The Star Citizen Thread v5

[Prince Thrakkath]

THIS is what I m actually tired off and getting miffed when the hardcore fans pick it up and carry it like a flag of success trying to convince themselves and others that it represents progress. Kind of what TB did in his "review".

Its a PICTURE...hand painted and probably the only existing asset of said feature currently hyped as "ingame". Why cannot people see that this is the same as the cover of a book, only nice piexels without actual content? It would be great if it was delivered along ingame patches or if it really could stand up to the real thing but the REAL THING is quite ugly at the moment and holds no indication that the above visuals will ever be in the game within this decade.

Yes it looks nice, its mostly a handful of colors, working with "fog" to reduce overal clarity and the background image is debatable. It has a few nice touches but thats all it is. A picture. I cant even see the connection to the current version of SC. Oh sure it ties nicely into the hype machine that we are used to but why oh why is SC working on a feature that is coming in 2-3 years (maybe) when actual core issues and "blockers" prevent progress of the base game? Why doesnt CR focus on important stuff? Nothing in (the actual) SC indicates that the above is even remotely possible. It strikes me like dreaming and theorizing by the developers when these guys should have a list of NOW-features they should work on. Theres time for dreaming when an actual game is ready. Now its time to start delivering on the most basics of promises.

I m sure the above picture will be taken in as reality and proof of progress and shown whenever a third party asks about the progress of Star Citizen completely mispresenting the current status of the game and somehow NOBODY stands up and asks the tough question "where is this in the game right now???"

Nobody knows how far along current feature and mechanic implementation is that would allow the realization of such a picture into the game. Nobody even knows if anybody even works currently on these features and mechanics. HOW is this the most open development ever?

Seriously.....sometimes I wonder if the whales really are kids with big wallets instead of adults who manage to raise a family or their own life.......

That TB 'review' was shameless. 'Most open development in history?' Only if you count throwaway demos that don't end up in the game and manipulative ship sales along with totally made up deadlines, never mind the fact that its 3 Years late already and counting . Even the most avid of SC defenders are more open to critical thinking than that, the guy literally admitted no fault with anything CIG have done or are doing, incredible

 

[Viajero]

But are we watching to enjoy the crash or in awe and horror at the folk still trying to encourage others to climb into the back?

That last part is really what could make me melt down. Sunk cost fallacy, ostrich effect and stubornness is a powerful and explosive mix. It is one thing to decide to go down with one´s boat, another very different to try and bring everybody else down with you.

 

[Maruun]

That TB 'review' was shameless. 'Most open development in history?' Only if you count throwaway demos that don't end up in the game and manipulative ship sales along with totally made up deadlines, never mind the fact that its 3 Years late already and counting . Even the most avid of SC defenders are more open to critical thinking than that, the guy literally admitted no fault with anything CIG have done or are doing, incredible

i dont blame him, not everyone is ready to swim through the sea of bull**** in order to see the promised land...

 

[Rolan]

That TB 'review' was shameless. 'Most open development in history?' Only if you count throwaway demos that don't end up in the game and manipulative ship sales along with totally made up deadlines, never mind the fact that its 3 Years late already and counting . Even the most avid of SC defenders are more open to critical thinking than that, the guy literally admitted no fault with anything CIG have done or are doing, incredible

This continues to come up and I really just can't shut up because this is crossing the line. He din't say at any moment now or in the past that CIG haven't maked demos, maked ships sales or made up deadlines. He just put up the reasons to why in his opinion comparing SC to NMS is . And I agree in some points and disagree in others. Most open develpment in history(which may be debatable but not a lie)? We may like it or not, but we can try the game right now. Is crap, but we can play it. There is little or almost nothing to do, but you can play it. No one is telling you that the AI is implemented, you can land on planets or travel to another system. You know exactly what is in the beta. The game is not released yet, and will not be released for a long time.

NMS was not avaliable to anyone until release (or a couple of days befores with a "demo", with some more lies about it if I don't remember wrong). I don't see a single lie in anything TB said and I didn't see him any way or form of defend CIG sales, way or communicating stuff or whatever.

You want to label him to shill and attack him for that? GL with that.

