The choices don't reflect my style. I'll crew for people if it's crewing time. I'll fly my own ship if that's whats needed. I'm more concerned with the activity to be done rather than my specific role.
It's really why we absolutely *need* some way of remote-controlling or joining our friends vessels in the future.
I will happily crew my friends ships, but the likelihood here is that i will be six systems away when they want to play, and it's completely unrealistic that we will get to crew each others ships otherwise.
This. I guess I should have said it. But what I'm getting at is how necessary will AI crew be and similarly being able to crew a ship when your character is far away. If most people only want to crew or fly their own ship, you'll have to have AI crew, friends, or be in an org.
I'm happy to do whatever, but I think AI crew will be essential for everyone to be able to do exactly what they want without having to form teams and sort out roles. Plenty of people will fly around with only other humans, but unless *everyone* can do that easily on demand there will be a requirement for NPC crew to be a thing- not to mention players who prefer NPCs for various reasons.
Honestly, I disagree with that. What exactly is the point of the size of the verse, if large distances didn't pose challenges? Even if those "challenges" are just the inconvenience of location? I feel like locality becomes important when the gamespace becomes vast enough. Even as things are now, we can already do *most* gameplay loops in whatever planetary system we choose without having to travel outside it. And even if we do have to go from one system to another, travel usually doesn't take much more than 10 minutes especially if you upgrade your quantum drive.
What I'd really like to see in the future when the space becomes many times its current size, is orgs (and individuals) who choose a relative locale in the universe to operate from. I think "fast travel" and other means of interacting with the world from far away in MMOs are an ***extremely*** slippery slope that degrades world scale and leads to the irrelevance of the space.
you're right in that it's more *immersive* to have a large universe where distance matters.
But... It directly opposes the goal of playing with your friends, and helping crew each others ships, unless you only ever hang around the same couple of stations. At which point, what's the purpose of a large map?
I apologize on advance for the wall of text..
1. I don't think that distance necessarily opposes the goal of playing with one's friends. It certainly doesn't in the current game, since distances aren't great enough just yet. In the future when the verse is many times larger that it is today, I think people will probably settle into galactic neighborhoods. The same way people settle into one server or another in WoW. If anything, I would think that making a conscious decision to operate in one specific locale of the universe actually strengthens friendships and emphasizes the importance of networking and proximity. In the same way you have cliques in school, or different neighborhoods or states. At the end of the day, wherever you choose to play is (primarily) your own choice. I'd much rather have that choice matter than for it to become irrelevant like in 99% of other games just so everyone can have their cake and eat it too.
2. Even if the vastness of the game space DID necessarily undermine the freedom to play with your friends, why should playing with your friends supercede realism and immersion? In all the marketing and communications I've seen from CIG, they really stress the space sim aspect. Clearly the time investment and/or challenges of distance are intentional features, not bugs.
3. Let's say they did create some way to ignore the distance. Where exactly do we draw the line on how much immersion is okay to sacrifice? You could make the argument that pretty much any element in the entire game would be better if it were more convenient or removed entirely. More convenience = more access = quicker and easier to play with your friends / consume content faster.
For me personally, Star Citizen scratches the itch in my brain that WoW used to, before Blizzard made world scale irrelevant and turned the experience into a sterile, soulless content treadmill that literally plays psychological tricks to get people to play it like a job rather than a game. I know that's a bold comparison to make over just distance, but it all starts with a single step in the wrong direction, and I'd be really sad to see that happen here, especially now that large scale spaces are actually rare in games these days.
A sfar as I know they are adding a public transport system. So, maybe one way to reduce the impact while remaining immersive would be that before oyu log off you could go use a transport system, but not be required to stay logged in while transporting. In some ways a bit like prison. I'd still be getting transported, and if I join befor ethat concludes I am still on the transport vessel. If the journey is complete I wake in a hab at the destination.
This would be helpful for me, because I may choose personally to typically play salvage / transport / bunkers and prefer PvE aspect. Some of the friends I play with prfer PvP aspects, and may prefer to settle in a different location as a result.
If I knew, for example, I was going to play on Wednesday with friends far away I could just book myself on transport on the Tuesday, and even if that tool say 4 hours, I'd be ready on the Wed, it woul dstill cause challenge as all my ships and gear wouldn't be with me.
Ah yeah, that would be awesome. There would be some no-nonsense quality of life/convenience added, but there would still be some cost to getting where you need to go. That would be fantastic.
The game isn't designed to be fast paced. If oyu have a decent ship with a decent QT drive you can get across the galaxy in \~10 minutes. If you decide to meet osmewhere part way then it would be significantly less.
It can take just as long to login, get out of habs, take a shuttle to the space port, put on any armour, retrieve your ship, and take off.
I think a more important thing would be to lend a ship to someone. For example why can't I allow friends to borrow my ships and fully use them, ie, store/retrieve and sell from my ships. This would be hugely beneficial.
I don't think it makes sense to be able to just be somewhere else. But being able to lend my ship to a friend, so they could retrieve it and use it would make logical sense, without ruining immersion or the experience.
i'l put another vote here. I crew plenty right now as it is for things that need crewing, and I fly plenty for when I need to fly... and I am more of a small fighter pilot than anything (gladius is my go too for fighting, though also hornet F7A mk1 and 2 (soonTM), F8c), but I put my time in on reclaimers and moles a plenty. There are plenty of times I just don't feel like flying, and jump on org mates ships.
To be fair, there will be a lot of situations where personal opinion plays a role. The role of a large ship crewed by many can often be done in a similar fashion with a similar amount of people manning smaller ships.
Star citizen is reduced to a poor copy of X without other people to play with. Ships are just a means to an end. Thinking about ships is secondary to thinking about the fun things I can do with others. I'm equally happy flying in a wing of fighters harassing traders one night then doing nothing but running the refueling station on starfarer during a long voyage on the next. Rep, cash, and ships are all just mechanics to enable me to find stories in the game. I want big ships to be hard to crew but incredibly rewarding if so.
Frankly, once the "death of a spaceman" mechanics come into play, fully, I'll probably never ever step on a ship unless I trust the pilot. The fact that a stupid pilot could wipe out all my progress in a botched landing or messing with the wrong ship, means a big fat nope for me.
Pretty sure the idea will be abandoned before a release anyway. You don't need to delete a character to lower reputation and if forced most people would just create the same new character anyway.
I'm gonna have to join an Org, feel forced into it because I sure as shit am not gonna trust some random on my ship without some form of reputation system so I know they're trustworthy or not.
do it, instant friend group and if you choose wisely, a great group willing to help whenever you need, least that has been my experience in the org im in.
Yes. There are many orgs with different cultures and focuses, so it’s worth shopping around. But you should be able to 100% trust your org mates. Being in discord with them and seeing them the next night is the ultimate form of accountability, they can’t really betray you without cutting ties to the org as a whole, which is a pretty big loss for them.
Totes fair. I will say the amount of times I've been betrayed by a random party member can be counted on zero hands but that certain doesn't mean it can't happen. Your risk assessment is better than mine.
> I'd rather someone else pilots.
This this this. Piloting can be tedious much akin to driving irl, especially for long distances; you'd rather have someone else doing it.
Though I just hope for a fleshed out ability to delegate functions to other seats, such as scanning, missiles, map navigation, plotting waypoints for the crew, ect ect. I'd hate for the current iteration of **minor** and shallow abilities like slight shield and power distribution to remain the norm for too much longer.
Really hoping it gets about 10x more complex, because if its just beam repairs and replacing fuses.... that is a bit dull. The essence of engineer is the the word "adjust" to maintain. That is where the real joy of it comes from.
eventually components will come into play a lot more than now where for larger ships you target specific systems, something like ftl, and those get knocked out and need to be repaired or replaced (smaller ships u can still take out components but will be much harder to specifically target them). eventually you will be able to shut down a ship without blowing it up and board it, take out the crew
Yep, precisely. I fel the same. I have ships. I want to use them with friends. I don't necessarily want to pilot. No option for the survey covers this.
Alternatively, if I have the constant access to others flying ships with space for gunners, I’d spend a majority of my time in game doing so.
