Star Citizen Live Gamedev: New Player Experience

12 May 202300:51:141,272 linesWatch on YouTube ↗

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

00:00:01
California love that you're intending to get and you'd always get some other version of California Love it's like why do I have the remix why do I you know there's a version that focuses more on Dre a version of focus is more On Tupac it's like I just want the original that I grew up with like is that so hard like you know what I'm talking about yes yeah I know what you're talking you know what you're talking about James has no idea hi everybody welcome to another exciting edition of Star Citizen LIVE Game Dev the improved new player experience I'm your host Jared Huckabee and we're just talking about the the discography of Tupac the joining us on the show this week are senior members from our Star Citizen development team we've got uh Star Citizen live game director Mr Todd Pappy hello and uh lead game designer yeah James K how you doing man
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uh welcome to the show uh because this is always somebody's first show let's do some quick introductions besides what I just did Todd who are you what do you do for Star City uh I'm a game director on Star Citizen so Tony and I are the code game directors of it um but I watch over more the player experience and and basically what players are doing moment to moment as well as content going into the game and James um I am the lead content designer um we focus I would say mostly our missions but is there's all kinds of curation going on um so it can be a location set up Bluetooth mindable distribution things like that so sandbox experience as well as missions some books yeah so you take the the stuff all the tools that are created by like mft and whatnot
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and then put them together in different exciting ways and then create that list of requests like hey I really want to do this but I don't have the module I need to do this and it's like that so all right cool we've had mft on the show a bunch of times in the last couple months so it's nice to get on the other side of that and see how that works um Today's Show is about uh one of the new features that are coming in 319 uh the improved new player experience but before we get into that I want to talk about creating things for new players to begin with um Star Citizen is a notoriously deep heavy game to try to try to get into you know to try to just walk into off the streets yeah the learning curve the learning curve is huge it extends even to our website you're trying to
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have the time trying to figure you know out what what you want to do shout out to turbulent I'm going to get an email letter from from Benoit on that uh but uh they're doing great work uh we have tried a tutorial before many years ago um talk to me about that first effort well I mean basically obviously that one was hand scripted from end to end and so if any new feature came online anything else that the player needed to learn came online at that point in time it was very difficult to separate things and move them apart and then interject new aspects of gameplay there so it really fell to the Wayside you know as as we were so heavy in development at that
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time um so it upkeeping that thing just became too big of a task so we we let it slide and we knew that we were going to come back to it at a later point in time it was also outside of the persistent Universe it was in its own little pocket Dimension you know based off the old hanger module background yeah do you remember what that old flow was no no I I I couldn't recite it off the top of my head there was gunny yes and there was a magnificence a score from uh Pedro that was very um inspired by a popular uh uh uh aerial dogfight combat movie that I'm not legally allowed to acknowledge it was inspired by and it was and it was it was an experience you know getting in and
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taking off and flying out but again limited yes strictly to the flight and takeoff experience and it existed before the persistent Universe yeah way before yeah so so [Music] you meant you mentioned this I want to touch on this before we get deep into the new thing developing a tutorial develop while you're still making the game while you're still adding stuff to the game that seems crazy well I I think now we're so far along like we we know what our base hero mechanics are from a from a player perspective we know what our base mechanics are from a ship perspective so I think right now is is one of the best times to be doing it um but you know in previous games and everything like that first level and
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last level we're always the ones that we built um just because you understood you know here's everything I need to teach and then I can do it at that point in um but since we have such a high learning curve you know we decided all right there's certain things in here that um we needed done first and uh we felt once those were completed um and really that to me was the contextual controls and contextual hints um those were the biggest things and and everything was built around that thought process and and what we wanted to teach um and then from there we felt like we can add on certain things later on and uh have it be still a cohesive experience but
