Star Citizen - The Crew Problem
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- Опубликовано: 8 сен 2024
- Hello Citizens!
In today's video I want to take a look at AI blades and NPC crews and how they impact multicrew gameplay. Enjoy!
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CIG seem to believe that we all have unlimited play time every day. Reality is that I have 2-3 hours on an average day, sometimes not even in a single sitting. Trying to group up with friends, all get to the same server and location, and actually head out and do an activity takes a significant amount of time. AI will make the game far more accessible.
They can’t even get their UI nailed after 10 years. I don’t see them ever really getting AI to a very functional state. Big ship stuff will probably be scheduled large guild activities.
This
A turret that is badly operated by an NPC or AI Blade is infinitely more useful than a turret that is not operated at all.
No, no it's really not. Sure you think any gun firing in a situation is better than none, but take into account how human perception is used. You're going to want to try and angle your ship to get the turrets to hit, the AI will instead just not, it will angle away and fire into dead space, forcing you to make a choice before you even get the AI "Do I stand and fight and hope the AI hits or do I just play like I used to and run."
So what's the point? When the choices are to stand and fight while your AI who can't hit a barn if it was 2 feet infront of them go at it, or just leave like you would normally in a hopeless fight, the answer becomes obvious. The AI is stupid and doesn't need to exist right now.
@@lordrevan571 You're assuming the AI will be doing the exact opposite of what needs to be done though. With enemy AI, this is needed of course, as you don't want AI ships that just hit every shot. They can tweak the parameters as needed to get a reliable, but not perfect result.
@@dandotvid So what was the point of that statement? You just walked around in a circle. It's not about tweaking parameters it's about pointing out the fact that the AI as it stands now adds nothing new to the dynamic of the game. It just adds more fps drops and lag.
Stop looking at this like another "wowzerie omg look oh my god!!! feature!!!" and look at this for what it is; basic fucking AI with terrible tracking. It doesn't add anything new as of yet nor, in its current iteration, looks to add anything that wasn't already there to begin with or, more importantly, what the game was built around. This isn't anything new or groundbreaking, the problem is that the tracking, targeting, response time and overall actions of the current AI is just poor, beyond poor, for something that's currently sitting at 700 Million in funding, the AI is a joke.
@@lordrevan571 what a dumb ass thing to say. id rather have NPCs and AI that can be tuned, than nothing at all.
I can speak only for me. Due to my Real job, I HATE dealing with people. I am also a tad antisocial, and very much a lone wolf. I love the Verse.
I tend to gravitate to activities I can do alone. My past ventures with other players was a mixed bag of crashes and 30Ks. I do own a few ships that need additional crew, but I always make sure that I can fire the main guns and missiles.
I look forward to the AI blades, and fully understand they will be limited. That is the trade off to a 'slaved' system.
As for as NPC crew, we better get better NPCs.
Make NO mistake. CIG LOVES Money. I can't envision CIG alienating a segment of the population that they know exist. The Verse has evolved soo much from the original pitch from 2012, it will continue to do so unless public interest and wallets dries up.
There will be a niche for lone players, and I bet anything that the number of them will surprise Roberts.
It shouldn't surprise them at all hopefully the data is quite clear that the core player base of an mmo is invariably solo players
I want to be a bounty hunter... how many BH's do you see in films and tv working with teams of strangers. They are generally lone wolfs
I think that NPC Crews and AI blades are necessary to complement human crew members, and to give options once you do not have enough people online/available. Ships with human crew should always be more efficient, though.
No. Ai npc's need to be to par with decent players. You should not be forced to be irl charismatic to crew a large ship well.
@@mirrormonstere113 It is an MMO, not a single player game. Start polishing that charisma.
@@Krieghandt I'm fine. 95 percent will not be. Good way to kill your game. Gamers are notorious for being charisma lacking dorks.
@@Krieghandt Also, what exactly would the problem be?
Aye, I've been following the game since 2011, and it seems that at some point in the last year or so that CIG has changed their design intent for the game, from a game "featuring" multi-player to a game "gated" by multi-player. 13 years ago I didn't pledge for a game that would have much of the content locked behind group play but rather one "including" and "incentivizing" multi-player.
So now it seems that as a solo player you're restricted to what, a 1 - 3 crew ship?, and anything bigger is locked behind having 4-18 other players ready and willing to do the exact same content in the exact same ship? That just doesn't sound practical or sustainable to me. I've been on board with everything that CIG has done and said so far, but this shift has shaken my faith.
The time sinks are exponentially worse as more people try to work together.
The last time I played the rewards also decreased the more people partied together. No incentive there at all.
Nobody has an hour just just group up, not in this economy. Another two hours to do a mission. It’s bullshit.
@@HDA_III lol even if they increased the rewards, you dont want to crew up. you want "big ship" to fly by yourself to tank damage and grief..
@@VenEm So you're going to ignore the massive time sinks? Big ships tend to get popped by little ones...
CIG has made so many committments over the years when selling ships that they need to be very careful and thorough with their implementation in a way that respects their biggest supporters. For example, early on they encouraged people to build a fleet of ships because they said you could send your unused ships and NPC crew off on missions. They took that back pretty quickly, but from 2013 to TODAY in late July 2024 they still have the page up explaining why players should buy those extra packages: Because you'll get an NPC crew member for free with it. Since it's one of your own character slots you'll be paying yourself if you have to pay it a salaray so it's still win win and respects those players that spent all that extra money on those early promises. For the rest of us, there will be crew we can hire or blades, and yes CIG made it very clear that it was OK to buy bigger ships and staff them this way. The shift towards 'solo players shouldn't have big ships' is a newer excuse for CIG failing to get NPCs, blades, drones, and all the other associated features working after a decade of delays.
No joke, I mentioned on a livestream a while ago that they still had the page from Invictus 2945 (2015) hyping up the Retaliator and it's Modules, and the initial sales pitch. The modules are half-ass released 9 years later. To make it more interesting, after discussing it on the stream, the page was almost fully wiped. There's only the headline and page itself leftover.