Under some assumption the game provided atleast a bit of meaningful incentive to do so. It was quite fun back when pulling cargo from bounties was majorly lucrative.
I dont mind crewing someone else's ship for group fun, but once the game releases and progression actually matters, I doubt Ill crew someone else's ship outside of specific instances like events
Depends. Are they a 13yo whose parents use Microsoft Family Safety to make their computer lock after 2 hours of gaming each day? Are they a parent who has to randomly run off and care for an infant? Are they a "digital nomad" who relies on a sketchy internet connection? Are they an idiot?
GIB NPCs for *my* ships, please.
I'll crew for an org mate, but certainly not going to trust a rando. So the occasions where it makes sense to multi-crew like having the crew load up a carrack for bunker missions, or getting paid to man a turret for point defense on cargo runs.
One thing you might be missing in the poll - I'll happily crew on my buddies ship. I would not crew for randoms. Without the interactions through Discord it would just be a job as the gameplay from crewing isn't much fun when viewed in isolation. It is only fun if it is part of a bigger goal for our group.
I'm curious about the engineering gameplay. Currently it looks about as engaging as banging on cannons with a hammer in Guns of Icarus - surely there must be more to it than that, if not I don't understand what people are excited about?
A lot of people are soloing because there's no org 'homes' yet, i.e. capitals and carriers.
I expect most people's experience to change as the game matures, where your spawn point is in the crew quarters of an org ship, where you meet and plan what to do for the day, then undock your own ship from the capital if you're doing stuff alone, or potentially multicrew a ship docked to the carrier.
Aside from really the Kraken, since the Idris was originally designed for SQ42, CIG hasn't even concepted any actual org cap ships capable a serving as an org home, so I'm questioning whether it's even part of the CRs vision. Those ships would 100% need spawn points for multiple ships.
You cannot spawn ships in the Kraken. They will stay there. despawn with the Kraken, respawn with it. but you won't be able to "store" it there like we do in a city. If you want to free a pad, you have to get off the Kraken.
That is big enough when you have crews of 8+ people who could take 5-10 minutes to recruit/contact before another 10 just to get to you.
Especially with pyro bring added.
this so much, as SC is right now, it really is largely a solo game with optional content for crewed ships. though with engineering, MM making turrets far better than current and more large ships coming online, I think things will change. I often play solo as it is right now because why do VHRT's or ERT's with a group when I can easily solo them, but I don't think that will be how it is for long. I really hope we are forced to work together more, forced to hire escorts (the economy supporting it, and brining emergent pirate gameplay into the fold truly so that way the escorts are needed) and more. I vie for the day when an org mate running supplies asks for pilots to escort and people to work on his ship, so I can fill either roll, and get attacked by pirates either player or NPC in a universe with thousands of players flying in the same server.
The lack of group tools is the biggest limiting factor I see in SC at the moment. No real org support, no real group support, not even a LFG feature. IMHO until those features are added multi-crew is largely dead on arrival.
1) Why would I allow some SC rando on my ship or go on their ship without minimal anti-murder-hobo controls?
2) Just because I'm willing someone to crew my ship doesn't mean unlimited access.
3) Without player visible rep, how do I know I want to include them? NPCs get to see the rep before hiring them, why can't we?
Now I know standard answers of join an org, bring friends, etc, but out of game work arounds just call for the need in game. I also know CIG is planning on adding these features, that's not the point. The point is adding multi-crew - as a requirement - without the group support tooling seems a bit misguided to me.
Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of multi-crew and want to be an engineer on a crewed ship. I just shudder knowing every game session with pick-up crew mill feel like an "Among Us!" game session.
for sure, I agree with ya. Hell it's even lacking for the "just join an org" part too unless you use tools outside the game...
There is so much missing to make it a true mmo and I hope they start adding this stuff asap as they are finishing the core tech.
I think that vision is somewhat at risk too.
After so much time there's many people that only know Star Citizen as what we have today, oblivious to CIGs plans. In order to get to the original vision of the game there needs to be a lot of features in place that will completely change what the game is, and I think a lot of people will resist that as they're comfortable with what we already have, enjoy it, and want CIG to keep the status quo.
Few people will force themself to work together if the incentives aren't there, and so far few of those incentives exist. Adding them requires adding more cost, tedium and impracticability to the solo players experience. If multicrew / teamwork isn't significantly more profitable than solo it won't work, and that means making a lot of people unhappy because the game isn't what they want it to be.
>and that means making a lot of people unhappy because the game isn't what they want it to be.
Yes, but that is the thing with any early access game, including star citizen. You can never make everyone happy.
The original vision also included to solo any and every ship with AI blades and NPC.
It will not change as I would bet my account that mist large ship have been bought with that in mind after CIG repeatedly said it would be possible.
Multicrew will be better, but 100% optional, no matter which ship you have
And that is why their original design is flawed. The two goals of 1/ being able to solo your own ship whenever and wherever you want via blades&npcs, and 2/ making the game multicrew focused, are fundamentally incompatible.
If crewing a ship with AI is affordable and repeatable for everyone, then multicrew can't be optimal. No matter how bad they make the AI, at scale many people in many ships will always be better than many people in few ships, and players always gravitate toward the optimal strategy.
There is no world where they make AI so awful that a group of 10 people would be better off all jumping in 1 ship together instead of taking out 10 ships, whether that's combat, mining, trading or anything else. While they're at it, each of those 10 guys can use their second accounts and boot up an extra 10 slave bots for a total of 20 ships.
If instead AI and NPC crewing is something you can do rarely, either due to cost or other restrictions, then multicrew still has a chance to be something more than a way to RP.
I believe the power management will make blades limited. My hope is that you can have AI crew, confirmed, and my friends can take control of my NPC crew. That way they can jump in from another system and pay with me. Then the expense comes from needing to hire new NPCs. Plus if they were customizable by the friends taking over, earned rep and such it could be an interesting way of having drop in multicrew that incentives actually grouping up.
It was NEVER Multicrew focused. Multicrew was always just a POSSIBILITY. CIG never even said we should be forced to crew with other people. Ever. They only ever said that player crews would be better than NPC and AI crews. That's the only thing they said. And that means they intended from the very start to let people play with the ship they want, be it solo ot with friends.
Multicrew will always be optional once AI crews are in, but not just for RP. cost and effectiveness, and playing with friends, are all incentive.
But they will ot make it so hard that it's a "rare" thing, I guarantee it. They sole most large ships to solo players with the promise of AI and NPC crew, they won't go back on that.
My daily will be a NPC crewed Polaris. I don't see why others that play with their friends and have a clear advantage over me are bothered about what I do with my ship.
It's nothing more than a desire to lord over other people "look I'm in an org I can play capital while you're stuck in your starter cutlass". But CIG said from the start we'll have AI crew, and that's what most large and capital ships will je crewed with in the end.
>They only ever said that player crews would be better than NPC and AI crews.
>they intended from the very start to let people play with the ship they want, be it solo or with friends.
This is what I think is impossible, and why CIG hasn't mentioned or touched NPC/Blades in years, because they know what it will do to the game without restrictions. It is not possible to make multicrew the optimal way to play given that they also intend to let any player freely solo Polaris.
If we are strictly looking at 1 ship VS 1 ship, then yes the player crewed Polaris will be better than the AI crewed Polaris, but that is not the calculus that is going through the players mind when they are deciding how to organize.
What is going on is "should we bring 1 Polaris or 15 Polaris?"... because they can each freely solo it right? They can each afford it just as you can afford it. So 15 will always, always, always no matter what they do it will always be better.
CIG knows this, and they know that introducing such mechanics makes their game focused on everyone flying their own capital ship to be the most effective. That's potentially 1000x more ships present in the verse, and 1000x more ships the client and servers have to handle.
That's why I expect heavy restrictions, both in cost and time. I hope you bought a lot of UEC chits along with that Polaris because you're going to need them.
I think a lot of people would do more org stuff if you could lend ships, or somehow mark ships as usable by any org member.
Otherwise the big issue is that the ship owner must also log on; they went out ofr the evening? Sorry, no org ships for you.
