Star Citizen Live: All About Alpha 3.23

2 February 202401:03:051,702 linesWatch on YouTube ↗

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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just threatening peep I I was going to start with like l Good Morning Star Citizen he was just waving me off hi everybody we're back welcome to Star Citizen live uh uh uh I'm your host um Jared we just talked about that we just talked about that uh have you've never seen Star Citizen live before so we take about an hour out of the end of our week and we chat with a few of the developers who make Star Citizen and Squadron 42 possible on this week's show we are uh we are changing things up a bit generally speaking uh towards the release of Any Given patch we have what we call this all about Alpha whatever it is show we usually bring our Star
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Citizen live game director Todd papy on the show and he answers your questions about all the things things you've seen in ISC throughout the season building up to this uh the things that you're on P you're experiencing through evocati and through PTU and it's all a big fun thing where you guys get to ask questions and we POS right to the people put them on the hi seat Hot Seat we're not doing any of that today we are changing the formula uh we are at the beginning of this journey to Alpha 323 Alpha 323 Alpha 323 uh we've all come back uh from our holidays we've uh done the uh typical uh regroup and and and and Engineering planning for the next patch we also do our our yearly performance reviews how'd you do I've done know yet okay we'll find out I I don't haven't found out mine either but uh let's hope
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they're not watching this show uh do the performance and then we begin this journey towards our next big patch uh because this patch is built very differently than previous patches before uh it's going to Showcase a whole lot of what you saw you know showcased at citizen con uh we thought we'd uh do it differently we're we're going to we're going to be Babe Ruth we're going to step up the plate and we're going to call our shot this quarter and we're going to talk about what's coming in Alpha 323 uh at the beginning of of this road and to do that joining me today uh first is uh uh a friend of the show somebody we haven't had on the on either of our shows in quite some time uh you've got a new title since the last time we had it so I'm going to have you do it because I didn't think to ask you what your title was before we started uh
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Johnny javius Johnny how you doing man hello um do you want to guess what my title is It's assist assoc assistant design director got it in one did I get it yeah you did congratulations on the promotion man thank you very much sorry I need a bit of a water there so assistant design director what does assistant design director do um a lot of stuff um essentially I am cross project on both Squadron 42 and St citizen itself so I essentially run the design teams that we've got which includes Mission design economy design system design technical design so all those teams report to me and we all work together as one big team uh we also work with a lot of the other teams obviously people like here in leand and his art team a lot of people that we've had on here before um but essentially I'm
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working with everyone in the company more or less to try and you know hit the vision that we're trying to hit you were uh folks who've been watching our star Sison programming for years now remember you were part of the F FPS systems design team but not you went over to Squadron uh with that big migration uh gosh two two and a half three years ago now uh you you went away the Squadron hunkered down worked on the worked on all these features in in a uh quiet Solitude and now we're bringing all these things back adding to the already existing uh team and work of the Star Citizen development team uh to make alpha 323 and Beyond yep so we're going to jump right into it so we are we're going to we're going to we're going to talk about the things that are targeted for Alpha 323 now I I
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want to before we go into the rest of the show I want to be I want to I want to I want to talk about what that word targeted means these are the things that the various programming and Engineering teams the art teams the design teams these are the features that they're all working towards and expected to have delivered for Alpha 323 we all know because we've been doing this for a while that sometimes the thing uh slips it gets to a go no go it doesn't quite make the go uh so like that so this is not a exhaustive list of everything that will come there are also um some surprises there are also some things that we've designated uh surprises things we want you to to discover on your own when you log in PTU for that first time so we're not going to cover everything that we're intending to put into 323 but we're going to cover
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a pretty exhaustive list and we're going to start with the stuff that we talked about yesterday in inside Star Citizen uh we came back on inside Star Citizen yesterday if you haven't checked it out check it out um new Eva so new W Eva is is is coming along pretty well uh when we first started capturing for is for ISC we were we still had to be in Squadron builds for a little bit because it was just getting integrated into into the pris universe uh by the time we went live it had been it had begun its integration in the start citizen Universe uh how's Eva doing um really good obviously there's still work to do um obviously a big proponent of that as you mentioned it was in Squadron stream obviously now we're dealing with things like networking and this is going to be true for a lot of the features that we
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talk about today is that obviously there are you know unique challenges that come with putting things into the persistent universe and Star Citizen so um yeah it's looking really good and obviously the the guys yesterday if you missed the ISC they did a very very good job of explaining the systems but I'll I'll kind of give a quick summary that um basically you know how we felt previously about the the old Eva system is that it wasn't really up to scratch the player experience and just the feel of the movement wasn't really as responsive and as as basically uh easy to use as we essentially want so um as the game's evolving we're finding that we're going into these environments where we're making tighter turns we're going through wreckages we're trying to do things like that and if you think about the old Eva system because you're flying around so upright you kind of have a silhouette of movement that's kind of like my forearm here but if you
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think about it now because we're going into what we've kind of um called The Iron Man pose internally where you're kind of leaning forward your arms are down by your side your silhouette is more like this so you're facing directly forwards and what that means is obviously if you're going through tighter spaces it's a lot easier when you're rotating you're no longer uh rotating like this you're kind of more rotating like this so you can fit through those gaps easier and you're not bumping into things quite as often um and then on top of that if you're winding your way through you're almost mirroring a bit like a snake like motion and obviously you can kind of fit through all those tight gaps and turns and things like that too um a lot of the comments uh that we saw on uh in YouTube and on spectrum and on Reddit uh had to do with it it seemed like it seemed like the next logical step might be like little little rockets on the boots little rocket boots to help Propel you