@@realtimbotube They sold the modding manual for dedicated servers until October 2023, then poof it just went 404 which is extremely shady. I guess they didn't feel like following through on that sold feature like they don't feel like working on VR support anymore, and dont' feel like implementing that co-op campaign for Squadron 42. At this point the list of features they no longer feel like delivering on is getting really long.
The game needs to reach a state where the casual player has a reason to play the game, in order for hardcore players to reach a state where playing the game satisfies the fantasy
Yup, and sadly we are still at least a minimum of 10 years away from that, because CIG hasn't done many things that is necessary for this.
* actual in depth, and numerous missions
* actual working economy
* finalized and functioning flight model, and flight mechanics.
* Finalized and or at least functional damage models.
*Balancing of the combat in any way... (it's not remotely and its a joke)
* Figuring out and locking in how actual emergent gameplay is going to function.. Right now its all extremely forced with stupid events that focus only on PvP as its forefront.
* Server meshing actually functional..
ANd that's not to mention the numerous other major issues.. like 10 years in and they're still effing around with UI back end... like good fucking hell man... That should of been done and finalized 7 years ago... Not still jerking around with deciding what they want, and how they want it to function... Its worse than amateur after a decade, and that's with numerous heads who have been in game development for 20+ years already...
@@Cramblit I know.. It's like why the fuck didn't they release Elite Dangerous v1.8
@@Cramblit What the hell is a "UI back end"?
@@QuotidianStupidity UI back end, is the "UI building blocks" CIG keeps talking about, and how they keep remaking it, over and over and over and over, because they can't decide how to do something efficiently, that game developers have been doing for 30+ years, and they can't decide on a system they like.
It's what everything you press and interact with connects too.
I'm starting to think that they are doing it on purpose because it gives them a fail safe excuse of why half their shit is broken 24/7, and why half their UI hasn't functioned in 10 years.
Every time you ask why a basic button isn't working, you get 1 of 2 excuses. "server" or "UI building blocks aren't done"
Both of which are horrendously inept excuses after 10 years of course.
@@Cramblit building blocks is the name of the UI system they changed to when moving away from the old tech. I don't think they have been changing the system of building blocks, it is fundamental to all of the items that they release now that look great like the holo viewer, new ship UI's etc.
I think distrust will be a big point in the future and a difficult one to work around. I may be an exceptional case but I have already been betrayed by "hired" crew before plenty a times where they either I was the hired one to do box stuff in the reclaimer and got shot before we reached Lorville to sell and he always found excuses for not having shared the contract. Or that time when 3 friends and I were manning a HH for some bounty grinding but wanted 2 more just to be safe aaand one of em endet up being a Pi-Rat he conveyed our destination with his discord buddies aaand they intersepted us shortly before arriving. A fully manned Redeemer and a Mantis + 2 guys to do the deed. Asked us for 2 millions so we "could keep our ship and stuff" ... an empty HH and throwaway gear so we declined the lluducriss demand and got killed right there... Those 2 being just some of many cases of "Pi-Rating" that happened to me in less then a Year since starting When shit lieke that is "perfectly fine, legal and allowed" piracy then you can bet your ass sooner rather then later people will be burned one to many times eventually not trusting one annother especially when sh... stuff like death of a spaceman will be a thing. But idk I am pretty vehemently against such things since I dont think the current and future gaming community is made for that. If people are already sick of toxic behavior in relatively consequency free games then I cant see how SC would thrive as much as it needs to. And remember, its supposed to be an MMO ... now what does the future tell us about that Massive part... lotta people being asses and or trolls. Now make that stuff a viable gameplay path in were in for one hell of a time of toxicity and distrust. To not come to a compleete state of distrust those pirates would have to do stuff like that in moderation.... and they wont. If I learned anything from 14 years of gaming then that that moderation is not a virtue of most players, especially of those who would engage in gameplay made around sabotaging other players to varying extend. I cant help but think that in contrast, if WoW only had PVP servers and other players would be able to kill, gank and hunt you AND then stealing your stuff it would have propablly never taken off as much as it did back in the day. And yes PvP servers dont mean your alyways fighting against other people, but the propability of running into such was quite high back in the day from what ive heared. And yes PvP wasnt the only thing the game had to offer. Yes but good luck getting the broader playerbase to a "competetive level" when all they do is die every 10 ish level to annother player loosing all the stuff in their inventory having to either beg or extremely tediously grind back up to get stuff to continue your journey and you have SC light and I dont think we would be celebrating WoW´s 21 next year if that would have been the case. It had its roughpatches and blizzards fuckups and controversies didnt quite help facilitating trust in them altho they were able to provide quite the quality back in the day and even now from time to time... sound a bit familliar to CIG? I am not saying that CIG is as bad as blizzard heeeell noooo BUT just think what the wider public will see in SC; The game of about 10+ years making, incredible investment, vision and quite the controversies in the past and propably future, looong grindes, severe consequenzes and past incompetenz be that minor or major balancing and design. They, more then anyone need to find that "Golden Balance" and uphold it which is incredibly difficult if not outright impossible so that this grand vision can become reality. Sounds like quite the "future prediction of some guy that has no chance of becoming reality" but (ofc) id wager that this is a very real possibility when im looking all across gaming and the internet.
The game is still in development, so these people are having to do these kinds of things in the Stanton system. Eventually there will be player to player reputation and players like that will be easy to spot, or will be doing stuff like that in a lawless zone.
I can't wait for npc crew and ai blades.
Blades will be another component that you'll be able to adjust and tinker with as with all components in the game. If you buy a cheap blade to do a complex task like manning a gun it will be slower to react and be balanced based on that. Different size ships will have a different amount of available slottage for blades and they can only be slaved to certain tasks that will cause further drain on your ships resources while they are active. We can see this conceptually in their plans for engineering and resource management as well as a few ships already having the slots like the Carrack. They've stated recently that the technology for the AI blades is already finished with the only holdup being how the blades get into the players hands.
