PAT7 Multiplanet Exploration

And once more, this entry is gonna be a bit different. Where the PAT5 report was a text-only description of the test, the PAT6 report was more of a travel-journal, with lots of images added. To keep the format evolving, this time I’ll try to add in a little bit of the surrounding design discussion as well.

What I just barely mentioned in previous reports, is that many testers are joined in a voice channel on the Tester’s Discord - and are talking to each other, sharing their experiences, exchanging tips, giving feedback, asking questions and having discussions, both in that voice channel, as well as in multiple associated text-channels.

Multiple developers are typically present during each tests - they help people troubleshoot problems, explain newcomers how things work, and they also sometimes enjoy talking about or showing off things they have been working on. You can often feel that there is a genuine enthusiasm and giddiness about what they are doing. These are people who are proud of what they are doing, and get honestly excited about observing players interact with their creation.

But let’s start with what’s new: this test saw the addition of two new planets, a jungle planet and a desert planet. Both the previously seen temperate planet and deep space still existed as well, brining the number of zones to 4 in total! On login, players got randomly sent to one of those zones - which worked pretty well to better distribute the numbers.

But, this test also saw the first few character customization and clothing options added to the game. But you still did not get any choices at character creation - which is not implemented yet. Instead everyone got a randomized character of the chosen species. Randomzied in both the various body options/measurements, as well as some clothing options. Some results were pretty amazing - others represented some more questionable choices with weird clothing combinations - but what stood out to me, is that all the various clothes and body shapes and everything worked pretty well together and always created a believable whole.

Character Outfits

And then, there’s my own character, who - with his impeccable fashion sense - chose to combine swimming trunks and rain boots:

Peak Fashion

Of course the test also added a few new items, skills and a number of new crafting recipes. Still being limited to 2 hours, it’s now getting definitely too much to check out all of it during a single test. But, while all characters still get wiped whenever a new build is being rolled out, character will now stick around during repeats of tests - which means, that there might be chances to continue playing the same character over the next two weeks or so (unless the character data gets corrupted, which may occasionally happen on crashes).

Desert Pyramid

Purple ‘splosion

That means that instead of hurriedly trying to do everything in just one single session, I decided to stick with the desert (which I happened to initially spawn in) for this entire test - and then go checkout the the new jungle at a later opportunity. I also stuck with mining (mineralogy) and combat for the most part of this test - hoping to do some building the next time around. Combat was a necessity in the desert - as there was plenty of fairly tough enemies around here. When they ganged up on you, death got sometimes unavoidable.

Bittersweet Death

One design topic that came up early during this test, was about racial stats bonuses. Like would Skwatchi get extra strength, or a bonus to cooking or something, or Eloni be better at sneaking and stealthing than others? The answer to that is no, probably not. It was an area of intense internal debate among the dev team, but the fact is that players like to optimize and min-max, and so if you do give a cooking bonus to Skwatchi you end up with all chefs in the game being Skwatchi (and the few players choosing something else for roleplay- or visual reasons, getting more or less punished for doing so). Therefore the plan currently is for species to be a purely cosmetic choice.

While all species will offer the same range of possible stats though, players will be able to individually adjust (and re-spec) their own character’s stats - so there will be individualization there - it’s just not gonna differ from species to species. But apart from those mechanical number aspects, there might be some “other things” that will be different for each species. This got not further elaborated though.

In general, the players present in chat who responded to this, seemed to like the idea of free choice of species, with no specific bonuses pushing you towards choosing a specific species for the role you want to play. This also seems to fit well with the class-less approach, where you can mix and match your skills as you like. In the same vein you can also mix and match your race/species and stats as you like, and can also respec your stats completely - not getting locked in any way.

Desert Dusk

Desert Night

Another question that came up, was that of whether the desert had varying temperatures between day and night - and the answer to that was “not yet”. The entire day-night cycle isn’t fully done yet, neither is the season system - but eventually the game world will change temperature, humidy and other variables depending on time of day, time of the year, weather and other factors.