SC may be crap or may be a good game someday but it can't be compared to NMS for now. As always this is my opinion, label me as what ever you want and attack me with what you want, I don't care. But in the same way I say what I think in the subreddit I will say it here.

 

[Zetta]

This continues to come up and I really just can't shut up because this is crossing the line. He din't say at any moment now or in the past that CIG haven't maked demos, maked ships sales or made up deadlines. He just put up the reasons to why in his opinion comparing SC to NMS is . And I agree in some points and disagree in others. Most open develpment in history(which may be debatable but not a lie)? We may like it or not, but we can try the game right now. Is crap, but we can play it. There is little or almost nothing to do, but you can play it. No one is telling you that the AI is implemented, you can land on planets or travel to another system. You know exactly what is in the beta. The game is not released yet, and will not be released for a long time.

I have to agree with this. In the context of NMS vs SC then the latter looks far more like open development.

NMS was not avaliable to anyone until release (or a couple of days befores with a "demo", with some more lies about it if I don't remember wrong). I don't see a single lie in anything TB said and I didn't see him any way or form of defend CIG sales, way or communicating stuff or whatever.

I remember the early PS4 discs that some people got their hands on, the lead dev for NMS was basically claiming it wasn't representative of the full game etc and it bloody well was.

 

[Viajero]

SC may be or may be a good game someday but it can't be compared to NMS for now.

You are not wrong in some of your post, but in this part I think you are. Just try and go past the "but you can play now" and look instead at what we can NOT yet play now of the tons of amazing content and mechanics that SC has promised that are not yet in what "we can play now" (base building, e-war mechanics, economic nodes, factory control, 100+ extremely detailed and handcrafted star systems, most refined and personalized mission generation systems in existence, best soldiers in the battlefield FPS mechanics, VR support... just to pick a couple things at random). Then you will realize the situation is exactly the same as it was in NMS.

In both NMS and SC the devs have hyped the game to kingdom come on the basis of future promises about incredible features never seen before. In both cases the community has developed dreams of their own about what the game experience will be when released without seeing any of those future promised features. In both cases those dreams are over the moon. In both cases expectations are beyond any reasonable measure.

 

[Asylum]

I have to agree with this. In the context of NMS vs SC then the latter looks far more like open development.



I remember the early PS4 discs that some people got their hands on, the lead dev for NMS was basically claiming it wasn't representative of the full game etc and it bloody well was.

It's not a1:1 comparison and shouldn't be taken as such. The general statement of NMS and SC having some similarities in terms of expectations IS valid. You just have to break down the details a bit.

In terms of hype and expectation setting...yes I would put the two in a similar camp. Although I persoanlly had less expectations for NMS and never put any money into it. Never liked the look of it artistically and the way the game seemed to play but was waiting for release to see if I would change my mind.

SC promises everything and has balooned in scope. So my expectations have been hyped and let down a number of times. People also put more money into SC so the room for NMS fallout is quite high as it's unlikely they will be able to deliver based on their current release quality.

Just opinion, open nature of the two games was much different but I'm not sure how open SC is about the core functionality.

The gameplay is also quite "rich" in ts description on their homepage...

 

[tooterfish]

SC isn't open at all. I'm not sure how you can argue that with a straight face when they give exclusive access to paid magazines.

Good lord.

 

[Toumal]

So here's the thing: SC just pushed things back more and more, years at a time. CIG is using the "it's still alpha" defense for 4 years now. And technically, that's a difference to NMS because Hello Games and Sean Murray said that things would be in the game that, on release and to this date, are undeniably not in the game.

The only thing that CIG said to be already in the game when it wasn't, was Star Marine - that was back before they did a complete 360 and eventually DID release something called Star Marine. It still doesn't contain all the things they promised (switchable gravity generators etc., all the stuff shown from the Illfonic demo), but hey.
As for the other things like cargo, trading, a dynamic market simulation, piracy, etc? Those are simply endlessly pushed back.

However, NMS is starting to deliver on things promised via patches. They haven't delivered everything they promised to have in the game at launch yet, but time will tell. And they do have at least a base game working, and it's working alright. SC might have broken less promises yet, but they've made a LOT more promises than NMS to begin with, and they did break a few. And their delivery record does not look good at all. The gap between "stuff promised" and "stuff delivered" doesn't get smaller, it keeps getting wider and wider.