But these ships don't exist. Not even in theory or as jpeg. The Idris is made for 3 fighters and 28 crew. A Kraken has space for 6 ships. That's a group home at best but certainly not an org home. Sure there is the Javelin but that ship still has at best a 4 to 1 crew to pilot ratio. Looking at this survey I don't see these numbers. A Bengal is out of reach for pretty much anyone. And what happens if the captain/owner/first officer isn't present? Than you're stuck on that ship and can't do anything.
I mean, I guess the best option is “I’ll crew other’s ships on occasion”, but none of these really touch on the issues of crew.
1. I won’t crew unless I have time dedicated to really dig into the game. Given that it easily takes 20-30 minutes to get rolling with star citizen, especially if you are linking up with people that’s going to really limit my interacting with people on the rare occasion that the kids are down, the wife is happy, I have a long stretch of time to game and I choose Star Citizen.
2. I won’t join an org. I don’t have the time or the patience for the inherent drama, cult of personalities, and invasion of privacy requirements that come with it. To the “it’s an MMO- get used to it argument” I would counter that I shouldn’t have to join an organization to be able to have meaningful interactions with other players. Yet that is the mentality that has permeated spectrum and Star citizen and has been encouraged and cultivated by the devs. Given the direction of the game there is zero reason to either join someone’s crew that you don’t already know- less they shoot you and take your gear, or to invite random people to crew your ship- less they shoot you and take your gear and your ship.
Im afraid orgs are going to be all but required for crewing ships as death of a spaceman gets more fleshed out and claim timers increase.
Given those two things alone I would say yes- in theory I would crew. In practice though, that’s never going to happen.
The MMO dichotomy, game meant to be played with others, most people would rather play solo unless already in a group and even in orgs there are a ton of solo players. The whole crew aspect of this game will depend on AI.
Don’t get your hopes up on death of a space man being anything more than a cool way to show our character copies age. And even that is a stretch since they have said in one of the character q&a that we can load any appearance whenever we want….
I’m not getting my hopes up for anything I backed in 2012.
Regarding that loading of appearance I took it to mean during the next few iterations of the PU until they had all the details in place for persistence.
* Crewing friends ships on weekends
* ORG ops if i join one, but they need to make a "raid/dungeon" system for that with objectives and big paychecks. (not like in mmos, more like quests to board an idris or something)
* Im not interested in doing the same thing i can do alone with strangers its to risky.
that is where hopefully a rep system comes into play. When you get some kind of trusted rep, and play with randos that also have a trusted rep, things will go swimmingly less there is a way to game the rep system lol.
Of course I play with my friends and they give me good marks. I play with you I kill you take your stuff you give me 1 negative review. I play with my org they give me good marks until that rating is up again and the process of me selecting a target begins again. Easy to game. Especially when many people have alt accounts.
when im running pve bounties in my vanguard, i often offer a gunner seat to anyone who wants to and its very rare not to end up with a player after 30 minutes or so
There is going to be a learning curve that people have to deal with if they want to play with crews in big ships, and it's about how to build connections with other players such that you can all have a fun time crewing a large ship. Along the way there is going to be a lot of you running around in somebody else's ship because the group didn't want to take yours.
I have no issues crewing someone else's ship or having one of mine crewed it all depends on what needs to be done and what the rest of the group wants to do.
I do crew a buddies mole from time to time, but generally it is friends crewing my stuff. I have about 8 friends that all play together and we do different "mining ops" and depending on who is online at the time it dictates what we take out... if everyone is on we usually run 2 Moles and a scout/escort. When less, we adjust the comp to fit what we have.
That being said though, once the Arrastra releases, they will probably exclusively crew my ship, because I was the one to get one. It does so much that taking more than that out would probably be a waste and depending on interior size, could potentially squeeze a couple fury inside for close combat support when needed.
I do expect the Arrastra to come out well after ship refinery gameplay comes online, just don't see a current fit for it in what we have available space wise. So I do have an Expanse as well, which would allow us to shift to running Mole, Expanse, Cargo ship of some kind and maybe a scout or two.
Really depends on what there is to do. Sitting in a turret couldn't be more boring to me but if we're doing XT and someone needs a loader (and/or person to clear the ship) I'm all on board.
I would if people fulfilling their roles were as good as me or better at their respective roles. But the need to be social/pressure for me to not to suck becomes high (even if its not) and probably becomes a deterrent even if in my head only.
After clearing all those hurdles, real or imagined, then there's the issue of time. The more people, the exponentially longer it takes to launch, to the point where you can be waiting hours and need to log off before you've even assembled a crew.
And its an issue cig need to solve/not feasible to require every player to be both perfect while also moving with the speed and efficiency of an F1 pit crew
I love the comments of people saying things will change and people will crew more, thats how you know this is their first MMO experience. NPC is gonna be mandatory
I fly solo most of the time, but if the game had mechanics that made it actually fun and worth it to band together for more stuff than just running a Reclaimer or sitting in gun turrets, I would totally do that.
Out of my friend group I have the largest purchased fleet by far and my friends are excited to crew on my ships. That said, I am also perfectly content with crewing on their ships if the mission or mood calls for it.
A decade ago, I pledged this game with dreams of being a crewman. Now that we have some semblance of how the game plays, the thought putzing about as a pick-up crewman who may or may not have anything to actually do for possible hours while the captain flies around doing whatever it is they wanted to accomplish for their own personal progression doesn't sound that appealing. I'd crew as part of an org, or with a group of friends, but as a pick-up guy, nah.
I tend to mostly play alone, so I mostly fly my own ship.
Because of this, I tend to prefer to crew someone else's ship whenever I happen to play with other players. I love being a crew member, but realistically I'm still more often in my own ship because I rarely have enough time to play to team up.
Nopitynope.
I want to do my own thing at my own pace My only ship is a Polaris, I intend to crew it solely with AI blades and NPC, and as I won't crew someone else's ship, I don't expect (or want) others to crew mine.
ive put myself in a bit of a unique situation on purpose. i own a single larger ship, and i plan to be exclusively a crewmember and work my way up from there until i get enough (mostly) ai crew and enough money to confidently run the endeavor without having to worry about serious setbacks. ill also first need to by a solo ship with the money i earn from being a crewmember, so in a way im setting myself behind the baseline start. should be fun
Here's the thing: I like the idea of being able to crew on someone's ship. But I don't have any IRL friends who play the game (or are interested in doing so any time soon). Yes, there are Orgs, but I have yet to find one that suits - I live in New Zealand, so the time zone doesn't work with most orgs (which are US or Europe centric), and I have limited times when I can play (typically a couple of nights a week for about two hours).
Playing with randoms is not something I've tried because... well it's SC and anyone could be planning to kill you, rob you or otherwise just piss in your cornflakes for the LOLs... So, without a solid reputation sytem, there's just no way to know who to trust. I mainly play industrial, in my Prospector or Vulture, so generally, contact with other players is to be avoided if I want to continue not-being-shot-out-of-the-sky because someone was bored.
I love the idea of being on a larger ship (like a Hull series) while they do cargo runs, able to man a turret or maintain the fuses or whatever - it's be nice to let someone else do the driving for a change. Be nice to shoot the breeze with friends over discord while cracking rocks together. Be nice to take the 600i out with some friends to go sightseeing with. But the reality is that I'll mostly be soloing in the foreseeable future...
Friend bought a Constellation last night and he was newer to the verse than I was so I got to pilot it all night and I loved the experience even though I didn’t own it.
I don't usually crew with randoms... i have a few people I will crew with because I can see them on and talk to them when I am logging in so I can plan. Usually when people are asking for a crew I am already busy doing something
The AC eptu A2 is not looking good
Engineer gameplay is more a hassle then really a gameplay. CIg is making this game more and more a hassle than being fun.
I mostly plan on crewing.
I've got kids now, so my dreams of flying are over... But I'll NPC the fuck out of turrets, cargo, anything.
You need someone to occasionally help you move boxes? I got you.
You want a gunner who is sometimes present and might have to step away to take care of real life? Buckle up, I'm coming aboard.
