is a bit spicy. So I would agree that at the moment, especially in the 1v1s, we have a lower skill ceiling. At the same time, we're also lowering the skill floor to actually do PvP or space combat in general, right? So I do think that for the longevity of the game, the changes we're doing right now are actually suitable. I think the question of whether the skill ceiling is a little bit lower is the same question as, what can we do to make 1v1s better, right? It kind of steers in the same direction. So basically, from my point of view, it goes back to just making the flight dynamics a little bit more dynamic and a little bit better, so that people who are spending a lot of time in their ships learn what the ships actually can do. And so that the maximum performance envelope of a ship is not always directly available, but you have to work for it in order to get it. That's at least what I read out of that.

Yogi Klatt · Principal Vehicle Programmer

Okay. So I spoke with PT about this, what players mean by that, because technically there is no difference in what kind of flight performance your ship has between SCM and NAV mode, and NAV mode is actually a little bit better because you have a wider velocity space available to you. What we think it is, and Michael, correct me if I'm wrong, is the absence of the overly high G advantages you got from tricording in the past. The problem with tricording was always that you get more acceleration when you go forward, left and up, right? Because the accelerations on each axis actually accumulate. The problem is that the more acceleration a ship already has and the more spherical its tuning is, that advantage can get up to 70% in the worst case, right? So that's why we cut down on these accelerations. And this basically deprived racers and high-skilled PvP players of their capabilities to quickly evade, because they couldn't access that acceleration anymore. So I believe that is part of why it is perceived that you're less agile in racing. Would you agree, Michael?

Michael "Bayor" · Director of Player Experience

I would, and it's really an important question to understand our process a little bit, because we see comments like that, and it's easy to go, well, that's just wrong, and just dismiss that. But in reality, what we do is, well, why are they saying that? Let's look into the process. We understand the context of what they're saying and figure out what exactly is going on. Yogi is exactly right. It's the tricording issue. You got a lot more acceleration from that, and it's much more noticeable if you're going faster. So it seems like when you're in NAV mode, you have less control, even if the accelerations aren't necessarily different between NAV mode and SCM. So we don't dismiss feedback, even if it has sort of the wrong statements in it. We try to understand that context and understand what are they getting at? What could they do that they can't do anymore? And try to figure out if there's a problem there that we can address.

Yogi Klatt · Principal Vehicle Programmer

Yeah, I mean, this is also absolutely true. The thing is, when you go fast, the scale of things that you see around you is also changing, because the feeling of speed is not based on how fast you are, but relatively how close things come by you. Strictly speaking, if you have a racetrack which you can fly decently well at 1,200 meters per second, you can have an equally challenging racetrack for the SCM speed envelope that just has much narrower tracks, as an example. The racing community in general was pretty critical about master modes, and it also encouraged us to tweak a little bit the tricording limiters that we added and so on. But I do think that in order to allow better racing, we should probably look at different kinds of tracks. At this point, we are also not sure exactly how we're going to treat the post-SCM speed space in general. But this is still a future topic. All these things can still change. And when these things change and we think it's better for the game, then some other parts have to change or be adapted as well. That said, I would say the best racetrack that I could imagine is one where you actually need to swap between the modes, so that you have areas where you are supposed to be using your cornering speed much more than in other cases, right? And then, I don't know, you come around the corner, you see, oh, the next target is 20 kilometers away, swap to NAV, go. We could even think about racing tracks later, when we have the quantum boost mechanic, that require you to boost between, I don't know, a planet and a space station or whatever, right? There's a lot of things we can do. The main thing is, racing will always work. However, the tracks might just look different than now.

Yogi Klatt · Principal Vehicle Programmer

When the pilot is in NAV mode, the Hammerhead is traveling from A to B, and the Hammerhead is either escaping from combat or just simply going to another position. There's nothing to do for the turret gunners in that case. So when we're talking about crew roles in the future, this would be the perfect time to, I don't know, swap out fuses or stuff like that, and do all the maintenance on your ship that you want to do.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

And let's not forget that the full breadth of the intended multi-crew experience that we want to build is not limited to just being turret gunners. This is one of the principal reasons, even if the Idris were complete, and it's not, why we don't just dump it into the Persistent Universe. There will be a time and a period where the focusing eye of development will turn to all the multi-crew gameplay necessary for these ships. Resource Network is the next big part of that, and you will begin to find more and more uses for multi-crew people than just sitting and firing in turrets. We all want that very much and Resource Network is the next big push on that. And then there will be many others after that.

