AngryJoe SC Interview, asking some tough questions

MaxBacon

This is one most interesting interview, AngryJoe pushed the devs a bit into answering some of the most tough questions, that hit especially the balance of economy earning, ship costs, and piracy.

Especially the 2nd part with Tony is where you see that in-depth design on controversial topics like PvP balance that are quite well thought as he shares some details.

kikoodutroa8

The though questions : D

ChildoftheShadows

I don't like an interviewer who interrupts. Had to stop watching. Gave me a headache.

MaxBacon

ChildoftheShadows said:

I don't like an interviewer who interrupts. Had to stop watching. Gave me a headache.

Yeah people were like let the man speak. But still got the main info from it.

MaxBacon

Some highlights of tony answers kinda hit on the design very well.

Pirate players, griefing and all, camping areas of space with newbies, the usual problems of PvPvE MMO's. The whole core design to get the game itself fixing out temporary imbalances is one smart approach:

• Pirate Players decide to camp X area with new players for easier prey and profit (or grief).
• Game stats increase the crime rate on that area of space.
• Game itself rolls out more mission content for security and increases the rewards for security mission players on the specific area.
• The fact one area of space being under exploitation by criminal players has now generated high profitability opportunities for the players undertaking security/bounties and such.
• The imbalance created by the criminal players raiding the area of space will even itself out.

Seems like a good approach to have the game mess with how rewarding content is in a localized matter reaction to crime rates, to even out things.


The 2nd bit that got attention is the what happens to the player who steals my ship:

• Player who gets ship stolen can easily do claim insurance to get it back.
• Player who stole the ship can ride it around and do things with it, but the ship will be marked as stolen by the insurance mechanics.
• Once marked as stolen, the entire game makes the life hard to play with the stolen ship, this is likely to benefit scrapping it or such over playing with it, game services like landing areas, refueling/ammo services and such will not want to interact with the player on the stolen ship, making it hard to maintain a stolen vehicle on purpose.

And the 3rd bit, "holy shit that ship pricing in-game was insane!":

• Capital ships as that, the high tier of game ships, are being priced to be something one guild, one organization of players would be looking at getting together, and not for a solo player to earn by himself.
• The ownership of ships bought in-game is purposely more expensive because of the ship renting mechanics.
• Ship renting is the way for new players to have a quick and easier access to other ships and play around with them, earn up money up until the point they might want to buy the actual ship, or maybe the players just want to play with X ship temporarily, or just try it out first.

The co-existence of ownership and renting by in-game credits at once is interesting, allowing to retain the high value of ships without forcing obscene grind bars to actually get to play with them.

Wizardry

Before i watch this,i'll say that i was there in the beginning when Angry Joe was endorsing this BEFORE it reached any goals claiming this would likely be one of the best games EVER.
I felt his rave was unwarranted considering there was literally NOTHING but chit chat.
At that time and sort of recently i mentioned that Angry Joe a guy who was all over the claims this game was going to be great,never cared to ever mention the game again.

That just does NOT add up.Anyhow,in the start before it rolls he says "o originally backed this back in 2011 or whatever.it kind of proves he has had no interest in the game since that initial video which so happens was PERFECTLY timed when Robert's was bidding for backers.Angry Joe was telling his friends to back the game,quite unprofessional to have such high hopes and get your friends aboard a game that shows NOTHING at that time.

So now fast forward,all of a SUDDEN  we hear from Joe,7 years later..wtf?

This leaves me feeling this is going to be another sketchy video.Is he just leading us astray with the notion he claims "TOUGH questions?"BTW the STANDARD procedure is to  have an agreement on the type of questions or actual interview questions.So apparently he starts off with some no namer and not Robert's or his wife or the brother or anyone meaningful.Seeing how often Robert's has to always be in the videos,this seems VERY odd,almost like a setup.

Angry Joe is a business entity,he has a business team,Star Citizen is a business,they have a marketing team,yeah you get the point.Anyhow on to watching this video,i am very skeptical but i'll watch.

Wizardry

Man that is a lot of BS talk,like a presidential election.

"I know the vision" " i know the team" umm yeah nice.
We don't want the AI to be off then it looks bad...lmao.Remember the PLAYERS are SUPPOSE to be a part of the testing,well how can you TEST the AI if it is not out there for the players?

Angry Joe was doing a LOT of excuse making for this guy,sort of answering the questions for him.
IDK maybe he or the team THINK people are really dumb.I know what AI is,i know how it works,it is scripts that TELL the npc how to react,you either have some scripts..AI or you don't.You can even use the same scripts for various NPC's,there seems to be nothing after 7 years...sigh.

The ONE tough question was the cost of buying a ship for $700 but if you want to EARN it would take a full year at 24/7,so MANY years.The guy seemed to have no real answers but claimed"we wouldn't make you grind for years"well then why is that EXACTLY the system in place?


"WE know what we are doing and where we are going"...lol
HOW can you know if you don't have any of the real systems in place after 7 years !!No real scripting,no real grinding measurements.So he goes on to talk about "do we want this travel to take 12 minutes"well again HOW can you know the timing if there is no proper scripting or AI with the NPC's?

My opinion.this whole Star Citizen game is full of crap,one big sketchy operation that is ONLY out to rip off or exploit foolish spenders.It is a HUGE money grab first and a game studio second.

MaxBacon

What a rant O_o. There is no better person than Tony to answer though questions about balance and economy, he is the one who does and has to deal with all that, CR may be the vision one but it's Tony (as the director) who translates that into implementation.

The question about the ship costs was undertaken by Tony afterwards, with both renting and buying ship mechanics on the game, they can allow players to play with ships and reach higher earning rates (as logic if you rent a big cargo hauler you can do bigger trade runs = more profit), while keeping the ownership of the ship itself on intended values. He also answered the question about the capital ship pricing, they are meant for guilds, for groups of players to work for together and not for solo players, the cost obv gets more on reach when you're buying a capital multi-crew ship for the fleet of a guild.

cheyane

Bacon it is 'tough' might want to edit that as it is also in the body of the post too.

MaxBacon

cheyane said:

Bacon it is 'tough' might want to edit that as it is also in the body of the post too.

Thanks, English still tricks me on words like that one hah

cheyane

MaxBacon said:

cheyane said:

Bacon it is 'tough' might want to edit that as it is also in the body of the post too.

Thanks, English still tricks me on words like that one hah

I'm so glad you did not get upset, I was not trying to be clever as I myself need help with spelling occasionally. 

ChildoftheShadows

"Pirate Players decide to camp X area with new players for easier prey and profit (or grief)."

The problem with this here is that a vast majority of people in it for PVE will not enjoy even a single hit from a pirate player. 

Gdemami

This is the worst designed game I have seen in a while...

MaxBacon

ChildoftheShadows said:

"Pirate Players decide to camp X area with new players for easier prey and profit (or grief)."

The problem with this here is that a vast majority of people in it for PVE will not enjoy even a single hit from a pirate player. 

Well, the system is really never going to cope with a player who says "I'm a PvE player I want no PvP" unless the PvE player is doing activities where PvP is either unlikely or not of his concern to react upon.

What matters is more what happens when criminal players try to exploit the system, try to camp "easy prey" areas, try to raid areas with numbers, and situations as that, it could easily be highly disruptive, as the game has unmonitored areas where PvP won't equal to crime, so the objective is to keep PvP to a minimum on the "monitored space".