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Speaking of the resources and the collecting, one thing we didn't really mention in persistence, a stage slightly different from the iCache persistence we've talked about, is persistence of resources on moons and planets, right?

TL;DRResource persistence on planets and moons is targeted for 3.9, so minerals deplete as players extract them, driving exploration, scanning and conflict over rich locations.

Todd PapyStar Citizen Live Game Director

In fact, I think our team is doing it this quarter.

Chris RobertsCEO / Game Director

For 3.9. So the cool thing with that is that now there's just always whatever the mineral is there, but with the persistence, absolutely, if there's a really strong vein of stuff there, it will be gone if players are there and they've already...

Chris RobertsCEO / Game Director

Yeah, and this goes back to, again, it's one of the things I find most interesting. It's discovery. It's actually finding...

Chris RobertsCEO / Game Director

And that's exploration and scanning.

Tony ZurovecPersistent Universe Director

That's exactly it. And eventually, right now we're still very limited. You basically fly over the surface of a planet and you happen to come upon stuff. Eventually we want to be able to do a more analytical, a more detailed analysis of a planet so that you can find these things, but it's time consuming, it's labor intensive, it requires equipment.

Todd PapyStar Citizen Live Game Director

That's exactly it. Because a lot of times you find the rocks and you're like, I don't know which one it is.

Tony ZurovecPersistent Universe Director

Not only is it hard, but most of these things, excepting things like plant growth that regrow and things like that... when you're talking about metals and minerals and things like that, there is a fixed quantity of those within the ground in a given area. And that's what we're looking to deliver for 3.9, so that there is this much gold in this particular area. And if you happen to extract it, over the course of a day or two or three days, whatever, there will gradually become less and less and less. And then you need to go out and find a new location. And this is where it starts getting interesting...

Chris RobertsCEO / Game Director

A lot of conflict over the locations.

Tony ZurovecPersistent Universe Director

That's exactly it. And it's easier for me to follow a miner to wherever he's going on the presumption that he's already found some valuable place than it is for me to go scan and do all of this analysis of the planet and find my own location, which might involve, who knows, eventually hours and hours of work to find a really rich one. And so now you'll have people tagging along.

Chris RobertsCEO / Game Director

Driven by, oh yeah, this is a great place to buy resources, therefore I can make money. I mean, that gameplay all emerges out of it, and then if it feeds into the background universe simulation that we're running, the thing that you're working on, Tony, I just think, I haven't seen a game like this, and it is literally like a second universe that you can just escape into.

Pillar Talk›Looking Into 2020·
Published on this date.11 Feb 2020