Star Citizen Live: Q&A - The Story So Far

24 April 202500:59:001,568 linesWatch on YouTube ↗

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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Hi everybody. If you're watching on Twitch, I apologize. Welcome to another episode of Star Citizen Live. I'm your host Jared Huckabe. And if you've never seen Star Citizen Live before, it's where we take a indeterminate amount of time at the end of certain weeks uh to invite our developers on and answer questions from you, the Star Citizen community. Uh on this week's show uh we're going to take I'm guessing looking at the question we're going to it's probably going to be about 30 or 40 minute show. We'll we'll see uh in case you know you have somewhere to be. Um we have me members of our esteemed narrative team. Uh people who need no introduction but I'm going to anyway. Uh Dave and Will. Dave, how you doing? I'm good. Good. How are you? Good. Will that's my intro. Look, I look, they're not all going to be
00:00:53
winners, and most of them won't be. Uh, Dave will cuz somebody somebody's show is everybody's first time. Yeah, sure. Give me a second to parse that. The mustache and somebody's last time. The mustache is nothing for my performance. Uh, tell everybody who you are and what you do for Star Citizen. Uh, my name is Dave Haddock. the narrative director here at uh CI and work on Star Citizen, Squadron 42. Basically work with the team to flesh out, build out the universe, write the dialogue, come up with characters, come up with storylines, uh fiction, lore, item descriptions, all sorts of fun stuff. Okay. Yeah. And I'm William Weissbomb, assistant narrative director. I do what Dave does, but just backwards. Yeah. I love I jumped in there. Um, so this
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this week's show, we put up a thread on Spectrum as we normally do and collected questions. Um, before we get into the questions, I want to start uh I I want I want to do a lightning round of of of some of the questions. A lot of the questions uh that come in tended to be more feature related tended to be why don't you do this, why don't you do that, why don't you do this. Uh there are a lot of questions that all have variations of the same answer and whatnot. So uh so as we'll always we'll obviously be taking some questions from the chat here as well. So as to help guide those chats uh the chat questions and to help explain uh to those who submitted questions in spectrum are like well why didn't they answer my question? It was voted up more. I want to talk a little bit about the difference between those questions and and why the answer to almost all of them is pretty much the same. So some questions from the thing. Um are there plans for any cutscenes in
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in Star Citizen? you know, yes. Uh, yeah, we I think we'd all love that kind of stuff, but those resources are currently tied up finishing Squadron 42, the cinematics team, the facial animation team, the all that stuff like that. And so, that priority has to be there because that game is one that absolutely requires that. And where Star Citizen, that's a a nice to have kind of thing. Any plans to integrate the Galactipedia into Star Citizen to help players keep track of the ongoing narrative in the game? Yes, obviously something we'd all love very much, but that requires feature work and UI work. Again, both both of those teams are working on not just finishing out Squadron 42, but uh bug fixing and optimizing the performance of the PU right now. So, our this year is a big push towards performance optimization and bug fixing. So, we're really trying
00:03:23
to hold back on introducing new features to the PU uh for at least a great portion of this year while we stabil stabilize that. So again, something on the list, but is it more important than getting base building and crafting in or engineering finally in and stuff like that? So it'll be farther down the line, stuff like that. I thought pyro narrative had the planet strip mind. Um that's again that's another thing where we had that story that idea way back when the first version of Star Citizen where planets would never be landable. We're never you would you were never supposed to be able to land on planets. You would just kind of go to a unique landing zone and stuff. Now we have these fully realized 360°ree planets and stuff. So with that you kind that compare paired with where planet tech is at any given time. Obviously we're still on planet techch v4. We're developing
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planet techch v5 right now means that we we can these planets have to be realized in the tech that we have at the moment and stuff like that. So narrative. Should we go? Yeah. I'm doing the one. I don't want you to I'm setting I'm setting a thing. I don't want you to have to tell people. I don't want you to have to tell people why these things can't happen right now. Okay, that's my job. That's this and then uh just things like that. So, so basically a lot of the questions are a lot of the questions that are why don't you do this now or or seem like some really obvious choices like wouldn't it be so much better if you did this instead of this? The answer is almost always yes and we agreed and we wanted to too. But the priorities of game development mean that that you know other things take priority and other
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things have to come first and stuff like this. So um so with that we're gonna move out really loud there for some reason. I'm sorry. I haven't done one of these in a while. Uh so with that we're going to jump into actual questions that can be affected by narrative and stuff like that. So um there's a number of things going on. I'm going to start with probably our most recent one just for recency bias. The regen crisis was introduced in 41. Uh why don't you tell us what the regen crisis is? So high level uh you know what is it three years ago we had introduced this concept of regen. So it's basically it was a fictional way for uh to justify why players are respawning. Came up with this sort of this lore behind it of the Ibrahim spheres and and imprinting and and stuff
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like that. uh and and actually did it sort of in the timeline of the fictional universe. So it happened while players were playing. We introduced the tech. We kind of showed how the Imperior and the other people were kind of reacting to this type of thing. Uh but now basically for whatever reason the um the efficiency of the technology has been failing. So, uh, spoiler, it's not affecting the players, but for the majority of the NPC population, the, uh, efficacy of the regen tech has been dropping significantly. So, basically, death is now becoming a thing again. They thought they had kind of conquered it, and now it turns out that they're not. So currently the UEE uh and the Imperator are basically trying to scramble to figure out a solution uh to
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kind of research and science their way out of this predicament to hopefully try to restore the tech to its former glory. Uh and I'm pretty anything you want to add to that? No, like during the run-up to it, the tests and stuff, like as much as they tested the technology before it it came out, once you increased the sample size to several billion, it started really quickly like kind of showing the cracks and all of a sudden all these people who thought they had their imprint safely stored away in a hospital because everyone went out and got their imprints to protect them. It wasn't until they put it to the test months later that they realized that the imprints had gone bad. And so it's kind of like, you know, these small incidences of like, oh, this whole shipload of people got into a wreck and none of them came back and like that's weird. And then it started piling up to the realization of, oh, this technology