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you know little jetpacks you know maybe even an animation do the Christopher Reeve you the Superman thing are any of these being considered um in the future we want to put uh more emphasis on basically picking equipment that allows you to Eva better so that might be in the form of say Eva jetpacks uh not jetpacks but Eva back packs and things like that that might come with more Eva fuel because that's something we want to do down the line um more oxygen and things like that for existing in spaces where there's no atmosphere for you to be able to breathe um and essentially you know looking into that preparation phase that we've talked about before where you're making considerations that hey I want to be like a Eva salvager I'm going to equip myself with the things that are going to be able to get me there but until we get other features in like we showed yesterday we showed the zerog G Push Pull that's not coming in
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323 and some of these systems were holding back because we wouldn't really want to implement Eva fuel without having systems like Zerg Push Pull because otherwise you might be sat in the middle of space run out of fuel you you know you've got no options you also need to build places to refuel 100% like yeah so I'm glad you brought that up we uh we tried to be very deliberate in our storytelling we we said you know this is coming in Alpha 323 and then further down the line there's the there's the traversal there's the zeri traversal where where you're climbing on the hands there's the fuel we Chang the work in progress graphic to say you know this stuff is the 323 this stuff is not the 323 we Chang the music uh some folks you know who maybe get their news from other rewatchers or whatever missed that's the that Eva is 323 but the zerog G traversal that that crawling along the
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hands and the fuel stuff is not 323 that is down the line down the line because of those reasons you just mentioned we got to build these other systems out to accommodate them in a multiplayer environment yes you can kind of you can kind of gloss you have other Solutions in a single player game you know Mission ends and Stu like this but yeah so and then of course networking networking is going to be the challenge for all of these y there isn't just a make multiplayer button and and and trans and transfer these features over but uh the guys are working pretty the guys are working pretty well like I said at the I want to shout out the gameplay uh uh folks for star for inside Star Citizen um they do amazing stuff you know there's the alpha game that you play and then there's the PTU you know that's got
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a certain level of bugginess we're not there's no reason to lie about it uh there's the PTU that has a certain level of bugginess then there's evocati that has so much bugginess we NDA it and then there's where these guys work so so uh the the effort that they put into do getting those Eva shots when they were still working on networking and stuff uh was a truly herculian effort and I want to shout out will Dave uh and Alex for their work on that right there uh we also let's move on to uh uh the personal interaction experience or player interaction system I'm not going to use the acronym you sure and the default item actions okay um where did this come from because obviously with we were working inner thought and all this other stuff I know
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we talked a little bit about it at citizen con but but where in the development of Squadron 42 did that change did did we realize we needed this other approach yeah so obviously we we had an interaction system that has evolved a couple of times right and it evolves through necessity and where the game's at and where we feel like it needs to go so we used to just have the super super plain interaction you remember the old Ed thing that was in the middle of the screen and it used to just be you know looking back on that now it was quite inappropriate cuz you would use and hope that it was the correct action that you know it did is it going to pick it up is it going to open it is it going to close it what's what's going to happen so that obviously wasn't very clear and as the game evolved and the items and the way you interact with the items got more um kind of in-depth and you know you could do three or four five or six different things with the same item the necessity
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came to basically have a selection there so that's basically where we ended up with the system that is currently in stasis at the moment where we've got the list now obviously playing with that for such a long time we eventually got to a point where we were saying you know we could definitely do better here and it's something that we've wanted to do for quite a while so that's where the player interaction experience comes in where we are now condensing this down into one single use action but unlike the old use action you get a verb that essentially tells you what it is you're going to do and that also ties into default item action so I could look at all of these items on your desk right all of them might be very different from each other your laptop might be like the old school use action and which would tell me that I'm probably going to hop down and start typing on the laptop that folder there might be more like a pickup action or an inspect action if it's something that's
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like a data pad if there's an iPad on the table or something like that and that allows us to basically look at all of these different item types that we've got in data and say this is what we think the default item action for this thing should be but again in ISC something really cool that we showed off is the ability to customize that as well so we're not getting rid of all of the big list of actions that we previously had that were quite difficult to navigate through especially in like situations like combat combat is obviously something that we we've seen a lot of in in Squadron oh that in the middle of a fight let go through this long list of things here while I'm getting shot yeah you can Envision how that generally goes and again through the game evolving comes the necessity to change it right so uh I just want to look at a weapon on the floor and hit go I just want to pick it up and use it right uh but as I was saying yeah the we're not getting rid of all of the
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other actions that you can do with the items it's just that they are tucked away behind a wheel for the people who want to customize this experience or use the other interactions on specific items it's all there and it's in a slightly cleaner format with the wheel so you're not accidentally clicking something on a condensed list that we used to have some of the comments we saw again on uh on on YouTube and Spectrum whatnot was that as you looked around F on everything is that going to happen every single time a player looks around at everything is that a is that a toggleable thing is so spent a lot of time tuning that so it's picking out the important items the large items basically we we've got a system that essentially finds out where your focus is so again we have played with this a lot if this if the F moving around on
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all these different items got annoying it would Annoy Us too because we've played the game so much as well so we're at a point now where we feel like the F selection is very very clear and easy to use and it the selection itself isn't we know like if I was here right now and I had moved my focus to your laptop but I was too far away to look at to actually use the laptop it would prioritize the closest thing that still in the focus it's actually a very smart system um so yeah we don't get annoyed by it at all and for the people who actually like to use it the interaction system's still there so you can still Mouse over things and highlight them and interact with them if you really need to do fine control oh I'm sifting through this guy's stuff that's on his armor or I've got loads of clutter on my desk in my Hab I can still very fine you know have a fine selection of what I want to inter with to and of course you know the like