NPC crew will likely be tied to a reputation system for crew contracts. You can pay less to a worse crew member who can get better the longer they are part of your crew. OR you can pay more for a better crew member to start with. This will likely be some kind of management system to keep your NPC's happy enough to stay in your crew with different personalities, likes, and dislikes. We can see some of this mindset in the form of combat AI they are creating that have different attributes that affect their combat.
We can expect all gameplay to reflect the complexity and weight as we see currently with mining and the new cargo update. The direction they've reported on repeatedly in the law 2.0 and the direction they intend for bounty hunting to go, means that its complexity will be interesting and detailed with many steps to completely enjoy its loop. Managing an NPC crew will be another gameplay loop or feature that you'll need to do on your ships.
They have said that you will not be able to take another ship that you own and crew it with AI and send it out on its own to complete its task. This is where player grouping actually comes into the conversation and at no point before this does a player crew matter or is required with NPC crew and Blades fully realized.
Player crews will have the benefits that they have in any game that is multi-player. You'll be able to effectively communicate instantly with a human that can react appropriately to a situation without any clunk or delay or glitches in response.
Your player crew that has gone AFK while you are jumping the 30 minutes from point A to B aren't managing internal components or keeping a weathered eye on issues that may spring up. The parent who has to change their baby in the middle of a heated spaceship battle isn't going to effectively man that turret with poop hands. The busy work from home person isn't going to be able to replace a busted fuse while they are in the middle of giving a presentation. ETC...
Very few people want to live someone else's space dream. Even fewer adults can line up a consistent schedule to play a game as detailed and drawn out as Star Citizen intends to be. NPC crews and AI blades are going to be the default you'll find on every ship with more than one bed and in every instance on every ship you come across you'll want the NPC crew when you don't have that real person. When you do have that real person you'll gladly improve your ships capabilities by having another living person to communicate with and deal with the work load together.
With the increase of CIG/Devs basically telling everyone, "this is how we want it, we don't care what you want/say/need, so stop asking for it", openly during official communication, I tend to believe that most folks will be disappointed by "the Star Citizen experience" in the end.
>most folks will be disappointed
The players who actually tell CIG "what the players want" are a very small vocal minority. And this minority does not represent anyone's point of view but their own. Most players are silent average casuals, and to understand what they want, CIG have to conduct market research not listen to some "activists".
@@alexpetrov8871exactly. Anyways, I like the idea of large ship endeavors being expensive to run and requiring many players. Like you’d never run a Warcraft raid on your own. I feel like large ship activity gives you guild end game stuff to do.
@@Kyle-wc3nf >large ship endeavors being expensive to run and requiring many players
This is contrary to the current sales strategy. To follow your proposal, CIG will have to fail the expectations of existing backers and also admit that they have no idea what they were doing many years. AI crew and auto turrets like in ED are a much less expensive solutions.
@@alexpetrov8871 If you own a large combat vessel then you should be able to conduct raids into enemy (say vanduul) systems and get rewards. That would be the equivelant of going on LVL 70 raids in WoW.
There should be gameplay for all types of players, in all types of ships when you are creating an entire universe. Right now they cater to combat... and that is pretty much it. The devs don't seem capable of thinking about non-combat missions beyond boxes.
The reality is it's being made to how Chris Roberts wants it basically space WW2 dogfights for combat and not much real focus on the rest of the game. And CR also unfortunately has the habit of being easily distracted and randomly changing his mind on things that never get finished. Why he got kicked out of Origin and his Wing Commander series, and why he was forced to release Freelancer unfinished. He just chases unrealistic future tech ideas, burns money, and never finishes anything unless someone higher up than him puts their foot down. But now there's no one higher than him.
The other thing to consider with human crew is location. With no auto-join and limited teleport abilities, on top of long travel times. Even if you are in a org, nobody may be near you and it may take an hour to reach you. Considering it isnt uncommon for people to have limited playtime availability this is going to make teaming up in this game a nightmare. Anything involving multicrew is going to take a bunch of planning on the ship owners part if they want a human crew.
Org events are also going to reach a new level of planning on the org leaders part. where in other games you can fast travel to the raid zone or event location, so the main thing for a leader is how many tanks/healers/dps do i have signed up. Now anyone involved is going to have to make sure they are at least in the same system as the event and maybe have multiple ships available and at the location. Leaders are going to need to know how many are going, how many ships, what kind of ships, how many players are willing to crew multicrew ships, and probably more factors I am not even thinking of atm. Overall I am figuring both multicrew and org events are going to be a pretty big headache for those having to plan them.
i think your going to see a limtation to the blade system just like alot of other aspects to the game that have changed due to game design and games current direction , i think we will see less functionality in blades where they will serve a simple function , like running a refining job , and maybe running a point defence routine against missles and such very rudimentary type of things ,
NPC crew might be slightly better , but i feel they will good at single jobs , like engineering ,food prep , scanning, mining , but not possible for anything else outside of there job skill , so putting a engineer on food prep wont be possible or putting a crew member on a gunnery station not possible . thats how i think CIG will balance NPCs out , player crews will always be more flexible where as NPCs will be locked into a skill set and cost to keep
The fact enemy ships have fully functioning AI blade turrets they work well for you either now if you take over a ship, proves that they could be added today in game as a hired service. I’d love to see it and how the game developed. You’d lose more from ship destruction and more expensive to run, but flipside larger ships could be better defended or more offensive without the unrealistic expectation of coordinating large numbers of players when the serves jank out half the time.
My biggest ship is the MSR. I have no desire for anything larger, so when I don't have my friends with me, AI crew or even blades would be my choice as the MSR has a crew requirement of 3. Only problem I can forsee with the AI/blades is the scanning feature. Not sure if they could handle that function.
I think people have an early 2000's outlook on NPC's....Truth be told, A.I have the ability to be top tier even against other players... We slightly see that with the well known "seal team-6" npcs that sometimes arise in bunkers lol.. They're quick, aggressive and precise. So, the whole idea that npc's will be less effective will have to be a manufactured weakness. I look forward to them. And I hope that CiG is drawing the dots together on what they might do to their multicrew ship sales if they continue to push the whole "Join up or get f*cked" mentality. Some players are just introverts... That shouldn't come with brutal punishment. Sure, they can't run a Javalin or similarly sized ship... But smaller ships and scenarios shouldn't bar them Imho.
