Player vs Environment / PVE

Question 6 – Ice

Can you clarify the PvP slider, I see a lot of threads where people believe this effects the whole game, where I believe it to only effect the random encounters during auto-pilot?

Answer 6 – Chris Roberts

Ok so the PvP slider is an input to the game’s matchmaking system to give it a hint of kind of like who it should be matching you with.
So what happens is, when you fly around in space, you have you know, you’re in your view, your universe view, and the server up there is basically looking at where you are and it’s looking at everyone else and all their different machines, and then basically seeing where everyone else in the galaxy is and if it feels like there’s someone close to you or there’s an AI that’s close to you, it basically would tell your local client “Ok, this person’s close to you,” then that person would be streamed into your instance or that AI would be streamed into your instance.

So the PvP slider is essentially an extra variable for the matchmaking criteria. So the matchmaking criteria is on a whole bunch of things. It’s on things like ping, obviously we don’t want to be putting people together where there’s a huge latency. It’s on whether who’s your friends, who’s your enemy, who’s your people of interest. Also it would have some level of skill rating in there. So we’ll kind of track are you a new player or are you super experienced. And based on that, in most of the areas, because some areas there won’t be any, it will be whoever is there verses PvP or not. But if you basically said “Hey I would prefer to have more PvE than PvP,” it would give a preference to the AI flying around rather than real player. So if there’s an AI pirate and there’s a real player pirate, it would drop the AI pirate into your instance to fight if you were more towards PvE than PvP.
You defintiely would get other players streamed into your space that wouldn’t be hostile, say maybe a friend of yours or something. So you could definitely get a co-op kind of feeling, and that’s going to be an on-going process, but the whole idea of it is: you should be able to fly around in the game and if you wanted that more Privateer/Freelancer experience that’s kind of what will happen to you.
It will just be you’ll mostly see AI and then if there’s other players it will be probably friendly players, or if you’re in like certain areas of space where there’s no holds barred, it definitely could be an unfriendly player. But you’ll sort of know that ok, well those are the dangerous areas. So if you’re a new player and you don’t really want to be dealing with tough other players, then you probably should avoid those.

I would like to say one other thing, you definitely can have NPCs that are tougher than any player could ever be. It’s a computer that runs it, it knows exactly where you are and it can calculate the correct firing solution much better than a player could ever do, so I think it is a bit of a misnomer to think that NPCs aren’t necessarily as tough as real players. In some cases, NPCs could be tougher than real players.

But essentially the slider just sort of allows you to effect the kind of people that will stream into your space as you’re traveling across the galaxy, and hopefully that will mean if you want to play a more Privateer style game, and be just by yourself, you can have that experience. If you want to play with your friends and co-op against AI, that can happen. But also if you want to mix it up with other players, that will happen too.
And you know, we’ll have some other stuff. I mean I know there’s always the question where people are always worried that’s an exploit if you can change it dynamically, and we’re not going to let you change it dynamically as you’re flying around.
So it’s kind of a setting you have as you fly around, and as I said, there are some areas that are kind of no-holds-barred, and those areas will also have some really cool stuff in, so I’m hoping at some point you’ll get brave enough and you get good enough and you’ll go to some of these areas to get this one particular kind of weapon that you can’t get elsewhere or salvage an alien wreck, but you have to take some risks to get there. So it’s a sort of risk-reward basis. So I hope that answered the question on the PvP slider.

PvP vs PvE

Published on 1 Oct 2013

Chris Roberts:

For me, the way I look at it is, if you’re fighting real players that’s probably the most difficult thing you can do vs. fighting an NPC player.

The goal in Star Citizen is to be able to have both available for you and so if you kind of want to not want to do PvP you can sort of avoid it.

But there definitely needs to be some carrot out there for people to venture into the completely no holds barred, no law and order, really dangerous area.

And I don’t know how I can make an area any more dangerous than making it PvP.

See the way I look at it is, how is that different than me making the toughest boss monster? I mean it’s kind of like a boss monster that’s a player is better than one that is run by AI.

So for me it’s sort of like I use Demon Souls as an example, I like the game, but you know they had that whole thing, where like there was a whole part where you had to fight a black phantom.

Which would be another player, and that was actually the most scary thing that you would end up doing even (compared to) the big boss monsters in demon souls.

This special module that no one else can have, then maybe that’s out in an area that has no law and order and yeah you got to risk it.

But then again you can have a perfectly fine game career spend years playing the game and not go there, it’s just the same way in the real world right now.

There’s plenty of people that stay in a very nice safe area, and then there’s people that like to I don’t know take their jolly’s sailing around the Gulf of Aden.

You know in this world right, there’s people that are safe and there’s people that are thrill seekers. And so it doesn’t mean that if you aren’t a thrill seeker you can’t have a full life it just means you’re not gonna have the same life that a thrill seeker has.

I think part of the problem is that, you don’t want people, people feel like they should get everything, there should be risk and reward right? so, more difficult to get. Want to take the risk? then you get something cool, and then if you want to be safe and do this then yeah you can do that.

So the way I look at it is if you’re in a safe area and just want to be a merchant and trading, you can amass the same kind of wealth that you could be doing going to the outer edge of the galaxy, it will just maybe take you longer but it’ll be safer.

That’s sort of my view and approach, I could be wrong, it’s just as a player that’s kind of how I would like it to be approached. And hopefully it will be a good enough balance that there will be stuff for the PvP crowd and there will be stuff for the PvE crowd in there.

And I’m hoping maybe even I can get some people who will venture out from the PvE side into the PvP side, which will be kind of cool. Because I think the bigger problem people have on the PvP side is when there’s griefing and when there’s basically when there’s the equivalent of cyber-bullying when a bunch of people gather and beat up on you.

So I’m very focused on creating mechanisms inside the game system that will counteract that inside the PvP world right.

So if someone is sort of griefing someone especially in an area that has law and order, then there’s, it’s not gonna be good for them not because we’re gonna be ban them as an account, but we’re gonna sort of have the game system come after them, where you know you start to have a real bounty on your head.

There’s a lot of other PvP people that all of a sudden it’s like, if someone operates in a safe area of space and starts doing unauthorized PvP you know you’re getting a bounty on your head and then everyone else inside that area, it’s ok, you’re a bounty hunter, you can go after them, so you’re authorized to do PvP for that person.

At some point there’s gonna be a balance where you know people that start to grief and go after newbies in the game, it won’t be worth their time, because there will be so many other players all come down on top of them, because the game is going to incentivize them to come down on that person.

So my goal is to try and have the system of the game and the community itself almost police itself as much you can, it won’t be perfect, there will always be exceptions, there will always be problems, but the more of that I can built the better I think it will be. And then I think that counter acts some of the issues that people have on the PvP vs. PvE area.

- Chris Roberts