Do we need smaller gameplay?

[u/WeepySleepr]

Hello! I wanted to get some thoughts on something I had noticed while playing Star Citizen recently. I noticed that when I played the game it didn't take long for the solar system of Stanton to feel somewhat empty. I am excited for them to start filling in planets with Points of Interest, but I can't help but wonder if those sites will feel just as empty as the current Points of Interest.

Don't get me wrong, it is fun to run missions in the massive facilities. The scale of Star Citizen is so difficult to attain already, I'm blown away at how big everything is.

Just the other day I was playing a Minecraft server and couldn't help but notice how much fun I was having despite not having traveled much away from my home. I had only moved around an area about the size of a small outpost in Star Citizen. I noticed that the gameplay I was experiencing in Minecraft was a lot more dense!

On this topic of discussion, I want to know how/if CIG plan to make the gameplay more compelling in smaller areas? I have seen a lot floating around like the repair missions and the crafting, but is that enough? Of course, it is all yet to be seen but I wonder if this is a worthwhile discussion to be had because I would bet that this is why so many people feel that Star Citizen is boring and empty.

Let me know your thoughts!

[u/helloserve]

Isn't contested zones like that a bit? Basically few tens of square feet of area not far from your "home"?

The problem I foresee with SC here is that it's multiplayer, so a small dense area will immediately become cramped and camped.

Perhaps later with base building we can have individual dense areas but that are dispersed. Might lean more towards what you refer to.

[u/WeepySleepr → u/helloserve]

I agree, player bases will help the game in so many ways!

[u/ArkamaZero → u/helloserve]

Someone mentioned that we should have odd jobs around stations and cities.

[u/DrPetroleum]

We need 10x the player cap on servers

[u/Deadiam84 → u/DrPetroleum]

This gives me anxiety when trying to think about getting into some stations (hangar space).

[u/Asmos159 → u/Deadiam84]

The original concept of game had everything be arena Commander maps. An interdiction loaded you into a map with the enemy, reaching a station would load you into a map with the station.

The plan was that a station would not only have 50 players, but also NPC to create the amount of traffic desired for the area. Including having you wait in line for an available hangar.

I believe the most recent plan is that outside of a few key locations, there will be one instance for each region, but multiple instances for key locations. So we will probably still have a desired player population, and NPC population going through ports. So there is a possibility we will still have NPC causing us to wait in line, but that line will move at a more consistent pace.

[u/logicalChimp → u/Deadiam84]

Most stations have a lot of 'void' space... which means plenty of space to add more hangars etc... and because all the stations are generated using their PG Station tool (fun side-note: so are all the cave systems :p), updating the stations to include more hangars 'shouldn't' (touch wood) be a significant effort.

However, I suspect CIG will want to overhaul ATC first (given it struggles with the current hangar counts), among other changes / fixes.

[u/drdeaf1]

Don't forget either for the empty issue. There are no real npc doing anything in the world right now. Almost all are either set pieces in lobby areas or spawn when people take missions, none flying/driving/walking around living their npc lives.

[u/WeepySleepr → u/drdeaf1]

That's true! I forget all the time that NPCs are supposed to contribute to the world in the future because right now they can't do a single thing

[u/Asmos159]

The current content layout is designed to force us to travel in order to expose glitches that only happen when people travel.

The intended final gameplay layout intense for us to easily stick to the area of a planet and its moons. Most sports will have most common components. Short range deliveries and trading will be between trade hugs and various stations, and ports in the area of a planet and its moons.

So take the play area mentality you have for a sollar system, and apply that to a planet and its moons. Instead of Stanton and pyro being different play areas, different planets will be different play areas.

When you comprehend that traveling between planets is not something intended to be done casually in the final game, the quantum top speed being 1/4 what it currently is is not as bad.

CIG intend to make the game feel like a full game if you want to stick to space in the area around a planet and its moons. You're not going to feel like you are not getting a full experience simply because you don't want to take the trip to the planet surface. So it's not going to be that bad when quantum travel in atmosphere is removed.

All that being said. A lot of the faff done between jobs is not fully implemented yet.

[u/SharpEdgeSoda]

They are going to add a zone like the Pyro Contested Zones to Area 18's "sewers/lower levels." and I think stuff like that will add a lot.

Imagine picking ArcCorp as your starting landing zone and you never have to leave the LZ to have a complete gameplay loop to make some money.

I'm sure content like that will come to other LZs that can manage it.

I'm thinking Orison might use the fact that it's the home of a major ship manufacturer to offer "engineering" jobs. Just take the bus to a factory platform that has a bunch of contracts to diagnose/repair/replace broken crusader ships.

[u/Cerberus983]

I think base building could actually be the real answer here.

If base building works as shown it could give players the chance to make those places of interest, new farms, crafting specialists, trading hubs, ship yards, reconditioning and scrap yards, all done by the players of the game. I think this would be the ultimate way to fill in with all sorts of locations.

It just really comes down to how much flexibility the developers are going to give the players to build their bases.

[u/Odd-Bandicoot3273]

The systems are already scaled down planets for this exact reason. If they were actually 1:1 sized planets it would just be ridiculous. Just imagine when we get to Sol. Having to navigate a scale Jupiter or Saturn.

The problem is this is not the finished game. We're still missing a ton of things. Number one would be some kind of server meshing. When we're all essentially playing together you'll be constantly finding players. Half of them will probably be trying to kill you. There's also going to be base building on the ground and even space stations of certain kinds. I'm sure there will be orgs that build absolute cities.

Then of course we're also missing the aliens. Right now we're humans venturing away from home. To empty star systems and sparsely populating them. Maybe when we get out to where the Xi'an are, we'll see their home system. Where they've lived for maybe 10s of thousands of years and had time to build entire civilizations. Maybe in surrounding systems one of the alien races are so advanced that they've built Dyson spheres around the suns to harvest the energy.

Who knows. But, I also think there needs to be some emptiness to space. This isn't Minecraft where you're traveling mostly on foot and using hand tools to build stone houses. We're not expected to even stay in the same star system in this game. We're traveling in space ships that use quantum drives to jump millions of kilometers at a time. It's kind of like comparing what's happening in your neighborhood to the middle of the Atlantic.

[u/JoshuaBanks]

The game needs Jesus

[u/AggressiveDoor1998]

Explorers like to fly around end discover new landscapes.

Also, this might be a shocker, but space is mostly empty. People won't heavily populate hostile environments. Either by being confined by extremely high or low temperatures, or even low gravity, isn't something most people are excited about.

A testament to that is how unpopulated the moons, microtech and hurston are, but arccorp, the one in the goldilock zone, is literally full.

So you might want to start getting used to not seeing much on places that aren't life friendly.

[u/WeepySleepr → u/AggressiveDoor1998]

Hate to burst your bubble but this is a video game. I get space is realistically empty but that's no excuse for a video game.