Even if one isn't an introvert and has friends to play with, the whole grouping up in a timely organized manner is only going get harder, as we players start to spread across more solar systems. If it takes 30 mins to group up in Stanton now, how long is it going to take when we are many solar systems apart. You would have to give a weeks notice to a friend group, just to connect efficiently, at the appointed time.
The other is, your friends may bot be interested in what you are doing at the time, or may not have the time available.
A larger pool of friends may help.
But me being more introverted, keep my meaningful friends to a small list.
NPC artificial training/skills/leveling is a great way to improve the skill of them. It will make a player more invested in taking care of the crew.
@@festersmith8352 Exactly, if you are exploring you shouldn't be limited to only playing when you can fully man your Carrack.
@festersmith8352 if you assume that an NPC is on average as good as "you" then that's going to define the rate of pay an NPC might expect based on skills level. The game can't define your skill level, so all it can do is base it on the pay you get offered, which revolves around reputation. Given contract pay rates and the (slightly tedious) mantra that you must group up or be easy hostile player fodder that's not going to be popular and probably unviable.
You have a Caterpillar. You take on 2 AI crew as gunners, they don't load cargo or do engineering for CIG "reasons". The shipping contract pays you 30k at your skill level, which the AI match so cost 30k for the mission. Or it's equal shares, so 10k each. You are sensible on routing and there's no combat, which is what you wanted anyway.
Or, a worse case, there is combat, AI get paid, by you, equal shares, and the combat damage repair is 45k. At thus stage you start to question if CIG know anything about actual playability at all 😀
@@andrewfanner2245 And all of what you described is open for development and balance.
No sense in fanning the flames for persecution just yet.
@festersmith8352 it is indeed but let's just leave it at the standard investors warning of "past results are no guarantee of future performance" 😀
Chris Roberts doesn't believe in Ai Blades or NPC crews. The only reason we don't have either blades or NPC crews yet is because it's not important to Chris Roberts (Remember rule of cool comes first, then time sinks comes second). Never forget, Chris gets what Chris wants. We're all at his mercy.
Well, if you really feel that way, you do have options.
One of the things that break the experience of crewing your ship with players would be them moving thru your ship in the elevator(ex: hercules,reclaimer) while in quantum meanwhile you go to your bathroom, they´ll probably be sent to space, they communicate with you but they´ll think you abandoned them, when you return to your computer they already logged off pissed.
By fostering and encouraging non-consensual pvp gameplay, CIG actively creates and encourages a divisive, overall unfriendly community. They're going to *need* to provide AI crewmembers to make up for the fact that CIG encourages players distrusting and avoiding each other.
when you add the hardcore pressure to get multiple accounts and then people have ghost trolls accounts to foster even more distrust.
This is a confusing way to frame it since, just like the real-world, the fact that there's commerce and even the ability to attack people already encourages PvP.
You have stuff. They want it. Simple.
@@LucidStrikeexcept there are actual penalties( in civilized countries) to discourage that behaviour, taking from others is looked down upon socially, pirates are only glorified in movies and video games, in real life, anyone who deals with them despises them, and IRL, death eliminates recidivism. In a video game they just get their sperm suit on again and come right back out. And toxic players will always be toxic
They are adding npcs that you can hire
Thanks for adding the lonely coward’s perspective. It’s a GAME, If everyone trusted each other how G dam boring would the game be? It’s the espionage, collaboration, covert murder, betrayal etc that makes MMO’s interesting
As the captain of a Polaris corvette and with a tiny org trying to inspire players to play as crew or bring useful ships/escorts. It is VERY difficult to recruit and get players willing and dedicated. So this has been an issue on my mind for some time. Now that my ship is nearly completed and getting ready for release, I'm dreading what I will have to do to crew my ship even to the minimum specs...
For me...I own a Carrack a MM, Orion. I worry too. I have money to spend on more of these larger ships, Love the Star Citizen concept and willing to spend thousands more...but I'm holding back and loosing faith. Will our ships just be hangar Queens?
@@sajasafosajasafo8207 my biggest fear tends to be on AI crews and how effective they will actually be. If they are too effective, then why have player crew? If they are not that effective, and costly then our ships become hangar queens
@newblood5 the devs talked about this they are going to make it where high spec npcs are expensive and locked behind rep walls. You can hire cheaper crew that is less effective but you can train. The best will be a mix of ai and player crew.
A lot of people say that this isn't the case or fly smaller ships and that is a stupid take in my opinion. They want large ship conflicts and formation, sorry but how do you get that if two javelins fully crewed is 160 people no escorts fighter or anything. A solo should be able to bring all ships online and effectively, this would foster the ability for these conflicts. The true MMO star citizen offers is fleets not crewing one ship.
@baileyspringer1896 yeah that's AI shards. But that won't be in for some time, until then I have to find crew for my ship without them. And most people want to fly their ships, not crew others.
@newblood5 unfortunately it is a wait and that is a problem that won't go away. Not to mention one large ship is so resource heavy forget escort for it.
CIG are already on record as saying that a highly skilled NPC crew will operate at least on par as a human crewed ship and in some cases, such as in a gunner role, would outperform a human crew.
Wont ever happen due to the fact taht ai will either totaly suck or is totaly op.
@@dayumcraig7657 There is no problem to create 100 levels of AI skill gradation and set hiring price according to ingame economy. Cargo trader can hire anything between 100lvl for 95% of his profit or 1lvl for free purely for cosmetic effect.
need AI Crew ASAP
CIG are desperate to force grouping. They have also sold multicrew ships to all and sundry. So we have large numbers of players with muticrew ships all looking for crew. At equal sgares for all, the usual model they pay rates are risible. As a cargo captain most of the time you want the gunners to be bored and they wont want that. Loading and unloading will get very old fast.
I believe they are forcing this because right now it is the best way to guarantee fun and divergent gameplay, they haven't added enough content so are driving it this way.