Yogi Klatt · Principal Vehicle Programmer

It does. Actually, there's a misconception that the shields and weapons are powered off. They are powered on, because while you're in NAV mode, they're still regenerating. They're just not effective or active, so to speak. So, as I said, the only thing that we currently have in is that when you're in NAV mode, the regeneration rates of your weapons and shields are a little bit lower. But whether we keep that or not is a different question. So your guns still regenerate ammunition. Your shields are not regenerating into your shield faces, they're regenerating into a buffer. But when you're swapping back from NAV mode to SCM, that buffer is then filling up the shield faces quite quickly, and when this happens, that process cannot be interrupted by any hits. So when you come out and the spool time is over, you have the full shield strength available to you.

Yogi Klatt · Principal Vehicle Programmer

At the moment, not. Honestly, the team, we don't know yet if we're keeping this or not. At the moment, we don't see any reason to actually allow that, because we're really fast and we would like at least the opportunity that the counter gameplay against missiles in NAV mode has more to do with your maneuvering than just putting out some countermeasures. Actually, maybe Brent and Bayor, could you talk about how this is currently being used in the Arena Commander modes?

Michael "Bayor" · Director of Player Experience

Sure. What we see is that people are using missiles to counter someone moving into NAV mode. Typically, when somebody is moving into NAV mode, there's a spool-up period. If you're paying attention to the signature, you can actually see an EM spike on the ship when they go into NAV mode. And so people who are skilled and understand what that looks like can already start to spool up their missiles to counter that. Or they can watch the speeds. They can watch the rate of closure or the rate of separation that they're seeing, which is available on the UI. And they can start to lock on a missile and launch one to counter that and force them either to drop out of NAV mode to launch countermeasures, or to figure out a manual way of evading, or take a hit from a missile. There are some balance things I think we can probably talk about in the future to figure out how to get that to work a little bit better, but it is interesting gameplay and it does add a little more spice to the use of missiles than we had before.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

And some of the behavior I've seen is folks dropping chaff and then switching into NAV mode, which is a tactic that's viable because the chaff can't be fired in NAV mode. And I want to be clear, you're saying that right now the thought is that it's not usable in NAV mode. That doesn't mean that some very compelling argument can't be made and change our minds.

Rich · Lead Game Designer, Vehicle Experience Team

Yeah, and that's a really good point. This is about the now. When we talk, we're talking about the now. We don't sit here and go, we're never going to do this or we're never going to do that. We've made certain decisions based upon things we've learned and things we've seen along the way, but those things change. So we're definitely not afraid of changing that rule in that circumstance. It's one of the things that's open. We thought it might work that way, but if it doesn't work that way in game and the feedback says otherwise, we can change it.

Michael "Bayor" · Director of Player Experience

We have put in changes recently, not specifically to master modes. People might have noticed them actually in 3.22.1, broadly. There's been some changes to signature readouts and how those work, thanks to some of the communication between my team and Yogi and Rich's team. But there's been some changes, and those have been inherited into the master modes stuff as well.

Rich · Lead Game Designer, Vehicle Experience Team

I think they're definitely going to complement each other. We're definitely working with each other on what these features mean for the flight. I don't think you're going to see anything taken away. I think you're going to get more out of this. You're going to be able to move your ship and your components in more directions in the future, which will strengthen what that ship means, depending on the choices you make for that ship. And it's critical to the flight, it's critical to the combat performance, and it's critical to that moment in time. So if you've made certain choices, it's going to mean certain things. Let's say your signature and heat go up in sync, it's going to make you more vulnerable and stuff like that. So the player's going to have more choice in the future.

Yogi Klatt · Principal Vehicle Programmer

Well, it still boils down to this: if somebody wants to escape and he has the better equipment to do that and he has more experience and skill, then that ship might escape. But if you want to work as a bounty hunter, you are reliant on having very dedicated equipment anyway. One of the things we're thinking about here is the importance of distortion weapons. Since the quantum drive is the thing that allows the speed advantages in NAV mode, we're thinking about making the quantum drive, for example, very susceptible to distortion damage. But being susceptible to distortion damage means that the attacker needs to bring either an EMP device, or swap out some of their hardpoints for distortion weapons. And distortion weapons are always going to be less effective in taking down shields. In fact, in 3.21, we actually did a pretty big change to the distortion system so that shields are very resistant against distortion damage, so you need to bring energy weapons to actually bring them down. Again, it goes a little bit more in the direction of, as a player, you're being forced to bring specialized equipment. But if you have specialized equipment, then you are absolutely still able to do your bounty hunting stuff. Part of the equation is how big are the ships that you can trap and snare, right? But that's also something we have yet to answer internally, because there are some situations where, oh, there's a tiny little ship, why can I not jump away with my 890, right?

