The game's bad reputation comes from, quite frankly, horrid public relations efforts from CIG. Originally, all was good and it had this open cool indie vibe, there was lots of discussion with the devs about game mechanics and how things would be, what the plans were, ect.
Then somewhere along the way, they got a TON of money, stopped communicating much outside of ship sales, missed every single deadline they set by between a month and a year+, and the whole response to the thing was basically "Trust us guys", and the community going "YOU DON'T SEE THE GENIUS OF LORD ROBERTS, BELIEVE OR YOU'RE A TROLL".
This is amid accusations of poor treatment of employees, mismanaging money, extremely slow progress on the game, the question of how much of the money is already gone, increasingly expensive ship sales and increasing attempts to build hype, continued failure to communicate even slightly negative facts like "We've delayed another week" [Seriously, CIGs response to Star Marine being indefinitely delayed was to make that decision, wait 3 weeks, make a post about it, then less than a week later criticise the media for misinterpreting indefinitely delayed. Not the greatest communication to be honest].
So, yeah, honestly, CIG dropped the ball there recently, as has the community. Its extremely ambitious, but so would be me saying I'll build a space elevator for $100 million. Yet most here would call me a snake oil salesman if I were to try and say I'd do that, but Chris Roberts will obviously pull it off because its been a decade since he's done games but he's a real swell guy.
Basically, this community, and CIG themselves at times, take any form of scepticism too personally, and as an attack on the project. If you don't believe, you're a troll. If you exercise caution and want to wait because there's a fair chance CR won't deliver, you just want SC to fail. And sadly its not all of the community, there are a number of really great people who have been here since the beginning, and who are new to the community, who understand that this is something to be sceptical about, and that there is no guarantee that it'll work, and right now it certainly isn't showing the desired progress and is a reasonably flawed game - but that you can have faith and believe it will turn out great in the end. And better yet, that that faith is your own, and isn't mandatory to talk about the game.
Unfortunately, there is a rather cult-like sect of the community that sees anyone saying anything that doesn't sing Robert's praises to the high heavens as clickbait, spam, trolling, and just plain wrong. And CIG themselves, at times, act similarly to media reports, whilst other times they manage it reasonably well.
With a rabid cult-like community, poor communication on core issues, and the lack of guarantee that the game will ever release... Yeah, I can't see why people may not be praising the game to the high heavens. Nope, no clue at all. Obviously all trolls.
I'd love this game to turn out great, and there's definitely a chance it will, but you've also got to respect that a less optimistic, more realistic view exists with less certainty in this outcome. Trying to shut this outlook down honestly does nothing but harm the game. Respecting their views, then proving them wrong, would be a great set of actions that may convert them into fans of the game. Calling them trolls and consistently missing release dates by increasingly long margins just makes them distrust and dislike the project even more, and potential future sales - the sorts of sales CIG are relying on to fund the game post-release - are wasted because we're a bit too protective of our darling SC.
Everything laid out in the fundraising when the game, to the end user, nothing but blurbs of text was a promise regardless of how little you may like that fact. It was selling the game by stating what it was people were going to get when there was nothing tangible to sell. I'd certainly call those promises.
CR certainly didn't just go 'we're going to make a game, but we're not promising anything, but give us your money anyway' after all. What SC was intended to be was pretty damn clearly defined back then.
I sometimes think the game itself would probably have been better off if CIG would have only gotten the 20 million or so they said they needed to make what was originally promised. All the apparently endless funding has caused is unending feature creep, as well as CR deciding he has enough money that he gets to try and play movie director again.
My biggest concern currently is that CIG ends up being the next 3D Realms, only unlike that situation where DNF was 100% studio financed, here it's OUR money that's on the line.
I've got to agree with you here. CIG has promised a number of things that are no longer true, thanks to the expanding scope of the game. I honestly think I would have preferred the 20 million game. It would have been better designed, with tight mechanics rather than a bunch of loose mechanics quickly thrown together to get a lot of different things into one game, rather than focusing on delivering a highly polished experience. We had a lot of info on how things in the game would work and interact, and what the desired gameplay was. These days? Next to none, and what little we did know that may still be relevant, is often changed. There is a high chance this game will release a mess of unfocused mechanics that just don't intermingle well together as a game, and honestly that chance would have been minimised had they gone with the initial design. Things like more modular ships, though fewer ships, was also appealing, among other ditched design principles. And I would, supposedly, be playing and enjoying it now, rather than wondering if it'll be playable and enjoyable within the next decade.
But hey, hopefully the game still ends up being great. As things are though, it increasingly looks like CIG have bitten off more than they can chew, and the final product is going to suffer for it.
Thankfully I'm only $500ish in, rather than $2K, but I too regret putting that much in, rather than just the $45 I originally did. Just gotta hope it actually pays off in the end.