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is not as dependable as we first thought. And and you kind of ran into the thing too where people were starting to, you know, effectively get kind of cocky of like, oh, I doesn't matter. I can go and I can fly my ship into a wall and bounce back and everything will be okay. So, not only is the samples pool increasing, but people start could start abusing it and basically over and over and over again. And again, that could kind of raise the failure rate. Yeah. So, a turns out a large percentage of the population doesn't take well to imprinting. Maybe they only have one imprint, maybe none. And it's not like the player population, just like the player population is the part of the uh universe who owns spaceships and goes on these great adventures, they're also the part of the population that takes really well to imprinting. So, for the most part, and this is a story that, you know, obviously we've just introduced it
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with with 401. This is a story that will continue to to be revealed and and players will have more interactions with it and stuff as the as the months go by later this year. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean as we had sort of talked about in one of the uh inside star citizens the idea is like we're introducing these sort of ongoing storylines. Uh and so this is sort of the inciting incident for what we're calling kind of our be story. Um so it's you know the the threat of the regen crisis is kind of looming and it's sort of moving pieces around the board uh whether it's corporate interests, government interests, stuff like that to kind of make decisions that the players will get to kind of see as they kind of go throughout the universe. uh ancient sales says all this lore and background story over 14 years had said zero representation of this in the PU when is this content going to represent this
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we're literally that's literally what the what what the whole line in mind for that that that this is the reason you're going to these Hatheror places and stuff and the reason you're you're you're you're searching for these minerals and whatnot is to is to feed into Rayari yeah and and there's going to be other ways that we're we're going to kind of start tying into this stuff a bit a bit more where players are going to be able to see the ramifications of it the universe and here are NPCs discussing it and yes you you'll start to see more NPCs coming online again the the answer to I bring up ancient sales question because the answer to that is essentially the same as the answer for the first three questions of the show. It's it's basically those development resources need to become available for us in order to manifest this stuff more fully in the into the verse. And we'll have we'll have some uh chat later on about how we're going to do that uh and stuff like this. just it's it's one of
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those things where we shouldn't stop creating story. It it's and as just like anything else, we shouldn't stop adding money into the game. We shouldn't stop adding salvaging or combat or whatever. And the tools that allow us to make those things better will continue to develop as each patch goes on. The tools that will allow us to tell our stories better will continue to evolve as the patch goes on. Um, which the next question on here says, "Why doesn't the regen crisis affect the player?" Uh, I mean it's mostly just for the fact that the players do need to respawn. I mean, it's still regen still factors into the original Death of a Spaceman thing. So, there is that still that idea that um, you know, your your imprint um, kind of integrity will decay over time.
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And so we will still kind of feed it back into that that original mechanic uh that that Chris had talked about all those years ago. But it was mostly just the fact that it was uh you know players need to respawn otherwise you know right now in the alpha state of our game and what there's there's we're being completely a bit too for being candid there the game is plenty punishing enough in a lot of places without us introducing this on top of that. Plus, again, that's new feature work and stuff, and we just and as we've said since February this year, like this isn't the year of of of too many new feature works. This is the year of stability and and performances like this. Um, is the regen crisis a precursor to Death of Spacemen? Is is this when this storyline wraps, will it have some effect on Death of a Spaceman
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when it gets introduced? I mean, don't spoil. Fair enough. Fair enough. Stay tuned. Keep playing. Yeah. Yeah, I tried. Um, how does it make sense narratively that this major crisis with region is largely ignored by the UEE and they expect a bunch of randoms to solve it for them instead by knocking down all Hatheror sites with the fleet? So, yeah, like what is the UEE doing? I mean, they're doing a lot. It's mostly the thing of like they're the effects of what they're doing are probably behind closed doors. They're happening in other systems and stuff like that. Again, we have a we are we are limited to the standard pyro system right now. Yeah. So, they're they're certainly up to a lot, you know, trying to incentivize corporations to to find a solution and incentivizing the
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population to help the corporations and scientific research and finding the resources and stuff like that. Uh it's just again it's a player centric experience. So obviously it's we're focusing on I mean they're they're putting a lot of resources the UE is putting a lot of resources into trying to fix this crisis but the player isn't necessarily going to a UEE research lab to seeing what they're doing. We're we're coming up with ways that the player can participate in this regen crisis. And you will be you without without spoiling you will be going to some research labs. Yeah. You know, in the future they may not be UEE research lab, but you're going to you're going to be seeing what other people like we we've heard what Rayari is doing. You're going to start seeing what other uh uh factions and corporations are are doing to attempt to address. Yeah. And the reason why Rayari
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has all these funds to spend on these rare resources that we that players are excavating right now is because the UEE is putting extra funding into through Addison into researching how to fix this crisis. And uh for the region crisis, is the player going to be focused on helping address it or will players also have the chance to investigate why it's happening in the first place? Uh what what you can tell us about spoiling it? Obviously, uh it's more like they're experiencing a crisis firsthand and how to how to phrase
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this. We're we're going on a journey and we really wanted the players to feel like they're part of this unfolding and so whether there's going to be concrete answers or solutions at the end of this. So we're going to leave it up because we're check you're checking in with us halfway through. So it's kind of a delicate position. Not even not even halfway through. We barely got first chapter barely got the first chapter of this out. Well, and it's again, yeah, sort of that idea of like like like Will said that players are experiencing this as it's happening. So, we're kind of starting to lay a groundwork of con story continuity, which is, I think, a really exciting thing that we haven't really been able to do much before. We've been having a lot of kind of, you know, Simpsons cycles where it's just sort of like the status quo gets kind of reset, you know, but now we're now we're