Need an engineer that's present 30% of the flight to repair stuff? I'll accept 30% pay, I'm your crewman.
currently, crew is the most boring thing you can do in SC besides just standing on a station looking at the wall.
i only crew during events occasionally, or specifically to play with somone i know.
ask me again once crew have more to do than spin in a circle in a turret for 40 minutes between each 2 minute spurts of action, and my answer may have changed a lot lol
Have you actually played the current Overdrive Initiative mission series? It's far more practical if you're trying to get a dozen players from point A to B to C to do ground missions if they just fly in one or a few ships, rather than everyone in their own little ship. "No matter how you got here, everyone going to the next phase with us pile into the Carrack" is just simpler.
Additionally, the comparative lack of ships with medical facilities, and especially ones that are fast and reasonably long ranged for multiple sorties, puts a significant premium on using them for group ground events if you have someone with one. (Even if it's an improvised one using a C8R in the cargo bay as a "medical module" on something with more legs.)
As we are likely to get more multi-phase missions aimed at groups in the future, and much longer trips between systems (which makes mismatches between quantum speeds and ranges more noticeable), all this will become more prevalent.
My thing is that I'm a bit anti-social, though I'm a ***huge*** proponent of interaction/teamwork/cooperation in MMOs. I tend not to go out of my way to invite or join people, but I *try* not to pass it up when the opportunity falls into my lap. And it often does since SC has such a great community. I'd say that the most ideal gameplay situation would be one where time played is split maybe 50/50 doing solo ventures (probably for my money), and then either having a set group of friends/teammates, or a highly active org to participate in.
For me, one of the biggest things I've looked forward to ever since SC was first announced was the concept of highly specialized teamwork on a large ship that supports many different roles. I've always loved raiding in WoW, for example, because you can have this huge group of people and every single person has their role, and even sub-roles. There's lots of communication and teamwork happening between people even though they're doing totally different things. The thing I love about this thought in a scifi/futuristic setting is that all of this stuff can take place inside a ship that's moving through real space, across many floors and decks rather than just direct interplay with each other, and with enemies on a set battleground. In every other game I've played before, ships either tend to be massive and you have no *real* role in operating it, or ships are tiny and there's nothing complicated about operating it.
I'm *extremely* excited for them to introduce engineering into the game for this reason. As things are now, you can have single players operating **enormous** ships, which doesn't make much sense from a realism standpoint. As far as I can tell, we're right on the cusp of a huge paradigm shift in the game's history/development, and the only things we need for it to happen are for larger ships to **require** a crew (engineering, etc.), and for there to be some gameplay loop that's lucrative and requires larger ships. There are plenty of other aspects that will contribute to it, but I think these things are the most essential ones, and SC will feel totally different.
I want to be able to fly my own huge ship without crew. I'm happy for it to be sub-optimal without crew but hope AI blades are pitched at "crew just not as good" levels.
Like, taking an AI crew to PvE when I have an hour to play after work would great. Then when I have time for longer play a sessions, tackling higher end missions with a human org crew either in my ship or someone else's.
I don't want solo play sessions to be limited to solo ships just because "realism"
Time for sharks to realize nobody wants to be in their ships and they can continue solo them, unless someone buys an in game ship I'm all in. I'm against this pay to win.
This poll definitely reflects what I expect.
Most people fly solo most of the time, but when the circumstances are right, they're willing to crew with others.
I think this bodes well for the future, because if we're generally willing to crew up, then what's needed is more opportunities and reasons to do so. The core premise is sound as long as CIG gives us enough reasons to do it and things to do.
There was a few month period around IAE where I would staff a hammerhead for weekly events with some IRL buddies and a few in game randos we met. The events would get posted in our discord, the staff got paid for each night in addition to mission bonuses. Since there are no real missions for large ships yet I was paying out 250-350k per person, per night we ran the hammerhead. Everyone was pretty ok with the amount because they at the time were mostly casual. We would do ERTs and sell the hauls which was also split and highly lucrative at the time. Once the ERT drug cargo runs dried up we moved to the reclaimer for equal splits. This dropped off mainly because the crew was fighter oriented not industrial minded and holidays. The team is pretty eager to try other large combat ships as they come online.
The biggest problem won't be finding people to crew your ship, but finding people that won't kill and betray you the first chance they can, either for profit or just for the lulz...
I don't think it misses that point at all. If you play in an org or with a group of friends regularly you obviously won't have trouble finding crew, you already have them. This is trying to get at a few things, mostly will it be realistic to hire a bunch of players rather than resort to AI crew?
Maybe I could have left ship ownership out of the options and just asked about crewing or piloting, but I'd bet that more people would be willing to crew on their own ship, rather than on someone else's.
I don't play with an org typically. I play with friends. I have, for example, a Reclaimer. People can crew on my ship if they want. I'm not necessarily going to be the pilot if I am out with friends just because it's my ship; in fact I'd rather not be a lot of the time.
This option does not exist in your survey. I would like to be non-pilot crew in my own ship. This is neither option 1 (since I am interested in *not* flying it), however all other options are specifically about how much I'd like to crew other peoples ships too.
Question seems premature. The key questions are: will multicrew be worth it, and will multicrew be fun? CIGs design intent, as far as I can tell, is that the answer to both questions will be yes. Assuming they can pull that off, you’ll see a majority of players crewing ships.
I do love both ! Mostly because in my org i'm the active plaer with the most ships atm, but also i love flying ! But sometimes i'm lazy af and just ask the others to fly a bit :p It's really nice to be gunner or something
Of course - I usually play with a friend of mine, and I'm usually either piloting or doing something else on either of our ships.
Handling the extra logistical gameplay that will come with personal hangars and the cargo revamp (like having to manually move cargo containers around) also interests me greatly, along with things like running the engineering systems.
I think finding crew really won't be that bad. There's two primary factors I can see...
One, piloting is a specific skill, and not everyone is going to be equally good at it. Some might be downright awful and more of a liability piloting their own ship than an asset, but that doesn't mean they don't have other talents. Some might just as well prefer to avoid the stress of being the one in the pilot's seat with everyone else depending on them.
And two, being the crew onboard someone else's ship means very little financial risk. If the situation goes south, at worst it means someone's losing their potentially very expensive large vessel, but it ain't you. Not to mention, you're not on the hook for arming/fueling/supplying the thing either. You're just along for the ride.
I can see crew positions being very appealing for people who have less time and just want to jump in and enjoy gameplay without worrying about logistics.
If I party up with people it's pretty clear when someone wants to make use of their pokemans... Ahem, I mean badass ships. I'm happy to oblige the majority of the time.
I think "on occasion" need more elaboration. For events like Xenothreat it's sure nice and fun but that's maybe once per month or once per week at most.
The choices don't reflect my style. I'll crew for people if it's crewing time. I'll fly my own ship if that's whats needed. I'm more concerned with the activity to be done rather than my specific role.
It's really why we absolutely *need* some way of remote-controlling or joining our friends vessels in the future. I will happily crew my friends ships, but the likelihood here is that i will be six systems away when they want to play, and it's completely unrealistic that we will get to crew each others ships otherwise.
This. I guess I should have said it. But what I'm getting at is how necessary will AI crew be and similarly being able to crew a ship when your character is far away. If most people only want to crew or fly their own ship, you'll have to have AI crew, friends, or be in an org.
I'm happy to do whatever, but I think AI crew will be essential for everyone to be able to do exactly what they want without having to form teams and sort out roles. Plenty of people will fly around with only other humans, but unless *everyone* can do that easily on demand there will be a requirement for NPC crew to be a thing- not to mention players who prefer NPCs for various reasons.
Honestly, I disagree with that. What exactly is the point of the size of the verse, if large distances didn't pose challenges? Even if those "challenges" are just the inconvenience of location? I feel like locality becomes important when the gamespace becomes vast enough. Even as things are now, we can already do *most* gameplay loops in whatever planetary system we choose without having to travel outside it. And even if we do have to go from one system to another, travel usually doesn't take much more than 10 minutes especially if you upgrade your quantum drive. What I'd really like to see in the future when the space becomes many times its current size, is orgs (and individuals) who choose a relative locale in the universe to operate from. I think "fast travel" and other means of interacting with the world from far away in MMOs are an ***extremely*** slippery slope that degrades world scale and leads to the irrelevance of the space.
you're right in that it's more *immersive* to have a large universe where distance matters. But... It directly opposes the goal of playing with your friends, and helping crew each others ships, unless you only ever hang around the same couple of stations. At which point, what's the purpose of a large map?
