The Role of Player Gear

Why have player gear?

The Role of Player Gear

Primary Goals

• Assist players when tackling challenges outside their vehicle.
• PVE - Allows players to kill and loot locations inaccessible from their vehicle.
• PVP - Offers players additional tactical possibilities during engagements.
• Provide additional support to their respective vehicles.
• There are tasks and capabilities that vehicles are unable to perform.
• Present players with more strategic decisions during customization.

Secondary Goals

• Contribute to a vehicle’s capabilities during vehicular engagements.

How Important should Player Gear be?

How much should I care?

How Important should Player Gear be?

How Important should Player Gear be?

• The amount of human-scale tactical options will determine how important Player Gear will be.
• During a vehicular engagement:
• If players can only meaningfully contribute from a vehicle station, having a deep repertoire of player gear options is irrelevant.
• This is our current state of affairs.
• If players can attempt to board, sabotage, hack, disable, and damage other vehicles with player gear, its importance becomes extremely high.
• To provide the best long-term and enduring experience, it is in our best interest to provide loads of human-scale options without over-shadowing our vehicular options.

How Important should Player Gear be?

How Important should Player Gear be?

• Our giant vehicles are one of our unique selling points and should be given the priority when it comes to production and player focus.
• We need a good balance between human-scale and vehicle-scale options, and they should ideally complement each other.

Probably this one

Is Player Gear persistent?

Or just reset it every game?

Let’s Define Persistence

• Item persistence means these items can:
• Be acquired before or during a run.
• Be carried over between runs.
• Be lost forever.
• Loss conditions are undecided ATM.

Why have item persistence at all?

• It adds a lot of stakes to a match.
• Losing powerful and exciting items creates a lot of tension to use them.
• It allows for exciting and deep progression.
• Example: “Bring item A, B and C to this NPC, then successfully extract to unlock this.”
• It adds a moderate amount of variance during the match.
• It’s an evolution of the Battle-Royale genre; now players may or may not start with some equipment instead of always starting with nothing.
• Yet it preserves the aspect of finding random stuff on the battlefield.

Why have item persistence at all?

• We also have the unique opportunity of using our vehicles as a foundation players can always rely on.
• This means even if a player loses all of his gear with no backup, they can always rely on having a performant vehicle.

How should Player Gear persistence work?

What do I keep? What do I lose?

Unified Inventory

Contextual Inventory/Slots

Unified Management

Contextual Management

NEW

OLD

NEW

OLD

NEW

OLD

General Stash

Item Specific Stash

Player

Stash

No Stash

Player

Stash

Global Insurance

Limited Insurance

Weapon

Persistent

Insurance

Non-Consumable

Persistent

Insurance

Free

(If Unlocked)

Grenades

Backpack Item

Consumable

• Very little inventory management.
• Either during or post-game.
• Basic “insurance” mechanic.
• Let's players start with chosen items.
• Some for free, no hassle.
• Some items can be carried over but cannot be started with, no matter the player progression.
• Total losses are minor setbacks.

• Inventory management is expected between runs.
• Inventory and stash handling is mandatory.
• Complex insurance mechanics that are core to the experience.
• Most items require insurance.
• Total losses are meant to be crippling.

• Inventory management is expected between runs.
• Inventory and stash handling is mandatory.
• Complex insurance mechanics that are core to the experience.
• Total losses are meant to be crippling.

• Very little inventory management.
• Either during or post-game.
• Basic “insurance” mechanic.
• Let's players start with chosen items.
• Some for free, no hassle.
• Some items can be carried over but cannot be started with, no matter the player progression.
• Total losses are minor setbacks.

• Considering how game is meant to target a broader audience we should aim for a more streamlined solution.
• Inventory management is often a pain point when it comes to console-centric games.

How should Player Gear persistence really work?

For real now!

• Weapons are what players use to attack and defend

• Gadgets are active support items that complement player capabilities.
• Players have to press an input to use them.

• Body and Head items are passive items that yield additional benefits.

• Backpacks affect the size of their inventory
• Some advanced backpacks may yield additional passive benefits.

