Hmm, so basically what you are saying is a very long form version of what Hi-Ban, JohnMice and other very deep in the whole backers have been saying. No thank you.
Also yes, 2.5 IS as bad, as broken and as buggy as some people make it out to be, because they have experienced directly and suffered game spoiling problems as a result. Trying to hand wave their concerns away as "just give CIG (even more) time and (lots more) money, it will all work out in the end!" isn't going to make those same concerns magically go away, or protect CIG and Roberts from criticism for the way they are going about things.
I am not sure if what I am saying is a longer version of what others are saying since I didn't read what they said. I am pretty sure it's a longer version of what I am saying. I would disagree I think for me at least the best space game experience I had so far in my life is Alpha 2.5 and multicrewing with my friend in my Freelancer policing Crusader and assaulting Grim Hex for the wanted public enemy then doing patrol runs around the Yela asteroid to clear it from pirates just to return to the comm arrays and keep them on. Then buying cool new weapons and items from Arccorp and heading back for some FPS action. Talking to people and mingling with the community is just a lot of fun since it's all first person and pretty immersive.
There are bugs but it's not as bad as it was. You can play for hours on straight without running in to huge issues but you can also crash of course. Hence it's an Alpha. Nobody claimes it is a superb product. Well it doesn't matter who and what people say especially here. Since the devs and most of the community aren't here anyway. Don't get this the wrong way btw but no matter if or me like it or not a single fact is that Cloud Imperium Games is here to stay and yes they will have more time and yes they will have more money. The problems of the game are step by step getting removed as the game goes along. If you play each version of SC and read the changelogs or participate with the PTU test server you can see the truth.
There is proper progress on the game. It's just not visible from far away or by people who join in on a free flight now and then. Take the project under the loop and you will see constant iteration and fixing. Most people don't deny bugs or cover CIG from criticism I think. Since you play the game and see the issues there is no way around it. People accept it because this is an Alpha and it always shows signs of getting better.
Btw it's perfectly fine that you don't support or believe in the project but if you want to make real change sadly this forum is not the place to do it. Many backers push CIG for the better from within.
Mr Nowak, that's a large wall of text, but i completely agree with you on everything.
Some people seem to think SC is like a Call of Duty game, something you can develop in a year or two... Of course those people are going to be disappointed.
Some also don't seem to understand that we are not playing any kind of MVP, the updates we are getting are for testing and finding bugs. People complain that the alphas are buggy... well, that's the exact purpose of the alphas.
3.0 will allow us to test a lot of new mechanics. Remember guys that it is for testing for finding bugs, it's not a MVP. Complaining about "lack of content" or about it being "buggy" makes no sense.
Yea. I mean look at this I worked on a fairly complicated Unreal 4 project and we promised to have a certain vehicular feature to be in back in July 2015. Because our timing and schedule looked like we would have done it until that time. Well let me tell you we released that part July 2016. It was involving a lot of complicated physics which we thought we could tackle with 20 people but it took way longer and was more complex. Btw the complexity I am talking about here is like %800 less than what CIG is attempting to do with Star Citizen
This I doubt, because current Alfa is total tech demo with a lot of bugs..
Ok, if they hide all S42 progress from public then maybe its possible...current rumors are about 2017 Q4...so who knows...
Rumours don't matter much. Yes the current Alpha has it's issues but again it had %300 more issues 8 months ago. Also CIG is working with branches of code that they compile on top of each other. Basically there is a lot of clean up with the new code they are implementing but since there will be a lot of more features there will also be bugs. But there is a good amount of bugfixing and progress going to 2.6 which is coming out next month and only more so for 3.0 at least for the current systems already in place. I doubt that Squadron 42 will come out Q4. The latest I would say is Q2 and that is pushing it. They have everything done except for a few tech hurdles and polishing. But you never know either way when it comes out it needs to be special.
Mr Nowak, if the lack of Squadron 42 footage is because CIG want to "avoid spoilers", yet at the same time the game is just about to come out, then in that case Infinity Ward and Activision should be withholding all gameplay footage and demos of Call Of Duty: Infinite Warfare until about a fortnight before the games' release, not showing footage of playable content of the game for the last 3 or 4 months.
Or am I just another one of those who don't "understand" CIG software development?
Good points but there is a huge difference between Activision and IW and CIG. Squadron 42 is expected to be a much more character driven and story focused game. It is also the biggest debut of Star Citizen to the general market. There is a lot of pressure on it both by it's backers and the public. Squadron 42 Episode 1 will also set the stage for the next 2 episodes for the coming years. But expect Squadron 42 content to be shown at CitizenCon 2016 next month. I expect to see a live Capital Ship Battle demo. This is just a guess but it is one of the things that they have not shown yet and I have a gut feeling that they might.
In addition Activision and IW are completely corporate profit focused companies that have to get their products out every year to appease their investors and shareholders.
The problem, as I said a few pages back, is that you're treating the backers as one group uniformly in favour of what CIG are doing. The scope has ballooned massively; some backers think this is a good thing since the game will be more complete as a result, others are questioning whether this is a good idea. For some people that's because they are worried about Chris Roberts and his history, for others it's about whether CryEngine (even modified) can actually support this increased vision.
Importantly, though:
all of these people have paid CIG money. This is why people keep getting refunds, because the project seems to be a runaway train with ever-increasing scope that has to somehow actually come back down to earth at some point, without showing any meaningful signs of doing so. Some people like that and are willing to be along for the ride, some are not.