The lack of missions (variety, depth and chains) is really quite bad at this point
@QuotidianStupidity I compare SC with the other game I play a lot, LOTRO. Rich lore, both games, only one uses it to any extent. Variety of missions, SC has about 50, mostly copy paste. Environment, both very pretty. NPC population, SC T pose, LOTRO active, doing stuff, can be 100 or so in view in some places.
Budget, LOTRO on say 10% of SC.
Worries me that CIG have some gaps to bridge to compare towhat can be seen as a very old tech game.
And I'm a few layers into Chairman's Club but 3.23 rather damaged the rose spectacles.
I think we're going to get more ai crew rather than less
CIG has repeatedly stated that their aim is to make sure that you can crew any ship with either AI or other players, both options will have pros and cons.
@@theforgottenguise7971 Yes they have, but only when asked, its never mentioned, is on the roadmap, and they say is far down the road. CIG needs constant funding until they go subscription, and NPC don't spend $. The overdrive Initiative showed CIG's push for group/org gameplay. I play solo, yet understand i will need to adapt to having a support crew (human), and do not want AI or NPC drones fecking up my game.
@@theforgottenguise7971they also said the release date of squadron 42 would be in 2014.
Star citizen has a larger crew problem.Which is the crew sizes for the ships will not be ample enough and their current design for the amount of people you will need to fill the rolls required on larger ships
Hey CIG, better get that check book ready because you are dangerously close to another lawsuit all because you don't have the cajones to tell Chris Roberts he is a brilliant idiot..
It should also be noted that not everyone has the same amount of play time available and real life events do happen. Captains are reluctant to pick up randos for this reason as well (randos may cut out before mission complete). And trying to get more than 2 people over the age of 30 on the same ship, for the same amount of time is extremely difficult. Multicrew gameplay suits people with very few responsibilities well, but the rest of us are going to get screwed. It's almost as if CIG shouldn't have made multicrew ships so prevalent from the start? If more people had to start as crew and earn up, it'd help with this issue
I'll be hiring high lvl NPC's most of the time and let friends take those slots when we're playing together. Unless a real good reputation system comes into play , I think most players think that way. NPC's will get better once servers are more stable. According to CIG NPC's will be very good at what they do if they get xp enough ... and more expensive ofc. I think that s a good thing. (edit: typo)
I am myself more interested in support roles than piloting. I already often give control of my ships to team mates, and can't wait for engineering, cargo management, healing, scanning... to be online. I know a lot of people, among my friends and my guildmates who share this opinion. We don't want to flight or fight. That's why a lot of us didn't support the project until it clearly become "freelancer 2".
First, I hate being punished unless I play with other people. I’m in my 50’s. I don’t need a nagging mom telling me I have to play with my friends. Second, if NPCs are going to man my turrets, they better first learn to sit in chairs.
If Star Citizen doesn't implement some form of artificial PVP control, the universe is just going to end up like DayZ and Sea of Thieves. Everyone's going to try to solo as much as they can, and the few people that just want to do nothing but pvp will get 4 people grouped up and fly around griefing and ganking everyone else. I can't believe they are so naive this late in the MMO scene to make this obvious and common mistake.
1) PULSAR: Lost Colony was able to figure out NPC Crew back in 2015. 2) Most folks want to be the Captain...not a crew member. 3) If NPCs get paid, but human crew members don't, what's the incentive to be a crew member 4) I personally like the PVE part of it, not the PVP aspect of it. I think that's more of the 90s thinking that we're all sitting around with 3 or 4 favorite friends waiting to get online together. People paying for games like this are often adults. That's the only way they can afford these expensive games. So, you've got someone tired after work and dinner, hopping on for a couple of hours and hopping off. That's no time to PVP and convince other friends to come on the game...not to lead their own ship, but to be crew on somebody else's. And you certainly don't feel like fooling with a bunch of little kids griefing. Unless there are private server options...that may be a game plan. But at this rate, everyone will have gray hair before the game is finally finished.
CI better get AI crew and blades in and working well - they lead thousands of people to believe over the last decade + that we would be able to solo them with the help of blades and AI crew. Literally thousands of people spent a fortune at this point so they could operate ships with AI help. If they f*ck the community on that, they'll be dealing with a tidal wave of refunds at best or a class action lawsuit at worst.
Lawsuit over ai is crazy smh get some friends bro
No they don't, there is no initiative beyond the roadmap for any such nonsense, CIG are planning on data gathering once ships like the Idris/Polaris/Perseus are released to aid in development of AI/NPC tech, but that won't happen for yrs, CIG don't do ''threats'', you'll just have to continue playing NMS
What is the ratio of player-owned ships versus active players? That should give an indication of how easily it will be to find player crew.
The only case I can see this is if maybe a player wants to join a super-cool famous Org, and the Org makes them act as crew members for existing Org members for a certain time until they let them in to the cool kids club.
That and maybe super hardcore roleplayers.
CIG have already addressed this, and DigThat32 has a video quoting their comments. They have said---more or less---that NPCs will be more efficient/accurate than an *_*average*_* human player, but actual player crews that work at it will be superior to NPCs.
I won't link Dig's clip here because that feels wrong, but I would suggest tracking down those CIG interviews for background.
I think that in a game about space ships people would be more likely to buy bigger and bigger ships of their own and then crew them with what's available rather than have a full time job of an NPC on someone else's ship. I would rather bet on "recreational crewing" from time to time to play with friends.
Which brings us back to the problem. Ships are progression and an average player will work on bigger, more capable ships. And if they worked on them and eventually got them, they certainly won't spend the majority of their game time on someone else's ship because that makes no sense.
If a task requires a larger group of players to do it, and there is no matchmaking, those tasks will be done rarely, like raids in WoW. I dont know if CiG wants cargo hauling to be done as rarely as raids
Reality is, NPC crew and blades are an ABSOLUTE hard requirement for the game, and will likely be EXPANDED once game is in live status.If not, the game will instantly degrade into "join 1 zerg or or GTFO and don't bother playing", and a lot of players for years now have predicted that with the bloated zerg orgs around. NPC crew and blade options are absolutely required to have ANY sort of gameplay option for solo players or the small group of friends, otherwise they'll just be told not to bother joining or playing the game because they will be locked out of literally everything not being a part of the bloated zerg guilds.