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everything here this will continue to iterate after 323 yeah I don't think I don't think we're telling any tales that a school 323 is not going to be the final version of any of these features that you know this game continues to iterate and to evolve you know it's we got you got a balance for the Squadron 42 Universe putting it into persisent Universe there might we might discover a p location where it does get a little crazy and you know adjustments have to be made that's part of development um so that's what we covered yesterday so now let now let's now let's go into uh uh formally announcing some other things that that that we're working towards um distribution centers M distribution centers which we've shown off I think we we first introduced the idea of them at citizen con uh two years ago uh we Revisited them at the citizen
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con last year I think we did a journey to 4.0 special somewhere in the middle they they blurred together people I'm sorry they've done a lot of these shows um distribution centers are now fully on track for to come in Alpha 323 y um what can you tell me about what players can expect okay so just as a bit of background the distribution senses of these massive facilities that truly are really big that are down on the surface of planets and and moons and things like that and they kind of are what they sound like right there it's a center of distribution like there are lots of landing pads there should be a big it should be a big Hub of activities basically and there are a lot of different areas of the Distribution Center that are different from each other so you've got the exterior typically where you people will be landing their ship unloading cargo things like that um you've got the
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offices up top which is generally more of a front for whatever business or Corporation has ownership of this place and then you've kind of got more of the inner workings which are kind of where you would typically expect to see cargo being fed if there's Machinery that are producing stuff down there if they're making something then that would be where that's all tuck down so what we're trying to provide for um 323 is some variety between the different locations so slightly different layouts between the different distribution centers so they all feel a little bit different from each other um have different factions at each of these places as well which should give a very different feeling of what you're going to be doing there so just as an example and we talked about this recently is um you might have a law abiding faction there
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and typically you would be doing what you would expect to law abiding place where you would be trading talking to people things like that all above board uh if you're a pirate you can obviously come and attack and cause trouble but you know they might have security systems made to you know deal with you you might also have a hostile faction that's take over one of these things that you know a corporation maybe previously had and they they came in and took over and that would be a very combat focused area for you to go and play in and then you might have something that's more of a mix so you go in the front is very professional and businesslike but underneath if you go a little bit deeper you might find that they're up to no good space yeah so uh ultimately for the content we want to provide the distribution centers have a lot of possibility and there's no way that we're going to provide all the content that we want to in one drop but we definitely want you interacting there
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doing cargo missions and potentially some you know basic like combat missions and things like that to inter interact with all of the different areas of the distribution centers we're going to provide but the future is very exciting for them big and diverse and these are humongous these are the biggest thing we've done short of a landing Zone they are massive they are microcosms of the entire starts it as an FPS experience when I say FPS I mean things not in a spaceship uh it's it's there are there are Miss you'll get missions that will take you to these places you'll go to these places to take Miss to get missions to take you out some missions I was uh we'll be talking about these on ISC in just like two weeks so I don't want to spoil everything but some of the missions like self-contained within the Distribution Center they're that big that you can do the entire Loop within the Distribution
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Center um hi Daisy uh it's it they they really are uh an exciting new addition and in 323 is not the end of them like I said 323 is not the end of anything like this they they will continue to evolve beyond that I it's one of those things I don't think I'm ready we're ready to share that just yet but uh there are uh there are some exciting plans for distribution centers yeah uh Beyond 3 323 that uh boy when they let me tell you I'm gonna tell you really loud um all right uh from there let's move on to some some ship stuff uh uh what what did it say um wow the star SC and live set has come such a long way says old boy yeah we we try we try um Master modes MH
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so we've been talking about master modes again Master modes almost actually we've been talking about master modes for just as long as we've been talking about distribution centers they first debuted two citizens cons ago uh in 323 they are slated to go in y uh they are slated to go in so yeah so yay for everybody uh Rich uh the vehicle experience team Rich toler's team uh April and all them they are fast working on converting all of Star citizens uh existing spaceships to the master modes defining the different archetypes and again we'll be talking about the those in detail uh in ISC in four weeks 3 weeks four weeks uh what this is not it's taken us a while to get to masterm Y and uh not everyone is I think it's safe to say not
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everybody is completely on board with the idea you know I I can read Spectrum I can read Reddit and whatnot there there seem to be just as many people who are for the idea as against yeah uh talk to me about this I mean it's a big change right and people are always you know initially going to be um resistant to it and I think that's very very natural because you've been playing a game for such a long time and it's such a big change that you're can to have to relearn a lot of the things that you've already learned before um but ultimately again this was a another thing that has come around from us playing the game especially in like combat Focus scenarios in Squadron and going through and going you know like hey we feel like change needs to be made so just a very very very high level of what Master mode are are as essentially you have navigation and two SCM modes that you switch between and they have very
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defined purposes with how you fly your ship and what this has allowed us to do is in um sem which is essentially your combat mode is we've made it so the combat is able to be a little bit tighter because we've got a bit more control over the ship speeds there the combat is a lot more personal a lot tighter and we felt that it felt for a much more visceral and a lot more personal and experience with whoever you're fighting and obviously that's translated to player versus player combat as well which again we've been testing internally quite a lot and it's avoiding situations where you're able to essentially exploit the flight system to kind of constantly play Chase and not really have a proper you know one-on-one combat with someone and you're constantly running away and not running away so we felt that it was a positive change as we've been playing the game so yeah I think uh from from from my
