PAT29 Before The Frontier
On Friday, the 15th of March, the latest pre-alpha patch for Raph Koster’s upcoming social sandbox MMORPG Stars Reach finally was released to the test servers, after a six week wait period.
In case you don’t know - you can simply sign up for testing on their website (there’s a “join the waitlist” button at the bottom of the page), but invites have recently been paused and there will be no new testers let in for an still indeterminate amount of time. The reason for that is directly tied to todays patch: the devs are working on a set of larger, interconnected changes - and while that stuff is only partially done, the gameplay might end up in some awkward spots. The devs also warned that we might end up seeing more bugs and issues than in previous updates, because of that.
The goal here is, to get all of the game’s innermost core loops fully up and running - including combat, crafting, exploration and materials gathering. So far, we only had building going, and an initial version of crafting that didn’t loop yet (as items lasted forever).
To me personally, that change of development focus came as a little surprise. Call me naive if you want, but I never would have guessed that the development focus during a pre-alpha could be anything but eventually getting a prototype of the game’s core gameplay to work. I fully understand that in a company you’ll always have some co-workers, who’s skill-set is way better deployed on other tasks - and that it doesn’t make sense to just have everyone work on gameplay. I would also agree, that stability and performance should never be neglected. But why would you ever put the main focus of early development anywhere else but the very core features of the game? Maybe I’m just completely unaware of the realities of game development - who knows.
Anyway, now that the focus is back where it arguably should be, the developers are reporting faster progress, feeling re-invigorated and more motivated. And so far, this newest patch does seem to bear that out. There’s a lot of stuff in here - including things that will only bear fruit over longer periods of time, that I cannot just go in and test in a single weekend. Item decay is in - and despite being potentially set a bit too fast for testing purposes, it’s still gonna take some days before items start breaking. Skill limits are in - and despite the preliminary limit probably being lower than what we’ll eventually see, it’s still gonna take a while for a newly created character to hit that limit. That means, that for this post I can only give you initial impressions of these new systems - but I can only guess how these new mechanics will play out in the longer term.
Character Stat Allocation & Skill Limit
Since Stars Reach is going to be an RPG, you will be able to create a ‘build’ for your character, by choosing your character’s stats and skills. Unlike many other RPGs, you will never be locked into anything though - Stars Reach is going to allow you to change and tweak your build as you see fit. The only limitation is going to be a lengthy re-spec cooldown that prevents you from just swapping your build back and forth, willy-nilly. But you will be allowed to have more than one character - with the exact number of allowed characters per account still being tba.
There will be no classes either - and that’s despite the game having plans to offer significantly more (and significantly more diverse) character specialization options than most other RPG’s out there. Including some non-combat roles you rarely see, like ‘architect’, ‘journalist’ or ‘entertainer’. All these professions will get their own skill-trees, and players will be able to mix and match - building their own individual ‘class’ in the process.
More of a skill forest, than a skill tree
There will be no limits on how many skills you can train - but the maximum number of skills you can have active at a time, has been set to 80 for now. This number is likely to change as the game continues to be developed, and more professions and skills get added. In the long run you’ll probably be able to max out roughly two professions and still have a few skills left over - but that might vary, as the number of skills a profession has can vary per profession as well. You also don’t have to max two professions - you can also just max one, and spread the remaining skill points far and wide - or max nothing at all, and create a true jack-of-all-trades character. It’s completely up to you.
The great thing is, that you’re never locked in. As already mentioned, if your build doesn’t turn out to be as great as you imagined, you can always tweak and modify and update it, until it fits your preferred playstyle perfectly. Besides that new skill limit, which this patch introduced - your moment-to-moment gameplay role is also limited by your loadout. That is the four tools/weapons you carry on your toolbelt, as well as the special abilities you have assigned to them. But the equipment on your toolbelt can easily and unlimitedly be swapped out in every homestead or camp - and the special abilities can be swapped at every loadout-kiosk. You just cannot swap mid-combat.
The “paper doll” view of your character
And yes, I do think that some sort of limit is absolutely necessary - and that players should not be allowed to have everything maxed on a single character simultaneously. The short answer as to why is: ‘interdependency’ - the long answer has it’s own post.
Then there are your stats. You character has nine of those - grouped into three sets of three each. These do not define or limit your gameplay role, skill-build or item loadout, but you can balance them in ways that might give you certain advantages and disadvantages that are beneficial to certain gameplay tasks, and less to others. Or might even decide a specific flavor of gameplay style within the same task. Like for example, in combat you could choose between being more of a glass cannon or more of a tanky character - or something inbetween. Even ‘tanky’ might come in different flavors: like super high amount of health, or quickly regenerating health, or very slowly depleting health - or some combination of those three.