Yeah, it's a really stupid problem to have, but it's one of the many unanswered long term questions star cit has had for years the devs have never had any real answers for and is one of the many risks for the game ending up with bottomed out low player count like the countless other MMO failures throughout the years. At the very least NPC crew and blades give the overwhelming majority of casual/solo/small group players a chance to even be able to really do anything in the game and actually have fun instead of being gatekept and griefed at every corner like is the current risk with the current state of the alpha.
This game will not function without ai crew. Sure there are allot of people out there who would probably love to just be a crew member on somebody elses ship, but the vast majority of people who picked up this game didn't do so just to be a crew member on somebody elses ship. And even worse hiring other people as crew is a nightmare, your just as likely to be hiring a murder hobo or a pirate as you are somebody who genuinely wants to be your crew.
High level NPCs are supposed to be as good as skilled players at a single task however they will never be able to react as well or as unpredictable to changing circumstances as a player would be. A highly rated gunner NPC for instance will be excellent in a turret but pretty much horrible at anything else whereas a player would be able to adapt if you were to lets say ask them to jump out of the turret and do repairs. A gunner NPC would be baseline in skill at this. This is where players will always be preferable to NPCs... Adaptability to changing needs on the fly. This is all based on some very old information from CIG at this point so it may of course change.
AI Blades on the other hand will be as good as what you pay for but will be at a much lower skill rating than a lot of NPCs and never as good as a player would be. They will be the baseline option as it's a pay once and done whereas an NPC or Player would be an ongoing expenditure. Like I said above this is based on info that is a couple of years old at this point so take that as you will.
Basically Players will always be the preferred option with NPCs a close second and AI Blades a cheap but worst last option available. This is based on what we know currently which is old info.
Id assume players wont interact with each other besides through hostility. And work back from there, make sure NPC and blades can cover all roles on any ship. A game that relies on players to "play nice" or cooperate will have alot of issues.
I feel that having the ai blade or npcs would be the bulk of ships out there, but they should be cheaper and in general not as good as players, so cig can still push for players to Man ships, if not, many ships, even orgs would have ai and nov crewed ships. As I mentioned in other videos about the multi crew, the issue stems from the fact that I don’t think multi crew is or will be fun for most players. We can point to other games like void crew, guns of Icarus or sea of thieves, but in those games, the crew actively goes into danger, and take on multiple roles in a short span of time rather than just do a single thing for hours. Engineering gameplay does not change much unless you are in a really worn out ship or you are constantly seeing combat, and if you are in a hull c and constantly seeing combat, I think there is something gone wrong. So what most players would do in the hull C if they crew it, is sit around waiting for something to happen, be it the engineer or the gunner. And then afterwards it’s just loading, we already see how multi crew is in star citizen, you can crew a reclaimer and stack boxes for hours, run xeno threat and load up boxes for hours, or once you clear jumptown, load up illicit goods for hours. Some people might like that, but if we are being honest, most people don’t.
Dude, your voice reminds me so much of Anton Petrov :) Great channel and content! Subscibed!
There will never be enough real players online to crew even a handful of the larger ships that have already been sold. The reality will be even worse as most of those online will want to fly their own ships rather than crew someone else's.
To give an example, just to crew all of the Polaris already sold to backers before release will need ~40,000 players online. That's more than the average online player count and that is just a single ship out of close to 200 ship types sold before release. Player crews will be rare outside of events.
The numbers don't add up.
between ai blades, some ships coming default automated point defense turrets, hiring npcs, friends, hiring a reputable hand from a sell sword org, hiring a random stranger. I think it will be fine. Sure there are those who bought 2 javelins and 3 hammerheads, but that is their problem. Any person with a brain is keeping their owned ships in a sizable manner. At a certain point players have to be responsible for their wallet and social participation.
Agree, i own ships no larger than 6 crew, could quite possibly be crewed by less if a skilled crew. I am not planning on owning Krakens/Javelins or mining out of an Orion, i have a life, some own 4 Javelins?...something terribly wrong there.
I’ll be so gutted if it isn’t feasible to fly your own ship with just npc crew. Ideally, I’d have a ship like a Kraken or Merchantman with a big npc crew.
Good video.
Marketing at cig has lead many - especially new backers that they will have the means (finances/time/ability) to 'captain' big ships of all kinds.
Marketing encourages ego to big ships when realistically 1 man will difficulty running a kraken alone. Even with all the ai and NPC help.
The hate generated by threaten alpha egos - especially auec alpha focused players will continue saturate and slow down reality perception of what individual players are actually capable of doing.
Many more reality biscuits to come. Sorry
This means more wipes before 'live'.
Enjoy alpha, learn to fly, pledge wisely (1-4) u realistically can fly.
Good luck 07
I have always been against AI crew. I think a good compromise would be 1 or 2 AI sidekicks per player, this would allow smaller groups to crew larger ships, though I still think there should be none.
IA blades should function as point defence only.
SC is dead for me. I'm a concierge, so it's a big loss, but CIG just sucks at their job.
No Man's Sky is true fun, and got it for only $30 CDN. I highly recommend giving it a try; it's exceeded my expectations, so far.
@realtimbotube if we backers were shareholders, or even if we concierge were shareholders I suspect an EGM would be suggesting a couple of high profile resignations based on non delivery or rubbish 😀
@@andrewfanner2245 Their advertising certainly gives the impression that, as backers, we do change the direction of the game. It especially gives the impression that you get some sort of better service and in-game rewards for being a concierge.
Things that everyone already knows.
I'm pretty sure they're intentionally killing the enjoyability of the game so they can file bankruptcy easier and walk away.
i see it as a problem alot of players have ships they cant fly alone an 40% are solo players so this will make it a problem for alot of players
As I said in a recent Spectrum thread that complained about the hypothetical scenario of a person befriending another one and then using the cargo loading mechanism "loopholes" to steal their cargo,
There should be no dev "solutions" to things that come out of relations between people in an emergent manner. There should be space in an MMO for people to end up in situations of welcome surprise from strangers, unwelcome surprise from strangers, unwelcome surprise from people they thought they could trust, etc, etc. That's what a "living, breathing" social universe simulation means - not "devs give me as much magic code that safeguards me from every potential problem as possible".