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um also at the same time uh drip feed it a little bit better because right you know I think getting in and playing it and not having some of those hints some of those controls that because you know we use all the keyboard and plus some with all of our shift modifications and everything like it's um we wanted to make sure that the players could always remember it oh you know let's say they went away for two weeks or three months or whatever and then they come back to it it's like how did I do this again so and so forth so we wanted to kind of always have those constant reminders there and then that's really was the Catalyst for us you know pushing forward on this so what were the big so moving into that we've now we're now getting ready to release our first
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version of the new player experience it won't be the last one as you said we'll continue to iterate on it uh before as we're starting on this process what were the high level goals what did we know we absolutely needed to what would like the biggest ticket items like we've got to help people with this we've got to help people so for for from my standpoint because I was the one who wrote the initial doc um it was really teaching the player um very very core basic things so like getting up moving around um what are the basic controls for this interactions um you know eating drinking um anything that will kill you you know if you don't do it and then uh once you start getting into other aspects as far as what happens when you buy something and we have a deeper thread there that
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we haven't unlocked yet you know as far as being able to go and use a weapon or being able to go and try something out or or being able to try and compare and and all of those aspects that need to be taught as well then there's the player combat side from an FPS and then there's the ship combat side so like us just hitting very high level high level things which was teaching you you know interaction teaching you how to um eat and drink teaching you how to deal with inventory you know it we still need to teach more on that teaching you how to walk and Run and Jump and and then being able to teach you how to get out of you know the Spaceport and fly your ship but still trying to Dole that out and and kind of have some of those
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repetitious experiences that sometimes people need to to do to to actually learn it properly so we have a video we're gonna we're gonna start here in a moment and do some commentary over it but it's it starts once you're already in the universe so I want to start I want to go to even before that so you've looked so the new player has you know pledged for the game they've downloaded the game and they've started it up uh how do they does the game automatically put them into the new player experience does it give them an option so on the front end when you first load boot the game up um we ask the player do you want to um do you want to take part in the new player experience if they do then we will set their start location to area rating because that's
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where the new player experience takes place and then we will guide them through the process just automatically so as soon as they're in game the mission is accepted and we will guide them through as toddler saying all the basics eating and drinking and we will guide them through Area 18 onto the tram over to the Spaceport into their ship and then flying around so yeah it's uh we we start right at the beginning cool so let's go ahead and start our video here so this starts this video starts we've gone the the main menu we've selected the tutorial uh let's go ahead and put this on screen here so now we are obviously about to wake up in our uh where are we Yep this is your Hub in in area 18. so you spawn just as you would spawn
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normally except in this case there's the uh there's the tutorial running already so Moby glass was another thing that we thought we needed to teach so um and also the other thing with this room the idea is that you're locked in this room like obviously with persistent Universe there's not too many places that you can actually lock a player into space um you know like a traditional tutorial would be uh let let's pause the game let's um you know make it so that the player has to push this button for it to continue and so on and so forth so we have that here you know in certain areas but once you walk out of the hab you're free you know and and trying to teach that like it's it's it's very difficult
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yeah you don't have that it's like when you ignore a GPS and it's like it's telling you to turn right and you don't turn right and it reroutes right we don't have that yeah not yet anyway um so how did you well rather why did we decide on our Corp well um well the the thought process behind it was basically we have two locations that in order to get to you know our Central or our shopping area you can walk directly from uh the Habs to the shopping area um and then you've got some that you actually have to get onto the tram to so um eritin and loreville are the only ones that you can walk to the shopping area other ones if you have to new Babbage and Horizon you have to go to
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um the the tram first so um we wanted to also just teach the player all right hey this is clean and simple it it allows you to go shopping um and then also with the with cubby blast this one made sense from an armor and weapon perspective to to lead the player there to that point this is my first time watching this video I'll go back this looks like like we're teaching people to drink their Prime the Prime energy drink here yeah I never realized how much this bottle looks like the prime sorry I was watching WWE lately okay so we're now outside of our Hab and where are we being directed and cleaning my glasses I can't read it um so right now the players exited the