• All general items and resources go into the backpack.
• All of the other items above cannot be placed into the backpack.
• See Contextual Inventory in previous section

Weapon

Gadget 1

Gadget 2

Body Slot

Head Slot

Backpack Slot

Backpack Content

• Materials
• Fuel Additives
• Ingredients

Vehicle

• Vehicle category includes frames, parts, stations, or anything related to vehicles the player cannot carry.
• This means special ammo, boosts, additives, or any other type of consumables that players can find and collect belong in the backpack.
• See below for details

Persistent

Persistent

Persistent

Persistent

Persistent

• All of the player’s items are persistent.
• This means these items can:
• Be acquired before or during a run.
• Be carried over between runs.
• Be lost forever.
• Loss conditions are undecided ATM.

Weapon

Gadget 1

Gadget 2

Body Slot

Head Slot

Backpack Slot

Backpack Content

• Materials
• Fuel Additives
• Ingredients

Vehicle

Permanent

• Vehicle, either frames, parts, or stations, are permanent.
• When players unlock a vehicle part, they have permanent access to it and always have it available when starting a run.
• This presentation doesn’t touch too much on this topic but makes this assumption.

Weapon

Gadget 1

Gadget 2

Body Slot

Head Slot

Backpack Slot

Backpack Content

• Materials
• Fuel Additives
• Ingredients

Persistent

Persistent

Persistent

Persistent

Persistent

• Some of these items can be stashed.
• Stashes are in-between-game inventory where items are preserved and safe.
• Backpack content does not have a stash to reduce inventory management between games.
• See previous broader audience section.

Stash

Stash

Stash

Vehicle

Permanent

TBD

Providers

Providers

• The HUB will feature providers for different item types.
• These providers will award free items on a timer.
• Here are some examples:
• The weapon merchant will offer a free gun (weapon) every x hours.
• A tomato plant will offer free tomatoes (ingredient, backpack content) every x hours.
• This would emulate the insurance mechanics of other games of this genre.
• Its purpose is to allow players to always have a backup in case of a wipe.
• Additionally, these providers may also offer items that players can purchase using some form of soft currency.
• For example, a player can pay soft currency to the weapon merchant to immediately get a shotgun.
• Player progression would leverage these providers.
• Details in the next section.

Ingredients

Additives

Material

Merchant

Provider

Merchant

Provider

Merchant

Provider

Garden

Provider

Chemical Lab

Provider

Foundry

Provider

???

Weapon

Gadget 1

Gadget 2

Body Slot

Head Slot

Backpack Slot

Backpack Content

• Materials
• Fuel Additives
• Ingredients

Persistent

Persistent

Persistent

Persistent

Persistent

Stash

Stash

Stash

Vehicle

Permanent

TBD

How should Player Gear progress?

How do I improve?

How should Player Gear progress?

• Since players do not have a permanent inventory, the progression would be oriented towards the Providers of each respective category of gear.
• Each progression event would result in the following:
• Access to new purchasable gear.
• Some gear could be improved / rare version of gear.
• Access to new free gear.
• Lowered free gear timer.
• Lowered price for purchasable gear.
• Increased stash size.

Free Gun ever 1 hour!

AK-47 down to 90$!

2

3

AK-47 Unlocked!

1

How should Player Gear progress?

• Some unique providers could offer access that standard providers do not.
• Example: the Explosive Experts sells missile launchers which the normal weapon merchant does not offer, BUT she only shows up every X hours; otherwise, she is absent.
• Progressing the Explosive Experts could increase her presence frequency.

How should Player Gear progress?

• Players earn xp & levels when completing runs.
• Successful extraction more XP.
• Leveling up can unlock new providers.
• These providers each have their own individual progression to unlock new content & features.
• Progressing these providers may require these actions to progress:
• Specific quest/missions must be completed during a run.
• Specific gear must be extracted with.
• Specific gear milestones must be obtained.

1

2

3

Gear

Gear

Gear

Gear

Extraction

Player Level

Backpack Item

Quest

Extraction

Gear Milestone

Extraction

Gear Level

Extraction?

Game

Post-Game

TBD

• Backpack content, wtf is it?
• Insurance, is it good to not have it?