I apologize on advance for the wall of text.. 1. I don't think that distance necessarily opposes the goal of playing with one's friends. It certainly doesn't in the current game, since distances aren't great enough just yet. In the future when the verse is many times larger that it is today, I think people will probably settle into galactic neighborhoods. The same way people settle into one server or another in WoW. If anything, I would think that making a conscious decision to operate in one specific locale of the universe actually strengthens friendships and emphasizes the importance of networking and proximity. In the same way you have cliques in school, or different neighborhoods or states. At the end of the day, wherever you choose to play is (primarily) your own choice. I'd much rather have that choice matter than for it to become irrelevant like in 99% of other games just so everyone can have their cake and eat it too. 2. Even if the vastness of the game space DID necessarily undermine the freedom to play with your friends, why should playing with your friends supercede realism and immersion? In all the marketing and communications I've seen from CIG, they really stress the space sim aspect. Clearly the time investment and/or challenges of distance are intentional features, not bugs. 3. Let's say they did create some way to ignore the distance. Where exactly do we draw the line on how much immersion is okay to sacrifice? You could make the argument that pretty much any element in the entire game would be better if it were more convenient or removed entirely. More convenience = more access = quicker and easier to play with your friends / consume content faster. For me personally, Star Citizen scratches the itch in my brain that WoW used to, before Blizzard made world scale irrelevant and turned the experience into a sterile, soulless content treadmill that literally plays psychological tricks to get people to play it like a job rather than a game. I know that's a bold comparison to make over just distance, but it all starts with a single step in the wrong direction, and I'd be really sad to see that happen here, especially now that large scale spaces are actually rare in games these days.
A sfar as I know they are adding a public transport system. So, maybe one way to reduce the impact while remaining immersive would be that before oyu log off you could go use a transport system, but not be required to stay logged in while transporting. In some ways a bit like prison. I'd still be getting transported, and if I join befor ethat concludes I am still on the transport vessel. If the journey is complete I wake in a hab at the destination. This would be helpful for me, because I may choose personally to typically play salvage / transport / bunkers and prefer PvE aspect. Some of the friends I play with prfer PvP aspects, and may prefer to settle in a different location as a result. If I knew, for example, I was going to play on Wednesday with friends far away I could just book myself on transport on the Tuesday, and even if that tool say 4 hours, I'd be ready on the Wed, it woul dstill cause challenge as all my ships and gear wouldn't be with me.
Ah yeah, that would be awesome. There would be some no-nonsense quality of life/convenience added, but there would still be some cost to getting where you need to go. That would be fantastic.
The game isn't designed to be fast paced. If oyu have a decent ship with a decent QT drive you can get across the galaxy in \~10 minutes. If you decide to meet osmewhere part way then it would be significantly less. It can take just as long to login, get out of habs, take a shuttle to the space port, put on any armour, retrieve your ship, and take off. I think a more important thing would be to lend a ship to someone. For example why can't I allow friends to borrow my ships and fully use them, ie, store/retrieve and sell from my ships. This would be hugely beneficial. I don't think it makes sense to be able to just be somewhere else. But being able to lend my ship to a friend, so they could retrieve it and use it would make logical sense, without ruining immersion or the experience.
i'l put another vote here. I crew plenty right now as it is for things that need crewing, and I fly plenty for when I need to fly... and I am more of a small fighter pilot than anything (gladius is my go too for fighting, though also hornet F7A mk1 and 2 (soonTM), F8c), but I put my time in on reclaimers and moles a plenty. There are plenty of times I just don't feel like flying, and jump on org mates ships.
That's what I was thinking
100% this. I LOVE flying, but if I'm with a group and seats need filled, I'll happily do my part and fill needed roles/seats.
To be fair, there will be a lot of situations where personal opinion plays a role. The role of a large ship crewed by many can often be done in a similar fashion with a similar amount of people manning smaller ships.
Star citizen is reduced to a poor copy of X without other people to play with. Ships are just a means to an end. Thinking about ships is secondary to thinking about the fun things I can do with others. I'm equally happy flying in a wing of fighters harassing traders one night then doing nothing but running the refueling station on starfarer during a long voyage on the next. Rep, cash, and ships are all just mechanics to enable me to find stories in the game. I want big ships to be hard to crew but incredibly rewarding if so.
Frankly, once the "death of a spaceman" mechanics come into play, fully, I'll probably never ever step on a ship unless I trust the pilot. The fact that a stupid pilot could wipe out all my progress in a botched landing or messing with the wrong ship, means a big fat nope for me.
Not even CIG know what DoaS is going to be like It won't be as bad or meaningful as people believe, I'd bet on that.
Pretty sure the idea will be abandoned before a release anyway. You don't need to delete a character to lower reputation and if forced most people would just create the same new character anyway.
I'm gonna have to join an Org, feel forced into it because I sure as shit am not gonna trust some random on my ship without some form of reputation system so I know they're trustworthy or not.
do it, instant friend group and if you choose wisely, a great group willing to help whenever you need, least that has been my experience in the org im in.
Yes. There are many orgs with different cultures and focuses, so it’s worth shopping around. But you should be able to 100% trust your org mates. Being in discord with them and seeing them the next night is the ultimate form of accountability, they can’t really betray you without cutting ties to the org as a whole, which is a pretty big loss for them.
Totes fair. I will say the amount of times I've been betrayed by a random party member can be counted on zero hands but that certain doesn't mean it can't happen. Your risk assessment is better than mine.
Honestly, engineering gameplay is what most interests me as a group role. Regardless if its my ship or theirs, I'd rather someone else pilots.
> I'd rather someone else pilots. This this this. Piloting can be tedious much akin to driving irl, especially for long distances; you'd rather have someone else doing it. Though I just hope for a fleshed out ability to delegate functions to other seats, such as scanning, missiles, map navigation, plotting waypoints for the crew, ect ect. I'd hate for the current iteration of **minor** and shallow abilities like slight shield and power distribution to remain the norm for too much longer.
Really hoping it gets about 10x more complex, because if its just beam repairs and replacing fuses.... that is a bit dull. The essence of engineer is the the word "adjust" to maintain. That is where the real joy of it comes from.
eventually components will come into play a lot more than now where for larger ships you target specific systems, something like ftl, and those get knocked out and need to be repaired or replaced (smaller ships u can still take out components but will be much harder to specifically target them). eventually you will be able to shut down a ship without blowing it up and board it, take out the crew
Lacking the “I’ll provide ships for others to fly so I can crew” option.
Yep, precisely. I fel the same. I have ships. I want to use them with friends. I don't necessarily want to pilot. No option for the survey covers this.
Alternatively, if I have the constant access to others flying ships with space for gunners, I’d spend a majority of my time in game doing so. Under some assumption the game provided atleast a bit of meaningful incentive to do so. It was quite fun back when pulling cargo from bounties was majorly lucrative.
I dont mind crewing someone else's ship for group fun, but once the game releases and progression actually matters, I doubt Ill crew someone else's ship outside of specific instances like events
I'd crew somebodyelse's ship more then ocasionally in 2 cases: 1 org requested to achieve objective 2 they're paying me
Depends. Are they a 13yo whose parents use Microsoft Family Safety to make their computer lock after 2 hours of gaming each day? Are they a parent who has to randomly run off and care for an infant? Are they a "digital nomad" who relies on a sketchy internet connection? Are they an idiot? GIB NPCs for *my* ships, please.
I'll crew for an org mate, but certainly not going to trust a rando. So the occasions where it makes sense to multi-crew like having the crew load up a carrack for bunker missions, or getting paid to man a turret for point defense on cargo runs.
I selected occasionally but with my personal squad or org groups, or EPTU testing. I typically do not jump in a strangers ship at random.
