The Star Citizen Thread v5

[darkoff]

Realistically, he's in a place where he cannot present the game as an "also-ran", which means he does need to highlight what it can offer that people can't already get in an existing game that they can buy on the spot.
Successfully doing that without talking down the competition is a tight rope to walk; I really don't hold it against him if he stumbles or chooses to err on the side of rousing his supporters. He's between a rock and a hard place and I'm really glad I'm not in his shoes. Best case scenario: He eventually delivers a game that manages a similarly mostly-enthusiastic fan reception as Elite did and the last 5 years were a struggle that ultimately mostly worked out ok. Worst case scenario: He wastes 5 years of his life (and ten years of his health) living a waking nightmare he created by trying to chase a dream, as he watches himself systematically destroying his reputation and causing millions of people to despise him forever. Right now the stakes are high and whether he was ungenerous in focusing on perceived weaknesses in the competition probably barely registers on his list of concerns.

(Besides, those "weaknesses" don't even register as weaknesses to me - I already know that atmo planets are coming in a future season of Elite, and right now I assume that a future season of Elite has greater certainty than SC.)

I kinda feel sad for hole chris has made for himself. At 20 million mark the game sounded ambitious and cool. Like i thought that it was stretch to get it complete but it was still doable.
Now 100 million later i see that the game has gone down the rabbit hole of feature creep and cant get out of the hole anymore. It hasnt even completed 20 million worth of contend

The only thing positive that happened during gamescom was chris limiting the feature creep publicly.
The game wont have tons of different stations the outward appearances will stay same system to system. The insides should be modular so they will just place different internals to stations.
You cant land everywhere on stanton only on designated landing spots, chris does deny that it will be on rails landing but you cant veer off from landing path without autopilot forcing you back on track.
3.0 will only feature trading. The bounty hunting and pirating, will be emergent contend players themselves create.

and he did say some truly insane feature creep.
they will do new mocap in next month. This time they will start the star citizen 3.0 mocap. (they have only done 1 day of mocap for 3.0)
New live mocap for ingame newscasters. Basically community managers will mocap themselves for community events.

then theres some uncertain parts.
Chris roberts talked about how he hopes to do more mocap for sq42 part 2 or for sequel of sq42

source: https://www.twitch.tv/starcitizen/v/84641702?t=05h56m00s

 

[Backer42]

There is enough space in the universe for at least 10 space sims.

True, but the available buying power is naturally limited. Star Citizen scooped a huge amount of that space game money, which will never return to aid real game developers.

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It isn't uncommon behavior for someone with a Chris Roberts level of ego. In order to keep his own spirits up he has to constantly make sure he is topping the competition (even if only in appearance). Best to just ignore the self-aggrandizing behavior of a narcissist. We know where the other games stand, we've played them. Not sure if CR plays any other games

I'm pretty sure doesn't even play his own game. Chris Roberts is not a gamer and doesn't care at all about video games.

 

[Maruun]

True, but the available buying power is naturally limited. Star Citizen scooped a huge amount of that space game money, which will never return to aid real game developers.

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I'm pretty sure doesn't even play his own game. Chris Roberts is not a gamer and doesn't care at all about video games.

Not only that...it will burn the entire gaming industry and everyform of crowdfunded gaming...

 

[Backer42]

I don't think it started that way. I think they had a good working idea of what type of game to make and the original Kickstarter actually looked like something that could be made with Cryengine. Sadly has the money rolled in that changed. I truly think that the first year after the kickstarter (two years in development) was just a focus on bringing in money, when it became clear that they had a chance of fully funding the game with crowdfunding money.

I think their original plan was fleecing investors instead of gamers. But smoke and mirrors was it right from the start.

 

[Monk]

Not only that...it will burn the entire gaming industry and everyform of crowdfunded gaming...

That seems a bit prophetic.

It hurts the industry but, in the way a mosquito bite itches.

 

[Tippis]

Yup and those post illustrate how those mechanics are suppose to work. You are right that they don't show how they work within the game but AFAIK, no design doc that I have seen does either.

All design docs do that. That is the purpose of design docs: to define how things will work in and of themselves and in relation to every other part of the game. The posts in question don't describe any mechanics whatsoever, just offer a bunch of mock-up concepts of some activity — or even just some bit of UI — in isolation. Nowhere is the actual dynamic and place in the larger game discussed.

Open development =/= free open-source; don't know how you came to that association.