Solo/coop "MMOs" from publishers who want easy milking of $$$ from their games by sucking as much emergent interaction from them as possible to make them as predictable as possible have really shrunk people's imaginations for online universes over the past decade. I don't want this universe, which has massive potential of stories created through interactions between people, to become another lifeless "MMO" clone like that, and comments by CIG devs fill me with hope that that's how they see it as well. I, and they, want SC to herald the era of the original, actual, legendary MMOs like Ultima Online, where emergent person-to-person and org-to-org relations create memorable stories.
@SvalbardSleeperDistrict too.many basic security holes however, if the society is really that lawless then solutions evolve. Biometric locks for your ship entry, command seat and freight elevator are such a basic item their lack is very obvious.
Stanton is not a lawless system yet the law enforcement is of no value to the law abiding player and minimal deterrent to the criminal. Risk versus reward is so out of balance in favour of the criminal that one questions if anybody knows how to set that up.
The amount of mutual mistrust has increased significantly over the last 18 months or so and that's probably not healthy for a commercial development that wants to be THE mainstream space game experience.
@@andrewfanner2245 Of course, there are a lot of missing things at the moment - reputation system, better AI security response through server performance, etc. I've also said on Spectrum that game design itself needs to make sure first contact with someone can have space for non-conflictual evolution, instead of the current reality of "if I come across someone our first resort is to get the guns out". These need to be solved, but also there should be space left for interplays of trust, risk, emergent relations, etc.
@SvalbardSleeperDistrict reliable in game comms is an essential part of that. In 18 months ove had VOIP work maybe three times, for a player to player comms that was two way. I've has it work one other time, IAE last year where I could walk round the halls in a security uniform and occasionally say " I used to be a space adventurer like you, until I took a laser round to the knee".
Got very funny looks from my wife!
@@andrewfanner2245 That too.
crew size doesn't matter when you cant even get from your hab to the lobby in under 10 minutes with all the lag. i'd rather be able to actually play than have new systems that wont matter.
I mean duh? Their current priority is performance, so obviously they're not introducing NPC crew before meaningfully improving performance. Goes without saying...
Crew, they will eventually be a thing... They will fall through the floors, get stuck in walls, lost in space, glitched out in corners, wreck any ship/vehicle they get behind the wheel, and drink up all you Space CRED Drinks.
AI, much less inefficient in Star Citizen...
Crew, coming in 3.24X, right after they master the sweat and tears mechanics so we can really get our use out of them Crew.
We should have the ability to train crew and upgrade AI... maybe start with basic skills and gets better.
You left out two factors for motivating players to crew. Competitive survival and profitability. So what other than finding crew limits players from soloing their own large ship? Operational cost, risk, and enhanced profitability. Risk Reward will drive players to play together mostly on weekends when the pressure is higher, and the weekday play will be largely solo funded by the weekend operations. The players will regulate this more themselves than anything CIG can do other than setting up sufficiently high risk / reward play.
No one wants to be crew. We naturally all want the be the star of our own story and fly our own ships. No captain wants to hire untrustworthy or untested crew. It's too easy to get fucked over. Trying to manage player crew is like trying to heard cats. Everyone is going off in their own direction. NPC crew will be the solution.
Personally idc I wanna be crew so bad
@@Nobody-uu6ki You are a gem to the community and a rare find! Find me in game Maverick_Hard_Drive.
if the ai blade can shoot the targeted ship 1% of the time awesome it was doing 0% before
We need crew / fps accounts that can't fly or drive, and can't buy ships. Add more micro transactions, and the option to upgrade to full account.
NPC Crews ftw❗
Fairly certain lots of players will love to be crew on large ships. Remember that many players are flying in starters. I am curious to see what they do with AI blades, though.
Reason why, servers are trash, just getting 2 or 3 people together is a major accomplishment.
Pretty much this game will be for the hardcore folks that can get together and play 4+ hours. One of the reasons why I don't play anymore. I'm more single player oriented and this game just isn't for me anymore which sucks because theres no other game out there like it.
''NPC Crews and AI blades'' are just some of the 'techno babble' terms banded around in conversation to impress, yes, some of these components are on the roadmap, ship NPC's being one of them, yet that's just a place holder, with no time frame beyond ''probably far down the road'', say CIG. The main issue being with a stubborn contingent is, they buy large ships, knowing damm well that ''Engineering/Fire management/component repair/Boarding/master modes/Pyro'' etc, and CIG's push for Group/Org gameplay, and then expect, just because they have, in denial spent big $, that CIG are going to do this magical turnaround, and quickly usher in a band- aid to save the day, common sense tells us its just not happening, unless your totally ignorant, just look at the changes CIG did with the Polaris weapons a few days ago, removed even more pilot access. I just cant wait to see the Polaris released, then come across one solo, we'll eat it alive, you fly a warship solo, and that's a red flag.
PS: the art to enjoying SC solo in large ships is 1st to have at least 3 accounts, use each for a certain play style, equip each account with a vulture and a prospector and earn up. Ship destruction/Prison and claim times will be a thing of the past, you'll have your work cut out to get those big ships, but it'll only cost you time, and we know what little 'Grind monkey'' many backers are, no one plays with just one account, its dumb
Will blades and NPC crew sell more ships?
There's the answer.
The rest is framerate to make it all shine
I'm super late to the party but I think you missed the actual most important issue with the crew problem. OPPORTUNITY COST. realistically it will be nearly impossible to balance AI blades and NPC crew. IF they exist, players will never crew. if they don't get implemented then player crew can be a thing. The problem is human nature. People will always gravitate to the most efficient method available. Metas will always develop. and unfortunately, the truth is that no captain will ever hire a player as a crew member when they can instead hire that player to fly their own ship also fully crewed with ai blades or npc crews. the opportunity cost is too high. by having that player be in a single turret spot. you are giving up the potential to have that player sit in another captain's chair of another ship with all of its turrets also functioning without help. it's a no brainer choice. why have one turret efficiently manned when you can have an additional 4-6 turrets less efficiently manned. im not going to ever hire 2 people to run the two turrets on my connie. when i could instead hire them to bring TWO WHOLE MORE CONNIES.