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limited experience with it uh it gets more exciting the more players that get involved it's it's it's certainly fun One V one but when but when the when the fur ball starts you know we're testing some things that uh where you know more and more players are jumping in and stuff like this and when when I'm when I'm seeing the battles with like 15 people involved 25 people involved it keeps them all tight and Compact and you're and literally the screen can be filled with ships this way and it's a it's much more visceral exper a game changer we've got such beautiful ships we've got amazing VFX that you know when you're shooting at someone you typically in the past haven't really been able to see cuz you're you know hundreds of meters if not kilometers away from people it seems a real shame to not be able to see some of that stuff you're basically just
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interacting with the UI so this bringing you closer together is just a much better feeling experience in my in our opinion so Master modes on track 323 at the moment yeah mark it off and we want a lot of feedback so and we will get it I'm sure but yeah um along with Master modes uh some other ship related stuff uh Precision targeting targeting to Precision targeting and uh a big change to to gimbals in web G what what what can you tell us about this so Precision targeting edits very core is very similar to what you would do in a first person shooter you you take time to aim and it kind of almost helps you be more accurate so what you can expect in the ships is a immediate Zoom uh so I know we've got a system where you can scroll in and zoom and it's maybe a little bit
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awward to try and use this is a more toggle in toggle out of Zoom so again you're going to be closer anyway through Master modes coming in this is more a case of you're closer already and now you're zooming in on your target you can see much more of the ship so if you're in a combat scenario where you're flying around and having to maneuver a lot and you're dealing with multiple targets you might not necessarily want to use it too much but if I'm in a situation where you're flying a Cutler and I'm trying to take one of your engines off I can toggle into Precision targeting mode and go straight for your engines if I wanted to to just take out your engines get on board and deal with you that way so it's again leans more into that closer feeling experience also helps you with aiming at you know a Target rather than trying to pixel hunt a little bit with your screen uh and um obviously makes it more accessible than having to scroll in
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and out with the mouse wheel it's just one one click to toggle in and out um and then with the gimbal change um the big change there is All Ships are basically now going to have gimbals um the hold on just look right in that camera don't drop it look right in that c right there and say that again all ships are going to have gimbals or all weapons are going to have gimbals weapon Slots of ships are going to have gimbals so that's not entirely true I'm going to contradict myself already there are a couple exceptions you know you look at the adris it's got a massive rail gun on it it's not going to be rotating around everywhere it's no gun on the Vanguard yeah so there are a few that are going to be stuck as they are but the uh what we kind of had thought about for a while that we weren't too keen on is the swap down and swap po out for the different weapons uh and exchanging the gimbal out for that
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basically because new players come in and it's not immediately understandable what's going on there and we didn't really feel like it was adding as much value uh and just to touch on the turrets as well turrets are now going to have gimbal weapons too which is really really good because obviously previously you were limited to the rotation speed of the turret it gives you a little bit more look ahead and a little bit more of a unified pleasant experience that you can expect from the ships that you can then expect from the tourists as well so so we I think we we glost over the the gimbal change and again we have an entire ISC dedicated to this so we're covering a lot of topics that you're then going to see deep Dives of for the next seven eight nine 10 weeks and whatnot but with the gimbals uh the size restriction is also going away with them so as in it's the you're no longer trading have to do one size yeah exact exactly one so so some ships will get
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bigger weapons for this and of course there are the exceptions uh basically I'm not going to give you an exhaustive list of the exceptions but if you look at a ship and there's clearly a very impossibly fixed weapon on it think Inferno think Vanguard uh with the nose think Idris with the rail gun those will not be gambled so we're not they're not going through and remaking the the the ships to to do that so there are there are a very small amount of exceptions I think it's like four or five yeah it will be an exception rather than a common thing but you can clearly look at the ship and go they I don't understand how that could be gimb congratulations that's probably one of the ones that aren't being gimb um all right and again we will cover all that uh with yogi and rich rich Towler and and and their teams uh in just a few weeks so stay tuned for more details and examples and and all
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that good stuff [Music] um I don't know if I want to go to a big one or a small one you I'm trying trying to weave the story here because we got a lot more stuff coming um let's go back to FPS stuff a little bit okay um uh Dynamic Crosshair scopes reloading uh uh FPS weapon stuff go what you got oh man how long have we got going back to your old going back to your old stamping grounds here yeah I mean like so please stop me if I go too technical or go too deep on this because obviously this is kind of my my jam um so God where do we start so let's start with reloading so re the the changes or improvements to reloading as we've been calling it um have again come through the necessity of change through playing
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combat in Squadron a lot very focused combat areas where we're able to really hammer out some of the basic combat mechanics where we were in situations that were getting frustrating uh and we were essentially playing the game as most people probably know engag in the FPS combat if you reload we save your ammo pool to your magazine and that goes back on your suit and you might then end up in a situation where if you want to put more magazines on your suit your suit is now completely full and you can't put more on unless unless you swwa them out and it's a very sticky um tedious tedious process yeah so essentially we're trying to remove steps there rather than get rid of the um realism that you have with basically having magazines uh that contain the ammunition we want to keep that and down the line we may still want to lean into doing the magazine stripping through a
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proper animated system what we really wanted to lean in uh to at the moment is just an ability to be able to condense the amount of ammunition down that you've got so that's what we call ammo reping and that is an interaction either on the weapon or in your inventory that lets you essentially go this weapon I would like to condense all the magazines for that your character will play an animation while it's happening it's quite a basic one and then it will take a varying amount of time depending on how much ammunition you're shifting so if I'm doing lmg mags that will take longer than say if I'm doing pistol magazines that might have have 10 bullets in or so so and of course again we don't want to cover every aspect we want to save some stuff for for Ton's team when he's on in a few weeks um this is going this this is a weird show this is not a show that we've done before we're we're essentially spoiling the entire season of inside Star Citizen uh this quarter if you if you haven't