Harvesting

Surveying

This desert map had some very distinctive points of interest, and some quite recognizable landmarks, including a huge mountain in one corner (which I totally had to climb in order to get all the survey points). Therefore, navigation was super easy - there was no real risk of getting lost. There also was a huge chasm right through the middle of the map, and a developer-placed blue beacon near the portal to space. On top of that, the game now automatically places waypoints not just on your grave-marker, but also on your camp. And - if you unlock that for a few XP - you can create your own waypoints as well.

Between all those options, it was super easy to find your way around. It was even easier during the very first tests - when players started with fully maxed out gravmesh and grapple, which help a lot in getting around - and flying high up with the gravmesh also helps to orient yourself. It’s also interesting to note, that despite the map size still being 1km x 1km (final map-size for release is planned to be 4km x 4km, so 16 times the size) - the world felt larger, because of the lack of gravmesh and grapple.

It did not repeat - but the design topic of navigating the place and finding your way around was pretty huge, two tests earlier. Which happened to be the survey test, which intentionally made it hard to find all the survey points. That was the first time, the players were without gravmesh and grapple - and the map had no distinct features, no recognizable landmarks or orientation helps, and on top of that, it was heavily forested for the most part. And that one map was a lot harder to navigate - in a way none of the other maps ever were. Even deep space (which debuted last time), with it’s lack of defined “up” and “down” was not hard to navigate, because of the building and glowing portal right in the center - visible from almost everywhere.

Getting turned upside down, can feel quite disorienting - but during today’s test again (just like last time), players actually praised the fact, that there was no defined “up” or “down”. The fact that you could get turned around, helped make it feel more like actual space. The fact that large asteroids had gravity in their center, and you could stand on them on all their sides, and walk all the way around… people actually liked that.

But two tests ago, on that same-y, dense, forest map - people got lost. And immediately there was a discussion about the game having a need for a compass. And I want to point out here, that a compass only works, if up/down is defined as well - because if you are upside down, then west and east are flipped on the compass! Just defining north without defining up could even increase confusion, because having east and west switched with each other, just breaks people’s brains. But that strong demand for the game exposing it’s coordinate system, did not exist in any previous test - nor any later test. That was just on that one single dense forest map, where people had problems navigating. And where those beacons, and waypoints and other helping tools weren’t as readily available yet either.

I believe it’s worth keeping in mind, how situational it can be, how something in the game does feel right now. during a test!

Night Surveying

More Night Surveying

The big discussion that came up this time, during that seventh large test, was regarding the topic of tool slots and switching out tools. And again it was caused by very situational circumstances.

The way it is right now, players start a test with 5 tools - but there is an increasing number of additional tools (including weapons) what players can craft during the test. But you can only have equipped 4 tools at a time. Which means, that already at the start, you end up with one tool sitting in your inventory, instead of being on your toolbar. And you can only modify your toolbar, change your loadout in camp. You can’t switch out your tools while out and about, or fighting, or digging, or whatever. All of these given and craftable tools correspond to the professions and skill trees which are currently being tested. Those currently are:

• Mineralogy
• Survey
• Ranger
• Forestry
• Botany
• Civil Engineering
• Combat

These are not final by any means - from the Trailer II we know that “Combat” will actually be a whole number of different skill trees, and that there will be many, many more professions on top of that. Some of these are new - but the professions that already were there last time, have seen some changes as well (as they did between that previous test, and the one before it). And the tools got changed alongside with the professions. What is now the pathfinder and the trailblazer, I think used to be just different modes on the same tool.

We know that there are no classes, and that players will be able to mix and match skills from different skill trees to their liking. What we don’t know yet - and probably isn’t even decided yet - is how many skills a player will be able to master. For comparison, in SWG pre-cu you were able to master 2 entire professions and then have a few points left over to spend… so, roughly 2.5 professions in total. This is gonna be different in Stars Reach, as the professions here aren’t gonna be that strictly same-sized. Skill trees will vary in size and amount of points you can dump into them. But you still have to keep in mind, that in the final game you will probably not be able to play a full Mineralogist - Surveyor - Ranger - Forester - Botanist - Civil Engineer - Combatant. You should be able to mix that many professions - but not master all of them. And that means that during normal gameplay, most people are not going to need that many tools - as players need right now in this test, where they are trying out all those professions at once.

