Star Citizen The Future of PvP
we had a load of information on PvP plans and associated gameplay, Physcialized Inventories and Theatres of War from a Calling All Devs – Player vs. Player Video, this is a summary of that content:
Some Star Systems will have much more of a focus on PvP or PvE gameplay.
Pyro for example many more PvP opportunities.
Terra and Core UEE systems will be very safe.
There are security forces & laws to help protect players.
They don’t want to say you are 100% safe from all PvP in any system tho.
It sounds like any attempt to initiate PvP in safer areas will be extremely hard, costly and in a lot of situations stupid… tho it could be worth it if you were trying to take out a high ranking Org Leader for example… Risk vs Reward.
Stanton is a reasonably secure system but will have areas that are more PvP focused, typically being hotspots that involve illegal activity OR in places where there is no comm array coverage.
They want to somewhat hint where dangerous areas and where the potential of PvP is more likely to occur. If players are aware of the risks in an area then they are more likely to have a more enjoyable experience.
Rewards for taking out PvP bounties will be high, players will be able to loot each other as well when physicalized inventory is implemented.
At landing zones and cities there will be protections for players with security forces and defense turrets, though these may change from location to location.
If players take on more PvP missions and contracts and engagements they will get more of a focus on that PvP content and effectively build PvP reputation where the game will give them more of that.
If you avoid that type of gameplay you’ll get more PvE opportunities with missions & content.
Physical Inventory means you have to think about your loadout and bring the right gear with you for the situation. You’ll have to manage the amount of space you have and make choices on what you’ll need. What protections and armor do you bring. Medium and heavy armor won’t be able to to worn when you are in certain seats… so you’ll have to wear light or stow them away and put them on when you need them.
You’ll need to bring food and meds too. There are also gadgets, tools and throwables that you might want to bring as well.
They want some encounters to be broken down into preparation, combat and then aftermath/looting.
They talk about using scopes and binoculars to scout out enemy NPCs, tag them and map where they are so you can plan an assault.
Your characters equipment and condition/player status and the environment are all going to have a huge effect on combat, as will getting the drop on the other player or players.
They are building out the new “external inventory” currently. It’s a more grid based inventory that fits items in where there is appropriate space and we will have weapons and gear shown on your character appropriately but they also need to have the interaction with backpacks and boxes that allows for the storage and removal of items in them too.
Though they do need iCache and Item Persistence for this.
We will see the grid based inventory in the shorter term for mineables, food and commodities before this.
I think he mentions the GreyCat ROC buggy and they mute the audio, they say that you’ll be able to interact with cargos and move mineables, commodities between your inventory and theirs.
They will build onto this functionality until they have all items and gear being able to be stored and interacted with like this.
Theatres of War does have some AI ships flying about… so it has a little bit of a PvE element too.
They have been working on ToW and updating it since CitizenCon.
They’ve had 2 Evocati Tests since that. Performance has been an issue during those tests, so they have had to optimize a lot. These updates have also helped with the PU performance too. Server Performance issues are not really a problem with ToW tho they did have some issues with lots of players and the Matchmaker.
Form their data a chair got 2 kills and a fireextinusher somehow got a kill as well… but they can really analyse and act on their metrics.
CI have been playing lots of interal playtests of ToW as well.
There are “dramatic differences” in the next evo playtest with some of the feedback and improvements they have made. They say it will be more STAR CITIZEN and more responsive. They want to get it right before pushing it out to a wider test group.
If you want to get involved with evocati actively participate with the issue council reporting and validating bugs.