The biggest issue with NPC crews is it puts SC firmly into P2W territory. Before that you could, even if it's a stretch, make an argument larger ships are just a side-grade, because you still have to crew it. Well not anymore.
How so?
„NPC Crews“ even has the word „Crew“ in it. Honestly, it is the same thing. NPCs wont work for free as well. Crew is crew, why does it matter if human or AI?
@@REDACTED-DE Yes, of course it matters. Every single human that would be manning a turret for example now can bring another fully NPC crewed ship.
@@squirrelbait2944 Do I need to explain further?
Well to be fair, the AI blade vs Player argument will greatly depend on the competency of the player.
Ai crew is a necessity at this point. I don’t care what any of this “npc is not needed. They will suck” people say. I much rather have an ai man my guns and torps and do engineering than to have empty slots and be handicapped because I purchased a large ship I dreamed of flying. Shoot, I’ll do npc crew right now and just send it to cig if i knew how to code npcs and make that whole system run smoothly
gonna be honest i think NPC crew is years and years away and most of the theories about their capabilities have been forged by players after CIG says "maybe one day you'll be able to do this with an NPC"
This whole thing can be summed up to solo players beware.
I haven't seen anything to indicate they will have working AI crew members
If the entire experience of SQ42 is driven with AI/NPC's in all walks of life in the verse, it doesn't seem like a far stretch to make those same types of NPC's work in SC.
My only question is, will they be computed by the client or the server?
@@festersmith8352I assume Foul was being cheeky. A lot of people make snide comments about server performance in the NPC crew dis us soon as if NPC crew are coming right now and not after server performance is improved.
Project zomboid is gunna smash this "game" once build 42 is released in 2035.
The issues about time sinks dont suck if you're not oddly antisocial. The experience with friends, new friends or randoms that become new acquaintances becomes the game and even if the group makes less money, the act of working together for something larger than any one person could feasibly handle alone is worth it for some portion of the playerbase.
Not to say theres no room for solos, as many of the ships and gameloops will support solos to a degree, but this isnt EvE. You arent the ship. You're a single entity in the big ship, and will struggle to solo big ships, appropriately. If all you have on your ship is turret gunner AI, thats fine people will learn to trigger internal ship fires, and they still win. Ultimately, nothing should beat a capable human crewmate that can go between multiple jobs.
Just because you had bad experiences with randos doesnt mean thats all experiences. Find a good, consistent crew. Take on content appropriate for the group size and everyones availability. SC should never, ever be balanced around making soloing viable across all scenarios, balance around a smallish crew of 3-5, the usual party/squad/group size for most games.
They push too much onto player co-op gameplay. They don't understand that we have lives and that not everyone is going to be online at the same time all the time. The NPC crews should be good diverse members that can man every station on a ship. let's not forget as well that 99% of people play this game on their own and I feel like they are ignored.
i am more interested in the extra game pack npc's they promised ages ago...
Free/limited version of the game for crew only perhaps?
For years now I’ve suspected that there’s going to be a pretty big reckoning amongst the people that insist on being antisocial once Star Citizen goes live, or at least gets enough of its core gameplay loops established that its freeform content keeps people engaged. In the most basic terms of gameplay, the most lucrative money-making is going to happen in areas of space where PvP isn’t prevented or dissuaded by police NPCs. The difference in income compared to safe areas of space will be *intentionally* large enough to convince *some* would-be lone wolves to gamble. And these loners with NPC/AI crews will inevitably have to go up against people in organized groups, playing in fully crewed ships, with their ships’ computers having access to whatever “blades” can be slotted into them instead of the AI variety. We don’t have to know the specific values behind any of this to infer just how much of an advantage the organized, non-antisocial people are going to have in these engagements.
As someone who is part of multiple decently large gaming friend groups - one of which is a decently competitive Eve wormhole corp - I beg anyone that actually reads this to *try* to make gaming friends for something like Star Citizen. It doesn’t even have to be a Star Citizen focused group. You can absolutely find a group of people that won’t take away your autonomy, and when the game finally becomes a real game with actual reasons to fight over stuff of value, you’ll have so much more fun because of it.
That and I’m already tired of the inevitable wave of salt on the forums and on RUclips when people start realizing how naive they are, when it comes to the reality of Star Citizen.
Ultimately, you visually/understandably make blade or npc crew BELOW player avg skill use with hard grind or incapacity to meet avg player stats or slightly better, you lose that player pool of blade users or npc crew player based making the game universe EMPTY.
Why making blade, npc crew, or crew a problem?
Why?
They have enough data to implement growth in blade and growth in npc crew based on avg user scenarios to create challenges for that trio medican standoffs. But again growth does not mean hard grind like mining is about to become with useless blips and blops just because.
I DONT TRUST ANYONE, got enough murdered for ship stolen. WAITED LONG ENOUGH forming crews that is still waiting to happen. UNBALANCED BOREDOM being crew flushed in position (turret) where nothing happened during event, not event seeing what was happening but staring at space, hearing others patting each other over their kill or skill success with a random overshot laser bolt or bullets
I have big ships. Ive always not liked the thought of an ai crew, coming up to a fully ai crewed idris is going to feel cheap
we are years away from anything that resembles a finished game. nothing but bugs and BS
Seeing how pathetic the AI and NPCs are, I don't expect CIG to do anything for turrets. You don't like randoms well too bad, the game is teamplay for a reason.
I will tell you what I think of this video..clic bait. At the end you said what you should have said in the beginning. : We are years from having computer controlled crew members. So you waisted my time.
you are eternity away from this "game" being ACTUALLY a game
i cant or dont see an npc or ai blade being of any use to say like a mole owner doing mining.