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figured that out so this is basically everything that you can expect to see on Thursdays uh for the next uh 9 10 weeks as we go um Dynamic Crosshair okay Dynamic Crosshair so again this came through necessity from playing combat so much it was essentially a situation where you don't always have time to aim sometimes you want to just shoot your good in a desperate situation and it's really nice to have an indicator there of where it is you're going to shoot so um we came up with a dynamic Crosshair it essentially gives you an idea of what sort of spread you can expect from your weapon and and we essentially simulate spread through a spread cone on our guns just because we don't want the gun shaking all over the place to kind of generate it so we do add some spread on there and essentially the more you fire
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obviously it changes the more unstable is the dynamic crossair basically tells you where are going to be shooting now what we've done and this kind of leans into some down the line armor gameplay that we're going to be leaning into where we want to make the armor sets and things feel different and give them a unique purpose is this Dynamic Crosshair is meant as a combat feature that you get on combat helmets so if I'm you know say an engineer or something like that I don't necessarily need the dynamic crossair my gun because I'm not really going out and doing combat you might get other benefits from wearing engineering gear or medical gear or whatever but this is something that we're obviously leaning into longterm and this is one of the first features that we're bringing out for combat suits and we'll save uh Scopes and and recoil and stuff for for for torson and their team like this I do want to I do want I do want a a clear
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something up I I can see the chat right now and even if I couldn't see the chat I'd know what was happening he said 8 to nine weeks and somebody's doing math from February 2nd is it February 2nd yeah February 2nd to try to figure out when Alpha 323 is don't don't do that to yourself I'm just pulling numbers out of my the you know how many episodes that I have planned ahead and stuff like that that's not any indication of when the patch is going to come out don't do that just enjoy life be in the moment enjoy all of this that we're talking about that we're shooting for for Alpha 323 and don't spoil the experience for yourself by putting dates on things and trying to reverse information that doesn't exist I don't know what voice that
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was all right it's possible I've been doing this too long J maybe and it's only the stop that is um all right uh you mentioned the the the combat helmets and so so so T let's talk about the visor and lens stuff in in in ISC yesterday uh players saw a little bit of the the 3D mini map and the corn corner and some stuff uh 323 yeah uh yeah yeah y yep yep yep I think the uh so basically vron hood is going to be a big restyle so uh I think the the the big task at the moment is restyling it for um the persistent Universe um yeah just a few features essentially we we have like the existing
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hint system that we've got in game that's all being tidied away into the new notification system that we've got with high and low priority notifications where we've got some really nice visuals for those um we've obviously got the newly reworked um I'm going to call it like the combat stack that's what I quite like calling it no one else calls it that but basically shows you where all your armo is gives you all your feedback for your weapons changing items things like that shows you what's in your hands um let's make it a thing let let's all agree to call it the combat stack for JJ who's doing such a good job here today um then on the left hand side we've obviously got all the widgets for things like you know your health environment all that sort of stuff uh we've got the compass that's going into which is yeah we've got the compass it's in the video you can already see it wait an actual Compass well like I can I
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can tell what direction I'm going yes I no no more which direction am I going I can I I can go that's North yeah well not North in space but you know you got a bearing I'll take it not on a planet I'll take it yeah you happy yeah okay good um and then obviously one of the biggest ones is the the mini map uh and the mini map is uh amazing uh it really is and it it links into what we're doing which we can talk about in a little bit with the star map on the mobiglass 2 which is basically the area map we I'll make very clear now we're not doing all locations yes I was just about to hit that with the mini map because obviously there is a lot of space and areas to mark up yeah I was going to say it's talk about that the mini map is does not just exist in a
00:33:57
vacuum every single location in the persistent Universe has to be marked up in order to feed that information into map uh I'll go ahead and say because I talked to John crew about this just yesterday the ship team is working diligently to get as many of the ships as possible marked up for 320 at least explore your ships uh with the mini maps and stuff and then maybe a couple uh locations here and there and then that will just continue patch after patch after patch we'll just continue to mark up more and more locations until eventually all the Pu reaches parody yep so it's going to be really easy to find your way around like everywhere once it's done so you can basically just get a view of where you are where you want to go set a route you know all that good stuff okay um should we should we lay it on them I
00:34:46
mean we we're right there we're right there with the mini map I don't even know where you're going to go with this you don't know where we're going to go from oh yeah no okay now you said that should we should we lay it up sure say it star map star map you star map yeah so big big quality of life improvement from where we're at right now and again you know we're changing it because it's the current star map is difficult to use it's not clear you know you don't get enough feedback like some things are broken you know uh he said some things are broken yeah good good good uh but yeah we we've spent a lot of time on styling it making it very clear making it very easy to use done a lot of testing ourselves of just playing around with it we've added some new features to it too so essentially a estimated travel time if you set a route somewhere um
00:35:35
search functionality which is all fairly basic to start with we'll obviously come back more on that later but uh or down the line but essentially you know if I want to go to Hurston I type in Hurston it takes me to Hurst on the map and I click set route and then I go like it's uh is you know I don't understand why why can it be so easy don't understand yeah it's been a it's been a long time coming and we're obviously very very excited about it I have so many traumas though JJ what am I going to do with all my traumas you have to find new ones that's that's what you have to do create create more that's true yeah um and then uh from from the from the star map let's just go way to the other end of of technical stuff uh uh with a little thing uh we uh
00:36:23
showcased by Sean Tracy and and Andre uh citizen con the Character Creator character customizer yeah the character customizer is super cool um so along with all the new scans of characters and and and all the new basically look people that you're going to be able to to customize from um yeah you've got basically two ways of customizing a character now which is very exciting um you've essentially got something that allows you to do a DNA blend uh which is what that's what we call it anyway so you're basically taking your head on one side which is what you currently have there's basically a bank of heads on the other side that you can flick through and look you know I want I like these particular features and what you can do is you can select one go I like this person's nose I can then go on my slider not to 100% and go you know I want to go all the way to having their nose and I want to go all the way to having mine or