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Hub and we're gonna send them down to Kobe blast so they can they can get some experience um in a shop basically the main thing we wanted to teach there was you don't talk to the MPC behind the council are you doing most games but you interact with the kiosk so we're red chroming the player um down through the uh through the elevator which will be the first time that they've used an elevator so we guide them to the little panel next to the next to the elevator itself and teach them to interact with that and then when they get in should tell them which Which floor that they need to go to and as to be honest there's not really they can't really go wrong at this point because there is no other exit than the elevator but you know it's
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it's theoretically it's literally their first time in game so it doesn't do any harm to put a little little marker over the elevator panels that hey um you know on through the landing Zone um basically the brand new team and and the environment our team have gone through and said okay oh yeah if you go this way then you this is what you get if you go to the left then you get you know this other um you know experience uh or shopping or so and so forth so it it this is something that we will roll out to every major Landing Zone and then we'll also figure out how we can do it in space stations just so that you know it's very very clear for the player to understand where they can go and what they can do
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yeah we're going to see more of this as this goes on but I'm glad you shouted Out The Branding team in their work the signage change in our Corp is huge yeah uh it's yeah when I first started adding signs like okay I'll admit I kind of dismissed it like you know you're going to add some signs some directional arrows here and there and seeing the sheer amount that they've done and and how effective each one is uh I was like oh oh yeah okay like this we're coming up on you know the first big obvious one a brand new kind of overhead map to Area 18 here yeah it I mean it took us a while to to go through and work out obviously um you know for every major Landing Zone we want it to feel uh unique to itself so for example
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um you know an airport sign in Germany is different than an airport signed in the UK versus it's different in in the US but it still has something to do with their airplane you know um same with food um you know in Asia would be different than than uh in Europe so there's certain um terminology and certain things that we look at um to basically say okay hey this is this is something that we can carry through but this will feel special for our core versus all right when we do loreville it'll be a different somewhat different icon pass but it's got to fit still in this this box so this is the part where we've already forgotten what we're here to do and we're rechecking a shout out to Sam Molina who recorded this for us earlier in the day
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earlier in the week brother yeah Sam I'm disappointed that you did not give the person your hair or your beard um you mentioned the works so we got to come into cubby blast we got to talk to the kiosk as opposed to the shopkeeper that is obviously a that goes back to the creating tutorials and experiences for a game that's still in development obviously we want folks to one day eventually interact with the shopkeepers that's what they're there for and stuff like this but this is a good example of something that you do an interim version of this experience now and then you'll have to continue to update well and and even with this um so for example like you go in and buy a weapon like we want you to be able to go and test the weapon so that you don't have buyer's remorse you know all right I'm spending my hard
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earned cash on this what am I actually getting you know does this fit my play style so it's that to me is is going forward in the future like this is one of the big things that was called out in the original new user experience that obviously hasn't made it to this one I did notice that Sam is a dirty cheater and he started his new account with a million UEC so Sam expected better of you all right so it's it's this tryout I'll follow up on this you're talking about like giving cubby blast like a firing range kind of thing whether it's a firing range within its actual location so it's it's like a you know the player actually walks up to it or via Sim pod or something so the but the the the idea is for the player
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to be able to go and and try out um different uh weapons different ships so and so forth so like um you know if you're buying a ship item or or something oh I want to buy this power plant versus this other power plant like you want to be able to go and test it and see if it fits your playstyle was there a prompt that told him to go into his inventory and I missed it no not at the moment um some of the feedback we got was that we should really be um at least telling players that they might need a helmet because well yeah to bring that up but I was just noticing in that moment it's like that that seemed to be Sam possessing some knowledge already that yeah well you know that I need to go to my inventory to do this stuff yeah so right right now we we encourage the player to buy a
