Inside Star Citizen: Making Your Reputation | Winter 2021

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:03

   this is without a doubt my favorite system that i've worked on at cig i am so excited to see it getting into the hands of players and into the hands of other developers we felt that because this is such a crucial part of our game that our reputation system had to be much more evolved than that of a traditional mmo i love working on these systems that allow other systems to even happen this is where i feel like the the game that we've been talking about from a reputation and from an immersiveness level can start to happen [Music] the reputation system that will essentially allow us to track values for a player's reputation with an entity and when i say entity that

2. 00:00:52

   could be an npc an organization heck it could be a table if you want so long as it has a persistent id with it we can track a value against it still alive i think not only can we track a value we can track several values those values are in something that we call a scope when we say scope we're talking about two different things there's affinity which is this kind of measure of how much a entity likes you and that's common across all these entities npcs organizations etc hello a few different things affect affinity it's going to be mostly your mission performance and more specifically actually what you do during that mission that's when affinity will really get big boosts it is also worth noting that we can affect affinity through just your everyday action for organizations affinity is a little bit different

3. 00:01:39

   in that it kind of represents the amalgamated opinion of that organization and its members towards you it's going to control a lot of things like whether or not they want to attack you or help you for instance and then there's confidence career confidence is exclusive to mission givers and it kind of says how good they think you are at your job career is how an organization might be tracking that same value how good you are at your job the difference with an organization is that they can have several career scopes so a security company like crusader security might have a bounty scope but they also might have a defense scope or a jailer scope or any number of these career scopes that we want to track your different levels of career proficiency with different kinds of game play within scopes we have this concept of standings these are the ranks that you

4. 00:02:27

   move through from negative whatever to positive whatever and we can tell when we assess you either through the missions or the mission givers or npcs or however they are looking at you what standing you are at one of the things that we are very excited to have is these reputations giving you things when you get to those higher standings the idea is that this is giving you a benefits and rewards for for progressing through the game it's a progression system at its heart the other thing that i'm really excited about with this coming out is the concept of allowing for group building and community building with this by allowing you to bring something unique to your group of friends table you might have a reputation with a certain organization at a high level that your other friends don't and you've maybe done a little bit of extra work to

5. 00:03:14

   maintain that get that up there etc and as a result you're able to bring in something cool like a mission that normally they wouldn't be able to do plus everybody likes bragging rights we all know that you're going to be putting up screenshots on the subreddit or whatever saying look at all these reputations i have at max look at what i'm able to maintain all that we're darn excited about how that's going to play out potentially so for this release a lot of our focus is around missions and how that's going to be affecting things like your affinity and confidence but going forward you'll be having actions that affect your reputation of other kinds that's going to be things like a mission giver where you might push them but it also could be like if you shoot at them or if you

6. 00:04:02

   shove one of their friends or if you talk to them in the wrong way if you choose a bad choice in a conversation tree it could be any number of things um we even have so talked about some fun stuff where like constantine hurston for instance is a bit of a snob you walk in wearing a bad coat or like some weird clothes he might think less of you you can also key it off of things like when you happen to raid a ship that is controlled by maybe crusader security we could key it off of something like you go into the wrong area i mean you just walk into a club where the bouncer doesn't want you to be there we could key it off of you having the wrong decal on your ship or flying in a way that a person doesn't really think that you're flying in a cool way essentially it's very open-ended one of the things that we're really looking forward to is giving flavor to

7. 00:04:50

   organizations by essentially playing with what they like and don't like so there might be an organization that really likes it when you go around pvp and killing other players there might be organizations that frown on that a little bit there might be organizations that really really like it when you do piracy or smuggling or illegal acts and there might also be some that aren't so okay with that and that feel is going to allow us to bring a lot of the lore that up until now has existed on a website into the game so you guys can actually experience it and get to know these people in the universe and all that brings me to the topic of drift drift is the concept that over time your reputation might move up or down uh based on the mission giver organization essentially

8. 00:05:38

   moving towards neutral with you now before you all get your torches and pitchforks out the concept here isn't to enforce a horrifying grind or anything like that we do want to reward you for gameplay that you already want to do on your own but we do want to make sure also that these very high ends of reputation are things that take effort to get to and maintain and by doing that we let people sort of be unique and interesting by saying i want to make sure that i keep that one and that one at max and put in that effort and keep people interested in the game in a long-term sense giving them goals that they can keep on setting out so when it comes to you know how big of a change fundamentally is this that this is a massive change for