I didn't. That's why I didn't mention it. I was discussing their much-vaunted open development, which is apparently so open that the backers aren't told how the game is supposed to work. I don't know how you made the leap from there to FLOSS.

That whole pledge was about CIG solely being accountable to their backers in terms of keeping them up to date with the development of the game and nothing more.

Then perhaps he should have said that, rather than try to make some kind of argument about treating them like publisher or being exceptionally open, don't you think? After all, if that's all they're doing, they have no more claim to this being “open development” than, say, Microsoft.

Again they are modifying the engine while also creating the art assets. How hard is that to understand?

It's not. How is it so hard to understand that you shouldn't be polishing assets when it's not even clear yet what purpose those assets will have in the game or whether the engine can even support them?

This is but one way to create/test a game.

It's one way, sure. An entirely backwards way that creates massive waste of time, manpower, and money. It also makes it far more likely to incur engineering debt because you stubbornly hold on to previous creations for some reason or another (for instance, because lots of people have given you money for it) when it would be in everyone's best interest to drop it because it doesn't actually fit…

 

[AJW]

A failure of Star Citizen (at minimum, a failure to deliver the sort of game worth the $120 million or whatever spent on it) probably won't hurt the gaming industry in general significantly, but it will make future crowd funded games suffer - stifling innovation, and guaranteeing more generic shoot-the-zombie-hordes cookie-cutter products.

 

[Mu77ley]

at the end the most important thing is the number of people who work on a project.

SC has a lot of offices and worker now.
I would that Elite has the same number of employed, but it's not...
that's why the time necessary for the releases is increasing.

and that's why SC has an impressive increasing of technology applied on each new release we see.

I think you need to do a little light reading: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00B8USS14

 

[jcrg99]

Look to the new marketing approach of the "star citizens":

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/4z1enr/anyone_know_if_cig_will_reverse_a_refund/

That's what disgusts me more with this "community". It's the fact that they embrace strategies of deception to try to get more people to the cause.
Or maybe I am wrong.
Sounds totally legit, right?
LoL

 

[Mu77ley]

I hear that Meltdowns are par for the course this time of year...

I don't think you really understand what the term "Meltdown" means...

 

[milligna]

It's pretty adorable how they want to immediately set the narrative. It's decided already! Chris won!

Hang on a second, fellas -- shouldn't all this amazing stuff be delivered first before getting puffed up and victorious? In the aftermath of NMS, it doesn't particularly seem like much of an accomplishment getting a few low rent media outlets to assist your hyping of a tech demo.

 

[Shinimas]

I wouldn't be surprised if, secretly, Roberts considers the PTU to be the MVP. After all you've got space combat, you've got FPS, you've got missions. You've got shopping. I don't believe there will ever be a "Star Citizen v1.0", it's just going to continue to be an open-ended set of updates which will gradually add little bits and pieces, mostly bugs. Just witness the starry-eyed joy that met the announcement that they would be moving to "3.0", as if the number makes any difference whatsoever, other than to give them an excuse to deliver it later than they would have done with 2.7. And they'll keep running their annual dog and pony shows to fund it. But the last thing they want to do is draw a line and say "this is Star Citizen". As I think was alluded to in this thread before (props to whoever it was), right now the game is Schrodinger's cat and every stupid, delusional, unfounded idea that people have about what they'll be able to do in the game (along with the nonsense that Roberts has come up with) is coexisting inside the box, and as long as that's the case people will keep throwing money at CIG. It's in no one's interests to open the box.

So it will be interesting to see how they handle Squadron 42, because so far they've shown virtually nothing, and somehow they have to transition to a finished product. But going episodic means they can apply the same "you may not be able to do XYZ right now, but it's coming in a future episode. No, not the next one, maybe the one after that" development process they're currently applying to SC.

It was their biggest mistake to announce a project like Squadron 42. This is Roberts' delusion at work. With SC they could've kept the machine running for a good decade, never coming out of Beta, putting in small updates and charging for all sorts of little things, milking the fanboys and promising golden mountains on various conventions to con more people into buying the game. But Squadron 42 is supposed to be a finalized product. An actual game. It's something that just has to come out and be a real game. I wonder how they're going to handle relaying years of delays to the public... What's even more interesting is how the brainwashed fanbase will react when it's never released and maybe even officially cancelled at some point.

