Star Citizen Live Q&A: Making Missions II-2

12 July 202401:10:461,806 linesWatch on YouTube ↗

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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are we recording yes are we live hi everybody uh welcome to uh Star Citizen not so live I'm your host Jared Huckaby with a special uh pre-recorded take two of our making making missions to Q&A I'm G to start over again no I'm not we're going to keep going uh joining us on the show this week are two members of the steam Mission design team uh Elliot Nick Elliot Nick say hi hi hello and Nick's not a part of my team I don't want that guy oh that's right that's right I'm sorry Nick's on the economy team and Elliot's on the mission design team I've got my own Nick that's right you've got Nick urko which there's enough there's enough Nicks to go around yeah yeah which we met uh on yesterday's ISC uh which went out and
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hopefully you've all watched it because it contains important information for what we're going to talk about today I say yesterday but we're recording this on Wednesday so for us it's really tomorrow but for you who's watching it it's Wednesday and that's time travel okay so uh couple weeks ago we had making missions too where we invited uh yit and nickon they sat here and they showed you the process of making uh making these new cargo missions that are going live with Alpha 324 um we talked a bit about uh EVR and the and and the and how they plug into um the upcoming Quantum system or starsim or whatever the heck we're calling it now and stuff like this uh then Were Meant to follow up last week we took some questions last week we had some technical issues just won't go into it we're here now with a pre-recorded show we're going to jump right into the questions and stop wasting any more time
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because uh with the two guests that we have we're probably going to go over an hour we we'll find out so we have taken the questions from you the Star Citizen person Star Citizen citizen see this doesn't get any better when it's pre-recorded and uh we put him to Elliot and uh don't look at me like that we put him to Elliot Nick and pick the ones I want to answer so uh let's start off right off the bat uh what kind of containers will hauling missions use and how can I see that uh will I have to load 101 seu boxes or what no you won't have to load well you won't have to load 101 1su boxes you might have to load six 1u boxes but the missions are designed so that the uh Su uh the amount of su and the size of the
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box is based on the ideal ship for the grade of the mission so that you can do the do the do the mission in one run if you have the appropriately sized ship so the the ideal ship for the great of the mission so you're saying that each of these missions are designed with a certain size or scope of ship in mind when we when we go over them and we're planning out the grades and the difficulties we will look to go right this one is one that we class for say a caterpillar now it doesn't mean that you have to have a caterpillar to do it it's just kind of the grading that we do um so we'll go caterpillar that means this much seu you could do it in a Pisces if you want it's going to take quite a bit longer and you might have to leave the back door of your Pisces open with a 32 suu stuck out of it but that's how you want to play the game put a flag on it got to put a
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flag on it too otherwise it's illegal don't don't say that unless you're G to make let them do that don't put that idea in their heads because put a flag on it you you can't put a flag on it you're not going to let them um you should put flag on it you th yourself the phone this is all you yeah Wednesday shows man if you thought Friday shows were weird um so how are we communicating to that that to the player uh that this mission is designed for a specific size or scale of ship how will players know what the ideal is supposed to be so I so it's all in the contract details so before we just used to have the description on the contract and we used to have to expose a lot of information to it and it always kind of restricted the granularity of the information we can do um with the cargo hauling update we got the ability to pregenerate all of the
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objectives so uh when you go in your mob glass to accept the contract you'll see the description uh which is the narrative for the mission on the left and on the right you'll see all of the um your your delivery itinerary and you'll see every single commodity and you'll see the amount of cargo uh you have to haul now as for the specific sizes of boxes unfortunately at the moment that isn't something we can display so you won't actually know that it's going to give you a 16 like a 16 Su box and give you four of them to M meet the sort of Mach you've got a whole um but that is somewhere we want to go for the Future Okay um kind of goes into the next question here uh can we pick the size of the box that the hauling that the cargo hauling Mission will be spawned will
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spawn doesn't sound like it no not not not not currently um it's it's something that we we'd like to get to on the design side on the mission design side because it gives more um ability for the player to pick and know how they fit you know say say you've say you're doing some emergent um economy trading with your Commodities right and you've got space for you know a little bit of extra cargo and you're going to a same place you've spotted a mission that goes to that place where you're going to sell your goods emergently you might be like right well if they was all in like two SE boxes I could fit them fit more in um so we want to get to that that uh that direction put them on someone's lab yeah Okay carry them um I think we talked about this on the question says can we
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use our own Commodities or Commodities that we have found to complete these hauling missions no no um no not not like so the hauling missions as they are these are tracked contracted Goods so this company has already owned these Commodities and they're asking you to transport them from A to B um however uh what that open question is is kind of alluding to is is uh more resource Gathering uh missions so we will have um missions where you are asked to just get you know um 10 copon horns or this mining this Refinery just wants x amount of you know raw iron um and the player can get them by their own means um for example you could you know go go mine it yourself uh you could
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pirate it and use it for the for the mission and things like that so in the future we will have missions that allow you to get the Commodities bya your own means you just go get this go to wish and get the wish version of whatever you're supposed to be delivering on the Cheap on the cheap okay but not in 324 no all right uh how will players earn reputation and progress in the hauling missions in the guild so there is the the current hauling missions are actually using the same reputation system uh that's in the game at the moment so similar to the mercenary missions so you see your progression in dely like you do right now um in the future there is a whole new system coming which I think we mentioned is being designed by Luke
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Presley and economy's been involved in uh in that as well because EVR handles um any kind of reward whether that's UBC or rep or whatever it is um so that will be a bit like EVR is is is is Holistic For U it will also be holistic for reputation but that's not for 324 that's coming later we're using some I mean it's so secret we're not always the best at naming things but we're using cargo missions and Hauling missions interchangeably do we have a have we have we are are we just calling them all hauling missions or are they calling them cargo missions or there so I this is something I know we're going to get into a bit later but essentially the the simplest we look at it is there's hauling and there's Courier hauling is large volume uh moving of of
