Star Citizen: Calling All Devs - The Economy of Spaceships

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:00

   you hey everybody welcome to another edition of calling all Deb's our weekly Q&A series where I take questions from you the star says and backer imposed them directly to our developers usually without makeup have you enjoyed the last week of pre pre princess Lando I know I have all right let's get things started this week we are going to be calling all Deb's newbie with a question but probably the question that has come up for over as long as I follow the project and we're gonna explore the question a bit is maybe not getting a precise answer well you'll see when it comes up

2. 00:00:46

   Jake how you doing man hey how's it going I'm doing well welcome to calling all des thanks good to be here alright we're gonna jump right in this cuz this one's gonna take a while my glasses are filthy we've got a question this is a question that has has permeated the Stars is an experience since the project began let's just jump right into it how long thick how long do we expect it to take to earn a ship in the finished game ah really good question and it's also a really loaded question I think there are a lot of things that go into that the economy team is here in ATX and we have a lot of discussion what's that

3. 00:01:35

   kind of thing I'd say that we can't really say exactly which of these ships will cost a certain amount of time so I can talk to you about how what kind of things go into the price of the ships and what goes into the economy behind them where players will be divided to ships so when we look at the ships one of the things that we're looking at right now it's not necessarily the UEC or the dollars to earn it but we're trying to figure out the time to earn it so we look at items in such a way that we don't say like oh it's a certain amount of UEC or or certain amount of this or that we look at and say oh it should be 3 hours to earn this thing or it should be you know one hour of effort and of course if you're a better or worse player that effort will be you know or that amount of time that you'll

4. 00:02:23

   spend will be more or less right you can't just sit around and log into the game and and do the wave emotes for hours on end and still make the money required to earn you know whatever item you're looking for well I'm out Jarrod's primary strategy right there well not the waiver mode it would be a different emo ah we're working on that all right it's a continuum sorry so a lot of things go into - what causes the ship to have a lot of ever one of the things that we're really concerned about right now is making sure the progression is correct we put out these ship prices to the community and we had a surprising amount or surprising feedback actually some people thought that the prices were too much and a reasonable majority thought that the prices actually worked enough so it's

5. 00:03:10

   communities kind of divided on this based on the feedback that we've been watching in the evocati and in the on the forums on the website but really there's there's a lot more to the economy that we have yet to add to the game that's part of the thing that that players are probably feeling is that right now we put these ships out with the amount of effort that we expect the game to take today well actually we we delivered them with what it will end up being in the future it was a very hard target to hit because there's a lot of things that aren't in the game currently that will be in the game there and the reasoning behind that is that we really wanted to make sure that these the different kinds of things are the economy has a lot of things going on and at some point we have to say look we

6. 00:03:59

   gotta aim for what the game is going to be not for what the game is and that's why we made the decision for this particular thing we are looking into ways to kind of mitigate the effect of having you know a very expensive fully completed game kind of price on these ships right now with very alpha ways to earn them so that's one of the things that we're looking into and we're kind of looking to the best way to do that gotcha so you're saying have these ships at what we anticipate their final costs to be and then adjust the ways that we can earn money in the Alpha right now due to an accelerated rate yes so that people don't have to nickel and dime their way up to get them because there's only so many different

7. 00:04:46

   opportunities to err and money in the game today exactly well I even consider the stanton system right this is this is a relatively secure solar system with very few like risky business opportunities to engage in like there's there should be a very low risk low reward kind of thing going on in the stanton system now whether or not that's actually the case right now there's a different story but that's kind of what the the idea of this is and so we don't want to have these low level like courier jobs being the kind of thing that will finance a hammer head right like so the incomes that players see currently in the game are not sufficient to earn these ships and we know because that's what the system is about this system is not the kind of thing where you can start up a company and do that

8. 00:05:33

   where we are we have to look at the big picture and see what kind of things are going to happen in the very far strategic view of star citizen not just what the game currently offers yeah that's a I think that's a struggle we find that struggle in every aspect of star citizen it's it's the yeah because running a live game development in the middle of our development is presents a lot of unique challenges that most other projects would never encounter and that's a you can't just you can't just target everything for how it's going to be in the finished product because because because because there aren't enough pieces it's it's you have you have mining right now and you have you have some cargo stuff but we were missing Salvage we're missing a you know a bunch of other ways for you to

9. 00:06:21

   supplement your income so so targeting everything that we do for how it's supposed to be later doesn't give us a very compelling experience right now but at the same time if you just everything down right now then as the game develops prices start to creep and everything you know as things and we go back a my day a Hornet only cost this right and now it cost this and whatever so there's there's there's going to be some struggle there it always there's always gonna be some some inflation for lack of a word as the game continues and but and then of course there's just balance adjustments there's the you know that that's if everything that we thought we were doing never changes you know and we're dis explaining but then as the