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

And it's not a discussion that is exclusively for you and your team. It will also involve gameplay designers. The people who are assigned to build out the bounty hunting career will obviously have a say in that kind of stuff and what kind of tools and methods we can make available to them to work within the master modes system. The bounty hunter dream is core. It's one of those core things. We've talked about it forever. It's something CR is very, very interested in and always has been. So while we may not have specific answers or details for it now, when it comes time for bounty hunter V2 or whatever version we're on, you can expect to learn more information about it when that time comes.

Yogi Klatt · Principal Vehicle Programmer

OK, so nothing is off the table. Of course, we're somewhat more resistant towards certain things than others. Obviously, the SCM speed limits were brought up by the community quite a lot. But then again, we're getting a lot of advantages from that. So we will try to address the worries that people have. For example, usually when people say, oh, the speeds are too slow, this means either they cannot go fast from A to B, or it means they're not evasive enough, right? But these problems can be solved in a different way. So concerning the speeds, we will try to be rather conservative with changes. It does not mean that we're fixed, right? If our gameplay tests with the community show, oh, shit, we should just add like 100 meters per second more, fine, we'll do it, right? But it needs to go through a proper process internally, because it's just not something that we can right away promise. But nothing, and I mean nothing, is ever fixed, right?

Rich · Lead Game Designer, Vehicle Experience Team

Yeah, and I do think it's important to say that with any kind of values that we're tuning in, we're always open to trying different things. But we've set out a framework of what we think works. And in the end, it comes down to a choice. Because before, we had a lot higher speeds. And that wasn't always positive. So we've made the decision based upon certain factors that a lower speed works better. But it doesn't mean that moving to a lower speed never has any negatives, because it's a choice at the end of the day. We've made that choice to go slower, and we do think overall it's going to be better than the speeds we had before. But it's never going to be 100%, 10 out of 10, solving every single problem that we have in the game, for example, because we're based in certain physical realities of flight and power performance and stuff like that. We're a little bit tied to physical realities, more than saying we're not going to change these numbers.

Michael "Bayor" · Director of Player Experience

Usually what I'm looking for to pass on to Yogi and Rich is ways to deepen what we have. So what I see of what we created is a framework. And so now once we have a framework, we need to find ways to add depth to it later, to add individuality to these individual archetypes and these individual ships. And so that's the kind of feedback I'm looking for: somebody specifically talking about, hey, I'm trying to use my Khartu-al, my San'tok.yāi, and I'm finding it not very effective in these specific ways, and it doesn't match the role as described. I'm looking to pass that kind of information off. Or I'm using my Vulture and it's basically impossible for me to get out of a combat scenario. I never do. I'm always trapped into it. Those kinds of things where players are presenting problems that I can then pass off to the team with context and go, okay, this is what we're seeing players observing. Does this match the design we're going for? Maybe we need to make some adjustments there. And it's that deepening. How can we add further depth? How can we add further skill checks? How can we actually make this a little bit better of a skill curve, a little deeper, all that kind of stuff. That's usually what I'm looking for.

Yogi Klatt · Principal Vehicle Programmer

But just to add on that, there was some more to it, right? Because what we're also getting from Michael's team are sometimes recordings of actual flight combat that happens, which we can then analyze and go back and forth. We're getting KDR graphs and so on. So sometimes we see that something is wrong in the data. There's a lot of stuff that is going on. It's not just the qualitative stuff that Michael just described. It's also quantitative data.

Michael "Bayor" · Director of Player Experience

Yeah, that's an important part. I do want to mention that we don't just look at Spectrum and Reddit or YouTube videos and go, this is how it is. We compare what people are saying with what we observe in the data from our behavior analytics, too. We look at kill-to-death ratios. We look at accuracy values. And we combine that with our own observations in the game. So sometimes people might be like, multi-crew ships are terrible. Then we'll look at the kill-death ratios and we'll go, well, looks like they're doing really well. And then we'll go into the game and look and go, wow, everyone just avoids them. And that provides that kind of context. We don't ever look at a singular piece of information and go, this is the truth of the experience. We look at everything we possibly can to provide all of that context.