this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2024
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Star Citizen

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Star Citizen Live: Q&A Contested Zones and Asteroid Bases (youtu.be)
submitted 3 months ago by Essence_of_Meh to c/[email protected]
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/18733075

Guests:

  • Kaan, Lead Level Designer
  • John, Level Designer II
  • Manuel, Senior Level Designer

TL;DW:

  • "Asteroid bases are like bunkers 2.0" - more content space, more sandbox type of missions, more gameplay types.
  • Asteroid bases can also be worth visiting if you don't have a mission (there are puzzles and treasures).
  • Contested zones will have multiple entries from both interior and exterior of a station to limit bottlenecks.
  • At specific "depth" of a contested zone players can find exfiltration routes that will bring them back to a safe-zone. They are one way.
  • Reminder that contested zones are intended as a PvP space.
  • Jared: "Our job in those situations (griefing) is to find alternatives for the players who are suffering at the hands of PvP - provide ways they can counter it, provide alternatives that provide the same experience (...) When the player runs out of options and gets killed over and over again, that's when there's a problem."
  • There are 5 contested zones in Pyro at the moment, more or less evenly spread.
  • Some contested zones require specific items to access them.
  • Contested zones have short, mid and long term "branches" - the last one might requires items to access as well. Some of those items have to be gained from other places. Longer branches = better rewards.
  • Current plan for asteroid bases is to have both combat and "safer spaces" - not safe safe, as in PvP will be possible, but without enemy NPCs.
  • There will be functioning asteroid bases in the future, not in 4.0.
  • They'd like to implement less obvious traps in the future (like booby trapped chests etc), will have to be scanable or recognizable in some other way. (Jared wants a mimick)
  • Contested zones are created with 4-5 person groups in mind, up to 40 people per "dungeon".
  • Early sections of contested zones are soloable, deeper parts will require help.
  • Asteroid bases are always visible on the map (no need to find them/pick a mission to travel there). This might change later down the line.
  • "There's new stuff coming to Stanton in 4.0."
  • Pet Kopion variant coming in 4.0 (NPC owned only for now).
  • Contested zone difficulty will vary depending on depth and on which station you're in.
  • SC didn't have the tech to distribute player rewards for doing in-game things until recently (Operation Overdrive).
  • Ghost Arena was inspired by the "Running Man".
  • Current (deserted) asteroid bases have no official landing places (pads, hangars) available. Future ones will act as gas stations with place for small-medium ships, might have docking tubes for bigger ones.
  • Asteroid bases are done partially by hand instead of fully procedurally (they use hand made room sets instead of randomizing each room individually).
  • No gravity or power manipulation for contested zones initially, there are key cards and fuses though.
  • Contested zones will offer rewards unavailable in any other way. Provided example was ship components (military, stealth, competition ones, only certain variants not all).
  • 4.0 will finally bring back ship components making a difference to ship performance.
  • You'll have to use freight elevators to extract larger loot from contested zones.
  • Asteroid bases aren't planned as a step towards player owned locations ones at the moment.
  • Contested zones will be regularly updated as new items and systems come online.
  • Some locations in contested zones will have time pressure elements (timed gates, respawning and patrolling AI etc).
  • There are 3 variants of asteroid bases (combat, puzzle mixed) at the moment.
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[–] Korinthenkacker 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

To be honest, the more I know about pyro the less is the desire to visit it.

I understand, that CIG desparately needs a place, that can be used to extinct all the players to when pushing them out of stanton but there is less and less reason for me to visit this new place.

[–] Essence_of_Meh 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Same here though I didn't have much desire to begin with as I couldn't care less about participating in PvP, especially in a lawless system. I'll probably make 2-3 attempts to view the sights, get shot and go back to packages and playing doctor in Stanton.

That said, I'd be lying if I said I'm not a little interested how this experiment plays out. Will the player base turn Pyro into a shit show? Probably. Will CIG see that (again, after seeing all their previous attempts at having trust in their players) and do something to improve things for the "carebears"? I have my doubts but I'm open to surprises.

There is one thing I'm certain about however: FFS RELEASE THIS DAMN THING SO YOU CAN START ON IMPLEMENTING ACTUAL CIVILIZATION. If there's another Pyro focused presentation at Citizen Con I'm going to punch a child.

[–] Korinthenkacker 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I still hope, they implement the game economy in a meaningful way:

  • no insurance in lawless systems (you may get some other kind of insurance like stealing a ship and hand it in to insurance to keep their pool to increase the chance to get your ship back when lost in lawless system). If you get a ship from insurance, it was stolen and using it in any place that is run by a to lawful faction will have a risk of getting exposed. Normal insurance only works in lawful systems - which all consequences (meaning: with criminal reputation in a lawful system, you cannot use insurance)
  • shooting down smugglers that bring in wares will have devasting effects (instantly increases prices of NPC to bother to bring in wares, that wont exist otherwise while greately reduce the number of NPC that are willing to do so. The effect scales with the smuggler reputation the attacked smuggler has)
  • the UTTER AND TOTAL idiots that want to place special and rare rewards into a zone that has no economic output, will get finally booted from the design process and as thus cannot do more harm. OTHERWISE let these idiots explain, how these rewards are created in a zone, that has no economic output and lacks of literally everything
  • lawless zone means smuggling. Shooting down a smuggler will get you instantly hated by EVERY faction in that system on permanent basis, meaning the same thing as in stanton when get criminal reputation: you need to leave because there is no place you can show up beside player run facitlies (which will not exist for quite a few years). There should be a reputation that tracks the amount of smuggled wares into the lawless zone, so you can detect the negative consequences of attacking a smuggler.
  • data running from lawless zones should be quite lucrative
  • smuggling into lawless zones should be extremely lucrative
  • there should be special reputations, to make your past visible (like: number of shootdown medics, number of attacked service ships (starfarers, vulcan, SRV and the like) and so on. This is permant and bound to the current avatar. At the same time, make service beacons have conditions like "shootdown medics == 0" to remove these assholes from beacons. Also make it possible like "shootdown medics > 1" = reward * 100 so you can offer services as medic to assholes but let them pay. If you raise one of these counters above 10 there is a slight chance, that this negative reputation is partly inherited by your heir, starting the game with a massive disadvantage.
[–] Essence_of_Meh 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I think these ideas sound like a good starting point to thinking about such things in a way realistic for SC universe. They would probably have to be a bit less black and white since it's a game, people make mistakes and some would surely found a way to use them for trolling or griefing but that's a better starting point than "players should group up and take care of the problem themselves". On the other hand however, some of the devs are the exact people who would be the most affected by such restrictions and we can't have that, can we?

Seriously though, I can't wait for CIG to actually start talking about details of the reputation system and how they think they can prevent issues plaguing multiplayer games since their inception. I don't expect much considering they want to reinvent the wheel (as always) but I really want to know what their plan is.

[–] Korinthenkacker 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

For this reason, pyro coming is good. It will show how their ideas (especially the lack of) will work out.

They try to survive with their 2 faction system but that will only work on POIs - as soon as you lift off, you just can be shot down without any negative effects - over and over again. I cannot imagine how this scenario will be appealing to players.

[–] Essence_of_Meh 2 points 2 months ago

Just to clarify, I'm meant the future "policing" systems, ones they kind of vaguely mentioned before but probably aren't even designed let alone implemented far enough to be released in 4.0.

As far as I'm aware, Pyro release will be the usual wild west with the addition of slightly more integrated reputation system.