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actually kind of establishing that, you know, if someone starts playing the game in 3 months, their experience to things, you know, when talking to somebody who's been playing it this entire time is going to be a little different because the people who've been playing this entire time go, "Oh, well, you should have seen it." Da da there was this regen tech and it used to work and now it doesn't work and blah blah blah. I mean this year's focus on doing uh these regular patches, you know, monthly patches have really been interesting us from a narrative perspective on how we can tell our story cuz normally like we're unfolding previously we were doing the quarterly patches and stories were unfolding in a much greater amount of time and how the players experienced it was kind of very different. Um, but now we have a much more regular cadence and so slowly like doing these little little crumbs as we go and building into
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something bigger and bigger. Yeah. I mean, we we had we had four patches in four months, you know, December, January, February, March, uh, uh, it's it's with Invictus being in the middle of of May and whatnot, there there's a six week gap instead of a four-week gap there. And then and then our plan is to continue on that, you know, so that's May patch, June patch, July patch, August patch, September patch. So you'll see you'll see drops of this go going going through you know throughout the year. So that that's that's all part of this major change this content driven you know per less feature driven uh directive for this year. Um Adamant one Adam I think I'm reading that right in the chat says why focus on storylines while still in alpha and will any of these story lines repeat once 1.0 or full live release happens? You mentioned it. You mentioned
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earlier like when you re when you introduced regen and and the and the Ibraim spheres, it was in time and place three years ago and these these are story moments of where we are now in in in our sliding time scale. Yeah. So it's it's these aren't things that just repeat. Well, it's it's also that Yeah. I mean it's also a thing too. I mean, some of the stuff I think, you know, I mean, we had things like Siege of Orison, which would, you know, were single events that we would repeat because it was a fun game experience and and stuff like that. So, I think it'll probably always be kind of a balance of that. Uh, like a line in mine is kind of an evergreen location. It's meant to It's not an event. It's not an event. It's a permanent addition to the So, we're trying to balance between these story moments that you're experiencing right now with repeatable content that will
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kind of live on. Yeah, it's no different than any other MMO when you play the level 10 quests and whatnot. They happen much earlier in the ongoing saga, but they're always still going to be there playable. So, the these this content is designed to always be there. Yes, I think for the most part. Yeah. Yeah. In the groundwork that we're laying with this new content, even if it's there's a story mission attached to it, we're taking the content itself and figuring out how to reuse it in a repeatable playable experience. Um, so there might be more event type stuff coming this year, but anything that we do, we're hoping to build into stuff that players will keep getting to enjoy and have fun with. I think to I think what Adam might have been asking is, is this the 1.0 story or is this something else? This is something else. This is something else. This is this is our 2025 story line that
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we're And to his question, why why tell a story when you're in alpha? Uh well, part of it is this is giving narrative a chance to be in alpha as well. We've been learning so much in this past four months of now that the mission tools are in, now that the streaming content tools in that we've been able to really ramp up how we deliver and you're going to be seeing that more this year. Um and we've run into issues that we've been able to sort out with this earlier content and explore as we build up to our 1.0 you know, content and and it's a thing too. I mean, we've been working with the designers and stuff like that of part of it is that it giving it giving the narrative wrapping to why you're doing something makes the doing something a
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little bit more engaging. So, part of it is is is again this this push for sort of greater engagement in in the experience. It's let's add a story to it. So, it's not just, hey, we introduced this thing, go have fun. It's there's a reason around doing it, driving players to go play. Why not add another layer? Yeah. And I think it's a little bit of a of a thank you to the players who are playing it right now. You're playing in alpha. You're experiencing our game in development. And as part of that, you're getting to experience the regen crisis, which players who hop in to the bandwagon three years from now won't. So, good for you. Yeah. You said something. you you said we're learning through this and and I don't think that gets I mean I've been doing this for a decade now but I don't
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think I I'll ever get tired when I when I end the show say what do we learn this week it's not I'm not just speaking on behalf of the player and whatnot game development is this process of learning of this process we've been learning for the last 13 years what this game that we're making is you know it's new people come in with new ideas new technologies come on we didn't think we were going to be able to have like 360 degrees fully realize planets and stuff like this. It's it's and we learn we learn as much about how the game is changing and how to make this game every month as players learn alongside us and that's the virtue of ISC and stuff like that. It's it's it's all of game development is about learning in one way shape or form not just for the players but for the people who are making the game. And I just I really liked when you said that so I want to vote. Uh and then uh last question about the regen crisis. Uh, is
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the current respawn issue in 4.1 part of the B story or is it a bug? No, that's a bug. I wish it was. That would have been clever of us, though. Um, the other big addition recently is our first Banu, our first alien of of any kind. So excited to welcome. Tell me about Wiccolo. Who is Wiccolo? He's a Boo. He's a Boo. All right, moving. Tell me more about Wiccolo. Uh, yes. Yeah. So, Wiccolo is a yeah a new addition to Stanton system. He is uh a a fresh uh expatriate of the Banu Protectorate who has basically set up a shop. He uh divested from his Sulie and uh has traveled around and just he he is fascinated and loves human culture. And so he decided to go set up a shop uh in
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Stanton system where he will happily um trade stuff, build stuff, send you on food lunch orders. Uh he's great. And where did where where did why now like like why where where did this idea that this was the time to to bring this first come from? What can you remember? We were charged with from a design side. They wanted, you know, this person who had taken a random collection of resources from the player who didn't have like a set style or anything because basically this is like tier negative one of crafting almost. Like when crafting comes online later on, you'll be taking those recipe lists and you'll be filling them and you'll be
