The Star Citizen Thread v5

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

I was pretty sure that Elite 4 was going to be a flop when the Kickstarter opened. They had nothing to show for it other than some flat shaded prototype in the background (check the first KS video!) and Mr. Braben talking.

Star Citizen already had a carrier and several ships, in game, with FPS walking around. CR's push for "cinematic experiences" and him playing in third person was what made me hold off of SC initially. Then the ED alpha happened and when I saw those first youtube videos of actual gameplay by lots of people, I knew I had to have that. The first Elite Alpha was incredibly focused and polished.

BTW another game that has a similarly polished alpha/teaser is Overload. These guys also know what they're doing. And they're promising a true successor to Descent - nothing more, nothing less.

Also I would want to bust myth about CR helping ED kickstarter. He was very conflicted over support to it, and most of SC backers said they aren't interested just a game, they wanted to buy ships. In short, they quickly disappeared, claiming SC will come in one year so why support ED in first place.

What carried us over big slump in the middle of KS was Drew biting a bullet and doing Kickstarter for his book. Then Kate followed. Then FD started to communicate more clearly. Rest is history.

 

[Komemiute]

I was pretty sure that Elite 4 was going to be a flop when the Kickstarter opened. They had nothing to show for it other than some flat shaded prototype in the background (check the first KS video!) and Mr. Braben talking.

Star Citizen already had a carrier and several ships, in game, with FPS walking around. CR's push for "cinematic experiences" and him playing in third person was what made me hold off of SC initially. Then the ED alpha happened and when I saw those first youtube videos of actual gameplay by lots of people, I knew I had to have that. The first Elite Alpha was incredibly focused and polished.

BTW another game that has a similarly polished alpha/teaser is Overload. These guys also know what they're doing. And they're promising a true successor to Descent - nothing more, nothing less.

Heh, hell.
I'm guilty of this too.

I stu,bled first on SC kistarter video and then on ED.
Boy I felt bad for Frontier.

Boy do I feel the opposite now.

 

[Stigbob]

Wow the amount of hate on this forum is really a bad image on the name of frontier. Since when is it alright to call someone's genuine dad a fake spineless sellout? I mean come on guys at the end of the day you might not like the game but being this hateful really pushes it.

Sorry but this kind of attitude makes the world a worse place not a better one. Sad to see that Frontier forums became a hideout for this.

I can only speak for myself but I simply don't buy into hype, if anything it's counterproductive with me. The more someone pushes the (American style) hard sell and promises the sky the more likely I am to think there's something wrong. A good product speaks for itself, with ED I backed immediately after logging out of the demo which I played to make sure it was good, I liked it and my system could run it. The advertising just pointed me at something I could test for myself.

The whole cult of celebrity passes me by completely as well, I simply don't care what some random employee's dad thinks it bears no relevance to the product and looks like a desperate and lame attempt at unconvincing marketing filler.

No hate for Lando or his dad, just total indifference to who they are or what they think and wondering why anyone would think I care.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

just to put some fanboy into the thread, i think the recent vids from Star citizen are amazing.. the most recent one from obsidian ant.... wow, best visuals in a game i have ever seen? maybe - but then ground stuff is where cryengine shines.

But.... i do think the way things are going just shows Frontier were exactly right to do what they did with elite, (and that does not mean CIG were wrong to do what they have done with SC either) but by the time SC is out properly it will be 2018. ED will be in its 4th season, so in reality, the games will not really compete with each other, ED would have had 4 years as uncontested best space sim on the market.. this is way better than them competing directly with each other.

SC is looking to be a system crusher, just like Chris Roberts games of old, where to software drove the hardware sales, and i think this is great. I am fine if i cant run the game at high detail with my GTX980... Chris R was always very open about the fact the game was never planned to run on a GTX750!.

just look at this tho and tell me it does not make you drool..... its totally got the starwars feel and how can that be bad.... and that dust storm.....

I admit i had my doubts.. not that i would get value for money on a good game, as i am only in for $60ish - i was fine with that, but i had my doubts the game would be close to what they sold... but now...... i reckon maybe, just maybe they WILL pull it off. (they do need to up the draw distance on the sand detail tho )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bvOTqolIYg

now dont get me wrong, i dislike a lot of the "programs" they make, wingmans hangar and all that... its just so (cringing)....... American i guess.... but 10 for the chairman etc, that is more my thing and i wish FD did a similar monthly thing with Elite....

but i just choose to ignore all the flashy stuff that i do not like. I also wonder if getting celebs in is the best usage of the money.. but again, i am only in for $60 so as far as i am concerned they spend how they see fit.