10. 00:07:08

    game progresses as people give her feedback back you know we're gonna be like you they say but the things some people thoughts the Cutlass should cost this and other people thought think the colors should cut you should cost this and we of course have our ideas and our internal math and whatever but the virtue of having a live environment in the middle of our development is that we can listen to our community and take their feedback into consideration these decisions so it's it's it's a challenge that affects everything and I'm not surprised to hear that it affects your work on the economy it is it is my work it doesn't it just affects my work I mean that's that's the entirety of what we do so you just live in spreadsheets that's I am the king of spreadsheets I have so many spreadsheets that do so many amazing things I did that it kind of has a negative connotation sometimes

11. 00:07:56

    like I know that people like to like to diss on designer you know spreadsheet designers that don't open the game but you know the truth is that we do open the game right we do experience is it one of the problems with being an economy designer is that anything that I do and the economy is doomed to be anecdotal right I can't go in and say like oh well how much is the cost of this material going over you know shipping from place a to place B well if I did that I'm not giving an accurate assessment of the system because I'm not playing in a server with you know hundreds of other people at the same time right like so it's something we have to rely heavily on the community feedback to figure out like how does how does our economy work how does it feel like what our players actually experiencing because there's a big difference between what we hope the players experience and what they

12. 00:08:44

    actually end up experiencing right and the only way that we can figure that out is by listening to the forum's listen to player input seeing what the like how the economy system is performing in the game yeah and and using this thing that we have this live environment the middle of our development to our advantage that's right it's it's I mean we all we all have to log in you know we do these we do these a regular play test where you know it's it's everybody's got organ we do these organized events where all the developers get in and play it's like that most people have no idea it's happening it's like but uh it's important because we all we have to know what the clue you know but what the politicians thing is you know what the cost of a gallon of milk we have to know what the cost of a car in a big Benny is is you know we have to keep that in our minds at all time you know to know what the player experiences but then you know

13. 00:09:33

    we go home when we watch the twitch streams and the YouTube videos and all the stuff and see the player experience and we get to do that during our development and that's such an amazing tool and I have to imagine that's a big part of your workflow yes that's right like we deal with with the economy team deals with the design of large groups of people like how the the player base as a whole reacts to the game and and that's very difficult with with a live environment but also very rewarding it's really cool to be able to look at feedback and and react to it now I'm gonna have to ask because I I don't just advocate first for CIGI also advocate for the community the spreadsheets you you want you want to show me one I have to ask but don't show

14. 00:10:25

    anyone well I can show you various amounts of interesting spreadsheets I'm not going to show you one that shows you well the best trade routes are which I have but there are other interesting spreadsheets that show kind of the breakdown of what the ships are which I also can't show you now that I think about it yeah um ya know and for those wondering why why I thought this was open development why can't you show it's because it's it's it's it's temporary influx information and we do try and because it's constantly in flux and cuz it's constantly changing we do try to be responsible with the stuff that we we should be show you now that's not just maybe at a future date you know when things are more locked in we can we can crack open that shell a little bit more but right now while it's still in such a malleable form we're not I just I could I could hear the community in the back

15. 00:11:13

    of my head when we started mentioning the spreadsheets them asking like like like et and Elliot like there Elliot and I'm et and I could feel it and whether so I had to ask and address it but yeah but there's how they can't but you know we do try to and you know another reason that we don't show all these spreadsheets is just because like part of the gameplay we feel is finding out what some of this content is right and providing all the answers kind of really shortcuts a lot of that that entertainment of explorations that starts that is supposed to be about yeah have you seen these apps that folks are making or that were there figuring out the trade routes yeah yeah we love them that is like literally what we hope players would be able to do some of them are very accurate from them or not

16. 00:12:00

    so how hard is that how hard is it to not just jump on spectrum be like you're really close you actually know it's it's like watching it's like watching your friends like do a puzzle that's really fun you know but you know the answer already is yours like you're like cheering them on be like yeah break my system like do it you can you can figure it out there's like a loophole right here that we we didn't address that you guys can probably get what anything else you want to you want to share Jake user yeah and actually there's a we never actually talked about what goes into making a more or less do it let's do it so be a one-question calling all Depp's let's just do it so we one of the things we take into account is the performance of different