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helmet and maybe in a future iteration um we can sort of incorporate that into part of the flow um but yeah Sam's got special knowledge yeah I I think we've said this before and I think we're going to reiterate it a couple times like mining like Salvage like any other gameplay feature this is a the new player experience is something that will continue to evolve and be iterated on uh maybe not every single patch but in subsequent patches yeah you know not just for the new features that come online but per feedback for you you know stuff you know that's well and during um a summit you know you know Chris and myself and other directors we we had a very long conversation in regards to you know what will the final
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you know nuclear experience look like and you know the the Bare Bones aspect that we're building here you know it might be that we started started a different place beside your Hab but we're teaching you the same exact things we're teaching you you know the very Basics um and then from there again we wanted it to be kind of a a small bite-sized you know gameplay and then unleash the player into the world because again we don't know what you're doing it could be that that you're going through this experience just to meet up with some friends and you know we don't want to keep you from that so um but we want to at least be able to if the player needs to have their hand held a little bit we can
00:19:32
we can help them out I want to I want to shout out The Branding team again I'm trying to remember uh the name of the of the of the guy in charge right now I can't Nick Forte Nick and and Dominic also did a lot of this as well another shout out to Nick and domic just it's I mean this this is the same hardcore being we our corpse been around for a while RIT has been around but I mean it is it is transformed by these signs I don't want to oversell it but it really does look like it is so much better than it was well especially when you go to the other Landing zones so this is something that we know we need to take you know to the other Landing zones and and um basically Dole out throughout the year and and going forward so this window that's on the right the
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the one that's kind of just managing our what are those the the objectives there on the right I've got well those are friends was that a new system with with the blue bar at the top I don't remember seeing that before um yeah so previously hence would be kind of at the bottom in the center and we've got some tech which kind of makes them you know dresses them up a little bit moves them up and to the right and just below that we've got the new contact contextual hint system I noticed that when you open up the Mobile Glass we had text on text that's one of the things we need to fix yeah we we know that um basically with the old Moby glass it needs to burn in hell and then with the the visor um you
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know it's it's being worked on and being adjusted hold on can we can we switch to Todd's camera please yeah what you think of it it needs to burn in hell very very deep hell okay let's go let's go ahead and go no don't remember so we're on the tram always a always a cool experience your first time yeah less so you're 100 or 200th time but so we got we got some new tech um that enables us to figure out when the player gets on and off any kind of Transit entity we didn't have that before so anytime they get in or outer of an elevator or on and off tram we can we
00:22:02
can know where they are and what what uh Transit entity they got off um I think that's a good example of the functionality that we got for the new player experience that we can now use throughout throughout any kind of any Mission activity in in the Pu well and and I think one of the things that needs to be talked about is is the contextual controls and the amount of work that a lot of the the code team did you know is going through and adding these hooks for everything every single state and making sure that what's being shown there is is as as appropriate as possible at that time
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um and that was a long experience and it took a lot of work to go back and forth between the designers and the team on that so but basically you know it's it's something that we felt um you know was the core of the system and and basically what's the the new player experience was was all wrapped around and I want to address some of the folks who are commenting on the frame rate uh obviously there's a couple factors that play one this is still a work in progress build unlike any you know just like any other this is pre-release content um there's a misconception that every single member of the team has the most powerful rigs in the universe they don't uh you know especially you know designers and content designers and live designers stuff like that also you know
00:23:37
he's capturing at the same time he's recording on the same machine and running his own server and his own running his own service so this is you know it's it's one of those things we we make do with what we got in order to make the show possible but uh yeah your experience will vary playing on your own and not doing all these other things so I I think this needs to be talked about and if you want to explain a little bit more Jameson about the Partnerships yeah um so for the new player experience um we've basically gifted the player a rented Pisces the reason we do that is so they have a suitable ship to learning we don't sort of completely lock them out from any any purchase purchased ships they get unlocked at the end of