 

[Jason S]

I backed both ED and SC.

I backed SC to LTI aroura LN.
I backed ED to Alpha backer and two skins.

So I have spent more on ED than SC and have spent vastly more time playing ED.

The mission we saw a few weeks ago was heavily handcrafted and so there will be a finite number of those and I wonder how many but any is good.

The new planets shown a couple of days ago were lets face it awesome in detail. But I guess the worm and sandman were staged and i hope will be in the game but given the NMS fiasco we are once bitten twice shy.

I am unsure about SC but at the same time excited. It could all go pear shaped but there is I think some hope that it could be quadriple A game one day.

What I think some of you perhaps do not factor in is how long backers will fund the game at current levels as I can see those fans continuing to do that for many years yet.

Lets face it on these forums on average there is a negative SC bias just as on the SC forums there is a positive SC bias. Well that is to be expected.

Currently I feel still glad that I backed SC but still also unsure to the extent to put more money into it.

Anyway to SC good luck and I hope it does achieve its dreams.

 

[Tippis]

some are not happy.. this was great though, taken from the thread.

Clearly we have the wrong sense of time, and the work on the game before then didn't exist, along with kickstarter and pre-kickstarter.

I really love that logic.

“Unless they're working at full capacity (which will always be something completely undefinable), the work just doesn't count!”

CIG was working at full capacity in 2011–2012, back when they were a handful of them (+an outsourced team to create the pitch demo). They were working at full capacity in 2013, when there were a couple of dozen (+a couple of outsourced teams to create various parts of new demos to be pitched). They were working at full capacity in 2014, when there were expanding into the hundreds (+several outsourced teams to create actual gameplay for them). They were were working at full capacity in 2015, when their number counted several hundreds (+hundreds more in outsourced teams if Ben wasn't completely misinformed…).

But no, those millions of man-hours do not count. Only the ones from an arbitrary point in the past (which will be a completely different point in a month or two) are admissible as actual development. [wacky]

 

[Toumal]

In short, they quickly disappeared, claiming SC will come in one year so why support ED in first place.

This is true, and this killed Elite for many of my friends. Many people tried to "win me over" saying that SC will no doubt release sooner. Then it was that it will no doubt be more impressive. Now it is that the ambition is no doubt greater.

I can't start ambition.exe though

 

[GaryII]

CR's push for "cinematic experiences" and him playing in third person was what made me hold off of SC initially.

Also you can see a lot of "cinematic experiences" ingame, like after some time annoying chair and door animations...also lot of other stuff then over complicates the game and makes development slow and painful for devs..and expensive of backers...

 

[Tuub t Tute]

I really love that logic.

“Unless they're working at full capacity (which will always be something completely undefinable), the work just doesn't count!”

CIG was working at full capacity in 2011–2012, back when they were a handful of them (+an outsourced team to create the pitch demo). They were working at full capacity in 2013, when there were a couple of dozen (+a couple of outsourced teams to create various parts of new demos to be pitched). They were working at full capacity in 2014, when there were expanding into the hundreds (+several outsourced teams to create actual gameplay for them). They were were working at full capacity in 2015, when their number counted several hundreds (+hundreds more in outsourced teams if Ben wasn't completely misinformed…).

But no, those millions of man-hours do not count. Only the ones from an arbitrary point in the past (which will be a completely different point in a month or two) are admissible as actual development. [wacky]

We just don't understand Wibbly wobbly timey-wimey development...

 

[GaryII]

I backed both ED and SC.

I also backed both and now i feel that i just wasted money on SC...
If even SC comes out I expect at best average game maybe 6 of 10, probably even on release with a lot of bugs and unfinished or even missing features/dreams..

 

[Soliluna]

just to put some fanboy into the thread, i think the recent vids from Star citizen are amazing.. the most recent one from obsidian ant.... wow, best visuals in a game i have ever seen?

Obviously I'm not trying to contend to your opinion, but I am curious to know what other games you have seen, because I could reel off so many that have better visuals - and better tech. They're good no doubt (it is a stage demo after all, something designed to wow), but they're not great, pretty standard for 2016. I feel like you could pick any FPS of this year or the last and it would be better.

Have you seen the Toddyhancer mod for Battlefront?

Spoiler

[video=youtube;a72hU_l6mKc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a72hU_l6mKc[/video]
[video=youtube;6z2K4eFXobQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6z2K4eFXobQ[/video]

 

[bitstorm]

Umm, you really need to pay more attention, ED already does have dynamic music that adjusts according to what's going on.