All the various stat mins, maxes and averages in a single shot
In total, you get 9000 points overall. You can then distribute these point between the main three groups of stats: health, stamina and focus. By default these are set to 3000 points each - but you can set them as low as 2400, and as high as 3600. You just can never exceed 9000 total. Here’s a list of all different ‘extreme’ combinations possible:
| Health | Stamina | Focus | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3000 | 3000 | 3000 | All balanced |
| 3600 | 2700 | 2700 | Max health |
| 2700 | 3600 | 2700 | Max stamina |
| 2700 | 2700 | 3600 | Max focus |
| 2400 | 3300 | 3300 | Min health |
| 3300 | 2400 | 3300 | Min stamina |
| 3300 | 3300 | 2400 | Min focus |
| 3600 | 3000 | 2400 | Max health, min focus |
| 3600 | 2400 | 3000 | Max health, min stamina |
| 3000 | 3600 | 2400 | Max stamina, min focus |
| 2400 | 3600 | 3000 | Max stamina, min health |
| 3000 | 2400 | 3600 | Max focus, min stamina |
| 2400 | 3000 | 3600 | Max focus, min health |
Bottom line, you get somewhere between 2400 and 3600 points for each set of three stats. Each set of three consists of one value for the total amount, one value for regen speed and one value for damage reduction. For example the health group consists of:
- health (total hit points)
- constitution (hit point regeneration)
- toughness (hit point damage reduction)
The stamina group consists of:
- stamina (total stamina points)
- fitness (stamina regen)
- strength (stamina damage reduction)
The focus group consists of:
- focus (total focus points)
- serenity (focus regeneration)
- concentration (focus damage reduction)
All three groups work the same, so let’s take a closer look at only one of these, the health group.
At 2400 points total for health you get these ‘extreme’ options:
| Health | Constitution | Toughness | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 800 | 800 | 800 | All balanced |
| 960 | 720 | 720 | Max health |
| 720 | 960 | 720 | Max constitution |
| 720 | 720 | 960 | Max toughness |
| 640 | 880 | 880 | Min health |
| 880 | 640 | 880 | Min constitution |
| 880 | 880 | 640 | Min toughness |
| 960 | 800 | 640 | Max health, min toughness |
| 960 | 640 | 800 | Max health, min constitution |
| 800 | 960 | 640 | Max constitution, min toughness |
| 640 | 960 | 800 | Max constitution, min health |
| 800 | 640 | 960 | Max toughness, min constitution |
| 640 | 800 | 960 | Max toughness, min health |
At 3000 points total for health you get these ‘extreme’ options:
| Health | Constitution | Toughness | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1000 | 1000 | 1000 | All balanced |
| 1200 | 900 | 900 | Max health |
| 900 | 1200 | 900 | Max constitution |
| 900 | 900 | 1200 | Max toughness |
| 800 | 1100 | 1100 | Min health |
| 1100 | 800 | 1100 | Min constitution |
| 1100 | 1100 | 800 | Min toughness |
| 1200 | 1000 | 800 | Max health, min toughness |
| 1200 | 800 | 1000 | Max health, min constitution |
| 1000 | 1200 | 800 | Max constitution, min toughness |
| 800 | 1200 | 1000 | Max constitution, min health |
| 1000 | 800 | 1200 | Max toughness, min constitution |
| 800 | 1000 | 1200 | Max toughness, min health |
At 3600 points total for health you get these ‘extreme’ options:
| Health | Constitution | Toughness | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1200 | 1200 | 1200 | All balanced |
| 1440 | 1080 | 1080 | Max health |
| 1080 | 1440 | 1080 | Max constitution |
| 1080 | 1080 | 1440 | Max toughness |
| 960 | 1320 | 1320 | Min health |
| 1320 | 960 | 1320 | Min constitution |
| 1320 | 1320 | 960 | Min toughness |
| 1440 | 1200 | 960 | Max health, min toughness |
| 1440 | 960 | 1200 | Max health, min constitution |
| 1200 | 1440 | 960 | Max constitution, min toughness |
| 960 | 1440 | 1200 | Max constitution, min health |
| 1200 | 960 | 1440 | Max toughness, min constitution |
| 960 | 1200 | 1440 | Max toughness, min health |
That means that any single stat can theoretically go from as low as 640 to as high as 1440 (more than twice as much) - but in practice the min and max for a stat inside a group, depend on the total this group is getting. You can never have both a 640 and a 1440 within the same group. You have to max both the group and the stat to get a 1440 - and then the lowest another stat in the same group can get, would be 960.
Sadly the knobs and sliders to achieve these distributions are still a bit fiddly in their first iteration. Main problem being, that the slider you are moving can jump in increments of 1 - where it should only move in increments of 2 (so that both other sliders in the same group are always effected equally). Also that very last point towards a min or max can sometimes be hard to get - as the slider will stop short just that 1 point of where it should be going. The knobs within the triangles are even more unwilling to go anywhere near their max and min positions. But I’m sure we will see that become more smooth to operate in future updates.
As to what is a good distribution of stats - that’s still fairly impossible to say, as not all the gameplay uses for these stats have been implemented yet. The health group already plays a large role in combat - but stamina seems to mostly be just about sprinting… and focus, I think fabricator uses that a bit - but I don’t really see or understand the purpose of that. I see no reason to try and add time-sink to the building process and slow things down there… it already takes hours and induces RSI as is. But I digress - overall the ingame effect these stats have are still fairly limited. I’m sure there’s more to come.