My question would be: do you think they're finished with (the majority of) that tech development? I don't think they are. I think there are plenty more challenges ahead that they haven't even started thinking about how to deal with yet. Meanwhile we have promises of all sorts of exciting gameplay and mo-capped pets - the To Do List is turning into a novel whilst the amount of things being checked off it appears to be going (relatively) at a snail's pace, and the things being checked off are things that many people familiar with game development are saying shouldn't have been near the top of the list in the first place.
Agreed, release dates are hard, and for the most part I give them a pass. However, I think Star Marine is one example where they did get it unbelievably wrong. You
cannot honestly believe you're two weeks away from release, and then suddenly discover crippling integration issues that cost you a year. That's scary levels of internal miscommunication.
The problem isn't that they aren't showing anything, it's that what they are showing is mostly fluff that looks cool. Not any specifics on how gameplay is actually going to work, or activities you're likely to be able to do. (Edit: the Gamescom demo is a decent counterexample,
if it's representative of what will actually happen in the game.)
What they
could be doing is sharing all the design specifics on how they plan these things to work - open development, remember! Throw the Crime and Punishment plan out to the backers, let them talk about it, see what they think and iterate from that. Things like mining, exploration, all of that. All the current information about this stuff is either ancient or CR translating the magical vision in his head into speech in realtime. (I would be very happy to be wrong and to find out there's detailed info about these things, but I haven't seen any!)
I absolutely believe that the people "on the ground" at CIG are passionate and want to make a great game. I just still remain to be convinced that mismanagement hasn't already cost them the best chance of doing so. I'd dearly like to be wrong - I have two ships and would love to fly them around a completed 'verse - but to me it still looks like they have far too much to do and nowhere near enough time to do it.
For what it's worth, though, I'm very glad you're back and posting, glad to see you back.
I was not intending to but since I am a part of the community I am just relaying the overall observations. I feel quiet a part of the community is supporting CIG and I say this from interacting with the CIG community everyday. Yes the scope has gone insane and I think backers who worry about CR are right to be concerned. Also CryEngine worries are completely justified too and many arguments were had over this here. But again there is no golden formula for SC since it has never been done before.
That's why I tell people who want to back the project that they should wait further since there is no more content than 3-10 hours in it at the moment. Refunds are expected since this project has been delayed for such a long time but is still running resulting in loss of trust and of course backing
About your question on Tech Development here is what CIG finished in total.
- Local Physics Grids
- Actual Physical Flight Model
- Damage Model
- Zones System
- 64 bit map coordinates + local 32 bit camera interaction
- Actual Clothing system
- Zero-g-Free flight + interaction with areas with working gravitation (landing, collision, getting up)
- Mulitplayer-enabled multi-crew ships
- Massive technical optimisation to get it runing at all (which is where we currently stand) in all possible aspects
- Optimisation of the build-server (they got the time to create a build down from nearly a day to fractions of hours (and threw a lot of Hardware at it, currently it is 812 GB and 500 to 900 cores)).
- Outfitting the offices with awesome networking (and 1 Gbit/s or so cross-studio lines)
I think they still have to build tech for at least 1,5 more years but after that point it should be pretty much done. The major rework is the new StarNetwork network refactor and using of a shard based single instance system that will come online next year.
I agree that Star Marine was their worst example especially since they did a lot of marketing on it and then had to bail. It made them look quiet bad.
I think they talk about a lot of detail at their ATV episodes on how things work. Take a look at the last 2 episodes for example. Like Cargo and Salvage. Was explained quiet a bit. Also the Cargo system was outlined a couple of years back with a post. The footage for 2.0 last year also matches with the gameplay this year I would say. Same with the damage tech or the components system. The thing is I think CIG is a dev driven but community influenced company. But their community influence only goes from the QA and feedback loops they have with the devs.
Reverse The Verse and Forum Interactions with PTU - Evocatii and Eearly Tester interactions are strong. But to get your stuff the CIG devs you really need to reach out. You just can't do it simply from here. If you going to post something on the forum let's say you gotta make a real post pages and pages long with statistics and why to things don't work or how they could. Those things get read. A usual outcry is skimmed through but a detailed post gets hardly overlooked.
There is a lot to do but I think that there are more than 15 ships in the game already and for an Alpha that's a lot. The profession focused ships will start appearing in 3.0 and after since they need the professions to have a role. Also Squadron 42 has all the ship focus as of this point.
Oh thanks for the welcome back message. I sadly am not sure how long I would want to stay because the atmosphere here can get very heated up and I really don't want to bring down my energy being around too much. Let's say it depends on how chill this place is and how criticism can be addressed and talked about without yelling or posting insulting / cheeky smart comments.
Hey, good to see you back around here again. However long that is...
Thanks!
I would like to say two things on this. One is Two Factor Authentication. The other thing is that gifted ships are not giftable anymore and CIG Customer Support deletes hacker accounts and reimburses people whose accounts got hacked. They basically work a lot to make any sort of hacking operation non viable.
Also StarCitizen trades the grey market is not selling from Hackers and is making people provide proper documents before being able to sell ships and stuff after these incidents so a lot of work is going to prevent it being a thing. But this happens with a lot of MMO's it's just part of that world too.
Have a secure password and use two factor!
--
Cool reaction and discussion video from a youtuber
[video=youtube;QtvhtTFd7DE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtvhtTFd7DE[/video]