TotalBiscuit? He probably believes the things he says. I typically found him to be rather reasonable on a number of things. I do see him look like a sellout at times (Heartstone anyone?), but frankly here I just think he's lacking the information because he doesn't seem to be following all the shenanigans that happened. And judging from how angry he was about the stuff that Nintendo, Steam, Youtube and other big companies did to people's rights, the TOS change alone should make SC inacceptable to him. If someone sat down with him and showed him all the crap that has been going on, all the "liberal use of other people's art assets" by CIG, the TOS change, the customer labeling, the refund issues, the constant delays and preposterous statements about being "just days away" from something that then gets pushed back a whole year...

If TB had a more complete picture he'd rip SC a new one. I think he's simply not aware. CIGs strategy of drowning out the truth via lots and lots of marketing works rather well.

Plus it's easy to get wooed in by the marketing fluff or crap like bugsmashers if you're not a developer yourself. Watching a programmer do a dirty hack to fix a networking issue stemming from fundamental design choices is painful to watch only if you have written either a multiplayer game or similar networked applications, and know about consistency, the difficulties involving what's truth, the issue of time synchronization, optimistic locking vs. transactions, idempotence, etc. - 99% of the viewers see a wizard fixing their dream game. 1% cringe because they see him using hot glue to keep vital parts together.

 

[Rolan]

You are not wrong in some of your post, but in this part I think you are. Just try and go past the "but you can play now" and look instead at what we can NOT yet play now of the tons of amazing content and mechanics that SC has promised that are not yet in what "we can play now" (base building, e-war mechanics, economic nodes, factory control, 100+ extremely detailed and handcrafted star systems, most refined and personalized mission generation systems in existence, best soldiers in the battlefield FPS mechanics, VR support... just to pick a couple things at random). Then you will realize the situation is exactly the same as it was in NMS.

I fixed that quote, seems like I forgot to write it all P).

And I agree with some of what you said, we don't have it in the beta and didn't saw much (almost everything) of what the game is supposed to be, but(althoug I think I already said something like this) we have the PU and his (little) content. You don't have to "believe"(I don't like using this word) in anything other that what you can see in the PU, planetary landings? For me it doesn't exist until I can do it in the alpha, Economy? The same, and we can continue. But we don't have anyone telling us the game is going to be released tomorrow with everything promised without letting us play it. We can see what it is in the game for now, then you can say everything is alright like some fanatics(also the opposite like other group of fanatics), there is potential but I have great concerns like others(There are more "groups" ofc).

That's up to you, I have a lot of concerns and we can talk for a long time on many things that I as a developer wouln't do and for sure will never do that CIG have done. But the situation is very different in SC and in NMS. As always in my opinion.

If TB had a more complete picture he'd rip SC a new one. I think he's simply not aware. CIGs strategy of drowning out the truth via lots and lots of marketing works rather well.

The game is not released yet, I think is one of the reasons he doesn't talk more about it, it will probably get a looong video of rants if one day is released.

 

[Toumal]

The game is not released yet, I think is one of the reasons he doesn't talk more about it, it will probably get a looong video of rants if one day is released.

Do you think this will ever happen? Realistically?

 

[Rolan]

Do you think this will ever happen? Realistically?

I don't know, they can make it? Probably yes, will they be able to make it? That may be more difficult to answer, if they do not change their way of development and making demos, it will be difficult.

 

[Barking_Mad]

It still appears to come back to fixing the engine and networking, both of which (especially the former) appear to be in a dreadful mess. If it wasn't, where's the content they've been working on? I suspect they've dug a huge hole with the engine and coding - had people leave and replaced etc. and they've got oodles of code they can't fix. Throw in a lack of direction from the top, a long list of unfilled senior positions and they have a serious problem in getting anything to work properly.

 

[thorn-]

SC isn't open at all. I'm not sure how you can argue that with a straight face when they give exclusive access to paid magazines.

SC certainly has open development. They discuss their plans, show features in development, and allow players to access the game in an alpha state.

The problem is that you believe the word "open" means "full, unfiltered, complete access". This is not the case.