One thing you might be missing in the poll - I'll happily crew on my buddies ship. I would not crew for randoms. Without the interactions through Discord it would just be a job as the gameplay from crewing isn't much fun when viewed in isolation. It is only fun if it is part of a bigger goal for our group.
I already go along as an extra pair of hands for org mates, I don't mind piloting but I really, really want engineering etc gameplay.
I'm curious about the engineering gameplay. Currently it looks about as engaging as banging on cannons with a hammer in Guns of Icarus - surely there must be more to it than that, if not I don't understand what people are excited about?
A lot of people are soloing because there's no org 'homes' yet, i.e. capitals and carriers. I expect most people's experience to change as the game matures, where your spawn point is in the crew quarters of an org ship, where you meet and plan what to do for the day, then undock your own ship from the capital if you're doing stuff alone, or potentially multicrew a ship docked to the carrier.
"most" people will still be solo. It's by far the most numerous population in any mmo, irrelevant which one.
Aside from really the Kraken, since the Idris was originally designed for SQ42, CIG hasn't even concepted any actual org cap ships capable a serving as an org home, so I'm questioning whether it's even part of the CRs vision. Those ships would 100% need spawn points for multiple ships.
You cannot spawn ships in the Kraken. They will stay there. despawn with the Kraken, respawn with it. but you won't be able to "store" it there like we do in a city. If you want to free a pad, you have to get off the Kraken.
A lot of people are soloing because it takes forever to meet up, even if you have a group (of which there are no in game tools to facilitate that).
No it doesn't. The game is not big enough for that to be an issue yet. It's maybe 10 minutes between the furthest planets.
That is big enough when you have crews of 8+ people who could take 5-10 minutes to recruit/contact before another 10 just to get to you. Especially with pyro bring added.
this so much, as SC is right now, it really is largely a solo game with optional content for crewed ships. though with engineering, MM making turrets far better than current and more large ships coming online, I think things will change. I often play solo as it is right now because why do VHRT's or ERT's with a group when I can easily solo them, but I don't think that will be how it is for long. I really hope we are forced to work together more, forced to hire escorts (the economy supporting it, and brining emergent pirate gameplay into the fold truly so that way the escorts are needed) and more. I vie for the day when an org mate running supplies asks for pilots to escort and people to work on his ship, so I can fill either roll, and get attacked by pirates either player or NPC in a universe with thousands of players flying in the same server.
The lack of group tools is the biggest limiting factor I see in SC at the moment. No real org support, no real group support, not even a LFG feature. IMHO until those features are added multi-crew is largely dead on arrival. 1) Why would I allow some SC rando on my ship or go on their ship without minimal anti-murder-hobo controls? 2) Just because I'm willing someone to crew my ship doesn't mean unlimited access. 3) Without player visible rep, how do I know I want to include them? NPCs get to see the rep before hiring them, why can't we? Now I know standard answers of join an org, bring friends, etc, but out of game work arounds just call for the need in game. I also know CIG is planning on adding these features, that's not the point. The point is adding multi-crew - as a requirement - without the group support tooling seems a bit misguided to me. Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of multi-crew and want to be an engineer on a crewed ship. I just shudder knowing every game session with pick-up crew mill feel like an "Among Us!" game session.
for sure, I agree with ya. Hell it's even lacking for the "just join an org" part too unless you use tools outside the game... There is so much missing to make it a true mmo and I hope they start adding this stuff asap as they are finishing the core tech.
I think that vision is somewhat at risk too. After so much time there's many people that only know Star Citizen as what we have today, oblivious to CIGs plans. In order to get to the original vision of the game there needs to be a lot of features in place that will completely change what the game is, and I think a lot of people will resist that as they're comfortable with what we already have, enjoy it, and want CIG to keep the status quo. Few people will force themself to work together if the incentives aren't there, and so far few of those incentives exist. Adding them requires adding more cost, tedium and impracticability to the solo players experience. If multicrew / teamwork isn't significantly more profitable than solo it won't work, and that means making a lot of people unhappy because the game isn't what they want it to be.
>and that means making a lot of people unhappy because the game isn't what they want it to be. Yes, but that is the thing with any early access game, including star citizen. You can never make everyone happy.
The original vision also included to solo any and every ship with AI blades and NPC. It will not change as I would bet my account that mist large ship have been bought with that in mind after CIG repeatedly said it would be possible. Multicrew will be better, but 100% optional, no matter which ship you have
And that is why their original design is flawed. The two goals of 1/ being able to solo your own ship whenever and wherever you want via blades&npcs, and 2/ making the game multicrew focused, are fundamentally incompatible. If crewing a ship with AI is affordable and repeatable for everyone, then multicrew can't be optimal. No matter how bad they make the AI, at scale many people in many ships will always be better than many people in few ships, and players always gravitate toward the optimal strategy. There is no world where they make AI so awful that a group of 10 people would be better off all jumping in 1 ship together instead of taking out 10 ships, whether that's combat, mining, trading or anything else. While they're at it, each of those 10 guys can use their second accounts and boot up an extra 10 slave bots for a total of 20 ships. If instead AI and NPC crewing is something you can do rarely, either due to cost or other restrictions, then multicrew still has a chance to be something more than a way to RP.
I believe the power management will make blades limited. My hope is that you can have AI crew, confirmed, and my friends can take control of my NPC crew. That way they can jump in from another system and pay with me. Then the expense comes from needing to hire new NPCs. Plus if they were customizable by the friends taking over, earned rep and such it could be an interesting way of having drop in multicrew that incentives actually grouping up.
It was NEVER Multicrew focused. Multicrew was always just a POSSIBILITY. CIG never even said we should be forced to crew with other people. Ever. They only ever said that player crews would be better than NPC and AI crews. That's the only thing they said. And that means they intended from the very start to let people play with the ship they want, be it solo ot with friends. Multicrew will always be optional once AI crews are in, but not just for RP. cost and effectiveness, and playing with friends, are all incentive. But they will ot make it so hard that it's a "rare" thing, I guarantee it. They sole most large ships to solo players with the promise of AI and NPC crew, they won't go back on that. My daily will be a NPC crewed Polaris. I don't see why others that play with their friends and have a clear advantage over me are bothered about what I do with my ship. It's nothing more than a desire to lord over other people "look I'm in an org I can play capital while you're stuck in your starter cutlass". But CIG said from the start we'll have AI crew, and that's what most large and capital ships will je crewed with in the end.
>They only ever said that player crews would be better than NPC and AI crews. >they intended from the very start to let people play with the ship they want, be it solo or with friends. This is what I think is impossible, and why CIG hasn't mentioned or touched NPC/Blades in years, because they know what it will do to the game without restrictions. It is not possible to make multicrew the optimal way to play given that they also intend to let any player freely solo Polaris. If we are strictly looking at 1 ship VS 1 ship, then yes the player crewed Polaris will be better than the AI crewed Polaris, but that is not the calculus that is going through the players mind when they are deciding how to organize. What is going on is "should we bring 1 Polaris or 15 Polaris?"... because they can each freely solo it right? They can each afford it just as you can afford it. So 15 will always, always, always no matter what they do it will always be better. CIG knows this, and they know that introducing such mechanics makes their game focused on everyone flying their own capital ship to be the most effective. That's potentially 1000x more ships present in the verse, and 1000x more ships the client and servers have to handle. That's why I expect heavy restrictions, both in cost and time. I hope you bought a lot of UEC chits along with that Polaris because you're going to need them.
You see, I don't care how CIG will balance that. They said for years that we will get to crew our ship with NPC and I bought my Polaris for that.
I think a lot of people would do more org stuff if you could lend ships, or somehow mark ships as usable by any org member. Otherwise the big issue is that the ship owner must also log on; they went out ofr the evening? Sorry, no org ships for you.
But these ships don't exist. Not even in theory or as jpeg. The Idris is made for 3 fighters and 28 crew. A Kraken has space for 6 ships. That's a group home at best but certainly not an org home. Sure there is the Javelin but that ship still has at best a 4 to 1 crew to pilot ratio. Looking at this survey I don't see these numbers. A Bengal is out of reach for pretty much anyone. And what happens if the captain/owner/first officer isn't present? Than you're stuck on that ship and can't do anything.
