Asphalt 9 Dev Chat (March 2021 - Career)

The March 2021 Dev Chat was the 7th Dev-Chat and was done on March 26, 2021, it was centered in discussing changes and improvements to the Career mode appart of other extra stuff.
== Full #Dev-Chat-Answer ==
Chris718:
Hey everyone, I hope you are all having a good end of the week (be it the start of the day, middle or end)
so this month we are talking about something that we haven't discussed in a bit (if ever) which is career mode, were it sits now and what are the plans for it long term.
Once again a big thanks to everyone who submitted questions it helps me try and answer as much as I can and gives the team a feel for what everyone is interested in and wants to know. so before I start with some answers, I actually have a couple questions for all of you
Mina will put up some polls in the #dev-chat-vote channel in a bit so please take a look at them and give us your vote
Question 1 so the first thing I'd like to get a feel for is how many of you play the new career season that is added with each update?
and Question 2 secondly do you finish it or only play through it partly?
so while the polls go up let's get the ball rolling with a bit of general career mode information
Who is it aimed at?
Well the simple answer is that the career is aimed at everyone. A little bit more complicated is that the career mode besides being a solo mode that you can play and complete at your own pace is actually targeted at 2 groups of players.
The first group are new players in the game. Career is how we help onboard people, let them unlock and get access to the first few cars and get familiar with the base mechanics of the game.
The second group is obviously everyone else. The reason we keep adding to career each season is to keep providing more solo content for everyone. Even if you don't play it in 1 season it is still there for you to come back to when you want. So what does this mean with regards to career long term (and the answers to your questions)?
well it means 2 things: 
# Any changes we do to career we need to take into account the impact for new players and existing players 
# Any changes we do cannot take away the time and effort you have already put into the career.
so what are we thinking about?
First thing
Well the first thing we are looking at involves a bit of an elephant in the room when it comes to the current career mode.
Which is that it can be pretty overwhelming for a new player with all of the different seasons and multiple chapters. At the same time the flow between seasons and chapters does not always move in a linear method so it feels like you are jumping around unlocks which makes it hard to see what you have done/not done and overall progression.
Additionally it muddies the water when it comes to longer term rewards you can get in career as it is not always clear what seasons you need to do to get a guaranteed reward.
So one of the first things we are looking at is re-organizing the layout and flow.
This will mean a few things: -Ordering of seasons will obviously move around -We will potentially end up with "new" chapters to allow us to chunk things up more (I'll talk about chapters a bit more shortly)
A new chapter So what does this mean for chapters in career? Firstly it means we can look at our chapters and set them up so that we have "mandatory" chapters which are ones everyone should do to unlock guaranteed rewards and we can focus on using for onboarding of new players.
Secondly it means the seasonal elements we add in each update can be added in a manner that will make them easier to find (can be a problem at times) as well as let us look at a few other things for career. Third and most important it means we can add brand new chapters to the mode in a manner that keeps a logical flow, doesn't make the current setup worse by building on a foundation that isn't intended to support it
by separating things out it also helps us with balancing overall of the career progression as a new player may enter chapter and select a season with cars they haven't unlocked yet and feel blocked when really they should be playing on a different bath.
What would be in a new chapter?
or to phrase it another way what makes up a chapter?
New chapters would obviously consist of new missions, rewards etc but additionally it will give us the opportunity to do things such as: -Add new BP for cars not currently found in career (as these new chapters would be aimed at players with higher garage level) -Potentially unlocks of an entire car (maybe, don't quote me on this) -More maps (not just existing ones but also some of the new ones coming up) -More room to theme seasons in the chapter around tracks, missions etc.
A question that i'm sure will come up if we do this is 
What if I've already done all of the career?
As mentioned above any re-organization that we do will need to ensure you don't lose any of your progress, it's one of the key reasons we would re-organize everything before we add a new chapter so that we can make it both easy for ourselves (as we will know were everyone is exactly at that time) as well as for you as you will be able to clearly see what you are up to.
Seasonal pieces with each update
I mentioned previously we would be able to more easily show the seasonal additions that we add with each update. Looking at the poll it seems people are playing them (which our data also shows us) so we would keep adding these
but because they won't get added within the chapters we will be able to make them stand out more clearly. Be it adding them as a "side career" or use them to start building even further chapters (so we wouldn't add just 1 new chapter but could add X)
So what about game modes in career?
I saw a few questions submitted around this and in the current chat, so let me give you some more info here.
Again short answer is yup
I don't know if anyone has noticed but in the last year we have actually taken some modes that were previously found in career and have made them available in Daily events and SE
likewise we have looked at modes not used in career (e.g. money run) and have looked at moving them into career so that we can start using them.
Additionally one of our goals this year is to bring new modes to the game and we will plan to have these modes introduced both via an event but also added into career. Assuming of course the mode works with AI and doesn't require multiplayer (e.g. 1 vs 1)
Onboarding new players
I mentioned the onboarding of new players early, and this is something that someone made as a comment in a previous devchat
at times it can be hard for new players to catch up
they don't have access to all the cars that veteran players have and often the only way to do that is via the various events that are run which can be tough as they don't have the best cars to compete at times
so how do we think we can solve this?
Well that's is were not only the reorganization can help by having manadatory chapters vs. optional ones so we can ensure they get a "starter set" of cars that will help them start competing
additionally we have been thinking about what we are currently calling side elements
So what are they?
Side elements is a catch all term we are using at the moment for things like the additional seasonal updates that wouldn't go into a chapter
but probably more of interest to you it also includes the idea we have had bouncing around of "mini daily events"
which for a lack of a better term would be events that are a smaller and simplified version of the daily events that are present in the mode not just based upon time but driven more by specific criteria
For example: We could have a mini car hunt that is present if you don't have car X and stays until you get it to 2 stars.