00:37:11
I want to go somewhere in between so it Blends the two shapes together and you can do that for the entire head you could do it for ears nose eyes brow lips all that sort of stuff the second way of doing it which is a very cool one is um I don't know what we ended up calling it but essentially you are grabbing anchor points on the face so let's say I grabbed my brow and I was looking it from the side and I drag my mouse to the right hand side and try to pull it out what it does is it looks through our bank of heads that we've got in the back end and essentially tries to translate what is there to what you're doing with the mouse so if I did it on my nose and pulled it that way it would try and find a nose with the shape that's like that so you're basically grabbing points on the face moving the mouse around and essentially seeing it go through all of these different iterations to you so it
00:37:58
feels like you're sculpting but you're not if that makes sense so you come out the other side being able to make some really really unique characters and we've had a lot of fun in in tests trying to make you know Stone Cold Steve Austin you know Dave Batista you always is a a fun testing session and you know you can get something that looks you know pretty damn close but on top of that we've got new hair facial hair makeup uh the hair is very very by the way you've now got hair dye so if I really wanted to let's say change my hair to White I can change it to White have it fade into blue I can select how quickly it fades in if it's like a sharp transition if it's near the route or near the tip there's a ton of really cool customization there and obviously the UI has had a big overhaul as part of that
00:38:45
too um not an alien says I hope we can make freaks depends yeah don't just leave it yeah okay just just just let them sit sit with that let everybody sit knowing that that's what that that's what he said can make not an alien unique characters um cargo cargo's getting its next big kind of kind of kind of kind of kind of pushed there uh what's what can you tell us that's involved there freight elevators obviously yeah we've got the freight elevators we've got the um basically the the instance hangers so you're going to be able to go to your own hanger you're going to have your freight elevator you're going to be able to spawn your ship um the core part of the experience is that you essentially go to your freight elevator will have a kiosk with a nice new UI on it um you can then interact with that to
00:39:34
essentially go what's in my storage so the the regular inventory area storage is going away so it's much more physically based in your hanger storage it's very much more personal uh you then go I want all of this stuff click click click click click you fill up or see the freight elevator filling up on the UI then click a button and loow and behold all your stuff's just come out the ground and then it's up to you to load it into ship um so as part of that we'll also have things like hover trolleys we've obviously got the tractor beam that's usable in there too so you can then wheel it over start loading up your ship and it's a much more representative um feel of what the cargo experience is going to be like longterm it's a lot in 323 oh yeah we're not done we're not done uh there's a there's
00:40:23
a I want to start wrapping this I want to get to our next talking point here uh we're we're not sharing everything that's in 323 there are still some things we want to keep secret uh there's still some obviously also don't want to spoil an entire season of IC we've already covered so much and stuff like this but you can also expect things like uh the Blockade Runner Mission uh if you remember we covered that on ISC sometime last year uh maybe in quarter three sometime the Blockade Runner experience that we talked about then uh that's targeted for 323 uh a big update to Xeno threat that not going to share just yet we're going to let players uh that's one of those things that we're going to let players uh experience uh for yourself uh Xeno threat and a a sort of pre Xeno threat thing that's got a name but I'm not going to share the name today I want to
00:41:10
see if people can Suess it out uh but but Xeno threat's getting much much bigger much broader and much more interesting personally from my perspective uh that'll roll out that'll start to roll out before 323 and then into 323 uh if all things go as planned um the Looting stuff the the Looting stuff the the Looting stuff the the new looting stuff that we saw at citizen con going in uh the the uh there's a new shopping app uh we haven't showed that because the the guys on uh team kian's team actually are working on it right now uh we'll be showing that in ISC hopefully in about five six weeks when we go back to team Keen for even more stuff that they're working on uh they got a whole lot of stuff in 323 on that team um and then um some economy
00:42:01
stuff uh I've been doing this a long time and we haven't had we haven't talked a whole lot about economy stuff uh and it's rolling MMOs and stuff like that so for the economy stuff uh we're actually going to take a quick break and we're going to bring in two members of our economy team who have never been on video before we've never we've never actually uh put a showcase on on the people who were down in the trenches doing the economy stuff we're going to do that in a minute so we're going to throw to a beautiful scene of of pyro 2 four I don't remember which one uh while we Shuffle some chairs around and we'll be back to talk even more stuff coming in Alpha 323 so stay tuned and we're back hi everybody uh we're talking about all the
00:42:54
cool awesome I was going to say a swear word and I already used my one yesterday um uh being targeted for Alpha 323 joining us uh now are members of our UK uh uh economy team uh Andre and Nick Andre Nick how you doing hello hello thank you for having us so this is your first time on any kind of video stuff uh economy is not a it's not a topic we often uh talk about on our video stuff it's not a particularly visual uh topic so but there are some there's some big changes coming in 323 and then we'll continue on to 4.0 and stuff so we wanted to start this conversation that will continue in the weeks uh leading in before we get into that let's introduce ourselves let people know who you are and what you do so Andre you're closest
00:43:41
so we'll start with you who are you what do you do I am Andre I'm the lead economy designer you're the lead economy designer what does the lead economy designer do not much but uh no's figured the show out but I disagree with the fact that economy is not cool I brought all my spreadsheets so I'm going to prove you wrong you're just going to you just live your life in spreadsheets of course okay uh Nick yeah hi I'm Nick uh and I am uh one of the economy designers you look at you looked at your notes for that didn't you I saw you all you had to do was say your name and what you did to be just got to be certain I have actually got I've got based in Manchester Studio here but I figured that was unnecessary so and of course the uh the economy team is not just you you're just the you're just the who were drafted to appear uh with us today who else is on your there's
00:44:30
actually three of us we have Connor in US Hello Connor he's probably most certainly watching us right now yeah yeah uh you say one thing to Connor before we continue what would it be uh what would it be check your notes oh yeah check my notes uh it would be well done on uh other systems oh ominous I like it all right so let's talk a little bit about economy because I think I mean everybody knows what the textbook definition I shouldn't say everybody most people know what the textbook definition of the word is uh as it applies to video games I think it's easy to just assume it's the prices of things and that's it but we know that it's more than that so so what is economy as it applies to a large scale