The restaurant down the street is "open". That doesn't mean I get to wander around the kitchen anytime I like.
As a manager, I had an "open door" policy. That didn't mean that any employee could get the answer to every question they asked, nor could they poke through my file cabinet.

Don't get bitter with CIG because their level of communication doesn't match your personal demands.

 

[AJW]

...idempotence...

Had to look that one up. Useful concept.

 

[Stigbob]

SC certainly has open development. They discuss their plans, show features in development, and allow players to access the game in an alpha state.

The problem is that you believe the word "open" means "full, unfiltered, complete access". This is not the case.

The restaurant down the street is "open". That doesn't mean I get to wander around the kitchen anytime I like.
As a manager, I had an "open door" policy. That didn't mean that any employee could get the answer to every question they asked, nor could they poke through my file cabinet.

Don't get bitter with CIG because their level of communication doesn't match your personal demands.

Since it's so very open when is the game coming out ? and why wasn't it released in 2014 like Chris Roberts said it would be.

 

[hairychris]

SC certainly has open development. They discuss their plans, show features in development, and allow players to access the game in an alpha state.

The problem is that you believe the word "open" means "full, unfiltered, complete access". This is not the case.

The restaurant down the street is "open". That doesn't mean I get to wander around the kitchen anytime I like.
As a manager, I had an "open door" policy. That didn't mean that any employee could get the answer to every question they asked, nor could they poke through my file cabinet.

Don't get bitter with CIG because their level of communication doesn't match your personal demands.

They miss a lot of fundamental stuff out of their communication, miss deadlines and say nothing of it, and a whole load of other stuff.

They fire out a lot of details, sure, but a lot of the context/big picture is missing. And no, I don't mean CR's hopes & dreams, but basic timeline & project goals that map to reality.

FWIW I'm still annoyed at buying something that was advertised as "mac & cheese" yesterday, only to open it and find out that it was full of cauliflower and I loathe cauliflower. I ended up throwing 1/2 of it out. It looked like mac & cheese on the outside, mac and cheese were involved, but there was a chunk of information missing that would have meant that I would not have spent my money on it. CIG remind me of this! [hehe]

 

[frostypaw]

SC certainly has open development. They discuss their plans, show features in development, and allow players to access the game in an alpha state.

The problem is that you believe the word "open" means "full, unfiltered, complete access". This is not the case.

The restaurant down the street is "open". That doesn't mean I get to wander around the kitchen anytime I like.
As a manager, I had an "open door" policy. That didn't mean that any employee could get the answer to every question they asked, nor could they poke through my file cabinet.

Don't get bitter with CIG because their level of communication doesn't match your personal demands.

This is surely intentionally obtuse and trying to misdirect the discussion.

Nobody is expecting 'open development' to mean that - just some honesty. I genuinely don't think people (and i'm including many many folk on CIG's own forums) would mind if we got a lot less information, but that it was accurate and honest instead. Sheer volume of nonsense is irrelevant when you can't trust it.

Instead it's turned against people as you have done in your last sentence - how is that anything but unpleasant and divisive? Do you not care if the information you're fed is honest? Are we not all in agreement there that honest information would be better even if it meant less of it?

 

[thorn-]

Since it's so very open when is the game coming out ?

When it's Final.

and why wasn't it released in 2014 like Chris Roberts said it would be.

Because it wasn't Final.

You seem to believe that "open communication" means "meets all deadlines". This isn't the case with any other company I'm aware of.

They miss a lot of fundamental stuff out of their communication, miss deadlines and say nothing of it

They certainly do "say something of it." When plans have changed, they've certainly said WHY, and at times also what the new plan is.

They fire out a lot of details, sure, but a lot of the context/big picture is missing.

Wait, what? First you say they only give the big picture and no details, and now you say the reverse.

This is surely intentionally obtuse and trying to misdirect the discussion.

Blame the poster who said "SC isn't open at all" for poor generalization. Don't blame me for pointing out the obvious falsehood of that statement.

 

[Zetta]

Blame the poster who said "SC isn't open at all" for poor generalization. Don't blame me for pointing out the obvious falsehood of that statement.

That's a complete cop out. It was you who proceeded to tell them what they were alluding to instead of asking.