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the new player experience but for the for the very first flight and if you want to the the flights uh subsequent to that the player's got a nice ship it's easy to fly it's very small so it's uh it's it's kind of suitable for the very first experience yeah it's got a little sink preview of our console there all right so is there is there Hangar three uh it's always saying or three it's always it's really it's always well it's whenever um because I would go over to James's desk and he'd he'd be getting it ready um and so when I was doing reviews on it and everything like that it's always hanger three I don't know why but but for this one well he's running his own private server
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there's no other player so correct but but no matter what it's always hanger three so if I was doing it in James's desk even if we were we tried out different ships in in the beginning it was always hanger three but on live servers it'll be whatever right yeah and uh people like they don't know why no that's what it's part of what happens when you build a systemic Universe it's You're Building all these individual systems well it's I mean Hangar One and Two could be like the oversized hangers I I don't know how this one is exactly you know set up so it might be that those are the extra large hangers that are sort of how do you have name that every single game developer doesn't know the work and content of every single other game developer yes it's also I I don't know how some of these stuff how I
00:26:03
know how it's hooked up from a technical standpoint I don't know what order they hooked it up in right just as long as it works and it is duct taped together you know I got it got it go to camera one abusing opinions of Todd Pappy do not represent those of cloud and frame games Robert Space Industries or subsidiaries right back we really need that disclaimer reclaimer Tom you didn't hear this but there was this utterly dejected British sorry all right so we're now in our Hangar we've now jumped into our Pisces yeah with this to me there's still some
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work that needs to be done like uh when you request you know um uh basically to take off like to me there should be class ends and warnings and other lights spinning you know going off um and the vo for it to be for you to take off safely should be at the end once the doors are actually open versus at the beginning you know so there's still some Polish there that needs to happen and not every hanger is the top loading hanger correct we've got vertical as well as horizontal yeah so I mean if you didn't if this were your first time you didn't know there were there was a doorway up would you even look up yeah well this this is why we teach them to hold the ZK down and just look around before they actually take off because yeah for Todd it's always hanging three
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but for the public it could be anything so it could be front door in which case you see it fine but if not if you've got a top loading hanger then yeah you need to know to look up so something to add to the yeah we added that yeah so what is he doing in the console right here well it's lods oh yeah it's gone a lot well to somebody who doesn't know what he's doing uh it's basically we have um things off in the distance that will show uh designer or kind of arted boxes um so it basically helps us run a consistent frame rate so he was just going through and turning that stuff off so it actually gave a decent looking Skyline represents what the player would
00:28:28
see yeah exactly all right so we're leaving Area 18 where are we going um so at the moment the players so they've left their Hangar and we're giving them just a basic flight around area 18. um it's it's night time at the moment so you don't get to see very much but the idea is that you get an idea of how to fly your ship because this is the first time that the player's been in their ship so the path is pretty straight you can see objective markers appearing giving them new new places to go to so we keep them pretty much in line so they're not appearing off to the side and you're having to sort of swerve your way around but we're also popping up hints that give them basic controls so so you know
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at the start you'll say hey you need to raise your landing gear and this is your throttle and how to adjust your speed and just just various base basic hints like that just so they get an idea of how to fly this looks so good at night time is there a way to always make sure a new player gets the night time our Corp experience no well basically because whenever we do the testing it's always spinning up a new server right so I would always get to beginning point and it's completely dark completely black and um so it's it's difficult to see so we still need to work you know through some issues for folks in the chat our clouds obviously again this is this is a
00:30:02
internal build uh it's only got the stuff we need to show the feature on like we saw with the LOD stuff it doesn't have all the bells and whistles you would normally see on live um somebody in the chat was literally I guess I guess I guess in the recording he just noticed the clouds were up um one of the folks in chat mentioned that on some localized keyboards uh z and y are flipped correct uh does that does that change the input no no well it's sorry it should be that yeah because it like with the German keyboards z and y are flipped but it should just be that's the the placement of where it's actually at on the keyboards it will be why it should be a y instead of Z instead of Z and the text will reflect that yes it should okay