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Commodities and Courier is meant to be like you're the Amazon guy right you've got maybe you know five boxes but they're all personal they've all been directly requested by someone um so they're the sort of two delineations we're going with and they're all within car cargo missions yeah they're all within sort of the delivery General scope of it so there's delivery all in career hey David we should change that graphic on ISC since it hasn't gone out yet okay so the working progress boxes cargo missions we should change the hall missions and that's what you get on a pre-tape uh let's see uh next question says well it's a statement don't make a theme park cig oh okay so so obviously making missions and everything uh it's
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essentially adding rails to what's supposed to be a a a Sandbox game this is a forever consideration for you uh we hope that cig don't just put all the gameplay on Rails and stop us from making their own emerging opportunities there's not actually a question there that's just a statement it's just a statement yes um so I guess the person doesn't like theme par theme parks are meant to be fun so I guess you don't want a fun game right no um no how we see missions is um missions are and I know people will take the the piss currently uh but missions are meant to be more narrative driven um stories in the game um but we also use them as a vehicle to introduce players to the more emergent aspects of the world um so the hauling missions are meant to show
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players uh a connection of um Commodities between locations which then like now they know that this place trades in iron and this place wants iron and they can look at the commodity Terminals and goes well that sells for this much and that buys for this much I could make a profit if I ignore the mission and just do it without the mission that's what it's there for it's to expose a gameplay route it's something we found very successful when we when we first did Salvage um and Thorston Leman loves me for this but when we first did Salvage um and we put out the the whole scraping um in its first release we saw some people play it um but it wasn't as as much of a boom but when we released the missions which acted as an easy way to show the players the Salvage gameplay we saw a huge spike in people playing Salvage um and that's just generally how we look at missions
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is it's to introduce players to the sandbox nature of our game easily so then if they wish to break away from missions just start doing sandbox things they can and I mean you don't need a mission to ask someone to escort you either you know so it's not like they have to have an escort Mission so um if you if you're thinking about the balance between missions and emerging gameplay then calling missions with an escort is a good example of those two things working together gotta um different types of cargo are always fun uh this next question says uh are Alternative forms of cargo things like hazardous waste radioactives we used to have uh some of that um P packed up Vehicles time sensitive stuff small stuff data are all of this still in the
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cards uh yeah data running is his own Beast I'm not going to touch that um but all of the other Commodities definitely so um the future idea is is we we want these like kind of like certifications gradings where you have to sort of um you know show that you can haul radioactive Goods or haul livestock um and look after it appropriately to then sort of unlock those missions um but yeah no that is the plan that's something we want um we want you to be able to hold these different things because they all introduce their own challenging right whereas a simple Box Mission from A to B might be quite simple and you think well I just sit in my ship when when you're like right now I've got a whole livestock the atmosphere of your ship's got to be right so they can breathe uh the the correct mix of uh oxygen air and
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nitrogen things like that uh you've got to make sure that you feed them you know stu stuff like that that's that's the idea of what we we go towards um things like if we have perishable Goods like food you've got to make sure that it stays cold so that they uh you know are frozen you make sure that their crate stays at a certain temperature so it can prolong the lifespan of the food so it doesn't go rotten by the time you get to your destination things like that okay um makes sense you you put animals in boxes um it's quite possible uh it might be the I mean I can't it'd make my life a hell of a lot easier if I just slap a box on make it instead of trying animals on instead of yeah so like here's a box it's got a cow in it I make the box go
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moo every now and then in the box moves Al although oh gosh forcing Chad mckin to make animals stick to the cargo grid that could be that's why I'm glad he lives in America and I live in England because he' tried to kill me okay if I you come to him with that request um will Holly missions or any missions ever make use of ground Vehicles hopefully yeah um it's it's something that we we've talked about and it's something that we'd like you know the ability to go between sort of two outposts but there's a lot of things required to make that a good experience um along with the the aspect of why would you do it like there will be people who just like I want to drive ground vehicle I'm going to do a delivery between A and B but then you'll get economy Nick here um going but it's
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not efficient you're not earning the money in the best way you're taking all your time um something I think the principal concern you might have is yeah but what about all of that orbital bombardment that is slowing down your convoy yeah potato potato I need you I need you like Center yourself in the frame you like you're you're bouncing off and you're on I'm just going to do the show over here you you do the show on the left I'll do the show on the right switch back to ell how's that look there we oh you're centered more hold on kind of offc Center there we there we go pre-tape better Pace um cargo is Big you mentioned that there's the the hauling missions then the the The Courier Miss missions were just uh smaller boxes smaller quantities of boxes uh would you ever consider
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something uh so small that you would like carry it on you like like in one of your pouches a real like secret agent kind of thing where only you know you have it there's no outward indicator you're carrying it and and people have to hunt you down so so that's like that that is those things need transporting obviously but the hauler missions are specifically for the large scale Logistics so the hauling missions tend to generate uh the kinds of quantities that need to be transported at Large Scale um but like you have said and like Elliot has just said uh before different Commodities different items could be transported with different types of logistic Mission let's call them yeah definitely it's it's something that uh ker missions are definitely tie into um because they are more personal requests that would be a
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career type thing player cont oh oh sorry Jared I was just thinking um one of the main uh questions that that came up was um just because we have a large ship or just because we have been doing hauling missions for a while we've got a lot of reputation we've we've been doing this gameplay for a while doesn't mean that we wouldn't still want to take uh more risky high value smaller volume uh uh missions is that going to be what happens in hauling so that won't necessarily be what happens in the hauling um career specifically because of the volumes in hauling but that doesn't mean that those kinds of highrisk small volume high value um Commodities won't need trading and won't have their own place in logistics okay uh player contracts and job boards will players ever be able to set up
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contracts to have cargo or items hold by other players so we do have player beacons and I know what that current state of that is but um that isck what is the current state go ahead admit it worked perfectly it's um it's a feature but that's that's something which we it's like the economy it's nonexistent oh sorry Nick okay you this is pre-recorded and if that still makes it into the show know that I don't value my job that'll probably steal in the show I mean it's