9. 00:06:26

   for not just what it means for the game now but where the game is going like all things we'll be putting it out we'll be watching the feedback we'll be seeing what the numbers say we've got analytics all over the place watching what you guys are doing to see if we need to tweak in two numbers it's going to be an ongoing effort uh especially when we get to the concept of going from alpha to out of alpha those numbers are going to continue to shift with that in mind the ability for players to bring something unique to their groups that excites me a lot i love in mmos the the systems that make players want to play with each other that's what makes them better than other games is is that community and bringing that to star citizen to me is one of the most important things that we could do

10. 00:07:12

    making sure that it builds a strong community that's what's going to bring people back to star citizen over and over and over the reputation system is a turning point moment in the continuing development of the star citizen experience adding consequences and rewards to almost any action or decision you make and allowing for developers to build a sense of true progression as more and more systems plug into it across subsequent releases and speaking of releases alpha 313 is right around the corner so let's take a look at some of the new additions coming to the persistent universe when it arrives in the patch report first up we gotta start with the reputation system we just explored which looks to enhance every feature before it by adding progression and rewards while serving as the ground floor for

11. 00:08:00

    nearly every feature to come ready to plug in and add advancement in goodies galore to each new aspect as they come online in addition to the reputation system alpha 313 brings with it several expansions and revisions to existing assets and locations beginning with our new drive-in and sinkhole entrances for cave systems providing new opportunities to explore with ground vehicles and spacecraft alike new asteroids created with our refined process for more variety and less potatoey and the same great danger of crashing into non-commercial overlays for existing refineries designed to bring a more industrialized look while minimizing some of the excessive branding elements currently found on some stations

12. 00:08:50

    as well as a wrap up to the polished revisions of every planet and moon in the stanton system work that began several quarters ago improving the overall look and feel of everything from aberdeen to yila there's also new mission types scattered throughout stanton including quantum sensitive and timed multi-drop deliveries similar to those first introduced during our xenothread event multiple additions from the actor feature team like the new stagger force reactions the object push pull trolleys scattered throughout the system and mounted guns they still tell me we can't put on trolleys can't or won't richard tyre there are several new vehicle features coming your way in alpha 313 beginning with the long-awaited arrival of docking between the merlin

13. 00:09:38

    and constellation yes no longer will that ship in the back just be permanently attached to your butt we've all been there right afterwards ship the station docking will roll out in a subsequent 313x patch later this quarter to allow for some additional testing and polish we're trying to avoid scratching the paint on our 890s as much as you are speaking of which the first version of wear and dirt is coming with the new vehicle visual degradation system not only adding our first systemic use of the system but allowing players to finally wash some of their spaceships when they go for repairs mining ships are getting another layer of customizability with the addition of mining laser sub components allowing players to customize their laser experience to a greater degree than with consumables alone owners of

14. 00:10:27

    the 600i 890 jump hammerhead reclaimer mercury star runner and anvil carrick will now be able to display their unique ship names for all to see in alpha 313 while the feature is expected to roll out to additional ships in subsequent patches the long-awaited sdf shields first introduced with the npc idris and javelin earlier this quarter now expand to all ships in the star citizen universe plugging up shield holes and providing new visual experiences that not only look better but can help with gauging your attack effectiveness as well and finally in vehicle content we've got the new cyclone mt variant scheduled to arrive with alpha 313 as well as fan favorites the tumbril nova and hercules starlifter in subsequent 313x patches later this so what did we learn this week well we

15. 00:11:18

    learned that the reputation system is the next major new addition to the star citizen experience that it aims to add a real sense of progression and genuine impact for your efforts in the persistent universe and that every move you make every bond you break every step you take it'll be watching you the lawyer said i couldn't sing it keep an eye out for alpha 313 progress to find out when it moves from ptu to the live environment as well as a new merchandise promotion that's starting soon so save up for that it includes a brand new star citizen shirt that's 100 pre-shrunk cotton and as a person whose wardrobe is almost exclusively star citizen shirts at this point this is easily the most comfortable one we've made yet for inside star citizen i'm jared

16. 00:12:07

    huckabee we'll see you all next week