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it doesn't then please let us know and we'll fix it so okay I mean for this again like we were just thinking what are some of the basic things that we need to do so like James said you know raising landing gear teaching them basic controls as far as you know speeding up slowing down um and then then the next thing that was big that we needed to teach him was was QT and right and how to actually QT so um blue Minx and the chat was asking why is he just flying around why isn't he just Q team there we're literally teaching the process yeah so and um again for this I mean Sam Sam's going through and trying to make it look pretty and and
00:31:41
um versus you know as an average player you're going to be looking at it from your cockpit you're going to be trying to speed through it I think or or do a speed run for it um and usually our reviews take 30 minutes and maybe 10 of those are calling out notes and talking about you know um any sort of blockers or anything like that so I think James and I can get through this in what 15 minutes if that probably yeah so um it's usually a pretty quick so for for example like here you know right now you have a whole bunch of QT markers associated with this like again one of the things that we were trying to do was strip away all of these or or have it be that you didn't have enough
00:32:28
fuel to to fly over there so then he would have to come here refuel and then you know things are open to uh the um there's other aspects in regards to the amount of missions that are shown to the player and and everything yeah yeah we we were conscious that once the player finishes the tutorial um of these sort of um the missions that would be available immediately afterwards and while we couldn't get to all of them we've hopefully well we've cut down the number and we've hopefully cut down some of the more difficult ones for new players um so they should be they should have a more suitable selection than they would do previously let's say well and also so if we talk about this let's say let's
00:33:17
say you are a new new player or you've maybe you've played this one patch okay if we do any sort of resets or wipes or anything like that the idea would be after you finish the new player experience that gets you to the same Baseline that everybody else starts the game if they don't choose the new player experience that is and they just started and everything's reset it gets everybody at the same Baseline and so again for our missions we want to make sure that they they Branch out it's not like you've got you get you know 40 choices in the very beginning you'll have three and then you do have one and then now that opens up two more and now you have five available so like it's it it's slowly Doling those things out and it's pretty standard you know logging features behind a long team of them I
00:34:07
see the key bindings on screen is that part of the that is the contextual control aspects that we were talking about and also the um and part of the contextual hands so um because there's certain things that we wanted to teach or reinforce to the all the time again you know if you haven't played the game in a while or um or you're coming back Fresh then basically this this allows us to gently remind you now uh some somebody in the chat brings up a good question is this all within a green zone or will or because what what happens to group to groupers who decide to because all the new players are going along the same path here it basically becomes a chow line to Grievers it does
00:34:58
unfortunately it does so it's right now this is what we have and we will continue to make it better but we will roll this out to different Landing zones um obviously from there we'll also look at feedback on you know if if people are clubbing the baby seals over and over and over again then we will Institute other things to block that but again we without I mean we had talked about putting it on a unique uh planet that nobody could get to nobody could QT to and it's it's it's its own space like we had thought about that and where but that wasn't that's not our game yeah you know and
00:35:46
um so we had those those conversations and and talked about it um but it just didn't feel right so uh this is what we have and and so we need to build and tune for a game obviously I I think you know the new player experience at loreville versus a new player experience at at Horizon will be a little bit different but you know we're just trying to teach you the main Concepts is the intention to develop a new player experience for the multiple Landing zones yes the intention is to take it to those multiple Landing zones but uh I mean it's no secret that our next star system is is pyro can you can you see a version of the new player experience
00:36:36
that exists in pyro right now yeah that I mean that that's a little bit more difficult and I think that's something that that James and Dan and um Kristoff and I will need to sit down and you know really really go through um and and and talk about because like right now in Empire like should just be a guy that hands you a pistol and says good luck yeah and like have you enjoyed your new player experience yeah yeah if you choose to start in Pyro so I turned away what are we doing now um it well basically it teaches you to store your ship oh and then James can go into more details on that um so when the player lands um they they get out their shape and
00:37:23
you're sort of um asked to ask to store it and as soon as you stole your ship you've Landed It by Genie points you've learned all kinds of stuff and uh the uh yeah that's that's the ending point so yeah there we go short and sweet yeah is this hydration at 37 is that what it says yeah so it allows you to go through and read about any of the things that we that we teach the player so you can you can refer back to it and obviously for uh you know in case you missed something or or want to read up you know more information on on that then this allows you to to do that yeah one one thing we do throughout the new player experience is to point players towards the journal because the