Now this would mean these sorts of events would be present for everyone who met the criteria, so even a veteran player might see them as they might not have stared up a car and would now have a chance to do so at their own pace.
Ok let me take a look at some of the new questions and give some answers
Mastery
I've seen a few comments on this, and it's the sort of idea we would look at for the side elements. It doesn't fit perfectly for a career chapter or season but it works perfectly for an addition.
Cops vs Robbers
So this is something that's come up a bit, being able to be the cops rather than being chased by them. It is actually a mode we have thought about and want to design. Obviously we have cop cars already in the game but what we still need to work out is not just making sure you could drive as them but how would the AI work for the chase. But yes it's on our to do list and would be a good addition to a career season. We could even do it as a back and seasons one from the cop point of view and 1 from the robber.
Rewards
As part of our re-organization we will look at rewards overall. both for existing ones to make sure they work but also for how we will approach future ones. I will note that if we change existing ones and give out more rewards we will need to make sure that if you have already completed the career you would get the additional rewards so as to not penalize players.
MP in career
At this point in time there is no plan to do MP in career. The aim of career is to be solo mode that you can play at your own pace which goes against the MP side of the game.
LP cars in career
I've seen a few comments about LP cars in career, we will take a look and see about not always having them as it can be annoying to be 1 flag away from completion. The flip side is we may still use them as some LP cars will come back into wider rotation so while it means you might not be able to complete it now you will in the future.
Mini event clarification
To clarify on this and in general, the cars we reward in career are generally those which are older so they don't appear in live events as much or are cars that when used in live events are secondary
so rewards in career and the mini events would allow you to get these cars to 1 or 2 stars to help you use them in live events
Mission requirements
I didn't mention it previously but worth mentioning it here, we want to add more mission requirements in the game (not just career but across the board)
this not only allows us to make them more interesting it helps bring variety.
While this would have a massive impact on career as it is something that affects the game globally we are looking at this as a separate block of work that hopefully we can do before we do the reorganization (which is a ton more work)
GP tracks in career
I saw this and good idea, it is something we can look at doing for sure
F1 in A9
Would be nice but yeah I don't see it happening anytime soon both due to licensing and if those cars leave the ground their never coming back down
Car keys in career
This has come up a few times, right now we don't have a plan to have a car key in career.
Having said that there is no reason why we might not, it very much will depend on how we want a car to be unlocked it could be collect BP and you get the unlock or it could be complete X seasons and get a key.
Key's are just a mechanism for unlocking cars so it will depend on how we setup rewards
Daily play career
Yes for sure, as mentioned since career helps with onboarding we are also looking at our overall onboarding approach and one area we have looked at and would like to change is our daily missions
and make them a bit more contextual to overall progression as well as add variety.
Season about exclusive manufacturer 
We try to theme our seasonal career additions based upon that season
but when we build new chapters this is obviously outside the normal "season" so no reason we couldn't make it all about manufacturer X
Getting a manufacturer car for completion
Maybe is all I can say on this it will depend. Generally it wouldn't be for a single season but more for a couple of seasons or a chapter or even X flags.
Remove fuel in career
In general no, career shouldn't be something you blow through in 1 day (it means we would have to make a ton more to keep up which means we couldn't do other work). Having said that we are looking at potentially allowing free tries in career
so you would be able to play with a car you don't have (and could solve some of the LP car requirements)
Alright we have about 5min left so get your last questions in now!
off topic club changes No precise timeline other than we are working on something now that you will see in the 2nd half of the year
timelines in general I try to avoid talking timelines until we actually start code and art work on something mainly because so many things can happen to derail the plans (like lots of people having kids and going on leave so we can't do as much )
for career and onboarding we want to start working on it later this year so hopefully changes will come towards the end of the year but that is still pretty vague at this point in time. As we get closer we can give more precise information.
Decals, emoticons, titles 
Decals we are limited but can look at adding as rewarda Emoticons we can add Titles is a new feature and probably out of scope for now
for decals even something as simple as a stripe needs to go through licensing and manufacturer approval so not quick to do or even possible at times.
Covid and development 
Yes it has impacted it to some extent, there obviously was a ramp up curve of learning for everyone working remote and somethings are not as efficient (design brainstorms are tougher without beer and whiteboard) but overall the team has adapted really well
development in and of itself is a ton of work and has lots of unknowns and ups and downs that's why things can take longer than expected at times and we try to plan as far ahead as we can
That's all folks!!
Alright that's a wrap, thanks again everyone for joining today and have a good weekend.
== #Dev-Chat-Vote ==
Mina:
===== Vote 1 =====
Hey Legends! 
We are planning to change the locations of Elite Events in all classes. Take part of the poll and vote your favorite location. 
* San Francisco 
* Scotland 
* Himalayas 
* Rome 
* Shanghai 
* Cairo 
* U.S. Midwest 
* The Caribbean 
* Osaka 
* New York 
* Nevada
[Top 3 were Scotland, Nevada and Shanghai]
===== Vote 2 =====
Do you play the new career season that is added with each update? 
[Most people do play the new career seasons]
===== Vote 3 =====
Select the option that is roughly closest to how much you play it. 
* Don’t play 
* Finish <25% 
* Finish about 50% 
* Finish about 75% 
* Finish the entire thing
[Most people finish about 75% of the new career seasons]
===== Vote 4 =====
How did you like the Career Mode in general? (1 - I do not like it at all, 5 - I love it)
[Most people were indiferent with it]
Category:Asphalt 9 Dev Chats