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putting them into your own crafting station. But those things aren't ready yet. But we still kind of wanted that gameplay loop for the players to start experiencing it. Go find materials, bring the materials, turn the materials into a new thing, into a thing. And so this is the person who's kind of doing that through this trading shop. And so we were kind of thinking of like who would we do that? And we had been really wanting to get aliens because the Star Citizen is supposed to be populated by aliens. So we've been waiting for that opportunity. And so we we kind of asked, we're like maybe. And of course, like the answers at the very beginning, like we we have to implement it as far as we can with the tech and resources that we have right now. Obviously, a fully pcapped Banu running around saying, "Hey, what's
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over, you know, like it's it's we're not quite ready to do that because those resources are tied up with that." Well, it's it's just the the Yeah, I mean, we we we pecapped him. I mean, he is he is fully pecapped. Uh but but yeah, like needing what is the uh animation rig? the custom rig for a banner is is is something that hasn't been been made. I mean, again, even the the uh uh the sculpt from it was relatively quick because there there had been sort of development on it, but not a real intensive like game ready asset made. So, I mean, I think some some very uh ingenious people uh found a way into Wiklo's room and discovered that Wiklo wasn't quite all there yet. So, uh, for those not in the know, he's currently a head in a torso that sits behind his desk talking to you, but that's going to
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develop more as we get more time to put him in. And hopefully one day he'll be walking around his emporium interacting with you is our long-term goals. So, um, what sulie did Wiccolo belong to in his past life? I mean, I figure it was it was some kind of like fabrication sulie because again, just a you know, that's what he's been trained on and he's he knows how to do. Uh but um uh I actually don't know if we've ever really delved into like the naming conventions of Sulies, but it's usually after the person, the owner. Um the items Wiko asks for don't seem very thematic. Can you explain why Wiccolo wants these particular commodities? Seeing as he's a collector, I feel it would be more fitting if he requested rare loot from the loot pool
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or something like the artifacts and war medals you can find. Uh for the ship rewards, you you should have to turn in an in-game purchased one or an exact hanger ship. Basically, this person's got a lot of ideas, but but what basically the question is why why is Wiccolo after these things that he is and not and and and not collectible items to add to his menagerie because he's also a fabricator. He's not just a collector. He's also, you know, producing his own items and these rare resources are something that he desired or maybe someone else wanted to trade with him. There's kind of several excuses. It's also partially in metagaming wise. It's the timing of his release is with the mine in the line event. So, we wanted something to tie it together with that. So, it was kind of
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well, it's the intention with each patch that the that the things that he's looking for and ask for will will change and stuff. In fact, in in 411, uh uh we're we're introducing uh a guild script, you know, you know, a a different like physicalized currency uh that players will find throughout the throughout the universe and and he'll accept he'll accept those. Spoilers. It's my effing job. Uh yeah, it's also it's also important to remember too that he's and this was one of the the kind of beautiful benefits of him being a band who is that he's he's kind of eccentric. So to me the the the the thought of him going, "Hey, I want you to bring me like 30 pips cans, some keranite, and a burrito like made made sense for him because
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it's just like he's kind of weird that way." I mean, even for a Banu, I think he's on the eccentric end of things because he's living alone out in human space without a sulie. So, like, it's kind of And for a little behind the scenes, I'll I'll add uh like one one of the one of the suggestions of the person was like, you know, for vehicle rewards, you should be able to turn in one of the ones you've stolen and get it like this. He goes, "We actually did look into that. Uh we ran into a technical issue where the freight elevators couldn't destroy an item." So, you you load something in the freight. We actually tested, we actually intended to do something like that. you'd load it onto the thing, it would come down and come up with something else, but it kept coming up with the existing item and you just kept duplicating stuff. So, we inadvertently created our own asset duplication thing. So, it was one of those things where it's like that aspect of it was not able to make in the initial release, but it is something we're still looking at. Um, uh, and for
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what and how it will be implemented, you'll find out when it's ready. Uh, but yeah, just again, it's it's another example of we're we're we're thinking the same things they're thinking. we're having the same conversations they're having and the answer almost always to why didn't they just do that or whatever is the thing we needed to do that wasn't ready and if we waited until every single thing was ready we wouldn't be running a live environment in the middle of our development. Um this month's story element uh was twofold. Wiko's arrival and the regen crisis. Um this person wants to know they were both after the same minerals. They're both after the same resources in many ways. It's like uh uh does people helping Wiccolo is it going to hurt Rayari? Is is is is is
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this are are people automatically bad for want for for for choosing to get their ship instead of helping the the human race? Yes. I mean it is a it is effectively a moral choice. So but uh I mean they're technically the same story. They're just two halves of it. So the the the sort of B story is the, you know, the the resource mining and and stuff like that, but we just gave you two options of what you wanted to do with it. For people who didn't necessarily wanted to, even if they didn't necessarily want to give it to Wiccolo, you had the option of going to Rayari. If you, you know, wanted the items instead of the money, you know, you you go to Wiccolo. So, and there's a good chance Wiklo is just trading them right back to Rayari for price. So yeah,
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um, as far as the stuff that we we've seen in his menagerie, um, uh, I can't even begin. There's no vowels in this person's name. Um, why did Wiccolo Why does Wiccolo have Tessa Banister in a cryopod? Is is that really Tessa? Is is is it a clone of Tessa? That could be anybody with the first name starts with a T, ends in Banister. So, so that might not be Tess is what you you're not willing to confirm that's Tanya Banister. Tanya Banister here first. Um, you're not willing you're not willing to confirm that that's the confirm or deny. Is this on record? Uh, yeah. Oh, then no. It's on the internet and everybody knows you can't erase anything from the internet. I've
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tried. I once wore a beefeeder costume. Um, Vlaw's villainous, a longtime viewer in the chat says, "Nobody cares about NPCs. Give me my give me my ships." It's a it's a prudent prudent uh course of action. Um, all right. So, region crisis, wicro at the moment. So, let let's uh we get back into that a little bit in uh this next in this next Invictus patch. Um what's happening in Pyro with these three factions right now? Where where are we at in their story at the moment? Uh well, I guess just to fill in in the in the fight for Pyro is we had the introduction of a new group