00:45:19
open Universe himo like Star Citizen I completely agree with your statement first of all of course it includes the the pricess but at least for myself it's a bit more than that it includes telling telling a story but instead of using nice pictures instead of using uh words we are telling a story with uh with numbers we want to to make sure that everybody's immersed in the in the world they're having fun they they progress everything that they are doing uh not only makes a difference for the world and for for the other players also makes a difference for themselves would you agree with that Nick yeah absolutely it's it's defin definely I mean especially with an MMO it's um it's all about um an immersive Dynamic it's it's it's the it's the feeli that everything around you is connected and that your actions have purpose and you can
00:46:07
progress and so can your friends it's interesting to me that you use the word immersive because it is one of the you know I'm I'm going on 10 years here so one of the things that I I've heard uh CR uh mention complain about periodically is the fact that you can buy a missile for like 500 a that's not the actual number but it's some ridiculously no number it's like you could never just go into a store and buy a missile for 500 bucks or whatever it's like we got to get this economy stuff uh uh done um is that what we're talking about here with 323 and and and 4.0 are we starting the process of now going through and retuning all of these for sure we're in the process process of retuning that we're not only giving our our players and to ourselves because all of us are are are fans of the game uh
00:46:55
but the chance to earn more money to to become rich and be be rewarded in a in a fair way for the activity they uh they do but also the chance to spend that that us on something that they can be proud of and so before we get into the specifics of what're what's going to happen in 323 uh when we talk about things that are economy obviously the prices the prices of a thing are the economy but the the travel times how long it takes you to take something from this to this is a is a factor of the economy because that now determines whether the payout is you know whether whether a 10,000 credit payout is actually worth the 10,000 or not um how long it takes you to get your ship back from from insurance is is a factor of
00:47:43
economy what else am I not thinking of those are very very good examples and going back to uh to immersion it's almost like level design I want we want to uh find in the plac that we we going and explore the things that we would expect to find to find there and their prices to be uh according to for example to the distance from where they are they are produced The Players to have access to the resources that they they need and they want uh and Fuller 0079 says he says U not a don't read into it man I promise just it like we're sitting here we're giving you all this actual information and then people are like digging for like hidden information between the words it just it just makes makes it's
00:48:31
just going to make you unhappy it doesn't mean nothing enjoy the show all right so in 323 the first not let's say the next the next kind of major push towards you know building this economy towards hardening this economy that's been if you don't mind my saying kind of all over the place for for years and years and years is going to happen what are we talking about as far as what's going to happen in 323 well cohesive is a word that we are using a lot bringing all these these systems that our wonderful colleagues already built bringing them together so they make sense when they when they work together uh so you've already seen some glimpses uh uh in pyro in the design of pyro in the design of the prices of the
00:49:20
new the new prices of armors that ni to work very hard on them we're working on the weapons on FPS weapons pre- balance Vehicles ships eventually we're going to do a pass on everything basically so armors weapons uh probably the one that most people will notice right up the bat is ships and vehicles so there's going to be a substantial change to the prices of ships and vehicles in 323 um we're not going to ask you for specific numbers here because 323 is still many many weeks away and it would it would be a pointless exercise right now but talk to me about the process how how are you determining what these new prices are are going to be uh there's not a a good way or a bad way to to do to do it we we explore different different ways uh so
00:50:12
talking specifically about vehicles uh for example manufacturers it's something that we look into we could take each individual vehicle or ship and disassemble it into each stats how fast does it accelerate how fast uh what is its maximum speed and mass and everything but because that is subject to change we don't want to to tweak those prices uh every time a small changes is made so for that reason we we take those factors that we know that they are already decided on for ex I mentioned already manufacturers some manufacturers put more care into their work they use better materials they use better technology uh they use alien technology that is harder to to to get that informs the the price obviously if a ship is U larger it's going to to cost
00:51:01
more Goa and if it's strick it's obvious going to be cheaper I mean I would not confirm or deny that so so so so manufacturer is is one yes tenant uh what else is a factor uh the size of the the ship and its focus so the same way a tank is more expensive than a Lori the same way we would expect a combat ship to have better technology better armor better stats on average than truck okay so if it it sounds like if I'm understanding you're right correctly in 323 there's going to be a a massive change to the in-game cost and I want to make sure that we're we're talk this is not this is a development thing it's not a it's not a marketing thing before the freaking Reddit threads start up this is go this is going through and working the
00:51:49
in-game economy uh and realigning the ships based on manufacturer uh a rooll size RO size um I did ask you if you could give us some examples now these are not going to be final examples obviously again the the changes won't happen for for several several several weeks yet but just to help us illustrate help us prepare uh for what kind of stuff entir did were you able to get some examples yes I I watch your show so I see that you have a Pisces there so uh the rescue one because we want to make it more affordable and because myself I see I see myself playing as a as a medic in the future I made it a bit a bit more affordable uh so it's going to be in the in the AG of half a million USC Alpha USC and um they for so so you're saying
00:52:40
something like the Pisces might actually go down as far as the cost uh the the the the Pisces rescue is going to be a lot more afford affordable than it uh it was uh I can give the example of my my favorite ship you can argue about that in the in the chat is the arrow I really like like The Arrow uh is going to be in um um in the range of about 2 million USC uh it's a combat ship it's high performance ship so obviously somebody that can drive that ship uh work very hard to to get that ship and they can again they can be proud of holding that that ship um some those seem like kind of lower level entry level ships uh can we talk about something kind of mid-range like a Connie or a Connie that's a very good example because a lot of uh a lot of our players like that
00:53:30
that ship I think it's in the range of 10 10 million uh now um maybe going back into combat something even larger uh I really like the Hammerhead yeah the Hammerhead uh is about 45 to 50 million us see uh it's it's a it's a ship that uh it's a multi Cru ship so I I can see players pulling the their resources together to buy such a such a ship gotcha and and this is you know you're using the words it's going to be and stuff like this this is what we're working towards is this is what we're what we're currently working towards of course with feedback and testing stuff the numbers may may change and what not of course uh 323 is not the end all be off for anything it's like obviously these things go in we get player feedback we do the the testing at