17. 00:12:48

    things compared to each other there's a couple things going on one is the actual items that are like the quantity of items that go into it and the other is kind of the performance of the ship in the ends we want a better performing ship to be more expensive that just makes logical sense and all across the board right so typical game design 101 it's almost typical life 101 like a lot of our stuff is translating life into what a video game would do well if that was your I'd make a lot more money than I do hi Chris I'm just so what we end up doing is taking things like how many hard points is is happening how many weapons heart points is this ship have and then relate those into part of the value of the ship so ship that has more hard points and the costing more or ship that has more

18. 00:13:37

    power plant sockets will that will go into consideration a ship that has more seats for crew members right ship that has more room for cargo all of those things get abstracted any kind of these value points that at the end of the day can put like actual value numbers on each of these ships where otherwise they can be compared because I mean like it's very difficult to say compare the the value of a shield generator to the value of 20 cargo slots on your ship you know that's kind of tough stuff to do so what we do is we abstract it away we turn into value and then we compare those other things to each other and then we also put in how much material costs we think will go into those ships and that's how we get luxury ships like the you know the consolation Phoenix costing a lot more because the materials that go into that end up

19. 00:14:24

    costing a lot more okay so there's a there's a kind of a real-world logistics thing all the in you know the quantifiable stuff that poor item ports and the seeds this like that and then there's kind of a lower score if you will the the role in the in the universe is being luxury the luxury tax as we see some people call it yeah you know yes the eventual goal is to make those things be one of the same however like we want the Phoenix con relation to be a luxury ship and to have really good reasons why it's a luxury ship you know like it to have you know all of the things that go into making a shield generator be a better shield generator like that all comes from

20. 00:15:11

    materials that are mined on various planets that are so hard to get you know that are hazardous to store or that are difficult to process or whatever and then behind the scenes those are all put together in such a way with you know technology and different manufacturing plans and different you know manufacturers that actually translates from the effort that it takes into the value of the thing so we don't want to just have shield generators that this one's better just because and why does it cost more because it's better you know it's kind of a circular argument what we want to do is really link the hats to the entire economic chain all the way down to the rocks that these things are mined from you want those to have better qualities you know that that influence and inform the performance of the items and then go in to actually being better on those ships and then

21. 00:15:58

    when you look at the ship in the end it's just a bunch of materials and a bunch of processes applied to a ship that comes out to be you know and a bunch of Labor tacked on that comes out to be the price of the ship so that's what we're working towards we're working towards all of that being making perfect logical sense gonna take a long time to do but that's the goal that's what Chris wants that's what we want so yeah what we're aiming for doesn't no surprise that Chris wants it granular down to the materials used to make the components that come standard inside the ship that's right is there I grew up as a baseball guy worked in baseball for a number of years you talked a lot about intangibles the the because baseball is

22. 00:16:46

    a very number and stats specific sport more so than any other sport in the world but there's always that that last column the the intangibles the things that can't be quantified how do you factor those things into into the ship and the ship costs or the economy we try to make them tangible is the answer I suppose it's like for instance it's a very challenging task where we constantly have to look at all the things that add value we have to really assess what the value actually comes from for instance while doing the ships one of the things that we scored was the ark range of different guns that were available on it and that's kind of hard to put into a flat number you know like

23. 00:17:34

    because that's a very value judgment kind of a thing that you know ended up putting a number on it so that you can definitively say this thing has better Ark compared to to this ship the joke going around the kind of the office is that you know like Jake frequently puts value on on human life or you know love or or other things that should never have numbers was the kind of thing that that I regularly have to put numbers on that's kind of kind of the name of game the game for my job so how'd you get that judges you was it a short straw or did you just lose a bet there you know I I love it like I am super excited economy is always the kind of thing that that I really get into playing games I'm been fascinated with it for mmo's since forever I was the I was the dude that

24. 00:18:22

    was back in town crafting stuff and you know hunting materials and in that kind of thing like a leveling is leveling it's cool but man economy that is that is where it's at so Jake the Ferengi yeah all right Jake well gosh I think that's it this is turned into a special edition calling all that Jake Jake edition reitman that's it obviously there's there's a hundred more questions to do we'll see if we can't schedule an RVT sometime next year okay because this is like December by the time this airs and whatnot so I yeah we'll see if we can't say Gilardi didn't have an open some opening yourself to some questions from

25. 00:19:10

    some backers if it but that's the mineable to you that's totally fine that would be often I'm not going to put a specific date on it I learned that lesson last year because schedules change and whatever but we're gonna we're gonna shoot for an RVT with Jake melee next year I rarely have don't say it I I often have strategy tasks so they can be they can be moved around their mom having tactics tasks or fires I do have some but they're they're usually sparse enough them alright and I make an apple whenever alright well we'll discuss after the new year and see we'd see if we can we can't put together an art TV and expose you a little bit more to the community all right man fun I love talking the community I need to get that