Yes!

The game really surprised me the other day with a piano track on a planet's surface.

I often play with Twitch on so maybe I've just never noticed that specific bit of music but I started hearing this piano, I was looking through tabs thinking I had something open till through process of elimination I realised it was ED.

 

[Knightshark]

just to put some fanboy into the thread, i think the recent vids from Star citizen are amazing.. the most recent one from obsidian ant.... wow, best visuals in a game i have ever seen? maybe - but then ground stuff is where cryengine shines.

But.... i do think the way things are going just shows Frontier were exactly right to do what they did with elite, (and that does not mean CIG were wrong to do what they have done with SC either) but by the time SC is out properly it will be 2018. ED will be in its 4th season, so in reality, the games will not really compete with each other, ED would have had 4 years as uncontested best space sim on the market.. this is way better than them competing directly with each other.

SC is looking to be a system crusher, just like Chris Roberts games of old, where to software drove the hardware sales, and i think this is great. I am fine if i cant run the game at high detail with my GTX980... Chris R was always very open about the fact the game was never planned to run on a GTX750!.

just look at this tho and tell me it does not make you drool..... its totally got the starwars feel and how can that be bad.... and that dust storm.....

I admit i had my doubts.. not that i would get value for money on a good game, as i am only in for $60ish - i was fine with that, but i had my doubts the game would be close to what they sold... but now...... i reckon maybe, just maybe they WILL pull it off. (they do need to up the draw distance on the sand detail tho )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bvOTqolIYg

now dont get me wrong, i dislike a lot of the "programs" they make, wingmans hangar and all that... its just so (cringing)....... American i guess.... but 10 for the chairman etc, that is more my thing and i wish FD did a similar monthly thing with Elite....

but i just choose to ignore all the flashy stuff that i do not like. I also wonder if getting celebs in is the best usage of the money.. but again, i am only in for $60 so as far as i am concerned they spend how they see fit.

I got similar vibes when i watched the video, more even when i watched OA's video. But then i thought that this is again the same thing they do every time: show something spectacular. Point is, none of the spectacular videos from 2013/14 has it yet made into the game. So if i'd believe the citizen con demo was an unpolished part of gameplay soon to come, with dozens of similar planets and missions like in the 3.0 demo i'd be even inclined to throw money at them. But instead, the broken promise of SQ42 content let met lose any faith i had left, so i asked for a refund.

I hope they make it. I do want a cool game! There is no ED vs SC thing for me. If SQ42 get's released in a good state i buy it day 1. But i don't think this will happen anytime soon.

 

[BurnyBurns]

just look at this tho and tell me it does not make you drool..... its totally got the starwars feel and how can that be bad.... and that dust storm.....

It doesn't cut it for me. Highres textures and handmade assets potentially even placed by hand in a controlled area? Let's give them the benefit of the doubt and assume those are handmade assets, distributed by an algorithm across procgen planets. What it is then, is another procgen tech, next to Elite's, sooner or later Infinity Battlescape's and No Mans Sky's. All have their strenghts and weaknesses and I haven't seen a single one I would call perfect. Still, it's the most exciting aspect of the demo for me, but also one where they're pretty late to the party and just make different tadeoffs than everybody else.

But while I can agree that it all looks good - as long as the scripting doesn't break - it "moved" downright terribly in the demos. The character always half glitches, half walks through narrow geometry and has been doing that since Arena Commander in 2014. Moving through vehicle interiors has always felt terrible in Star Citizen's alphas and by the look of the demo that hasn't changed. The hover bike hobbles across the landscape like a bloody bunny. I said it before and I'll say it again: You get more air in Elite's SRV and that thing drives on wheels!

Calling a scripted moving texture wall a sandstorm is also pretty rich if you ask me. As is suggesting it'll blow the assets on the planet apart. Unless this works exactly as Elite's POIs, which just reset for each new instance you enter. In that case... been there, done that. Only with less graphical fidelity. Which I don't give a damn about, if the shooting gameplay is as sub-par and janky as demonstrated by the Citizencon demo. Crysis 1 even spanks what they've shown pretty thoroughly. Not to mention any other high profile shooter in the last decade. Usually, enemies have something like an AI.


