We all enjoyed your video interview months ago at the announcement of Stars Reach. That was recorded in May and debuted in June. (Editor’s note: it’s here if you missed it.)
What’s been the most rewarding or unexpected development in your work since the June 2024 announcement?
Avi: The fact that we’ve been running playtests almost weekly (and sometimes even more frequently!) means players get to see our work almost immediately. Even debugging mundane bugs and crashes has become a lot more fun because I know there are folks who are really looking forward to those fixes and will notice right away. This obviously applies even more to the highly visible gameplay features, and the constant positive feedback loop we have with the tester community is so invigorating.
Light: Hands down the most rewarding thing has been getting the game into the hands of players. We’ve always wanted to work closely with the community while making Stars Reach, and well before we revealed the game there was an unofficial Discord with a bunch of great people who were following our progress on our unannounced game. Finally getting to the point where a bunch of those people (and many others who’ve joined the adventure) are actually in the game and giving us feedback has been unbelievably rewarding. Whether it’s reporting issues in current playtests or sharing hopes of what future playtests may hold, it’s been great hearing from everyone and I love that we’re at a place where we can move forward together.
How have players in the playtest community surprised you over the past few months?
Avi: I expected to be surprised and impressed by our community from the beginning so in a way, I’m not at all surprised that I’m surprised and impressed at their creativity! Some of you have figured out neat tricks with the simulation like lithifying certain types of soil into stone and then melting it to create quartz, which is a useful gemstone for a bunch of crafting recipes. I didn’t even know you could do that! I just used it recently in an internal test to craft some new tools myself and others on the dev team were like, wait, how did you do that?! I can’t wait to see what other crazy things we learn from you all.
Light: The best thing about this kind of game is you can pretty much always count on players being able to surprise you. As long as you give players interesting options and a good simulation to play with, they will find ways to make it do things you didn’t intend. But actually the most surprising thing to me from our community hasn’t been an in-game mechanical interaction, but rather the social interactions that we’re already getting. We know the big-picture vision of our game has tons of support for social interactions, but the current in-game versions are pretty limited. And yet we have people in playtests who are not just excited to play, but who are already grouping up and coordinating team efforts to try to see just how far their creativity can go. We’ve had people work together to try to sculpt statues or write words on the sides of mountains. We’ve had people group up to try to make a mountain fall by collectively carving away its base. We’ve just recently had a group of people start making plans before the playtest even started to try to figure out what they were going to build together. That blew me away. We knew we were building a game that would encourage those kinds of social interactions, but given how few of our planned social systems are in right now (and how fleeting some of these early playtests are) I wasn’t sure how much social play we’d be seeing this early. Needless to say it’s been an absolute delight to watch.
What are you most excited to show the players in the next 6 months?
Avi: Combat is very near and dear to my heart and while what we have in game today is perfectly serviceable and already pretty fun, we have some big upgrades planned that will make it feel much more polished and responsive. We’ve been hard at work on some of the non-combat trees and performance and stability, but combat will have its day soon and I’m super hyped for it!
Light: Building off of my last answer, I’m excited to get more of the social systems in. We have so many tools and ideas to help players actually play together instead of just ‘playing separately in the same space’. In the immediate future we’re adding Gifting (which is the beginnings of an actual player economy!) and the rough beginnings of Homestead Permissions, but we’ve got plenty more to add and we’d like to start doing so soon! This is where I have to make my obligatory disclaimer that I’m not making feature or timeline promises… But some of the features we have planned that I suspect will make appearances soon include a Leadership Profession which will start out helping groups in combat, more ways to trade with other players including trading information not just items, and possibly even the start of Player Contracts.
For someone just joining the playtest, what’s your top tip for getting the most out of their first session?
Avi: This one’s easy! Now that our video NDA has been lifted, the pre-alpha tester community has already been creating guides for each other. Check out Rommi Noodles’ Pre-Alpha Beginner Guide on YouTube for a taste of what’s in the tests so far and some of the strategies and approaches they’ve already discovered: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsP7Ob4qtm0
Light: I think Avi already hit the nail on the head: The best way to start learning how to play an MMO has always been (and always will be) the friends you make along the way. So join the Discord, during playtests join the voice chat, and don’t be shy if you have questions! That said, I definitely understand that it might be a little overwhelming to be just dropped into one of our playtests. There’s a lot of tools, professions, and even movement options to learn, and we’re adding more all the time! So my advice would be to narrow your focus instead of trying to learn everything at once. Pick which sounds the most interesting to you between “Fighting”, “Exploring”, or “Gathering Resources,” and start learning just the things you need to do that thing. Each of those will eventually lead to learning the other two, and the three of them collectively will lead towards Crafting, Home Building, and more. One of the advantages of Stars Reach is there’s no single ‘right way’ to play, there’s lots of playstyles so if you know what your personal playstyle is just focus on the things you know you usually enjoy. We’re planning to add more in-game onboarding for First Time Players very soon, so that should help as well, but one more time for emphasis: the best resource for any MMO is its community.
Thank you to Avi and Light for taking the time to ask questions.
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