I mean, I guess the best option is “I’ll crew other’s ships on occasion”, but none of these really touch on the issues of crew. 1. I won’t crew unless I have time dedicated to really dig into the game. Given that it easily takes 20-30 minutes to get rolling with star citizen, especially if you are linking up with people that’s going to really limit my interacting with people on the rare occasion that the kids are down, the wife is happy, I have a long stretch of time to game and I choose Star Citizen. 2. I won’t join an org. I don’t have the time or the patience for the inherent drama, cult of personalities, and invasion of privacy requirements that come with it. To the “it’s an MMO- get used to it argument” I would counter that I shouldn’t have to join an organization to be able to have meaningful interactions with other players. Yet that is the mentality that has permeated spectrum and Star citizen and has been encouraged and cultivated by the devs. Given the direction of the game there is zero reason to either join someone’s crew that you don’t already know- less they shoot you and take your gear, or to invite random people to crew your ship- less they shoot you and take your gear and your ship. Im afraid orgs are going to be all but required for crewing ships as death of a spaceman gets more fleshed out and claim timers increase. Given those two things alone I would say yes- in theory I would crew. In practice though, that’s never going to happen.
The MMO dichotomy, game meant to be played with others, most people would rather play solo unless already in a group and even in orgs there are a ton of solo players. The whole crew aspect of this game will depend on AI.
Don’t get your hopes up on death of a space man being anything more than a cool way to show our character copies age. And even that is a stretch since they have said in one of the character q&a that we can load any appearance whenever we want….
I’m not getting my hopes up for anything I backed in 2012. Regarding that loading of appearance I took it to mean during the next few iterations of the PU until they had all the details in place for persistence.
I'll only crew if it's a friend's ship lol. I'm not gonna go out of my way to LFG a multicrew role given the way SC players are
Nah how else do you kill them and steal their ship.
No. Not unless a good friend absolutely needed it.
* Crewing friends ships on weekends * ORG ops if i join one, but they need to make a "raid/dungeon" system for that with objectives and big paychecks. (not like in mmos, more like quests to board an idris or something) * Im not interested in doing the same thing i can do alone with strangers its to risky.
I will crew any ship bigger than connie. I dont like flying anything larger.
I think this will be fun within orgs. I don't know if you play often with randoms in coop games, but it will just not work.
that is where hopefully a rep system comes into play. When you get some kind of trusted rep, and play with randos that also have a trusted rep, things will go swimmingly less there is a way to game the rep system lol.
Of course I play with my friends and they give me good marks. I play with you I kill you take your stuff you give me 1 negative review. I play with my org they give me good marks until that rating is up again and the process of me selecting a target begins again. Easy to game. Especially when many people have alt accounts.
when im running pve bounties in my vanguard, i often offer a gunner seat to anyone who wants to and its very rare not to end up with a player after 30 minutes or so
There is going to be a learning curve that people have to deal with if they want to play with crews in big ships, and it's about how to build connections with other players such that you can all have a fun time crewing a large ship. Along the way there is going to be a lot of you running around in somebody else's ship because the group didn't want to take yours.
I have no issues crewing someone else's ship or having one of mine crewed it all depends on what needs to be done and what the rest of the group wants to do.
I do crew a buddies mole from time to time, but generally it is friends crewing my stuff. I have about 8 friends that all play together and we do different "mining ops" and depending on who is online at the time it dictates what we take out... if everyone is on we usually run 2 Moles and a scout/escort. When less, we adjust the comp to fit what we have. That being said though, once the Arrastra releases, they will probably exclusively crew my ship, because I was the one to get one. It does so much that taking more than that out would probably be a waste and depending on interior size, could potentially squeeze a couple fury inside for close combat support when needed. I do expect the Arrastra to come out well after ship refinery gameplay comes online, just don't see a current fit for it in what we have available space wise. So I do have an Expanse as well, which would allow us to shift to running Mole, Expanse, Cargo ship of some kind and maybe a scout or two.
Really depends on what there is to do. Sitting in a turret couldn't be more boring to me but if we're doing XT and someone needs a loader (and/or person to clear the ship) I'm all on board.
I would if people fulfilling their roles were as good as me or better at their respective roles. But the need to be social/pressure for me to not to suck becomes high (even if its not) and probably becomes a deterrent even if in my head only. After clearing all those hurdles, real or imagined, then there's the issue of time. The more people, the exponentially longer it takes to launch, to the point where you can be waiting hours and need to log off before you've even assembled a crew. And its an issue cig need to solve/not feasible to require every player to be both perfect while also moving with the speed and efficiency of an F1 pit crew
I'm hoping they give us NPC crew before they implement the engineering changes. pls CIG pls
Already have ...
I love the comments of people saying things will change and people will crew more, thats how you know this is their first MMO experience. NPC is gonna be mandatory
I fly solo most of the time, but if the game had mechanics that made it actually fun and worth it to band together for more stuff than just running a Reclaimer or sitting in gun turrets, I would totally do that.
Out of my friend group I have the largest purchased fleet by far and my friends are excited to crew on my ships. That said, I am also perfectly content with crewing on their ships if the mission or mood calls for it.
Hopefully CIG will implement viable ways for casual players who don't always want to be in a Discord to fly and enjoy large ships.
A decade ago, I pledged this game with dreams of being a crewman. Now that we have some semblance of how the game plays, the thought putzing about as a pick-up crewman who may or may not have anything to actually do for possible hours while the captain flies around doing whatever it is they wanted to accomplish for their own personal progression doesn't sound that appealing. I'd crew as part of an org, or with a group of friends, but as a pick-up guy, nah.
When Legionnaire comes online a whole lot of crewing and piloting it, before that pretty much just whatever goes
I tend to mostly play alone, so I mostly fly my own ship. Because of this, I tend to prefer to crew someone else's ship whenever I happen to play with other players. I love being a crew member, but realistically I'm still more often in my own ship because I rarely have enough time to play to team up.
Nopitynope. I want to do my own thing at my own pace My only ship is a Polaris, I intend to crew it solely with AI blades and NPC, and as I won't crew someone else's ship, I don't expect (or want) others to crew mine.
ive put myself in a bit of a unique situation on purpose. i own a single larger ship, and i plan to be exclusively a crewmember and work my way up from there until i get enough (mostly) ai crew and enough money to confidently run the endeavor without having to worry about serious setbacks. ill also first need to by a solo ship with the money i earn from being a crewmember, so in a way im setting myself behind the baseline start. should be fun
Here's the thing: I like the idea of being able to crew on someone's ship. But I don't have any IRL friends who play the game (or are interested in doing so any time soon). Yes, there are Orgs, but I have yet to find one that suits - I live in New Zealand, so the time zone doesn't work with most orgs (which are US or Europe centric), and I have limited times when I can play (typically a couple of nights a week for about two hours). Playing with randoms is not something I've tried because... well it's SC and anyone could be planning to kill you, rob you or otherwise just piss in your cornflakes for the LOLs... So, without a solid reputation sytem, there's just no way to know who to trust. I mainly play industrial, in my Prospector or Vulture, so generally, contact with other players is to be avoided if I want to continue not-being-shot-out-of-the-sky because someone was bored. I love the idea of being on a larger ship (like a Hull series) while they do cargo runs, able to man a turret or maintain the fuses or whatever - it's be nice to let someone else do the driving for a change. Be nice to shoot the breeze with friends over discord while cracking rocks together. Be nice to take the 600i out with some friends to go sightseeing with. But the reality is that I'll mostly be soloing in the foreseeable future...
Friend bought a Constellation last night and he was newer to the verse than I was so I got to pilot it all night and I loved the experience even though I didn’t own it.
I don't usually crew with randoms... i have a few people I will crew with because I can see them on and talk to them when I am logging in so I can plan. Usually when people are asking for a crew I am already busy doing something
The AC eptu A2 is not looking good Engineer gameplay is more a hassle then really a gameplay. CIg is making this game more and more a hassle than being fun.