00:54:17
full scale and it's only the first and then just continue the first pass the the team is doing but this is this is all this this is a this is a conversation that's that that that's that's been waiting to happen for years and years like like we've all like we've always uh I don't think it's been a secret to anybody who's played Star Citizen that the like I said the economy has always just been kind of this we'll get to it we'll get to it we'll get to it we're here we're we're getting to it now for lack of a better term so Alpha 323 is that is that next push but it's not the last push it'll continue to be balanced continue to be evolved um I'm going to ask you for like a okay so we we we did we did a we did a Pisces and and and an arrow we did a a constellation let's go to the far end and just see if we can uh
00:55:07
get some of that sticker shock out of the way what are you thinking for something like in 890 for example for for example you like the nicer things you like oh well or or I'm I'm just I'm just trying to work the sticker shock here so origin fancy manufacturer 890 super big on the size um what are you thinking and I'm just going to hold my hold my packet here let's let's make a list do you want gold on the walls do you like do like the marbles in the bathrooms give me the worst case scenario what are we thinking worst case scenario um no you're talking about luxury uh we are talking about uh um um origin or manufactur that it's famous for putting so much care and so much quality in their in their ships and I'm thinking uh been the range of 70
00:55:56
million us okay somebody that has an they can be proud of it it's all right are we going to be able to sell virtual kidneys is that a thing look at him he's the FPS guy not yet is that coming at 323 no we can balance the price on that but I've known JJ a long time he's not going to dismiss the idea out of hand May harvesting some organs maybe we got to sideline in n a multitool that's what the multi-tools for all right so so yeah so obviously you know these are the these are the prices that we're that we're currently thinking this this this is the work this work is ongoing and will continue until Alpha 323 releases uh once it releases as part of alpha 323 it will continue to be evaluated it'll continue to to to
00:56:44
solicit feedback continue to look at analytics all that good stuff and make adjustments it's necessary because that's what you do with a live service game you make adjustments as necessary um thank thank you so much for this this was this was uh again like I remember you know coming to you like hey you know we want to talk about economy you were very eager you were very you you since the first time I've ever met you you're like I want to get on there and start chatting with people of econ about economy so I'm glad we we got a chance to I want that feedback as soon as possible that's the reason that's what we like to hear Andre um guys thank you so much uh for being on the show is there anything uh JJ anything more we want to say about 320 let's go back through let's go back through the list real quick before we we're talk so right now targeted for new for Alpha 323 we're targeting new Eva uh the new
00:57:35
uh piss pit whatever the we gotta got to get better at naming it's even better there's two pies Jared we're only dealing with one uh new default item actions uh uh reloading uh Dynamic crossair Scopes distribution centers Master modes Precision targeting turret and gim changes uh visor and lens stuff uh new looting screens uh new looting system rather uh new shopping app uh the star map character customizer a whole bunch of things cargo including the the freight elevators and and some more um the Blockade Runner Mission stuff we talked about uh big changes to Xeno threat uh and uh these economy changes and that's just the stuff I'm willing uh to share with you right now uh there's
00:58:25
even more feel good it's a lot to do it's a lot to do there is a lot to do but we're in the yeah we're all excited we're all excited it's building on the work that you guys have been doing for squadron 42 for the last two years uh it it's the teams are working hard to to convert it over we've already got interviews in the can for ISC for for for distribution centers and master mode and stuff like that we're going to be talking to you about all that stuff like that uh so yeah so lots of great stuff coming I hope I hope you're as excited let me change the way I want to say that I've been doing like I said I've been doing this for I'm going on 10 years now you've seen me here you've seen me in La you've seen me in a variety of situations talking to you about this that or the other thing uh you've seen me cautious you've seen me
00:59:14
with trepidation you've seen me you you you know you you know uh uh uh hedge my beds left and right um the last time I went full throated into something I ended up with a beard that was like this and it wasn't good uh I hope you can can can take from my own personal enthusiasm uh I see the work that these guys are doing each and every day I've been seeing the work they've been doing for the last two years and just waiting waiting waiting for the time where this gets brought back over to the Pu uh we're here this is going to be one heck of a year when the Squadron team comes back with the Star Citizen team and uh it's nothing but blue skies I I'm not gonna say that no I'm not gonna say It's Something Blue Sky what I'm getting caught up in my own hype let's make some magic happen it's gonna be a magical
01:00:02
year let's just say that I'm not going to say nothing L I was going to get hit by a meteor when I walk out the door about that um and uh lastly uh before this week's show uh I did want to take a few minutes to talk if I can as myself uh not as a cig representative but just as Jared Huckaby uh the dude that works in the game industry uh 202 three was a huge year for the release of video games and if you followed any ounce of gaming news you've probably know that it was one of the hardest years for those who create the video games uh that struggle to stay employed uh has extended into the first month of 2024 as I think the last count was nearly 5,000 people have been laid off in the video game industry in the first 30 days Alone um I spend my time dedicated to highlighting the people who
01:00:54
make video games possible and as one of those people who were lucky enough to do get to do still get to do what I love I wanted to take a moment at the end of the show just as me to show my appreciation my gratitude to all those people who are dedicated to creating the universes for our entertainment both here at cig and at every game Studio that's ever made a game I've played uh to those who've made the games that I still haven't played the backlog is real and and just My overall gratitude for everybody who contributes to this uh to this industry uh you're appreciated and uh we're all still we're all thinking about you always so uh hope you guys L on your feet uh we're going to keep on trucking we're going to keep on making uh the biggest and baddest uh MMO space MMO we can and uh yeah thanks for
01:01:45
humoring me for the last few minutes uh I don't know if I'm allowed to talk is just me but I thought I'd take the chance I I needed to say something so thanks a lot hope you enjoyed St Star Citizen live hope you're as hyped about Alpha 323 as I am uh join us next week on inside Star Citizen uh when we shake things up and we uh explore the work of a team uh you'd probably never expect us to uh it's not a 323 thing it's a it's it's one of those little cool detours that we take sometimes uh but but their really their work is really cool and I hope you'll appreciate it as much as I do and then we'll be back right here for another star C live next week uh and I have no idea who's on that show I just got to I got to wander through the hallways like the Grim video Reaper like you're next on my show so take care thanks a lot that's Andre that's Nick
01:02:34
that's JJ I'm Jared see you later take care bye thank you Jared

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