00:30:01
um called the the Frontier Fighters who have who have a different take on the Pyro solution, right? because we've established for a long time the citizens for prosperity who are out there who are like if we just resettle Cairo we can turn it around if there's more economic development here then the UEE will care more then we'll get more resources more funds and we can make it safe and in turn make the neighboring system safer and that's their plan and the frontier fighters are like no that's going to take too long you've been trying to do this all you're doing is sending resources in there that outlaws just steal. You're making this situation worse. Our solution is burn it to the ground. It's called Pyro. Let's burn it
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up. And so they've come in here and to kind of get the ball rolling, it turns out they pretended to be a pyro outlaw group called the Slicers. They did a huge terrorist attack on the Stanton system and then they're like, "Come on everyone, let's get those slicers." And trying to get the whole system agitated because they saw what happened when Xeno threat did their attack. They were like, "This was good, but not good enough. Let's do it better. Um, so it says everything you need to know about these people. The the uber racist did a good job, but we we they didn't go far enough. Well, as far as agitating Stanton into action. Yeah, cuz pyro is one of those problems that's so big that it feels easier to ignore. Like, so it's easy enough to be like, uh, it's there, it's fine. and just deal with like, oh, we'll catch this one shipjack or we'll
00:31:36
catch this one outlaw, but it doesn't help the larger problem of an outlaw system. So, how did the idea of the slicers/freedom fighter frontier fighters reveal come about? Uh, I believe it was it was a conversation with design. They were basically looking for a uh they had built this sort of series of of missions that were supposed to kind of build up towards the release of Pyro System. Uh and so there was that initial thing of the like oh you can pick from these three and then suddenly they wanted to make it shift to two. So we had to kind of figure out like look at kind of their outline of how they wanted to do things and figure out like all right well how can we how can we phase it from three to two and you know basically kind of hit all of the markers that they needed to hit and then tell a story that could be
00:32:24
fun that would sort of again the goal was hey pyro is coming out we want people to go to pyro so how do we incentivize people to to go storming into pyro and it's it's been one of the things we had actually years ago had talked about a similar thing for for for for Xeno threat as well of them taking over like the jump point station and then fleeing into Pyro. And so it was basically the Navy gave the go ahead to go in. So it was basically was like a bunch of missions for players but it was the same type of thing like you know figure out a story line that would ultimately culminate with the invasion of Pyro. And so we sort of circled around this idea of the the Frontier Fighters being a much more hardline uh version of the of CFP basically and then you know and talking with design kind of
00:33:13
came up with this ide this this hook of uh the turning them into the the villains basically. So turning frontier fighters into the bad guys. Hence why you had to fall into CFP or head hunters was and I'm glad I asked that question because you answered exactly what I was hoping you were going to say that this this idea looking at the questions in that thread. I think sometimes there's this idea that everything starts with narrative and everything you know it's like everybody else in the company has to do what you decide the story is and that's not the case. It's it's not the case. This is a collaborative uh uh thing and and and and many many many people have a voice. Um not me or we'd have jalapy but other people have voices where they they I would like we would like to do this. But that's something that happens quite a lot. Designers come
00:34:00
and say we would like to make this kind of content. We would like to do something like this. Can you help us find a way to fit that in into the universe that you've created? And that's a that's a big part of what you guys do day in and day out like this. So um uh this question came from the chat and it's also it's it's in the Meyer was asking Meyer I thought better of you man. Why can't we stay on the freedom fighter side? Why why don't why don't why don't you let us be the genocidal terrorists who want to just wholesale slaughter thousands and thousands and thousands of innocent people? Yeah. I mean, kind of answered your own question. Uh, yeah. Uh, the the Frontier Fighters switching into a pure enemy faction. I know some people align with
00:34:50
them and they wanted to keep working for them, but the our idea was always to have them as an ongoing enemy faction for the rest of the story we're telling this year. And, you know, going forward there, not every faction that you encounter in the game is going to be one that the players can actively work for. And there are these purely hostile factions and we need them from gameplay reasons is that with as the reputation system slowly evolves, we want a similar experience for players who always can arrive in a location and have someone to attack or who is attacking them without having to worry about how the reputation system is going to change how they behave or the dialogue lines because there's a high cost with that. We do want to have some reputation based
00:35:38
gameplay where the players alignment will affect the outcome or how they experience these things. Yes. But that's going to be much more controlled. It has to be within reason. Yeah. Has to be within technical reason. Has to be within feature reason has to be within uh time. You know, the the amount of time that we that we can invest into creating uh different variations. I mean, everybody everybody that's ever played a video game that has branching story lines know you can only have so many different branches and stuff otherwise you just it it just goes on and on and on and it becomes impossible. I say that and then Balders Gate 3 was like hold my beer you know shout out to Ballers Gate 3 but there but even there there are limits and that's like this. So it's limits in time limits in in technology limits in functionality and your own our own desires. It's it's it's
00:36:29
I don't think we don't we're not making a game where you can do absolutely every single thing in the universe. It's it's there's a there's a there's a game we learn every week the game that we want to make. It's it's we evolve. Chris evolves. You guys evolve. We all have different ideas every week and whatever and we start to think, you know, this is the kind of game we want to make and stuff as we see players react and stuff like this. And it's not to say that maybe someday down the road you're not going to be able to join space Nazis or whatnot, but at this moment where we're at, well, I don't say no. That's that's my point. But at this moment where we're at, like no, that's that's not that's not something we're really looking for. But again, like I mean going back to the sort of the the conversation about the guilds that we outlined in sort of the road to 1.0 thing, like there's there is going to be a criminal guild. Like there are if if if you are looking for that type of you know underworld working for
00:37:19