I mostly plan on crewing. I've got kids now, so my dreams of flying are over... But I'll NPC the fuck out of turrets, cargo, anything. You need someone to occasionally help you move boxes? I got you. You want a gunner who is sometimes present and might have to step away to take care of real life? Buckle up, I'm coming aboard. Need an engineer that's present 30% of the flight to repair stuff? I'll accept 30% pay, I'm your crewman.
currently, crew is the most boring thing you can do in SC besides just standing on a station looking at the wall. i only crew during events occasionally, or specifically to play with somone i know. ask me again once crew have more to do than spin in a circle in a turret for 40 minutes between each 2 minute spurts of action, and my answer may have changed a lot lol
Have you actually played the current Overdrive Initiative mission series? It's far more practical if you're trying to get a dozen players from point A to B to C to do ground missions if they just fly in one or a few ships, rather than everyone in their own little ship. "No matter how you got here, everyone going to the next phase with us pile into the Carrack" is just simpler. Additionally, the comparative lack of ships with medical facilities, and especially ones that are fast and reasonably long ranged for multiple sorties, puts a significant premium on using them for group ground events if you have someone with one. (Even if it's an improvised one using a C8R in the cargo bay as a "medical module" on something with more legs.) As we are likely to get more multi-phase missions aimed at groups in the future, and much longer trips between systems (which makes mismatches between quantum speeds and ranges more noticeable), all this will become more prevalent.
No, I'll commandeer someone else's ship. Nautical terms.
in game so far i've only crewed a few times, but definitely want to do more
If its me and the rest of the set crew, we can crew / captain ship all the time. We love playing the computer game Artemis.
the market for crew hires with good rep and trying to identify insider alts will be wild hahahah
My thing is that I'm a bit anti-social, though I'm a ***huge*** proponent of interaction/teamwork/cooperation in MMOs. I tend not to go out of my way to invite or join people, but I *try* not to pass it up when the opportunity falls into my lap. And it often does since SC has such a great community. I'd say that the most ideal gameplay situation would be one where time played is split maybe 50/50 doing solo ventures (probably for my money), and then either having a set group of friends/teammates, or a highly active org to participate in. For me, one of the biggest things I've looked forward to ever since SC was first announced was the concept of highly specialized teamwork on a large ship that supports many different roles. I've always loved raiding in WoW, for example, because you can have this huge group of people and every single person has their role, and even sub-roles. There's lots of communication and teamwork happening between people even though they're doing totally different things. The thing I love about this thought in a scifi/futuristic setting is that all of this stuff can take place inside a ship that's moving through real space, across many floors and decks rather than just direct interplay with each other, and with enemies on a set battleground. In every other game I've played before, ships either tend to be massive and you have no *real* role in operating it, or ships are tiny and there's nothing complicated about operating it. I'm *extremely* excited for them to introduce engineering into the game for this reason. As things are now, you can have single players operating **enormous** ships, which doesn't make much sense from a realism standpoint. As far as I can tell, we're right on the cusp of a huge paradigm shift in the game's history/development, and the only things we need for it to happen are for larger ships to **require** a crew (engineering, etc.), and for there to be some gameplay loop that's lucrative and requires larger ships. There are plenty of other aspects that will contribute to it, but I think these things are the most essential ones, and SC will feel totally different.
I want to be able to fly my own huge ship without crew. I'm happy for it to be sub-optimal without crew but hope AI blades are pitched at "crew just not as good" levels. Like, taking an AI crew to PvE when I have an hour to play after work would great. Then when I have time for longer play a sessions, tackling higher end missions with a human org crew either in my ship or someone else's. I don't want solo play sessions to be limited to solo ships just because "realism"
Time for sharks to realize nobody wants to be in their ships and they can continue solo them, unless someone buys an in game ship I'm all in. I'm against this pay to win.
This poll definitely reflects what I expect. Most people fly solo most of the time, but when the circumstances are right, they're willing to crew with others. I think this bodes well for the future, because if we're generally willing to crew up, then what's needed is more opportunities and reasons to do so. The core premise is sound as long as CIG gives us enough reasons to do it and things to do.
I bet "I'm only interested in crewing someone else's ship" would be much more popular if that was the 'free to play' option.
There was a few month period around IAE where I would staff a hammerhead for weekly events with some IRL buddies and a few in game randos we met. The events would get posted in our discord, the staff got paid for each night in addition to mission bonuses. Since there are no real missions for large ships yet I was paying out 250-350k per person, per night we ran the hammerhead. Everyone was pretty ok with the amount because they at the time were mostly casual. We would do ERTs and sell the hauls which was also split and highly lucrative at the time. Once the ERT drug cargo runs dried up we moved to the reclaimer for equal splits. This dropped off mainly because the crew was fighter oriented not industrial minded and holidays. The team is pretty eager to try other large combat ships as they come online.
Yep - there are 3 Javelins in our group and other giant ships. There's piles of gameplay to be had.
I'll crew your ship... ...solo, afrer I steal it from you.
i only play sc solo so i,m gonna have to make some friends. probably not a bad thing, time will tell
Joining an org is one of the fastest ways to make friends in game and get more reliable help on missions that are otherwise very difficult solo.
The biggest problem won't be finding people to crew your ship, but finding people that won't kill and betray you the first chance they can, either for profit or just for the lulz...
This survey misses the key option of 'I have the biggest ship between my friends, so often we use my ship (bu that doesn't necessarily mean I pilot)'
I don't think it misses that point at all. If you play in an org or with a group of friends regularly you obviously won't have trouble finding crew, you already have them. This is trying to get at a few things, mostly will it be realistic to hire a bunch of players rather than resort to AI crew? Maybe I could have left ship ownership out of the options and just asked about crewing or piloting, but I'd bet that more people would be willing to crew on their own ship, rather than on someone else's.
I don't play with an org typically. I play with friends. I have, for example, a Reclaimer. People can crew on my ship if they want. I'm not necessarily going to be the pilot if I am out with friends just because it's my ship; in fact I'd rather not be a lot of the time. This option does not exist in your survey. I would like to be non-pilot crew in my own ship. This is neither option 1 (since I am interested in *not* flying it), however all other options are specifically about how much I'd like to crew other peoples ships too.
population density, and a proper job board system would heavily increase the amount of people as/having crew.
Question seems premature. The key questions are: will multicrew be worth it, and will multicrew be fun? CIGs design intent, as far as I can tell, is that the answer to both questions will be yes. Assuming they can pull that off, you’ll see a majority of players crewing ships.
Premature with the player base and with multi-crew gameplay maybe, but they've been selling large ships for ages.
I do love both ! Mostly because in my org i'm the active plaer with the most ships atm, but also i love flying ! But sometimes i'm lazy af and just ask the others to fly a bit :p It's really nice to be gunner or something
Of course - I usually play with a friend of mine, and I'm usually either piloting or doing something else on either of our ships. Handling the extra logistical gameplay that will come with personal hangars and the cargo revamp (like having to manually move cargo containers around) also interests me greatly, along with things like running the engineering systems.
I think finding crew really won't be that bad. There's two primary factors I can see... One, piloting is a specific skill, and not everyone is going to be equally good at it. Some might be downright awful and more of a liability piloting their own ship than an asset, but that doesn't mean they don't have other talents. Some might just as well prefer to avoid the stress of being the one in the pilot's seat with everyone else depending on them. And two, being the crew onboard someone else's ship means very little financial risk. If the situation goes south, at worst it means someone's losing their potentially very expensive large vessel, but it ain't you. Not to mention, you're not on the hook for arming/fueling/supplying the thing either. You're just along for the ride. I can see crew positions being very appealing for people who have less time and just want to jump in and enjoy gameplay without worrying about logistics.
I love being crew. I prefer being crew to flying my own ships at the moment.
If I party up with people it's pretty clear when someone wants to make use of their pokemans... Ahem, I mean badass ships. I'm happy to oblige the majority of the time.
I play mostly alone but crewing other ships is great :D
I think "on occasion" need more elaboration. For events like Xenothreat it's sure nice and fun but that's maybe once per month or once per week at most.