Chris Roberts · CEO / Game Director

Well, okay. So there is a level of persistence now. For instance, what you leave on your ship or in your hab now should persist. Obviously, what happens to your items, their state and stuff, should persist, not between patches, but during the patch. But we're doing a complete refactor of the whole database, the item cache, and that's the other big hand-in-hand job that's happening with object container streaming and server meshing, so we can persist everything much more easily. So the goal is, if I'm running around and I drop my gun in the woods somewhere in Hurston and I leave, when I come back, that gun will be there. And obviously there'll be some limitations, like we'll only allow so many objects in certain areas. And if someone, when everyone's not looking, probably just came by and took that gun and got rid of it... We'll do garbage cleanup if there's too much stuff there, but the idea is that fluidly you can persist anywhere in the game, whether it's in space, whether it's on a planet, whether it's inside a room or a location. So we're refactoring the database to be able to do that in an efficient manner, so we can properly persist states, objects and locations, which also is necessary if you as a player decide, oh, I'm going to set my base down here, and you put your own little outpost somewhere, that persists. So we're building the structure to do that.

And then the other thing that's actually quite important for me, and I think everyone on the game side, is that we currently wipe the database between patches. We don't want to do that. So once this refactor to the more flexible and fluid item persistence cache happens, it will enable us to not have to do that. Because the only reason why we wipe the database sometimes is because some of the data schemas have changed, for how we're storing item data and stuff like that. But with the new setup we don't need to do that. So the money you earn, or the items you've gained, or the ships you've earned in the game, you can persist from patch to patch. So our goal is, even if we roll out a new patch, we're not wiping the database. Now, we'll reserve the right to go in there and make some unilateral fixes in case there was an exploit and everybody earned a bunch of money. We'd reserve the right to say, I'm sorry, we're going to have to take that money back and those items you bought with it. But the goal would be that people should be able to play, keep their character going from patch to patch, not have to start from scratch again. Because it's fairly frustrating. It's like Demon's Souls. It's like, oh, I died, I gotta start from the beginning again and go all the way forward. Because right now the motivation for you to be earning money so you can buy that ship or the item is not so great when you know the new patch is coming up, because you know, okay, I get it and I'm going to lose it anyway. So we want to be able to persist that. And then, of course, there's things like additional insurance, like item insurance. So again, I bought my gun, and I get some extra item insurance, and if I lose it, then I can have a chance of getting it back. So I think those are all things that would encourage people even now, even though the game isn't fully finished, to be playing it like it's a finished game and building up their possessions and character and really engaging.