the dark side type you know characters and interactions and factions and stuff like that. We have that like you you will be able to to to work for those people but you can be criminals you can be criminals. You can be pirates and it's just there they're it's just a question of how far into depravity. We look an early version of the reputation system had a lot more factions that you're working for. They were going to be very localized so that as you traveled from planet to planet you were starting to build your reputation up and it turned out like that level of complexity wasn't delivering on the experience that we wanted. So, we kind of have paired back so that the factions will ideally have larger differences from each other so that you're not just shuffling back and forth between like 20 identical delivery
00:38:09
companies. Like for 1.0, we want each, you know, company that you work for to have its own vibe, its own voice, and those are going to be the ones and for you to grow along with them from system to system. So a lot of the factions that we previously thought was going to be Pyro only or Stanton only are going to expand out into the other systems so you can keep have a continuous experiment experience as you travel through the star systems like you know um and so I think I think a part of that is kind of limiting who you're going to be able to grow that reputation with. We're gonna have local factions and local people that you can still get paying jobs with and do slow them all mission chains with, but you won't necessarily be earning a permanent reputation with them
00:38:57
that's tracked and affects other people. Um, so it's going to be a lot more focused and hopefully deliver a more in-depth experience for those factions that you do work with. Um, we've mentioned in the p obviously we spent a long time talking about Pyro and stuff in the leadup. Uh hopefully Nicks ain't that long. Um are the previous mentioned gangs of pyro still intended to be there? Overlords, fire rats, the the the vipers, stuff like that, or have the frontier fighters and headunters just killed them all off? Uh I mean it's an interesting idea to kind of run with the that you know frontier fighters steamroll their way through some of the other gangs and and wipe them out. Again, it's usually that thing too of of what you were talking about before of everything kind of to to build the experience that we like or the standard
00:39:46
of quality that we like to ascribe to stuff. You know, it adding those gangs requires support. It requires costumes. It requires voice packs ideally. It requires ship liveries. It requires a lot of stuff that requires other teams to get involved in. So, uh, it's, you know, that's why we usually make the distinction whenever we're kind of talking with on on this or in the forums and stuff like that is, you know, there's a distinction of between the fictional universe and the in-game universe. And the fictional universe, they they're probably out still running around, but whether they're represented in the game yet, right now, we're not really at a place where we can support putting them in. But as far as like, you know, down the road, we have plenty of narrative room to have them show up and start taking having outpost dedicated to
00:40:33
them. And I think it's about, oh, now we've had the character art time so that they have really cool bespoke armor that makes me want to go engage with them and loot them. And right now, we just don't have that in the schedule. I mean, you you kind of see it like with the fires and the the contested zones, like kind of how unique they can they can look like. this the work that they did on that, you know, was was really awesome and shows basically where it could go. But uh but yeah, but I do like the idea of actually saying that, you know, maybe we we we kill off fictionally kill off one of the gangs that Frontier Fighters gets a hold of them and stomps them out. It's also hard because we're we're dancing around a lot of things because of what's coming later this year. It's like that's it's like it's like we you know it's been the struggle of these kind of shows for you know a more than a decade now. It's it's we we we we want to share but we don't
00:41:21
want to spoil and especially this year. This year has been a big focus on on in-game discovery probably more than any previous uh year. Um and that's affected everything from my SC toCL. It's why there are fewer shows. It's why it's it's why we don't spoil every single thing. In in two weeks you're going to see the show about about 411. And there's some rather sizable things in in in that show that we're leaving out because again we want folks to discover it in game. We don't want to. It's I think a lot of folks sometimes I shouldn't say a lot of folks, but some folks sometimes forget that the product of CI is not these shows. The product of CI is the game and whatever. These these shows just support and inform about it. But this is not, you know, it's I and I I just want to say I really feel for all the people who've been following along
00:42:09
with the lore that we've been releasing for the past Yeah. you know, decade and and seeing our development in real time, and they've always been representative of our thoughts at the time and our aspirations of the time, but we've changed, we've grown, and we've learned stuff. So, at one point, we were going to have all these gangs, and we developed them because that was what the idea was at the time. And now as we learned it's like oh we want less better gangs and so we've trimmed pair down to fit into that schedule or we know how much developer resources it takes to do it to our quality now and we've had to adjust it. That's not to say that they're cut or gone. They're just might not be showing up in the way they've come in. You know, we talk about this with the location lore, having to adjust and change to our new tech and and so yeah, I appreciate how difficult it is
00:42:59
to be a Star Citizen lore fan and being like, wait, I thought it was this and then like you told me these gangs were down here doing stuff and like and I don't see them. So, I know it's tough. Plus, C4 assist. So, without spoiling, Squadron 42 is not for this year. No, it's not. We said that at Citizen Arm last year. 2026. It's not not 2025. Um, all right. So, we got a little bit more time here. I I want to I want to do some rapid fire general questions here. This is different than the lightning round. Yeah. This one's you can actually answer. Um, why do criminal groups like to live in piles of trash? A good thing. I think I think it's a strong visual indicator to players that they're entering an area that's seedy and unwelcoming is to see trash
00:43:47
littering around. Um, I think a lot of times when you're fighting for your life, you maybe have more important things to worry about than picking up your uh protein bar wrapper. Y So, um, sorry, Voz is like, but what quarter of 2026 when it's ready? Um, how come gangs manage to borrow so many large military ships like the Idris every year? These manufacturers should fire their heads of security. Well, I mean, just look how many Polarises are are flying around right now. But yes, they should. Their security system is truly horrible. Has the role of head of security even been invented? Like is it does it exist in the Star Citizen? Is
00:44:36
there some fictional reason security gullible? They just walk in and they're like, "Hey, I supposed to take that ship out." And they're like, "Oh, okay." And just there's some suspension of disbelief that needs to happen to like how many times will Orrison be taken over and sieged before they would just shut the city down. So, it's uh um we've had a lot of focus on the Pyro gangs recently. Uh this person would like to ask if you plan to focus on each of the four Stanton Corporations a little more and their stuff. Sure. No comment. Okay. I uh that's going to lead I'm going to go right into the next question. We have introduced relatively recently within the last six months. I mean everything is relative. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You you know Foxwell is now you know this new I guess they're a PMC.