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just the look we're just going to leave that in because I've said it before we have the same conversations you do the same exact things you guys talk about the same concerns that you have we we have we we say all the same things just 12 weeks before you do it's we recognized that some of these systems uh uh uh still still have work to do still need love I'm going to ask Elliot about Box Mission so don't you worry um so don't take our cander about it as us not caring about it or us not thinking it's important it's just there's a very long list of things that we're doing for Star Citizen that we still have to do that we still have to fix and we're just that's just us being very aware of it and sometimes you just have to kind of go yeah we know if we don't we' all be
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depressed right got to got to have fun to make fun so it's take it as us being like you and we understand it we're aware of it it's on the list and uh uh just all we can ask for is patience while we try to get to everything all right continue with whatever we were talking about I forgotten now player concept to answer the question yeah to answer the question Elliot um the beacon system is something which provides for players to contract other players and it's a system we will be looking to expand upon in the future and personally I think that this side of the economy is fundamental given that we are having a hybrid economy so player driven yeah that's space tomato clip it
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fundamentally said yes you it really is it's I don't think I've been like I said I'm going on 10 years year now I've had I've had a 100 conversations with with Tony and with everybody else who's involved with this stuff and I cannot under overstate how important a player driven the player driven aspect of our economy is to us it's it's it's just things like the player Beacon system and stuff it's just waiting for it the the Eye of development Sauron to turn its eye back to it resources to free up new technologies to to work on a lot of this stuff it's like you don't want to put in a whole bunch of work when you know this other work that you also have to do is going to invalidate that so we're forced to kind of sit there and grin and and bear certain aspects of this while we're waiting for other new technologies and other new works to come online but it
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is fundamentals a really good word for that Nick thank you thank you um all right and we'll follow that up with Dynamic Mission generation so we go go from the players making it to the to the starim and Quantum making it uh Dynamic Mission generation starim Quantum uh was always supposed to dynamically generate missions and response to the activities of players and Quant is this still the plan so the short answer is yes and uh when we are ready to talk more about that we absolutely will you will be the first to know about it um and I mean the reason we're doing all this now is because we don't want you to have to wait any longer for the kind this kind of gameplay but everything we're doing now even though we're doing it manually um will be able to plug into the implementation of starim when it's ready
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so we're not wasting work but we just wanted to get this game play in so that you don't have to wait um any longer right but yes the short answer is yes you make a good you can make a good point all that work to to to to spec out stars and to design it to figure it out that's there so we can so so while it's still hardening and becoming ready we can sit there and say okay this plugs into this this plugs into this this we just fill in our own values based on you know like the spreadsheets and stuff that you showed oncl last week and so we can still build missions without having to wait for it and then when it's ready plug right in uh what happens to the hauling mission that nobody takes it's a good question that question you want to answer that I think there's
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a timeout right yeah um so missions as they currently are um they generate based on eligibility and then they stay around for an amount of time um so if there's a cargo hauling Mission it will stay around for I don't know like maybe 30 minutes and if no one accepts it it shuts itself down and we'll try generate a new one um there might be changes to that that are in the future um with maybe starim that Nick might want to talk about or might not want to depending but um right now they just shut down and then they'll regenerate after period of time so yeah um what missions are available and what opportunities they present to players is a balance that we're going to
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have to um judge as we go with starim because it is a hybrid economy and that means that um player driven is really important but we don't want parts of the universe to be abandoned or um or to to lack input um if there aren't enough players there so it will be player driven but it will be system maintained that's I feel like the the timer question was probably a question more for your yeah yor couldn't join us uh here this week he's he he had a well deserved and well scheduled vacation this week so when we had to resched last week's show uh it was really disappointing that he wasn't going to be able to do this but we didn't want to wait any longer so I mean I I've got the data open I can give you a time but I
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don't want to because then everyone's going to hyper focus on you said it' take 13 minutes oh my gosh a number early in development that never changes could you imagine no um you you said you know while you were talking I was imagining like us creating this terrible version of clippy that shows up hey you want to do a car a hauling Mission there's car there's hauling missions available although that's sort of what those that that toast that kept forever showing up the CER we we fixed that 323 didn't we the constant the constant thing that no that's on my team to fix and I I'm trying to make Caro work Jared right the constant buff ups are like down here for me I had missions that don't complete man that's right that's right
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we do have a clippy it's just not not nearly as entertaining um there really is no difference between the pre-recorded and the live shows we just go Um will we get missions in landing zones yes and um yes and uh yes and no yes in the future no right now um the uh the performance is is isn't isn't great in landing zones as I'm sure many players are aware right now um this we we used to have some missions that were in landing zones for those veterans um who can remember um three 32 or yeah like in in like 3.2 I'm sure salty Mike will be sat there going I remember that and
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start moaning about something else um yes we used to have them but they used to take like five minutes to spawn and that's because the server is like a box get gets put in a spawn queue and then if people are doing stuff like I'm trying to buy some I'm trying to on my 890 jump or whatever um the box is kind of like a lower priority so they took ages and it was just a really bad player experience so we turned them off for the time being but when performance at Landing zones is improved um and we have you know a bit more stability there by all means because you know the the hopeful idea would be that you wake up in a landing Zone and have things to do um so it makes it feel like that Landing Zone's alive and you've got things to do you know pick up this trash deliver someone's Pizza things like that
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um no hear this this next one's not not a question either just a statement it says uh autoloading times are broken than yes yes yeah we know jez sorry sorry about that um no uh the the reason is because um in order to make them more reflective of how we actually want them we actually need some more uh development on them and everybody is very busy so it is a priority and hopefully coming soon TM but um we had to get something to work in a tier zero so that we could at least get the hauling missions out and we will be working on fixing that as soon as resources available to fix that um but it is actually worth noting just from a
