In-Depth REC System Discussion

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:08

   hi everybody I'm Travis day and I'm here with Kix Renault our lead designer of the rec system hey rental equipment currency for those of you don't know so we're going to tell you a little bit more about the design the thought process and and kind of do a bit of more of a deep dive on this feature so anyways Kix uh welcome to the downstairs office thank you and uh I think one of the things we want to talk about right is uh the kind of the idea for behind wreck right the impetus for for making a rental equipment currency system for Reena Commander so what what led us here is really the question well yeah so wck wck comes to us because we had Arena Commander with all this great stuff we were making and it it was sort of locked to a lot of people and okay the arena Commander bucks the thing that you will

2. 00:00:58

   earn and needs to be needs to be uh future proof we want this to be a thing that exists now and exists all the way through the unforeseeable future uh like you know when Star Sy comes out when we're doing uh you know major Universe events way down the line uh when we translate all into Banu because we are now living actually in space uh we we want this needs to continue to be a functional system even then so so uh we we set to work I I sat down with with you and and a few of our other designers and you know hashed out okay what do we need from a system like this you know we need we need it to be accessible well I think it's important to note too I mean

3. 00:01:46

   we started down this path quite a while ago so it's been a long time yeah in ruminating baking and steeping and coming up with a system that will really satisfy all these conditions it's been coming together as Arena Commander has been coming together mhm um and so that's that's the the context of seeing people play the game and the the perspective that that gives has really been instrumental right like we you see people uh get drawn towards certain builds get people drawn specifically away from those builds I mean missiles are perfect example missiles were unbalanced mhm and people interested in playing the game game actively avoided them they actively avoided using them

4. 00:02:34

   they people are willing to push themselves towards parts of the game in order to experience those so we it's up to us to open up those parts of the game so that you can experience those and that's that's what that's what wck is about it's about being able to to have short-term goals of of a rental system in which at any time you can be like oh I saw something cool that I like I'd like to know how that how that works uh or maybe my Shields aren't really working for me right now and I need a different build uh I have a new goal I'm going to put in just a little bit of effort to attain that goal and now now I have it now I can decide did this do I like it is it cool or not did it expectations yeah exactly that's that's been the the biggest the biggest

5. 00:03:23

   design factor in wreck this entire way so yeah as you uh were texting me over the week weekend I think you've been following the the community response to wreck very closely yes we have a have had a lot of great feedback from the community I mean everybody is so passionate about the game and it's it's really nice to be able to get instant feedback about something like normally normally I would have built this system already before no we would be like 6 months down development and then all of a sudden we'd release this thing to the public with the game and they'd be like oh and this W thing it would be one of a thousand things they were looking at when they first got their first look at the game so it's kind of fun that each individual feature gets its own like the fact that we're sitting here talking about it yeah is even just kind of cool yeah so I still feel like there's people that uh you know like SLP away on the hubcaps in Grand Theft Auto and they

6. 00:04:10

   never get recognized the great hubcaps but you know what I mean they never actually in the totality of the picture get looked at I flip through them sometimes yeah on my way to other Hub cups um no no so you looking through all the feedback I think a lot of the things that we you know I say a lot of the things but one of the kind of the primary points that I saw a lot of people gravitate towards was the whole idea of uh duration based rentals right and I think that at some level they I think some people got it I think some people like were Mis understanding the intent there and so I guess you know can you explain a little bit more about the how the duration system works now and kind of where we're going to go with it yeah uh so the duration system works that you you rent a ship and or a piece of equipment and you have seven days of use when you when you log in and you go in to play Arena Commander you have have

7. 00:05:00

   used up one of those days you from that point on you have 24 hours to get like a 24-hour window um and and that's a part of that is just a matter of us uh bringing this together alongside our backend server like we don't have uh everything second data yeah so we need we need something that is granular but uh flexible and yeah so been within this right if so let's just say I I rent an M50 right and I want to go raise ring mhm so I go and I race it the same day I buy it so I've consumed kind of one 24-hour cycle now I'm uh asked to go visit IL phonic and the Austin studio and a bunch of other places and I come back 3 weeks later to sit down to play can I still play with that six days left perfect you

8. 00:05:48

   have six days left and when you log on it'll be there waiting for you and you'll be able to use it and its equipment because it comes again with the loadout oh so they have all their default loadouts so it's not like you're going to grind out a ship and then have to get every single freaking weapon that goes along with it okay cool perfect yeah you you don't it doesn't start with empty hard points you don't have to put the engine on or the you know and that was part of the of the calls like where would you draw the line once you start making those kinds of calls so uh it seemed like it was it's it's simple and it's it's upfront so I figure yeah let's start there yeah so that's that's great uh great on that point I guess and one of the one of the other things that we'd heard a lot of feedback on I think was just the the amount of wreck the number of hours cuz I think what we put out to the community was basically a raw spill of