00:38:12
journal is uh is a really good source of information not just during the new player experience but throughout it will teach you about law and crime stats and all that kind of stuff so pointing plays to that early on gives them a tool which they can use throughout their time with Star Citizen and then as the new movie glass comes online that ideally that will free you to do all manner of additional things to tell people yeah like uh the the thing the thing that got me the whole time is the text on the text is not being able to reposition the windows and stuff like that that's yeah I like Todd said because this is the version of what we have right now where we build we build on top of that we build on top of that as new features
00:38:59
come on we add those in that is the nature of star citizens development yeah and I mean basically s42 is building you know new mobile glass framework we'll take that framework and and adjust it you know from a visual standpoint but then continue to build on that for the persistent Universe needs and so it's it's basically we just need to wait you know but we felt like um the new player experience and and what we were able to develop right now was good enough you know obviously there's still some bugs that we need to work through but it was good enough to to introduce and make sure that you know we can actually uh lower the learning curve that that basically new players run into all the time so that was a look at what's coming in
00:39:49
319 we talked about maybe you know adding a a prompt to tell you to put your helmet on before you you go out will that make 319 is or is that going to have to be another I don't think that'll make 2019 um but it's possibility for a for a future uh patch yeah okay um until then we'll have to rely on our wonderful community and the guides and whatnot well and I think the other thing that needs to be stated there is is in the on the front end there's a actual button there that will take you it's a hyperlink that will take you out and it'll take you to the guide you know on um on the Robert Space Industries uh website and and you'll be able to request a guide if you want thank you um so that so that's 319 that's it's
00:40:37
currently available on open PTU right now uh any any star system backer can can copy their account over the PTU and test it now it's coming when 319 releases hopefully sometime in the next week uh it's as close as I'll get to a date let's talk a little bit about the future uh where do we we've said we've mentioned a couple things are already but but summarize where do we want to take this in the future what do we already know is on the menu that whenever we can get to it when features and time and everything Collide to make it happen uh well we can do it real quick I think um taking it to the different Landing zones um taking certain uh feedback that we that we acquire
00:41:25
um that we need to basically flesh out more um and adjust that and then long term it would be thinking about okay do we need to do short little Mission training for combat whether that be FPS or ship do we need to do it for Eva do we need to do it for missile lock so and so forth so like everything that's you know or do we need to do it for mining or salvaging or any of our gameplay Loops um and do we do these small little Snippets of of missions that you can load up and you can kind of rinse and repeat those over and over again like like a combat Mission and then a yeah a deliver a cargo delivery Mission kind of thing I mean it could be even smaller than that like okay I want to
00:42:16
practice missile lock okay so all right how you know spawn the scenario you know even probably via senpod like I'm sitting there and I can practice okay this is how I do missile lock or I want to shoot down a missile okay you've got a missile coming in shoot that down or shoot down three of them in x amount of time so just ways for you to uh Harden your skills and and work on very specific scenarios that might not opportune might not spawn themselves unless it's in battle or something like um we're we're almost done it's it's a shorter show this week than normal um we all got places to go I do want to ask you the first version of the tutorial the
00:43:04
old gunny thing that was instance it was it was essentially Arena Commander you could say it was a simulation kind of thing this is obviously not this is in the Pu was there a consideration of of making the new player experience a simulation you do it and then you step out of the Sim pod and you're just safe and completely isolated that whole time and nobody can mess you up or why did we why was it important that we put you in the Pu from the moment you start so yes we talked about it and um that was one of the one of the initial pitches that I did was that it was Sim pod only and then you know after you get out of it then now you're in a safe area obviously there's certain aspects you know like um getting out of the hangar and
00:43:54
crashing your ship and then going to the medical center and then so and so forth like there were certain things there um were not new user friendly um and so but at the same time we were we are at MMO you know and we want to make sure that we don't isolate the players um from their friends or from other things that's uh you know they could experience on their their Journey on on the new player experience right so so there's a certain amount of I don't think it's a secret there's a certain amount of chaos that comes with the persistent universe and we're not totally a hundred percent against chaos you know no we like that we like that emergent nature the the how other players affect things exactly I I think if if we teach them you know hey this is
