John Griffiths · Lead Environment Artist, Distribution Centers product owner

Great question. Well, what's known is we want them to be the end game. So you've done the story or what have you. You've explored your career as much as you want to. And then you can dip into these end-game missions, as it were. And this is where you're going to find super rare loot or super high-value items. And they're going to take place at DCs which are owned by big corporations or big brands or big factions. And like you said before, they were the new UGFs, underground facilities. And we still have the idea that some of them do go underground, and that's where the raid takes place. So not only do you have to fight your way through the airspace of the DC, then realise it's too hot, so land, get your ground vehicles out and approach on foot, you've got to get into the thing and then down into the raid. So they're going to be difficult. They're going to expect you to be A-game people going in. You have your squad all kitted out. Everyone has a role to play. When the resource network comes online, you're going to have to work strategically, I can't really say long words, to try and get in. Which is going to be great. And then what happens if, when you're in there, reinforcements are getting called in but you've disabled everything, so it's actually even harder for you to get out? We want it to be tough, but we also want you to be rewarded for doing them as well. So that's kind of the general overview that we want. We now have to go and do that.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

I want to be real clear. This is not a 2024 thing. Raids are not a 2024 thing. It's not on the calendar for 2024. Don't even ask me beyond that. But as Star Citizen continues to develop, as we continue to harden the systems and it becomes closer and closer to the game that we want it to be, we're going to continuously ask ourselves these MMO-related questions. We don't want every trapping of every MMO that you ever see out there. We're not trying to be every single game that ever was. But there are certain tenets and there are certain tropes, if you will, of an MMO space that interest us, that we like. And I can see us trying a few of them. I mean, organizations are just guilds by another name. So not every MMO trope is bad. Some of them are expected. Some of them are frankly necessary to achieve the experience that we want. Raids will be an interesting experiment for us when that time comes, because we don't have a health bar, a lot of the traditional class systems and stuff like that. So it'll be an interesting experiment when that time comes, and I'm looking forward to us trying it. Will it work? Will it not work? Maybe it's going to be a hover mode. Maybe it's going to be a master mode. You don't know. I like that we try things. But again, that's not a 2024 thing.

John Griffiths · Lead Environment Artist, Distribution Centers product owner

Yeah, I think additionally to that, I've been harping on about how big these things are on the ground for quite a while, and I just don't think anyone realizes how big they are. So I'm really looking forward to them going out and people going, 'Oh, he was telling the truth this whole time.' But if you think some of the missions that they're going to release with are going to be difficult, then think, okay, so if this is how hard it is now, just think where we can get to when raids come online. And you think it's big on the ground now, just think of the networks you're going to have to go through to conquer these raids. So just bear that in the back of your mind when these do go out.