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uh time calculation point of view that the uh times when calculating the reward on the hauling missions don't use the autoloading times they use the manual loading times except for the whole sea um because that is always autoloading um all right um speaking of of of we're going to get into this little section here talking about you know effort versus reward and stuff um well as as as we talked about in as we talked about in ISC yesterday um there's lots of these missions that are that are chained to you know Le from one location to another location to another location stuff like this this question is why why not simply use a big enormous C2 Hercules and chain all of the small missions why would we ever use a smaller medium ship at all from a mission design
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point you can like this isn't something I want to limit I want you to choose you know um back in the I mean it was way ago but uh back when we used to have the old delivery system where you could chain uh your own cargo machines together that was exactly the the point players could have this huge ship and take quite a lot of small jumps and then go oh this one goes to this location and then I oh I have a pickup from there and it goes back over here and I I can make my own round delivery Loop um from just reading contracts and understanding where everything is locality wise you know I know that this Outpost is right next to this Outpost so I'll drop off here and I'll do a quick harop grab it and make my time more efficient um but sure Nick might have some other reasons as to why not it's not the most efficient route you're wasting your time
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no no I mean you're absolutely right obviously not only can you do it but you definitely should be doing it um the question isn't so much whether you should or shouldn't be using a C2 that should why would I ever use a small or a medium ship maybe that's all you have maybe you only have a smaller medium ship not everyone has c2s like salty Mike so if you only have a smaller medium ship um then we wanted to make sure that you still had access to the hauling gameplay um the other thing to bear in mind of course is that there are only so many of each type of mission in each part of space so if you are in a very traffic part of space and there are more people who are doing hauling and they have smaller or medium ships they will they may have taken all of those smaller media siiz contracts so you
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there may be one or two you could grab but you aren't going to be able to fill a whole C2 with them if you're in a heavily trafficed P of space where everyone else is scrabbling over those same missions and then of course there are the more economy um based answers so can you make an efficient delivery route if you have to go back and forth and forth and back and out of atmosphere and that back up again and you know you have to sometimes Quantum sometimes you're using hydrogen fuel costs alone might make it um not economically viable to do eight different small missions when you could just do two medium or two large ones also depending on where you're going a C2 is a really big Target uh if you're seeing a C2 fly between you know big Commerce areas is people are going to start to figure out that
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that's what folks are doing and those become bigger targets and imagine having to having to ex you you know losing not just one missions worth of cargo but four simultaneous missions worth of cargo to four different uh providers absolutely that is a really good point I mean imagine there is a trade Lane a small trade Lane which is traditionally um Nomads and maybe cutlasses or whatever H are hauling this Lane and and maybe there is a pirate uh um lurking if he sees a C2 or they see a C2 which one are they going to go for the the Titan or the C2 so there are considerations yeah but by all means take multiple missions be as efficient as you can and the the rep hit to that like if you if you do get caught out
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like there four missions that are going to fail and you get a rep hit times four you know you might have a bit where it's like right I can't play cargo missions for the next hour or so no it's good it's it's like anything else there's options what's Johnny doing hold on go back to Johnny was Johnny come here J Jared's asking questions about you oh I'm on oh sorry no it's good it's fine all right so yeah I know's Friday it's Jared you know it's unreliable right yeah he's doing it before he's got a I don't know I have a thing that I'm supposed to be doing on Friday so um we're here we're here officially in the in the
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EV phas here uh we mentioned it first on on a couple weeks ago uh it came up again on ISC yesterday this is not a for A New Concept this effort versus reward I I I would hesitate to um say would not hesitate to say that just about every video game that's ever been made involves some kind of effort versus reward calculation um why is this why is this new to us why are we talking about it now um and uh for the people who have who' chosen not to watch the other things uh give us a a cap of why it's important yeah absolutely yep it's not this is not uh Preparatory Tech this is uh the way that you would uh approach how to uh balance the
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um the the players activities versus the reward that they should be given in any game I mean if star cism were a traditional single player game and we just had characters with levels um then it would be relatively easy to work out how much gold we should give you depending whether you're level 12 or 11 50 1170 whatever it is um but because Star Citizen is not only an MMO of a very large scale but we also have a mixture of structure missions and sandbox gameplay um and we don't have a traditional leveling system per se then EVR which is for people who didn't see the uh the or the the ISC um it's effort versus reward so it's basically time and difficulty on one side of the equation how long it
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takes you to do something how difficult it is to do it will always be equivalent to the amount of reward that you will get for the time and the difficulty so that could be ueec that could be reputation that could be um the amount of loot in an area and it allows us just to balance the Universe um whether that's a mission or um an area like a distribution center um or sandbox gameplay like piracy for example it's really important that people doing any kind of activity feel that they are um receiving appropriate reward for the effort they're putting in that's part of what makes the game fun um so Jared actually had a brilliant um uh description of it um in the last a PA for the course it's it's not the final
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number it's a design discussion and it creates an expectation for what the reward level should be for the player activity um and there are additional factors that we need to consider like for example um how do you handle the risk of players stealing the cargo that are given to them in the hauling missions so when we're designing the hall emissions and the reward for that we have to consider what to do about that and that isn't directly a question that's answered by EVR it's a question that has to be answered by Design around the mission design um and all of these conversations happen with the mission designers and economy we work really closely together um so that we can apply it to all of the different behaviors all the different activities um across the part of the conversation that we have is is Nick's tool will generate this this value that we look at and then on the
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design side it's it's not exactly that we we we know the numbers and we know all the economy so we know how it fits and we know it balances we can just go as simply as this doesn't feel like it's enough or this feels like it might be too much and then from there we have a conversation on what part of it and why and then we rebalance from that um and we've done multiple passes like even since um since everyone saw the me and Nick have have sat together a few times and we've gone over the sheet that balances every single Mission um and sort of gone over how it feels and giving some more information you know being like right this this one's insane right because it takes into account you'll get a crime startat and then if you get a crime startat inherently you either go to prison and serve time off or you have to go to karea do your hacking uh people will come kill you PVP