 

[AJW]

Look to the new marketing approach of the "star citizens":

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/4z1enr/anyone_know_if_cig_will_reverse_a_refund/

That's what disgusts me more with this "community". It's the fact that they embrace strategies of deception to try to get more people to the cause.
Or maybe I am wrong.
Sounds totally legit, right?
LoL

Could be fake, could be genuine. I seem to remember reading somewhere (probably this thread, or one of its predecessors) about someone who bought in, got a refund, changed their mind, and bought in again: only to request, and get, another refund. All it really shows is that some people have little sense when it comes to handing over money for future promises.

 

[Tippis]

It's pretty adorable how they want to immediately set the narrative. It's decided already! Chris won!

Hang on a second, fellas -- shouldn't all this amazing stuff be delivered first before getting puffed up and victorious? In the aftermath of NMS, it doesn't particularly seem like much of an accomplishment getting a few low rent media outlets to assist your hyping of a tech demo.

You just don't understand game development delivery.

 

[Karhu Major]

This comes down to LoD, stations don't need a high one, currently, and when we get space legs they will add another LoD. Just look at the difference in quality between planets we drive around in elite and the planet you walk around in SC, there is no comparison , elites blows SC out of the water.

http://youtubedoubler.com/j7Ob
Did I just pick out a really bad example or...? How does Elite's blow SC's out of the water? Of course this is a demo but it's not like it's fluffed up graphics wise: SC just looks like that.

A dedicated hate reddit about a person seems like the most rational place to find reliable information about the notoriety and trustworthiness of said person.

The sub archives whatever Derek says and then later fact-checks his statements. I don't see how that can be biased. See for yourself and come back to me when you find "unreliable" information in the link I provided, instead of brushing it off like that.

True, but the available buying power is naturally limited. Star Citizen scooped a huge amount of that space game money, which will never return to aid real game developers.

What? You think the hype surrounding space games in the first place isn't partly due to SC? Also what do you mean by "real" game developers?

Chris Roberts is not a gamer and doesn't care at all about video games.

Citation needed. The man shat out successful space games left and right. Where were you in the 90s?

SC certainly deserves criticism but for sanity's sake people, don't let the hate consume you. This is some utter bull I'm reading here.

 

[milligna]

Citation needed. The man shat out successful space games left and right.

Not really. He only had much input on a handful of them that were simple shooters riffing on Larry Holland's games. Where were YOU in the 90s? The X-Wing series absolutely slayed Wing Commander on all levels. Who wants pastiche and 10th rate copies when you can go to the source? Tie Fighter alone is better than anything he's ever done and Freespace 2 delivered the coup de grace towards the end.

He quickly got bored and handed off the bulk of the games attributed to him to his brother to make and was way more interested in FMV and a brilliant Hollywood career that stubbornly eluded him after a disastrous film and a string of bad investments in productions that didn't make money.

I tend to prefer gameplay more than cutscenes. He's had a few decades to strut his stuff and it's obvious CR ain't much of a storyteller and certainly isn't some gameplay guru. There's a reason why Hollywood and the games industry said thanks but no thanks to putting any money into any of his warmed-over "ideas" since...

Whenever he talks about gaming and talks up his supposed innovations, it's obvious it's a man who has been in suspended animation since the 90s and missed out on what most of the industry was up to while he tried to conquer Hollywood.

 

[jcrg99]

Where were you in the 90s?

Wasn't that in the past century?

 

[briguy168]

When CR says there will be PG birds, people expect PG birds. When CR does not deliver PG birds he should get criticized for not delivering PG birds. Sure you can be skeptical that he will deliver on what he says, and you can even believe he is a lair, but that does not change what he said or the expectations the created. Just look at this thread, there are people that do think that he will deliver on what he has said, while others do not. Neither one changes what was promised and stated to be in the game.

I understand your sentiment and generally agree with it but isn't judging it before it's even attempted a little like the chicken before the egg scenario?

 

[Backer42]

Look to the new marketing approach of the "star citizens"

I don't think "Reddit" is worth any discussion.

 

[Sterlino]

I think you need to do a little light reading: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00B8USS14

this is not a matter of complex project or whatever.. this (SC) is a project where you need to add the more details as possible.
and the number of employed can make the difference.

I am very sad to notice how Frontier completely missed the opportunity to increase the team and to not do the same amount of work in faster times.
but this happens when you don't know, exactly, how to do a proper marketing of your own product, i guess.
when they started the crowdfounding (or kickstarter, name as you wish) something doesn't went very well.

Chris Roberts made an incredible marketing stage and he continues to increase the budget month after month.
That is not wrong as someone (in early days) had thought.
Selling the ships was the correct (and very smart) way to have a fast crowdfounding.


what else to say..
haters gonna hate...