It’s very specific to these current tests - that players are doing “all the professions” and using “all the tools”. In this game you have no class that you are locked into - in any other game it would be obvious that you can only equip the class items of your own class - and not all the items of all the classes. It also would be quite normal that you can’t just change your class for example right in the middle of combat. There’s a few games out there, that do allow you do learn all the classes on a single character - but class switching still is something you usually can only do in town at a trainer, or something.

Now, in Stars Reach, it’s your item loadout (and your skill build) which defines your role in the game. That’s basically your self-built class. You can train all the skills of all the professions - but not have them all active at the same time. Swapping active skills will come with a significant time delay. That too has been a point of debate. And now we have that debate for equipped tools. Various people argued for removal of the “camp only” requirement - to allow tool switching anytime - and to also increase the number of tool slots to 8 - instead of 4. Because in other games you can switch easily too. Because having to find a camp is tedious. Because not being able to everything all at once equals “forced grouping”, and all sorts of wild arguments get thrown around.

Day Surveying

More Day Surveying

And while many of those arguments make sense within the context of the current test - and are totally valid right now - I feel they often don’t apply to the later game at all.

I know it’s hard to imagine how the later game will be - there’s sooo much we just don’t know yet. But we should be able to imagine, that it’s not gonna be all featureless, dense forests, always - and that it’s not gonna be “testing 7+ professions all at once” forever. Both navigation and the tool-equip-limits have to be considered with the bigger picture in mind. Working towards the complete game, as it’s later planned to be. The testing situations we are thrown into right now, are artificially narrow and locked down to specific things - while a lot of other stuff is still missing - but also way too generous in the amount of XP and tools and stuff you get, and the speed of it. In the final game, it’s probably not gonna possible to max out 5 professions within 2 hours of starting the game. So, in some regards those test-situations we find ourselves in right now, are not fully representative of the final product.

Another design question that came up during the previous test, was how fast or slow the digging in the ground should be. And this too is a debated topic. Right now, it’s not too fast. During the first terrain manipulation test, it was faster, as people started the test with maxed out tools and skills - but even then, it was much slower than say Minecraft. Once you crafted a few better tools, and maybe some enchantments, the speed at which you can change the ground in Minecraft is ludicrous! But in this game, due to the massively multiplayer nature and the simulation running behind each single cell - you can’t easily go quite that fast. But even then, going as fast as you can, is probably not desirable - you maybe want for flattening an entire planet to take some time, and not be something you can just do overnight, if you’re dedicated.

It’s important to note here, that digging speed (the speed at which the ground deforms and holes form), and the harvesting/collection speed (at which you pick up resources) are separate. And the harvesting speed at which you collect ores and dirt and rock from your digging - is gonna be balanced according to economic balance needs. We’re only talking about the speed at which ground deforms, and only that alone. And how fast that should be, is imho a very difficult question to answer - because so many other factors play into this as well. It’s almost impossible to gauge, with so much other stuff still being unknown.

Diggy Diggy Hole

Mining

Tunnel

Ventilation Hole

What I intended to show here is, that these sorts of discussions and feedback are part of the testing process as well. Things do get picked apart, analyzed and talked about. And it’s great to talk about those things - and to hear the dev’s responsed and explanations as to why things are being done the way they are - and what purpose certain things have, within the bigger picture of the later game.

And for the final few pictures, I’ll show you how I tried building a little cave, right at the very end of the test, where meteors were raining down elsewhere: (also note how the shale I dropped to the right, turned into sand overnight!)

Cave Rock

Forming an Entrance

Getting Deeper

Lava-flattening the Floor

Update Nov 23

So, I went back in for a test-repeat last night - but I was rather sleepy and unfocussed, so I didn’t make much progress. Didn’t take any screenshots either. Wasn’t on my best game, sadly.