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you've got all the AI that there to battle against and then because of that you know it's like right well every illegal Mission Baseline should have this value and then anything that's extra gets put on top of it um so it's it's yeah it's not like a cold and unfeeling system it's something that is nurtured with love and like and the advantage goe sorry go ahead the advantage is that it because um It's a combination of maths and design then we can make bespoke decisions as we need to but fundamentally Underneath It All there is an algorithm so in the future when the when Star Sim when a system is um making these decisions um in a more algorithmic way the entire system can be balanced at once um and then tweaked and designed accordingly which is a really um
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important place for us to be when it comes to balancing an entire universe yeah I'm certain that there were I'm certain that there were people who looked at the information from the last and and and did some maths and was like it's going to take 107 days to earn an 890 jump at at that kind of payout and stuff um we just want to reiterate again that every aspect of Star Citizen is is still a work in progress we're we're we're we're in Alpha it's we're going to try some stuff and we're going to try some other stuff and we're going to try some other stuff it's uh even even Master modes has has some changes coming down the road which which we'll talk about in a in a bit uh don't get too excited it's just more Evolution we we try a thing we listen we try another thing um you can say a lot
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of things about Star Citizen I don't think anybody can't say we're afraid of trying new things and afraid of you know taking a different direction after we try something so it's I just want to caution you again when you see these numbers e even when 324 goes out and it's out when you see those numbers on those days that's the number then and we will continue to review we will continue to discuss we will continue to iterate so uh feedback feedback feedback always Doom and Gloom the sky is falling less helpful yeah and I mean on that uh on that point to the uh the hundreds of days uh point if you were to take the numbers of the low um the early missions um and you know let's say at the moment
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we're imagining those numbers are around the 20K per hour for example but like Jared says these numbers change and then you just did a straight times this by that what's an 890 jump then you're getting hundreds of days or whatever okay okay but you're not going to be doing those missions yeah well I mean for starters we're in MMO so so we're not like a 40-hour game that you finish in 3 weeks but but even so this is not a linear scale this is a curved scale the whole point of it is the further you climb up that scale the more rapidly you accelerate the the more rapidly you make more that's not only to reward players for their progression through the system but it's also to account for the fact that an extremely difficult environment is going to require multiplayer it's not going to be
00:38:01
soloable so it can't just be the case that I get this reward when I do an easy one and I get this reward when I do a difficult one it needs to be one person gets this reward when they do an easy one and three people get this reward when they do a hard one split up between them and you still progress that way um but it's not a straight line it's a it's quite a curve yeah um what do you say to so obviously you those are those calculations uh we we talked a bit about uh how we calculate re how we calculate effort you know and how hard it is in something uh what about time time is another Factor um I'm S I saw comments of people that said that were saying that you're not factoring all all
00:38:50
that time of walking through stations of having to buy um uh food and water uh of having to set a destination on the map the time it takes to open the hanger doors the time the multiple times you die in the elevator how are the time discussions going versus the effort I mean for for for the first part I know Nick's got his his answer to it is you know in the real world um if you're a hauler you have your vehicle and you get your petrol paid for the time it takes you to get there is your own time right and if you take longer than Norm than necessary know you it won't be worth because it's like oh this is meant to be a 2-hour haul but instead I stopped off and had a meal so it's actually a 4 Hour you know that's that's on you for when I'm working here they pay me from the second
00:39:39
I'm sat at my SAT my desk to the time when I finished at my desk they don't pay me for my walk in they don't pay me for my stop at Macky D's for me breakfast like you know so for me it's it's there are bits will pull in to the payout that makes sense but there are also bits that just don't make sense and I'm sure nickel have more of a elegant actually no sorry jar go no I said let's hope I mean one big difference here is why I'm not elegant is I'm from the north and Nick Nick's from the south I am I am not from the south I was born in Scotland no you wasn't I was not got the accent for it ah you know what um doesn't
00:40:28
you you can't judge a person by their accent that's a saying right anyway I was actually gonna uh I was going to actually reply this more from a design point of view as opposed to just a cold numbers point of view star isn't like any game you can play it as a minmaxer you can play it as a I want to make absolutely the most I possibly can I want the best reward I want everything in every minute of every day why why AR why aren't I getting the best thing I possibly can but we're building an immersive universe here if you want to spend time walking around the station buying your food getting your burritos doing your stuff you shouldn't feel guilty that you're somehow not earning enough you're going to take your missions you're going to do your sandbox gameplay you're going to get a fair reward for it because of EVR and because of the ongoing balance because of the feedback and the fact that we work with
00:41:15
the community to make this happen wow JJ is loud and and if you want to just chill and and and not earn money every second that you are playing the game because it's a game go for it um Elliot yo what what uh what breakfast do you get at McDonald's uh oh it depends it depends it depends what day it is um I'll sometimes get like a two sausage and eggut muffins um and maybe a Cheesy break and flatbread uh but it's only on certain days I don't do every time do do do you put the hash brown in the sausage and egg muffin I don't like hash browns yeah yeah but you put them in the sandwich I don't like eating them alone
00:42:03
either but you put them in the sandwich it dramatically changes AC cross McDonald's I don't don't touch that I've had I've had a hash brown before in a sandwich in in one of those but it's just not it's not for me I don't know I know don't judge me I mean if you're going to judge me for anything it's the two double double sausage and egg M muffins that's what I should be judged for I I I I I eat the two double s poins what you do is you get the meal and then it comes with a hash brown and then you add another hash brown and then you just get the second one solo you get the second one solo it's actually uh uh uh like 40 cents or pens or whatever the heck you call the little ones here cheaper than than ordering two meals pennies pennies all right well next time I'll get the ash Browns and I'll bring them to you you can have my ash Browns well no I can't have them anymore oh my
00:42:52
God I'm not allowed to have sugar or carb they go in the bed then um and that's the show for this now I'm just kidding uh don't we'll tack it on at the end that wasn't lost time that was me time um nerfing Mission payouts EG Salvage missions and why do hauling missions pay so little compared to other things I can do to earn ueec yeah Nick out everything isn't this Connor isn't this isn't this Connor who's going out and and nerfing all the missions they're all one it's a combination It's a combination just tell it's the whole of the economy team he's not here he can't defend himself just tell him it's Connor it's Connor yeah it is Connor it is literally is Connor for jump town