Item Degradation
I’m not going to go into much detail here, since I’ve already written up a preview on item degradation, two patches ago - and to my best knowledge, there were no substantial changes to it since then. Well, except for the big change that it actually is in the game now.
The big question now is, is it too fast? Are repair kits working well as they are? And generally speaking, it’s still to early to really give an answer to that. So far, at a first glance, the speed at which items do decay seems to be noticeable - but not outrageous. From what I’ve heard and read so far, testers seem fine with the rate of degradation so far. I presume it might still be a bit on the high end - for testing purposes.
As of right now, you have to unequip your item to see it’s durability
But overall, what really matters is, how much total damage you would take across all your tools and workbenches (and maybe armor/shields for loot items), in order to collect all the materials and craft all the components to make a new item. If the total combined damage across all your gear adds up to more than 1 item (if it were combined) - then that’s a problem. You can’t on average loose one item to make one item, that’s not going to work out, as players will never be able to do that with 100% efficiency.
But it’s going to need a lot more playtime to really get a feel for that and figure it out. For now, all we can to is to keep an eye on it, and observe how our items fare, and how repairable they are.
Other Changes
I’m lumping a lot of stuff together here (and also glossing over/omitting quite a bit of stuff) - so feel free to check out the official patch notes to get the full scoop on everything. It’s just that I don’t have that much to say on these things - that doesn’t make them less valuable or less useful. Not even necessarily less “discussable” - but only so with regards to my personal discussion interests.
A ‘paper doll’ view of your character is now visible on your inventory screen. That’s of course going to be great once the game has some clothing implemented, that we can put on our characters - but for now, it really doesn’t do much yet. Sadly it doesn’t even rotate if you try to drag it with your mouse. Sure hope that’s still to come!
Context menus have been added. I see the usefulness - but the way they are now in their first iteration, they do be a bit cumbersome.
Automatic server spin-up/spin-down. Servers will now go to sleep, if there’s no players on them. If you go through a wormhole to a currently sleeping planet, it will wake up - and other than a few extra seconds of loading time, that should be completely invisible to you, the player.
Business XP are now in the game. For now it can only be gained through player-to-player trading, and isn’t really useful yet, but more is to come in future patches.
Pressing ‘F4’ (by default, unless rebound) will hide the UI - which allows you to take clean, uncluttered screenshots. The built-in screenshot tool using ‘F10’ will take a high-res picture that’s exactly 2x the size of your current render resolution. In my case, the game is set to render in 1440p - so the screenshot will be 2880p in size. This still does not work, if you have your inventory or any other UI screen open - so, to take screenshots of such UI-windows, you need to use Steam’s screenshot tool which lives under the ‘F12’ key. That one will just take a picture of the resolution of your monitor. In my case that’s a 4k monitor - meaning I get an upscaled version of the 1440p image, which is not ideal, quality-wise.
In Conclusion
This is the first patch since the developers went through with their “change in focus”. The goal now is to really get the core gameplay systems rolling - and so far the impression is quite good. Sure the patch took quite a while - but it also came loaded with quite some stuff.
One other big improvement that this change in approach has brought, is that the developer roadmap is being updated a lot more often and with much more detail. If you are following the progress of this game’s development more closely, you should definitely check back with the roadmap on a regular basis. There’s loads of information on there, and it’s often the first place you will find something new. Like for example, the patch notes for this update kinda ‘leaked’ on there a day early. And most of the talking points of the last developer vlog weren’t completely new to any regular roadmap readers either.
Looking at the roadmap right now, also does allow us to glean what might be found in the next update for the game. Everything that’s in the “internal testing” column right now, is a hot candidate for next patch. There’s of course no guarantee that any specific item actually makes it - but a lot of these probably will. Things that are “currently being worked on” might still make it over into “in internal testing” and the next patch as well - but with lower likelyhood. Still, if it’s not in the next patch, then likely in the one after that. Overall you still get a nice view of what’s going on, and what progress is being made.
So, maybe next time around we’ll be talking about the alien puzzles, the new character profile screen (which will then also allow you to change your stat distribution post character creation), the new splash screen, the interactive object highlight, the inventory tabs, etc. Probably less so about the optimzations to building tiles, as ideally those will be completely invisible to players. But if you do look a bit futher ahead, there’s some interesting things coming, like the structure building upgrade, underwater rendering, character customization & clothing system, more playable species, and a whole slew of things that when taken all together form the combat upgrade. We’re getting that more piecemeal now - step by step.
These upcoming roadmap items - especially those in the ‘next priorities’ columns - are also worthwhile discussing on the Discord or on Reddit. The developers are reading those discussions, and while they are working out the details of a feature - that’s the best moment to provide feedback (or rather “feed-ahead”?) on what you’d like to see. On the discord, there’s a section called ‘forum’ where you can create new topics/threads yourself. Perfect place for such discussions - for example we had a very productive talk right there about item decay, roughly a month ago.
See you next time. Until then, have a good one!