Wanted to go to the jungle planet, so obviously I ended up being in the desert, in space and on the temperate planet - anywhere but jungle. ;)

Didn’t manage to finish the tool used for construction/voxel building either. It needs metal, gas and some sort of gemstone to build. Easily mined all the needed metal from an asteroid - these are great sources of metal. The gas, I already had nearly enough of that, but not sure where I got I from. I assume it’s loot from fighting Ballhogs or Skysharks. Some of these do drop gas. The gemstone is something you can create yourself using the chronophaser tool. There’s a video explaining that, which I didn’t watch of course - so I had to figure it out myself. I got the Quartz, but also got several other things at the same time - because I didn’t clearly separate materials - so I’m not even fully sure jet, which input material turned into the quartz… as I said, I was rather tired and unfocussed yesterday.

Apart from that, I ran into a bug where a Ballhog somehow ended up underneath the Terrain. Which is rather annoying, because there you are, digging your tunnel, and suddenly you take damage. And you look around, and there’s nothing that could damage you. And you take damage again. And you feel like going crazy, until you see a little hand sticking out of the rock - just to disappear. Great - there’s an enemy on the other side of the rock. The rock is a bit like a one-sided mirror. It has a solid rockface on the side that’s facing you - but if you look at it from the back, there’s nothing - you can just see trough. AND shoot through. Which you can’t do in the other direction. So I had no way of hurting the ballhog, while it continued to damage me - and well, the tunnel was deep, and I was not able to get out fast enough to be able to survive. Got killed by single stray ballhog, and there was nothing I could do about it. The joys of testing :D

Update Nov 30

I had to delete my character and start over.

So all I did last night, was to retrain and recollect the things I already had.

I’m back to a maxed out Ranger Skill tree. A few combat unlocks. Social engineering unlock and collected the metal and minerals needed for building an instaformer, only missing some gas again.

Also visited the jungle, got a bunch of xp for harvesting fruit there.

I should finally, finally become able to so building in today’s test. That took me way too long :(

Update Dec 6

Well, I did finally get around to do some building yesterday. With blocks only. I got the pre-made modules unlocked as well, and even had the resources to craft a few of those, I was lacking the stuff needed to create the fabricator tool, needed to place them.

I chose to go harvest some wood - easy enough on the temperate planet, with the tree trunks that lie around. There’s plenty of those, and right now, they refresh very quickly, so you can harvest them again and again and again. From that I made log cabin blocks. I generally do like the look of log cabins, and often built those in Minecraft as well. But the “log” blocks as they currently are in Stars Reach (all placeholder/work-in-progress of course) didn’t seem visually pleasing to my eye. They don’t look like logs, and they have no face side - no cut side. They end up looking more like Minecraft wooden planks do, and that’s where that rustic log-cabin imho feel does get lost.

In general, when compared to the prefab modules, the blocks seem quite coarse. Where in Minecraft it didn’t stand out, because everything was blocky - and you had some blocks to place, that weren’t just cubes, to break things up a bit - in Stars Reach you are currently limited to purely cubes, which contrast rather harshly with the more organic look of the rest of the landscape. Makes me kinda feel that the prefab modules will ultimately be more popular for building - since those allow to build thinner walls, and more different shapes and stuff. Right now though, there’s only one single set of sci-fi-ish floors/ramps/walls/doors/roofs available, which results in all buildings looking kinda the same. I think we are going to need a LOT more variety than that - and just some ability of changing the colors of prefab modules might go a long way in moving away from everyone having the same grey walls.

What I didn’t get around to try out - because I didn’t manage to craft a fabricator tool in time - was how well the blocks and prefab modules can be mixed. That’s something I hope to be able to explore in future tests. But, there’s a character wipe upcoming - so, next test is gonna be starting over from scratch. But with the main cause of character corruptions fixed, I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to get deeper into the weeds with the next set of tests. In this current set of tests, I also missed one session, due to coming down with a cold and a fever once. And living in an european time-zone only about half of the tests are doable for me in the first place. BUT - the upcoming set of tests is going to expand the playtime from 2hours/test to 3hours/test - which should help slow-pokes like me, to get some stuff done ;)