00:43:41
Connor for all Commodities it's Connor for everything I'm gonna have to stick up for my esteemed colleague Connor here con is Commodities Connor is Commodities and those kinds of things and he knows exactly what he's doing thank you Mr mby I never said you didn't I just said it was him he's responsible Conor we love you you can get him when you come over so so what do we have to say about nerfing of these Mission payouts so all the the the we're in a strange situation right now where we have hundreds in fact we have thousands of missions and um in order to get them all into the balance with EVR there's quite a substantial amount of
00:44:28
manual work that needs to be done and that is ongoing so you're experiencing the moment um some of the missions are in the new system in EVR and some of the missions are still with the original designed rewards which were kind of put in by whichever designer put those in at the time when everything is rebalanced um to EVR then there will be a a new um there will be a new um if you like yeah a new reality um but it's not it's not Doom and Gloom um you've just only seen certain parts of it so for example um the hard retrieve Consignment missions what are those called Elliot that's a great name in in data Forge um retrieve Consignment they are the missions where you go to a ugf
00:45:17
and there's a uh box dispenser you have to find a code from the body enter it into a terminal and it pumps up random Commodities that you can sell and you're looking for a um a confidential item uh that you then have to deliver that's what those ones are I can't remember the narrative name because it's got a few variants but that that's that's what you do in the mission right so the original award on those was set um uh by the designer but they didn't perhaps understand quite how long those missions would take because EVR is time and difficulty me under the bus okay the original designer was uh was only slightly out but EV EV takes into account the time and so we have that data now and so they're getting a bump they're getting about a 50% bump um and the M the multi3 and the multi4 hauling
00:46:05
missions they're like up in the hundreds per hour um and the illegal missions like Elliot was saying because they are additionally complex with the crime startat and the difficulty in those is always higher so they're they're going to be um have a bump and those crazy very very low paying missions for example the Box delivery missions they're getting a bump as well because they take a certain amount of time more than perhaps they originally thought so it's not all doom and gloom but it will be a new normal and we will listen to all the feedback and balance everything so it's rewarding but it's not all happening in 324 absolutely not no no this is this is very much ongoing work can I can I ask a question I kind of feel like I have to ask
00:46:52
shoot why not wait until every Mission has been rebalanced to do this change why why create the inequity for any period of time yeah that is a very fair question because um the longer we waited to um put this Tech into any Mission the would basically be adding to the uh the old way of doing things instead of backlog instead of moving on to the new way so the entire Mission uh system is being refactored now um and EVR is a part of that refactor so new stuff is coming out with EVR um recent stuff is being addressed older stuff is going to be addressed okay
00:47:41
um don't lower Mission rewards and higher prices mean grind do we want grind yes we we want an MMO we want we want game pay we want opportunity we want years of Star Citizen we don't want 40 to 60 hours I got an 890 jump I'm done I'm going to go and play we we want like you feel more connected to things that you've had to put more time into getting um you know there's other MMOs where you do raids that take absolutely hours and the rewards you get from them feel even better because of the effort you put into it and it is effort versus reward right the the the grind is a part of the effort your reward is is how an item makes you feel
00:48:29
um there's a really popular Community event we did a while ago which was kill 50 players and you get a vandal mask that Vandal mask mean something to those players because they put in that time they put in that effort the ones who actually did it not the ones who just like had all their mates on a server and just killed them like the people who put in the grind it means more to them and it's the same thing that we've been going forward with with some of our other events where we've been giving you a set of armor that shows that you've done a bunch of stuff for it it feels more rewarding to you as the player um and that's that's what a lot of MMOs do you know you put in time you put in effort and you have something to show for it um I can't tell you how many times JJ sits next to me he's loaded up world Warcraft and show me all of his accounts I was gonna say that's that's horeshit because I I've I never got alist raser and so like everything that you're saying right now I'm like no I
00:49:18
never got alist raser I never got that damn Firebird so it's all that only works if I get it if I don't don't get it you'll get it you'll get it you just need you just need to join the right people to boost you no no no I I had to I had to leave that that was a decade and a half was enough of that I gave up um but yeah I think the point I think the point is taken one of the one of the weird challenges that are unique to Star Citizen is that we're running a live environment in the middle of our development so in the development of any game it it it's it's thing many things will start easy and then become hard some things
00:50:07
will become start hard and become easy it's it's this continuous sculpting and reverse sculpting and most of this is done in secret most of this is done in private at any other game by the time they open it up to the players they're they're well along in a lot of those those big sweeping Chang have have been done we have this continuous thing where because we've run a live game environment since late 2015 November December 2015 uh to this day here it's these growing pains are experienced not just by us which is normal but by our players which is not so players who have played a long time who players who have played a tremendous amount can get used to things being a certain way
00:50:57
and when we change that almost never feels good whether it's a good change or it's not is a whole another discussion it's just when you're when You' become used to something when you've when you when you've been accommodated to it when you when you when you decided you like it and then it changes that can cause consternation uh we see that with everything from from Master modes to these economy changes and everything else between that's not the same as saying that the feed back is not valid I want to be real clear with that uh feedback is valid some some of these changes are going to be too sweeping some of the some of these cuts are going to be too much some of these bumps are going to be too much uh some of some of the things we did for master modes like hover mod stuff uh are going to be right where we want them and some aren't and
00:51:45
we're going to keep tweaking and stuff like this this is all of Star citizens game development but it is a yeah I'm sorry let me just finish this up here but yeah it is a it is a I see it from everybody from good people from the best people who who struggle with this and it's it's it's unfortunate and it's but it's normal it's a part of our process here and it comes part and parcel with running a live game development live game environment in the middle of our development so as always we just encourage you to um um be patient with us to help us uh to keep testing to keep giving us uh feedback like I said before the Doom and Gloom stuff stuff doesn't help so much the hey this could be a more like more like this and you would get this that's the sweet stuff so uh yeah what what do you want
00:52:35
