What is the current thinking regarding the immediate future of Star Ciitzen's party system?

Sure. So the party system, what we're doing right now is we're laying the groundwork for party organization and party being able to just better communicate with other members, including members of your party. And the main system we're implementing is called the group system. So groups are really just groups of other people, whether they're in your primary party or whether they are temporary groups they set up for chatting. And once we get that system in place, which we're working on currently, we'll also be able to do things like chat between the members of your party, specify temporary party groups so that you could do things like quantum link together, so everyone in the party can use their quantum drive and end up in the same destination. We can do things like set up a group for when you do missions. So when you do missions, we have to adjust the mission system itself, but you can invite other people, whether they're in your private party or another grouping of members, to include into that particular mission and then divvy up the rewards as you see fit. We can do things like set up dynamic temporary groups. So when you're in a room, we can set up a group that specifies who's chatting, so within earshot, you can find out exactly which people are talking. And then one other aspect that we're incorporating into the group system is that you'll be able to physically interact with people that are in front of you. So if there's some person in front of you, because of the group system and how it'll let you listen in to a conversation that that person is either having directly with you or in your vicinity, that person is super friendly, hey, you'd be able to click on them and invite them into your party or as a contact list member. And then you can do things like whisper and have a personal conversation with them, or have a general conversation with them or other people you invite into that group. And anything that requires any type of communication within a certain group of people is what we will be incorporating into this group system.

Wow, so this sounds like a system that's fully fleshed out and already done and should be in the game tomorrow, right?

So like I was just mentioning, the underlying group system is what's being worked on. We're working with our members internally to make sure that we'll have the back-end system for that so that we can do things also with Spectrum chat. So one thing that we'll be able to incorporate is that you shouldn't have to be in the game live to be able to simply communicate with other members of your group. So say it's a primary party. The primary party is represented in Spectrum chat. If you're offline, you should be able to chat with anybody that's live, and vice versa. They should be able to talk to anybody that just isn't signed on but happens to be in Spectrum. So you can do things like organize future events. Because we'll have the status of everyone that's within those groups visible to either side, when you're in Spectrum, you should be able to see, hey, you know what? Jared is near Port Olisar and he's just about ready to get into a mission. That sounds awesome. I should be able to see that info and then click on your name and go, you know what? I actually want to log in. So a single click should be able to start up the game, and then you should automatically be able to join the same server as you, and then we'll have rules for where you spawn, like maybe you spawn near them or within one of the spawnable beds on your ship. So we'll figure that stuff out as we go along. But you should be able to really quickly group up and organize things, because I think one thing we're lacking right now is the ability to kind of figure out exactly where people are and what they're doing. So we're going to make that a richer experience and make it simpler so that everyone can coordinate and do stuff together, which is really the crux of systems like multiplayer, or just being a big part of a party in general.

This is my time to say that these are, of course, our first intentions and the things that we're building towards. Whatever the next iteration of this that makes it in the game may not be all these features, and this will be something that we continue to build on and continue to iterate. And you should check out Around the Verse in the coming months, as that will be the place where we'll really showcase the work on this feature and stuff like this.

Right. So once we get some of the basic group system in, I think the first place that players will see what we're implementing is going to be in mobiGlas. We'll have a much nicer version of our chat system, so that you'll have a primary chat in the lobby that will use a nice interface, so you don't have to memorize all these kind of strange keybinds. We'll improve the visor chat as well. And we'll have some better visibility about specifically who's around you, and some interactions with those people physically, so that you don't have to go hunting for their name and input these CVars in the console, which are really difficult to use right now.