00:44:43
what it you know works like in a in a vacuum you know then it's it's it's not it's not us you know and so um the the most vacuum aspects that we did was all right we we said all right this is the halves now it might be that you know in the future you're on a ship going to you know whatever uh major Landing zone is going to be your home you know and then at that point in time you get off and and uh we still teach you how to get to your halves or or away from your Hab and so it there's certain things that we know that we need to train it's just going to be how do we go about it and and do it but I think a lot of the work that James and Sam and and the rest of the team have done um you know on creating this uh is basically laying the foundation for
00:45:33
anything that we do in the future cool well that's about it Todd James is there is there something else I haven't touched is there some aspect of this that we want to make sure folks understand before Before I Let You Go um I I guess for me it's been more a labor of love I I did the initial pitch of this two years ago so yeah like for for me this is this is something that I've been wanting to see for quite a while and now that's not the same because people are going to grab onto that that's not to say that this took two years of continuous work it is there's this has to go into the schedule and into the resources yeah and there's certain fundamental things that we wanted in place first before we would do
00:46:22
it so um it's just that's you know there's other higher priorities or there's other things but this this allowed us to you know align you know everything comes in in line and we understand that okay certain features you know on and because for example like the Henson the training like that was on the actor team but they had other priorities that they needed to do and so this allowed us to to go through and and get it um done but like you know the initial thought process of it and the initial document that I wrote was yeah about two years ago I I imagine because there's a there's a misapprehension that all aspects of a game are worked on continuously at the same time in
00:47:09
conjunction and stuff like this it's it's they hear oh you're working on this whatever it is in one month and it means well it's been eight months it's weird about they've been working on it for eight months and that's not true teams get pulled off there are dependencies that come up we need new tech to be developed before we can continue our work there's any number of reasons for people to part the project new people join the project with new ideas and we rethink you know oh well that's a better idea than what we were doing it's like this is all there's there's no end of the reasons why development Bobs and weaves and so that's why I always say the only constant game development has changed but I just I wanted to yeah no I mean from from James's standpoint I think you started on this wood three four months ago yeah late last year so you know and and like he he was the one that did the
00:48:00
initial Mission and then calling out to mft and saying hey we need this we need this we need this and then you know it'd be myself and and um Phil and Jonathan from production standpoint going around chasing up people saying okay we need this feature when is this coming online um you know there was there was some new tech that had to be created for like mission that starts you know um basically when the player initiates into the world like there there were certain fundamental things that were not there and then there were definitely some gotcha moments when we're going through and we're like oh we missed this you know oh we need this or you know and with a lot of these things um for the most part the way that we do our our feedback you know or or our play tests
00:48:48
we do a lot of those via um uh you've seen seen PTU you know and seen the evocati playing and um it's that's so it's the hardcore of the hardcore but we knew for this feature like the people wouldn't be doing that or needing that so you know so we did internal play tests and we watched them yes a lot yeah yeah some some real gotcha moments on James certainly why some just just things that surprised you well I'm looking at one right now yeah episode of Star Citizen live and light improve new player experience
00:49:35
thank you to Todd and James for taking time out of the end of your your week uh uh uh thank you to Todd's uh uh uh Offspring we're in our studio audience uh we're forced to hang around hang out and and see us do this uh they just turned bright red and I love it we didn't we don't have a camera on them um join us back here next week uh uh inside Star Citizen you can probably guess what it's about I didn't see if I was allowed to say it early so I'm not going to say it but I mean if you watch the very end of this week's ISC you can probably guess what next week's ISC is all about and then there is no uh Star Citizen live uh next week because I'll be on a plane to Belgium for uh Beacon the Belgian community's annual convention uh so you can see me over there I'm sure there's probably a live
00:50:24
stream or something I'll pop up on so for Todd and for James and for me thanks for watching uh take care keep an eye out on all things 319 on the robertspaceans.com website and of course our Star Citizen socials on Twitter and Instagram and Tick Tock which is blowing up apparently uh and uh yeah I thought I had an ending for this and I don't bye everybody

Transcript from YouTube’s automatic captions — punctuation and Star Citizen jargon are approximate. The video itself is hosted by CIG on the official channel.