to say um just something to add is like we're very much aware obviously as Jared says with was being live service and we talk about being in MMO and grind and the reactions we get we understand why for most of them um we're we're making a grindy environment in something that we constantly reset and wipe as it is currently and that obviously isn't fun because you're not getting that long-term reward out of the effort you put in but eventually when we're closer to done you will because we'll have we'll have solidified a lot more of this so therefore the grind and the wipes will go so that you can put in the effort and get the effort out I understand right now that it won't be as fun to put you know 80 hours into getting some up there in the hauling
00:53:22
things just to next patch find out that we need to wipe because of a bug or because were balancing it's part and parcel of just having to lay the tracks while we're still running the train down it yeah although I want to add to what Elliot says I've had a dozen conversations with Rich tyer about this topic here and I was like why am I looking at Elliot uh and we want to try to avoid as many wipes as possible it's it's that's always this that's always the other thing it's it's people don't want to invest time people don't want to invest knowing this thing is going to wipe it is Our intention from this point forward to not wipe for anything or anything that's not the same as saying that we're not going to now I want to be real clear
00:54:10
because every time we say what we want to do and then something changes people are like cig promised no we told you what we wanted to do what we want to do from this point forward is we want to try to avoid any wipe if we have to wipe uh at this from this point forward forward it'll be something severe it'll be something that we've all come together and said there's just no other way forward and I'm not so that is still a possibility I'm not going to sit here and lie to you and say it's not but the intention from everyone at every single level is to do every single thing we can from this point forward to avoid any more wepes so and uh of course we there are some other things which are very important pieces of functionality which uh which we haven't got to yet which will
00:54:56
like Elliot was saying you'll be able to enjoy your progress and your your status that you've earned over all those hours and it will become even more meaningful with death of a Spaceman where you're your it'll bring a bit more more consequence more meaning to decisions you make and server meshing where we bring more players together interacting in the same place which is going to bring a lot more life and uh collaboration to decisions you make and starim in the background makes the universe Dynamic around you so at the moment it might feel like it's a grind and it's groundhog day but we're building for the future um ell you mentioned earlier about you know as these missions get harder and harder and stuff uh wanting to have more players and other people to
00:55:45
help you um let's talk about security so it's uh while loading and unloading and then you know while flying through trade lanes and stuff like this talk to me about security while loading and loading is this is this does it just you have to get friends or are there other things we're looking at here uh there'll be areas where you're safe and there'll be areas where you're not places that you have arms dises or green zones you'll be very safe in but ones where you don't you won't be it's the intention right it's say it's it's going to be an experience you have in pyro when you're trying to do these sou and S missions you know you're unprotected like if I go to an outpost that has a freight elevator that doesn't have a green zone I need to be aware of it and I need to be ready to defend myself whether it's I leave people in the turrets of my ship while I load
00:56:33
whether I hire myself an escort by talking in in chat and trying to get some people that I don't know or do know to help me out there's meant to be some risk and that risk is calculated when we do the reward like we know the locations we're sending you to we know all this sort of stuff so that that risk is inherently calculated but no I'm not here to hold everyone's hand through the unloading and loading process and make it all safe um there will be obviously things to Aid you like I believe currently if you try to steal a box so say I I call up a freight elevator with my cargo and Nick who I don't know tries to take it off they should get a crime like there'll be a a way in the legal system for you for us to defend um and to allow you to sort of enact Justice yourself legally without consequence yeah and and as you
00:57:20
mentioned obviously where you operate is important like there's the green zone stuff but even in a place like pyro that doesn't have any uh green zones per se you know it's it's you can align yourself with one of the factions there and if you're aligned with the citizens of prosperity and you're doing your loading there you'll have a certain amount of protection from the the folks there uh but if but if you're aligned with s and prosperity and you try to go to one of the the head hunters uh trading posts and try to load up there it's going to have a worse time yeah and St like that so it's it's these decisions are part and parcel of the process and and and even without green zones there will still be places for everyone based on your decisions the decisions you make for your character to okay this is less risky and this is more risky the choice is yours yeah it goes into you know doing like in real life
00:58:10
when they do shipping uh Lanes if they know that they're going to go from Pirate infested waters there there are mercenaries on board to defend against it and that should be the same thing like the players will if they want to do these missions that at some point they'll have to adapt understand that oh this location I know of because it doesn't have a green zone that means that this person of the mission I'm safe but as soon as I'm getting close to this location I need to be prepared for anything right um and it will be something that comes with the players's knowledge and then building their game knowledge is they'll understand that this location isn't safe for me I need to make sure I've got protection and while we have some version of it now with with with with these new missions that are you know designed to link to go from this place to that place to that place natural trade lanes are going to start to form
00:58:59
yep uh as as server meshing comes online and we we be we begin to increase the number of players in these natural trade Lanes will start to harden it'll start to solidify you'll start to see more and more ships uh that will create a lot of interesting opportunities for players on both sides of of of the moral compass uh for protection and for uh piracy absolutely and um in the in the long term the very long term when there is a system um of a broader system of law um across um the the various uh solar systems that is being managed um so the the original Quantum uh demonstration that Tony gave us uh
00:59:50
shows how um different uh action areas can be uh can can can can be spawned in response to different um types of activity in an area if there are a lot of pirates then then there's a security response if there's uh and that could be player driven or it could be system driven um um uh last few questions we have are are kind of tangal to hully missions but the more other profession stuff but let's see if we can squeeze them in um Elliot for miners will there be missions to sell what we mind to the like something like the distribution centers so that they can they can then be hauled away with other hauling missions uh yeah as I mentioned before this is the resource Gathering type Mission so we will have missions that
01:00:38
require them it says I know the question is De miners like you you can steal those goods you could buy them from somewhere it's really cheap and bring them over or you can mine them that is it's a choice that I want to give the players so you can choose whatever gameplay you are interested in for this mission but yeah we're going to have missions where you have to bring resources to a location um and then naturally that location would then take those resources produce something and then another location would then consume what that location produces and that makes the um the what do you call it the um the hauling sort of mission currently our hauling missions are very static they're not reactive based on location inventory amount that's something that is something on the side of like starim um because you know that will keep track of sort of things like that so it knows
01:01:27