9. 00:06:37

   your proposal off of the Confluence page with some editing and Graphics basically this this happens every time with the like the cargo which apparently just we just took that and copy paste put it right in uh yes so in this particular case people are I think sweating over the numbers going like oh my God s and a half hours of of how much Kix thinks I might be earning per hour calculates to X number of hours for so those are obviously those set in stone like those numbers will never change right uh yeah it's actually physically impossible at this point to change so they're just they're locked it's it's like uh it's one of those uh mathematical constants uh 10% of your ueec for wreck can't be changed oh damn okay uh not at all an offthe cuff number that I chose because it seemed like a a useful way to oh this

10. 00:07:26

    thing cost this much and this thing maybe it'll cost that much yeah so it it was it's really all about just I need as a designer and we need as as Cloud Imperium to say here are the tools by which we can influence this experience so like if this were a radio these the the dials that we can turn to manipulate you know is 10% too much maybe I haven't I haven't tried it I I have yet to spend maybe time 10% for ships and 8% for items or exactly cut it however same thing same thing for the discount same thing for how much wreck you earn uh per game mode uh how much wck you'll eventually earn for medals and challenges and and all these other things that stack up on top of just the

11. 00:08:15

    basic amount of of wreck that I anticipate that you'll earn which 1,800 comes from the notion that you can probably play uh uh two to four games and I figure I don't know that seems like that seems reasonable to me I just I don't know it felt it felt okay yeah um but again haven't tried it don't know don't know what it's like and and that's part of that's part of the other side of getting in this early MH no so I think the basic flow of this system right is that and actually really the way that the design process works on a lot of games that people maybe don't get to see is that you you lay out a plan you define all the variables that you can tweak which kind of defines all the tasks on the engineering side of what they need to allow to be tweakable what

12. 00:09:03

    data structure we're going to use for this how we're going to implement the system and then from there you find the fun right you find what's the right balance you you lay out what should be in a fun and organic and tweakable system and then you start changing the data points and so it could be as we go along I that's really the thing is that people generally don't see into this process this early so I think what's going to be fun though is after the first release of the system and we do these patches every two weeks they're going to be able to see those values changing we're going to see things like us pushing things to a steep discount to get it CU we need it tested cuz it's new or all these other ideas that we can finally play with before we could never do this yeah exactly being able like it's these tools for driving play to like you know maybe the 315 doesn't seem that appealing at the moment because I

13. 00:09:50

    mean what are you going to explore in Arena Commander just yet but we need to know what it's like to fly a 315p we need to know what it's like to to Kit it out so we could just say hey the next 2 weeks uh or until we say otherwise like here the the 315p is going to earn double the wreck that it normally would and so now it has appeal now there's a thing about it that even though this ship is not designed foreally for the combat that we're it has it has a purpose now in your uh your plan to to get uh whatever Loadout that you wanted or you know even you know stacking up as far as like the community chest and and those like grander uh uh goals that you know I think that's important to note though is like yeah these things like the metal system Community chest kind of

14. 00:10:38

    and call them achievements unlocks you know things that you can do both as an individual and collectively that are coming online are going to be really fun I think but yeah I think it's really exciting actually like the this notion I mean Arena Commander is by and large a competitive experience but even in being competitive you can be working to raise All Ships I think that's I think that's kind of cool I think that's one of the things that makes being a citizen of Star Citizen kind of this engaging concept and ever since you told me about the community chest idea I've been all about that just because it's like well what's in the chest and you give me this list of ideas and it's like but but how do people know well they don't know until it pops out it's like there could be anything in there it could even be a chest just has that I don't know raw curiosity appeal yeah um no actually so one of the other pieces of feedback we

15. 00:11:25

    we'd kind of Taken was and I think we know from our Tableau results itics results that uh I think we have like 80% of people play single player right now because they don't want to be in the multiplayer you for whatever reason right they don't want to do combat they don't want to be ranked there's a variety of reasons people have given um so one of the other pieces was people want to earn it in single player as well so I think we were talking to Chris about this a little bit earlier today and you know one first of all I guess vandel swarm Co-op I think is on the cards for earning wreck just the same yeah and then regular vuel swarm which is just running off your own computer so there's no no server to authenticate or validate anything yeah we're going to look into uh basically some ideas for a vandel swarm progression track right so that after you know and this is super just spitballing yeah but after you reach wave 18 on an aurora you've

16. 00:12:13

    unlocked the 300i or and after you reach it on a 300 eye you've unlocked a choice between this and this and you kind of can go up the path that way so I I think it's I guess what I'm trying to reinforce is it's important to for people to realize that um this is just a first pass you know what I mean and these things will come online as the game comes online so yeah and this this actually like again there's the there's the daily challenges that we we've spoken of um Bringing Down the Line the medals and there's there's this whole section of personal progression that uh wasn't quite up just enough for for sharing in in depth but you know being able like like you said to to unlock aspects of your ship um you know if you wanted to to work up the way to get a master skin uh this could be a way to do