00:45:26
Is that how you would classify? Uh I would call them a security company. I don't think they're they're solid enough to be a PMC. Okay. So So F so Foxwell is out there now giving missions. They they they seem to be taking some of the role that Crusader and Hursten security would have in the past. Is that accurate? What what's Yeah, it's part of our 1.0 alignment as we head towards that goal of um for the major landing zones. It was causing potential issues for players to be able to earn negative rep with these companies and seeing how like, you know, oh, I worked for Crusader Security. I pissed them off. Like I attacked them. What does that mean for me accessing the content in Crusader Now? And it had a lot of like knock-on ramifications of it was really complicating things having the four
00:46:14
corporations who control these planets also be reputation factions. So, we're going to slowly start changing towards them being more local factions where you can work for them and earn money for them sometimes, but not necessarily keep a long-term reputation with them. Instead, those beginning security jobs are going to be given out by Foxwell. And sometimes the the four corporations hire Foxwell as a contractor to do the work for them. And Foxwell because they're not so obviously linked to the Stanton system. Like you can, you talked earlier about being able to continue your relationships with some of these people as you progress to different systems. again at at Citizen Con, we revealed, you know, the first five systems, you know, after Pyro is Nyx. After Nyx is is is Castra. Am I remembering that right? Yeah. Yeah. And
00:47:02
then after Castra Terra. So So you might So a relationship with Crusader when you're in Castra doesn't necessarily make a whole lot of sense, but Foxwell is somebody that you can Yeah. build a relationship with and they can take with you as you progress. Yeah, that was what that was one of the like long like one of the earlier ideas was like, oh, you're going to have to rebuild your reputation and we kind of decided that's not what we're gearing for. So, we want that reputation to have continuation across systems. So, yeah, you start working in Foxwell in the stand system and you'll be able to continue working for them in Castra and Terra and and stuff like that until you, you know, graduate up to a higher tier of security company who wants to work with you now. So, okay. [Music] Um, have we seen the last of Xeno
00:47:53
threat? Probably not. They're like a bad penny. They are a bad penny. Um, last two questions. Um, why aren't there more non-combat focused storylines? So, we've only been introducing this new this new story initiative just started this year. Yeah. And we're we're only we're still in the fourth month of this year. So, so it's not it's not like we've well technically even started I think two two months I think month two of the story line. I would say with the start of Pyro and stuff like this with with with the fight for Pyro and stuff. So, we're really only four or five months and into this initiative here. Well, but the missions have all been very combat. The story has been very
00:48:42
combat focused. Even even a line of mine, you well, the regen question thing, the first thing you do is go to a big central sandbox where you're forced to fight with a bunch of people. Yeah. I mean the the from a high level actually the the B story the sc the science story the regen crisis story is actually the non-combat one because it's science it's needs resources and duh and the frontier fighters one which is sort of the a story that is obviously much more focused around combat so but within within each of them obviously there's going to be opportunities to do both combat and non-combat um I mean you know again like I think a lot of the systems for combat that has have already been sort of proven out. So I think that they're from, you know, you talk to the mission team, but I think they're they're a bit easier to set up
00:49:31
so it's faster to iterate on a lot of adding a lot of combat stuff versus just mining stuff. But, you know, the as far as I understand it, like the the hope is that we want to have like a very nice balance between the two that if you don't want to fight, you don't have to fight. Supplier or die, which was kind of a a refrain from from that a story, a little little denu while you take a break. and we introduced thing that that that could be done completely without combat. You you were you were able to to mine your way to to completion and get all the rewards or salvage your way to completion. Now, what other players allow you to do that that you know that so that that is the universe that we're that we're making but it was not it was not exclusively combat combat oriented. There was a path for combat and a path where you could avoid it. I think we'll
00:50:18
see more of those things a as we go on providing alternate paths to things as the reg as the region crisis continues. There will obviously there will no doubt be opportunities for some major combat and stuff but there will be also ways to contribute that are that are not um last question. Just looking through the list here too I'm gonna do two can do two more do more. I know I said I'd get you out of here early and I've failed that miserably. Um, what are the Tavarin up to right now? Anything? Just chilling. Just chilling like hanging out in their nest. I mean, still the the two main story lines that we've talked about in the past is kind of they're at a bit of a crossroads right now and um where there is a community of Tavvarin who've left
00:51:08
the UEE to kind of form a new Tavvarian home world and try to reestablish their culture and really embrace those roots. And then there's a new kind of tavarin movement about uh taking their culture and assimilating into the UEE and finding their new place as UEE citizens and you know fight for their status of equality and really having a place in it like genuinely going hey we're going to make a real effort of we're part of this you know the we've been a part of the UEE for a while now like let's really you know make a go of it and and stuff. And so, yeah, it's the two of them kind of at odds with each other. And I think this kind of desire now that the, you know, war is so long past of
00:51:56