what to generate and whatnot uh this question just says express delivery missions please yeah um the again it goes with the the type of cargo that you're hauling we will also have like Express hauling requests so these are these will just be missions where you know maybe a company's like we've got an order on from a from another company to make this many sort of Shield plating for this ship but we've run out of you know tungsten or something uh we need a quick delivery of it so we can me out quot and we don't get punished by violating our contracts you know these sorts of contracts that require you to bring something ASAP to a location will and these ones will be possibly a bit more unique because they will skip the
01:02:17
uh trade routs that we're setting up with this logistical Network because they are a demand right now so there'll be a a route which is your quickest route to take rather than you know from a distribution center that makes them to the Leo then the Leo to the L Grange point then Grange point to the jump point you know it will skip that flow and it might just be get it from pyro straight to the jump Point straight to the delivery location um so yes we will have Express bowling contracts eventually um uh why has it taken so long to get these hauling missions into game um people are going after me today uh it's it's I we don't want to do a half job right um
01:03:07
for for the longest time our cargo just appeared on our ship right and then you take it from A to B and it's we wanted more of an involved gameplay Loop so we chose to put them on the back burner until the tech was ready and focus on other things that we we thought would be more fun um I play a lot of hauling games like uh EUR truck simulator and death stranding so it's it's kind of something that I take like quite personally that I like I want to ensure that I've got the best experience um for the people who like the games that I play because that for me wouldn't have been fun um so we wanted to wait for the fundamental Tech that actually was how we want this system to work so that we could do these sorts of missions those are the two types of games Euro Truck Simulator death stranding everything else Falls in between
01:04:01
uh what do freight elevators mean for the future of missions uh they mean quite a lot it's you know I I we can do a lot more now we have them um now we have this sort of thought out structure of how we retrieve stuff like I can I can give you missions where you have to deliver vehicles I can give you missions where you have to um go to a freight elevator to cut to collect a part you know maybe maybe we do a repair Mission and it's like where we'll put a bunch of the repair stuff in the hanger um in this like location you've got access to it go pick it up and then bring it to the mission to sort of um deem it I could even do I could do a mission where I make you do Tetris in an ai's hanger where it's just hey load my ship up for me and off you go and you
01:04:49
play Tetris um it gives me a lot of power a legally distinct version yes yes sorry the views and opinions of Elliot Mal be not represent those of clad Imperium games Robert Space Industries or its subsidiaries I just watched the tetris movie that's why it was in my head it was good it was good was good um so yeah we I can I can do stuff like that it gives me more opportunities to do we you know there could be a mission where it's like gear up for a raid we've put all the gear in this location called fright elevator here's a box full of guns and masks and whatever else you know there's it unlocks a lot of possibilities for Missions um Nick we only have time for one more question um it's not a question for you but I want to are you there
01:05:40
Nick oh yeah I want to let you ask Elliott the question for me yeah so ask him if he's ever going to fix the Box missions so yeah Elliot Malby lead U Mission designer at Cloud Imperium games um on behalf of the community I was just wondering when are you going to fix box delivery missions oh here he comes here he comes oh no okay I thought you were gonna invade my space there there's no such thing as box delivery missions they're not broken um anyone who says so lying uh no I the we've thought so the the hauling update and the freight elevator update that came in allowed me to if anyone remembers that very fun isci I did on the delivery system all of
01:06:29
that stuff is gone or will be gone um because we're turning it into a coded based system so it's uh more robust um it still allows us to put our hooks in it on the design side when we're building logic so I can still request things and tell it to do things and manipulate in ways I need to but for simple missions where it's there's no extra gameplay that we start up in logic it's a lot better if it's a coded system so alongside the freight elevator emissions we have the ability now to do the Box missions the same way um so instead of it using a logic system which can sort of go a bit weird when a server's gone on a bit long or when it's at a low server frame rate we can use more of a coded system which which makes it more stable um and it will be something that will we look to refactor um I can't speak as to when it'll all be
01:07:19
done but we we have started this work as it is uh so yes box missions if everyone who wants to still pick up three box boxes and take them to a delivery Locker or to a shelf uh you guys will still have something to do because that is a part of The Courier gamepl um and it is still something we want it's just I'll get him working eventually fair enough Elliot Nick thank you uh for taking the time out of your Wednesday to be here on the show uh yes if it wasn't clear this whole time up here in the corner it tells you this has been a pre-recorded episode of Star seon live um again Elliot Nick thank you for taking the time to answer the questions Community thank you the time for the time to submit the questions uh we hope you found the show interesting and informative uh Alpha 324 uh is currently available for testing on the evocati PTU
01:08:09
by the to the stairs um uh we hope you get in there help help us uh kick the tires light the fires get this thing out because we all really really want it out uh not just cargo missions not just Blockade Runner which we talked about yesterday a whole host of of new changes to uh the the personal persistent hangers uh the freight elevators uh basically just a complete overhaul of life in the verse for almost every just existing aspect of the uh of the game so we're really excited for this in 324 uh we will be following up uh with a master of Chads I'm I'm sorry Master of cargo he probably master of Chads I mean I'm not going to say he's not a ask we're following up with a master of cargo Chad mckenny on ISC uh in about two weeks um uh so not this next episode uh the one
01:08:57
after that uh and uh we'll basically but I think we're going to do it we're we're going to try this this this isn't a promise either this is one of the things we're going to try we're going to try to do a calling all Chads I'm inventing that right now we're try to do a calling we're just we're just going to put a bunch of these questions to Chad and and and and and have them address uh all of your concerns and and and find out what has changed what's the still the same how it works for cargo and all these things in 324 that'll be an that'll be ISC in uh two weeks where we can also show you all these things working uh which is why it'll be different than ancl uh uh will be off next week um it's a scheduled Hiatus in the show we'll be back the following week and then next week on ISC um very special episode an episode I've waited to do for a long time uh with Alpha 4.0 approaching um it's time we're calling this inside Star
01:09:48
Citizen intro to jump points it's basically everything you could possibly want to know about jump points uh what how they've changed since we've been talking about them forever how they've evolved how they're going to work uh in 4.0 uh the visuals will still be work in progress because they always are on inside Star Citizen but basically this will be your One-Stop shop for everything you want to know about uh jump points uh so check that out on ISC next week uh but for I'm Jared uh that was Elliot and Nick uh that was Tom on the keys it's Pete on the on on the on the people talking uh thanks for watching and uh yeah tune in to I see next week everybody bye bye he looks so small behind him how dare you how dare what are you talking
01:10:41
about all right stop recording

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