Ghost Hollow
Ghost Hollow delivers an interesting and engaging PvP scenario never seen before in the game, accessible at all times. This was a solo project that I have pitched and added to the game.
The PvP element is entirely systemic and player driven. The event triggers and ends according to player actions and is unrelated to the contract manager or to event schedules.
A lot of economy design and balancing efforts have gone into this location as it greatly impacts the economy of the game and for a fair PvP experience.
Ghost Hollow is a settlement created from a crashed Reclaimer ship. Enemy NPCs occupy the location and offer multiple PvE missions such as eliminate all, steal cargo, assassination, etc.
The location also offers totally new PvP systemic player driven gameplay. Players need to fight for control over terminals for a chance at big credit payouts. The whole event requires a player to hack the comm array orbiting the planet. When the process has started, the whole solar system is notified and players can travel to Ghost Hollow to participate in the fight. A player could also stop the process by bringing the comm array back online. This also creates interesting fights off planet.
The reception and the player engagement of this PvP scenario has been incredibly positive.
Star Citizen Alpha 3.19: Call to Adventure
Design:
-It is a location that is both PvE and PvP with interesting spots to explore with hidden loot and minor puzzles.
-This creates a specific location for players to engage in PvP. they now know exeactly where to go for this type of gameplay. Plus, Ghost Hollow is perfect as there's a respawn point with guns and armors just over it. Players can login and jump into action very quickly.
-The event is entirely systemic and makes use of the comm array, which is underused. Hacking the array makes the event accessible, but also means that players can engage in combat without having any crimestats.
Challenges :
-The settlement is made from an existing ship and it was difficult to work around that layout and limitations.
-The PvP scenario was a solo project. It means it was a lot of UI creation, game design, economy design, level design and scripting for a single person.
-The balancing and testing has been a long ongoing process, including post release, spending a lot of time with players too.
-Ghost Hollow is both a PvE and PvP location and needs to be interesting in both situations regardless of the number of players.
-As it is a systemic scenario, everything needed to be clear and intuitive enough that they figure out by themselves how things work.
-There are a lot of edge cases and in a situation where we have seen up to 50 vs 50 battles there, the script needed to be extremely solid. This is the location that has given me the most pressure and still does as the player engagement is high.
Star Citizen and everything here is under the ownership of Cloud Imperium Games. For more information, visit the 3.19 patch notes.