um returning Tvaran culture back into, you know, the mainstream with Asperia's release of these Tavaran fighter ships and other forms of Tvaran culture, which were now being revitalized. kind of an interesting way of a combination of humanity and Tvarans working together to bring back these elements of Tavarin society that were lost. Um, yeah, I I I've wanted to eventually in game primarily because I've always wanted to dress my stars silling character like Brian Basted in Flash Garden as as a Hawkman. No, I'm I'm I'm very excited to, you know, when we finally get around to Tvar because they're they're my favorite uh group. Um, and then the last qu last question I want we've talked a lot about obviously
00:52:43
just two more questions. Yeah. Yeah. You you know what you you want to show? You you've hosted this show before. You're the only you're the only person that has hosted this show. You want to switch seats? Um, we've talked a lot about obviously story and narrative and stuff. Um, hopefully and and the and the the limitations that we have as far as how we can tell stories and stuff like this. We are making some progress with that. uh this this year. Um it is we do recognize that, you know, while data pads will always be a part they're a part of every video game that every major story narrative video game I I think I've played in the last 20 years. We do want to progress that more. What can you give us a a preview of of how we're progressing that? What what would
00:53:30
be next? Well, uh I mean just moving up the the the food chain, it's, you know, audio logs, you know, I mean, ultimately we want to get to be able to do video logs, like all that stuff because again, like it's the the data pads are are great because they're they're easy, they're relatively cheap, you know. Uh but um but again, you know, part of part of the thing with this year has been creating greater engagement and one of the the main methods for doing that is having characters that you're interacting with. And so even if it's a one-sided thing as far as, you know, an audio log or a video log or something like that, it's still you're reacting to a person rather than just reading text on the screen. Folks have already seen with obviously with Wiccolo Comm's calls are are coming
00:54:19
back. You know, you're starting to see some visuals com calls and people being able to talk to you and deliver some exposition folks who are playing 411 on PTU now. Know there's elements of that creeping into 411 as well with some of the new mission content uh that's available in 411 where we're able to have these comm calls come and and and talk to you. You just mentioned audio logs. Um, I think I I'll go ahead and say it is our intention to add audio logs to the game before the year is out. You know, I'll give I'll give us a big window there to to implement it. But, you know, we we do we do want to we do want to make it so it's it's not just picking up things that you have to read. It's things that you can actually listen to and hear to help tell uh that story. And as we showcased in ISC with with the performance capture episode just a few weeks ago, you know, we are moving
00:55:07
towards uh we want to be able to get some of these broadcasts and stuff on screens and landing zones and stuff and be able to to to to to push out story elements to you that you don't have to go and find yourself. So we're committed to trying to make that work this year. you're committed to trying to make audio logs this year and stuff like that because we are very serious about our desire to tell these tell these stories and improve the meth methods in which you tell a story. So I mean yeah the change to the new loading screen alone has just given us a nice opportunity. Oh, that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just a little bit of narrative. Again, it's it's text reading, which maybe is not as exciting, but the branding team has done an amazing job of doing the art for them and things we can do this year without requiring too much feature work, without pulling too many resources away from from squad from finishing out
00:55:54
Squadron 42 and without introducing too much instability into into the PU and stuff like that. It's it's like I said, it's all got to be managed. It's all got to be with uh you know balanced within the whole but we are making those we are making those efforts. Uh a few weeks it was March 13th that episode came out. Well look at you. You can read a calendar. I've done this is my 1,217th video for Star Citizen. I can't keep track. I can't I don't I don't know when the last one was. Come me some slack, man. Finro, that was the first comment Finno has ever made in Twitch chat. And it's and it's to be like, Jared doesn't know how to read a
00:56:43
calendar. You've made an enemy today, Finnro. You made one comment. I don't know how long you've been a backer. Maybe you've been a backer for like 11 years. And today, you made your first comment in Twitch chat. You made an enemy today. I'm going to melt his ships. Can I do that? Like, like, not all of them. There's just going to be one that's gone and you're not going to know which one. You're like, "What happened?" You're going to think it's a bug. I melted it. How do you not have a button for that on your desk that you can just press? All right. Um, folks, thanks thanks for taking the time to to be here for for doing this. Um, as a behind-the-scenes thing, Dave and Will have always been my my my my my my foundation for these things. Whenever
00:57:32
whenever I need something and and folks other folks are busy, folks have to cancel for whatever reason, uh, stuff like that, it's it's it's something has to delay because it's not ready to be talked about or shown or whatever. Uh, the number of times I've had to go hatinand to these two people and say, "Please help me do my job." It was such a such a heartwarming statement, but also reinforce that we're never your first choice. Go to them. No, not wrong. So, David and Will, not my first. Thanks for watching. Uh we'll be back uh we'll be back uh next week uh with a special behind the scen behind the ships episode. It was behind the ships next week, right? Yep. And what is that? where we reveal uh the first ship that's
00:58:20
coming uh for this year's Invictus uh just a little bit early. So stay tuned for that uh for Will and Dave. Now again, not my first choice. I am Jared Huckabe. Thanks for watching and we'll see you next week everybody. Take care. Bye.

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