As for the Sandworm monster, the fact it's damn near a 1:1 copy of the Dune worms of yore doesn't bother me that much and I like the idea of boss monster fights on surfaces. All up for big game hunting in Elite! Only that was nothing special in terms of boss fights. It was merely a scripted intro sequence for a boss fight, that may or may not materialize in Star Citizen, if and whenever it releases. But on an abstract level, it's a boss fight with larger than life monsters. I've had my fair share of them and I don't game that much even. The Zelda series has pretty consistent great boss fights. Nice to have then, but no USP by any stretch, nor more impressive than any other high profile boss fight in gaming.


Don't even get me started on the sour taste of everything they have shown being a specifically scripted demo rather than real deliverable game content, which they even made clear while demonstrating it. >.<

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Obviously I'm not trying to contend to your opinion, but I am curious to know what other games you have seen, because I could reel off so many that have better visuals - and better tech. They're good no doubt (it is a stage demo after all, something designed to wow), but they're not great, pretty standard for 2016. I feel like you could pick any FPS of this year or the last and it would be better.

Have you seen the Toddyhancer mod for Battlefront?

Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a72hU_l6mKc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6z2K4eFXobQ

true... battlefront is stunning, but its on a far smaller scale than SC.... but i will give you that one, i didnt consider it as i ignored due to it being just an arena shooter, so have never played it.

 

[frostypaw]

just to put some fanboy into the thread, i think the recent vids from Star citizen are amazing.. the most recent one from obsidian ant.... wow, best visuals in a game i have ever seen? maybe - but then ground stuff is where cryengine shines.

Sorry but this really bugs me.

I had to go check to confirm but as expected... OA's video is just a cut together of the ProcPlanetsv2 demo and him talking over it. Why is that better than the ProcPlanetsv2 demo?

But yeah compare it against other products out now in the light of us only actually seeing a tiny tiny bit of a planet and it's really not all that.

some are not happy..

Many great moments in that thread

We should be clear here, NMS items were literally cut and paste across the entire planet and if you look at structures they were cut and paste across the entire universe. All space stations looked identical, all ships handled exactly the same, star systems existed in no real logical fashion (IE: planets just kind of floated out there in a space, they weren't orbiting anything).

This after seeing the editor actually showing and them talking about how they were going to cut and paste stuff across entire planets/systems/the verse - in a game with currently no orbiting or rotating planets in the first place.

 

[dumbo]

As for the Sandworm monster, the fact it's damn near a 1:1 copy of the Dune worms of yore doesn't bother me that much and I like the idea of boss monster fights on surfaces. All up for big game hunting in Elite! Only that was nothing special in terms of boss fights. It was merely a scripted intro sequence for a boss fight, that may or may not materialize in Star Citizen, if and whenever it releases. But on an abstract level, it's a boss fight with larger than life monsters. I've had my fair share of them and I don't game that much even. The Zelda series has pretty consistent great boss fights. Nice to have then, but no USP by any stretch, nor more impressive than any other high profile boss fight in gaming.

It's quite impressive that, despite only giving a short gameplay demo of SC, they have still managed to increase the scope of the project (ground boss battles).

 

[marx]

It's quite impressive that, despite only giving a short gameplay demo of SC, they have still managed to increase the scope of the project (ground boss battles).

To be fair, they can just delay the release of the ground boss battles indefinitely, citing the need to refactor the sandworms to increase their fidelity and immersion.

 

[Ian Skippy]

Just so you know, everyone that you call a fake and spineless sell out is someone's son, or daughter and possibly their father, grandfather, cousin, uncle or wife. You're really making it out to be something it's not because you have respect for the man. Please don't waste forum space with these "You're all so mean!" posts, they just come across as an agenda to paint anyone with valid critique as a vilifying monster.

So, basically, it's always been alright to call someone's "genuine" dad a fake and spineless sellout. Kinda like Palmer Luckey, the fake and spineless sellout of VR. He's someone's son you know?

Don't forget Land's actual dad was on the stream. I think Nowak thought someone was attacking him, which indeed would have been weird and uncalled for. It was clarified he meant Landing, not his dad, so just a misunderstanding.

 

[FuriousMeow]

true... battlefront is stunning, but its on a far smaller scale than SC.... but i will give you that one, i didnt consider it as i ignored due to it being just an arena shooter, so have never played it.

What scale? The current client scale is not big. The anticipated imaginary scale is just imaginary.

This is the problem, SC is all ideas and imagination on paper and it is being compared to real developed games. The only thing that real games should be compared to is the real client that can be currently played and it is incredibly limited with an tiny scale and very very very limited gameplay plus buggier than all get out.