26. 00:19:59

    on those farms more cuz getting their feedback really is like the coolest part I'll let you get back to work thank you so much thanks Jared yep all right thanks so much Jake mealy now we got time for one more question so we're gonna go back to a past version of ourselves and an extra question that didn't make it into a previous show it's a Chad McKinney and the question about physicalized inventory that I think you might be interested in take away past me alright thank you so much up next we got Chad McKinney here with a question about physicalized inventories Chad how you doing man doing well yeah I got a question for you we're running Luke Luke pres Luke Luke Davis took like 14 minutes so we're running short on time I'm gonna give a afterwards but anyway it says but but the boss like you can keep the show on

27. 00:20:50

    that thing I'm trying but the information has to flow all right what are the plans on how physicalized inventories will be implemented for instance what are the tr0 plans and what are the future plans what are the plans talk to you about plans for physicalize inventory Jed it's a great question it's a fine question that's a fine it's something that we've been thinking about for a long time and I have had on my mind for a long time with 3.0 we did a really big push to increase the level of persistence in the game and this included some work to get for instance loose item persistence working in ships which was necessary to get cargo working however we've known

28. 00:21:38

    for a long time that we we have this kind of you know trick that we're a lot relying on the giant magic bag of holding that the player has where you just kind of stuff everything you just kind of pull it out where was it and so yes physical inventory is where we're headed so we want to have it to where you know you you don't have this magical place where all your guns are stored you know you have it on your your person or maybe in a bag that you're holding and if it's not there then well you don't have physical access to it so you can't equip it you may own it and maybe in some location that you own or a ship that you end but that doesn't mean that you can equip it and we want to start using the ships the ship storage Habs physical locations you know eventually that players owned themselves as the kind of physical storage however this

29. 00:22:28

    kind of starts to get into something that we're also working towards which is global persistence which itself is pretty closely tied in with server streaming and server meshing so actually these are big topics that we're starting to look towards now that we've got object container streaming starting to look good on the client and now that we're considering what server-side streaming needs to get working actually one of the big things is global persistence so we need to be able to stream out parts of the universe on the server and in order to stream it in correctly that means actually that place needs to be persisted out correctly so that actually is gonna help for physical persistence and physical inventory because that means that if I leave something somewhere say in an outpost you know it's still gonna be there if I

30. 00:23:15

    come back next week potentially unless somebody took it so the plans are we're gonna do it we have some ideas we're gonna increase our global persistence that said you know some fine details about like can I use my PMA app in the mobi glass if I'm standing next to the locker do I have to physically take it out things like that those details you know there's still a little bit in the air I think as we get closer to working on it we're gonna hammer down those kind of details but we're working on the big tech that's necessary to to deliver on it and it's not something that we've forgotten about that all so I imagine it's something that people are gonna want to keep an eye on the public road map for as far as when they're gonna be able to when they can expect things like global persistence and then the persist and the physicalize

31. 00:24:03

    inventories together way into these star citizen British University the other thing that I'll just quick more quickly is that in addition to kind of the the core system work to get the persistence behavior working there's also a lot of other miscellaneous work surrounding it so that includes like any kind of item game code that needs to be written for maybe like lockers and then also actor code that needs to be written to do any kind of the carrying logic to to pass things back and forth we have some of that but I think they'll be more as well as some animation work that's going to be necessary to do that like smooth locomotion in the transitions with items being faster out of these things so there's there's work to go around it's where are already seeing people carry big Bennie's all over the the stanton system right now it's it's taken the it's taken the community by strong I

32. 00:24:52

    watched a stream yesterday where somebody just spent a good four hours carrying a drink that they got from the bartender everywhere they could possibly take it in the in the starts in the stands as it is today so yeah I think I think global persistence will be a will be a huge step towards towards you know watch watching people you know like hide things behind plates like go to the the farthest corners of Nicks or what it hides them they're like okay we're gonna we're gonna come back like a week later and see if it's still there and go away play the rest of the game and to come back and find this stuff still there it'll be really cool alright man that's it so I got I'll let you get back to work cool thanks take a good job past me well that about does it for this week's show a special thanks to Jake mealy and Chad McKinney for appearing on the show with us this week remember to

33. 00:25:39

    submit your questions for consideration each and every week up in the thread up on spectrum and don't forget to vote so for calling all dads on content manager Jared I could be and we'll see you next week everybody thanks for watching for the latest and greatest in star citizen squadron 42 you can subscribe to our Channel or you can check out some of the other shows and you can also head to our website at