17. 00:13:02

    it and that sort of thing isn't as tightly tied to uh to the multiplayer competitive experience like yeah we could do medals that don't require uh constant contact with the server you can start see where you are when you start see where you are when you finish uh and that that means that we can do these daily challenges and and provide uh rewards for using uh the vuel Swarm or when we get other game modes in we can push cargo Olympics yeah push pushing stuff towards these alternative game modes yeah and actually when I want to go back to something you just said in there which is it was interesting is like the idea of a master skin right so I was just playing a ton of evolve over the weekend and they obviously have the

18. 00:13:50

    master skin for all their monsters all their characters um and I guess the the important thing to note out of what you just said is that in the old system there would be no way to do this other than pay us X number of dollars for this thing yep um and it would just be tied to a currency transaction and now it can actually be tied to the investment the love the Adoration that you feel for your ship and the experience that you've had building up to that moment so I think I don't know I just I think it's a Paving the way to a much better system yeah I mean you want your experience with your ship to show through your ship Bingo yeah exactly I think that's a really great way to do it well so we've kind of we've started to talk about it but one of the other things I want to talk with you about you know so people get get an idea for it is kind of where where are we now on the spectrum of wreck being an idea to wreck being the

19. 00:14:40

    final version of wreck that it'll ever be I mean the first first half first eth first 16th I mean where do you think we're we're pretty close to the beginning of that Spectrum yeah like wreck is a thing that we have talked about and that we have sat down and scoped out okay how are we going to do this yeah here's here's the first who is going to do this who who is actually tasked with the implementation of these features uh what is our what is our pipeline for determining whether these features are working uh how do we how do we actually enact change to these controls that we are putting in place in the design but again need to be implemented such that we can change them even so all of that work is beginning we've we've been been working well so

20. 00:15:28

    then if at the very beginning then I guess where where between now and the end of time do you see us going with the rec system or what what can people look forward to or maybe I mean maybe some of it even that's kind of the magic hasn't been thought of yet or hasn't even been brought up yet to start with wreck is going to be it's going it's going to be the simple system of you can rent a thing like the these things that you don't have already on your account that are locked to you are uned locked you have access to them by earning wreck that is that I mean that's seems like it's a necessary feature so I figured you know we should probably start that um and then we get the the initial version of the seven days that

21. 00:16:18

    you log in uh and making sure that that tracks correctly and that you don't log in after your first day and oh God where is your ship uh so even even just that is going to be a pretty big thing to make sure that we have working across the board AC and as a big step forward yeah it's pretty nice like you'll be able to actually try this stuff out but from there I mean there's there's all kinds of really really cool stuff that I'd like to be doing with this that going the community chest I like to talk about uh the the daily challenges the daily Community challenges uh some of which even the the example that I put on on on the document was you know hey kill 3,000 vanuel just just shotgun that vuel swarm and see see

22. 00:17:08

    how they like it uh I don't I expect not that much I expect they will they will protest in fiery protest but from there to to having uh personal personal progression things of uh you know unlock the master skin but also unlocking handicaps or which is is one of those things that I really really appreciate because it's it's like unintuitive but it it kind of works where you'll be able to take on additional handicaps you'll be able to have a brighter a vastly brighter signature or uh come in without um as you know half the amount of power that you you can output or all these kind of mutations to your personal stats

23. 00:17:57

    based on your your sh kind like the like the different I know odd permutations of game modes that you could have almost like in you you ever played the N64 gold ey where you could like no way really I didn't my the PlayStation 2 was my first console I was a little baby oh Lord okay left for dead had the mutation game modes you know skulls and Halo the skulls in Halo where you you can take on extra challenge right and for that you you were rewarded by yeah okay um and so and and you know making these things known like if if if you go out and and you're that guy who's owning everybody in Aurora you want them to know yeah it's it's kind of cool you want them to know uh exactly where you stand um and you know things things beyond that for personal expression like the the social

24. 00:18:47

    element of this game is going to be huge down the road and abs and at the moment there's relatively little expression that you can do because because we're still making the game really uh but having add unlockable elements to your your ship and to uh you know your um your I uh Beacon and oh like having different monikers for yourself exactly you could you could unlock specific monikers and uh have a a victory signature that uh this Banner that everybody has to look at when you cream them yeah yeah uh so things like that I mean and and from here this sort of just unlocks all these opportunities for making the point once we have the base system we could kind of and that's the point of this system is we can go any direction that we want with it yeah you

25. 00:19:35

    can use this thing now for anything mhm uh and and I think that's I think that's really cool to be honest no I I agree so no I think it sounds like a cool system and I think really the I mean a lot of what we talked about here today is I think it's going to be a cool first pass it leaves us the ability to do a lot of different things and then as we move forward with the progress I mean we obviously we're listening to the feedback so have the feedback keep coming in and we'll keep looking at what we're doing and looking at where we're going with it and it's not a it's not a one-off it's like something that's going to continue to grow and evolve over time just like the game itself so yeah and that's that's the whole point of being this open with the community it's kind of it's great yeah well cool and just a reminder I guess you're I'm KX Forno I'm a tech designer here at Santa Monica and

26. 00:20:23

    I am Travis day here in Santa Monica so thank you for joining us for our twom man Symposium on wreck come