The Star Citizen Thread v9

Video of Lorville (no fps counter though)

[video=youtube;XS6MTMk1Ico]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XS6MTMk1Ico[/video]
 
Video of Lorville (no fps counter though)

CIG do seem focused at the moment on making a bog standard walk around simulator. I think the Cyberpunk demo gave CR an aneurysm.

Size wise. Different trains to take to different sections. Probably because it is new, but constantly lost trying to get around. Right now it is full of npc's and npc ship taking off and landing.

Although performance really takes a hit at some points. I got down to an indicated 1fps at times. But it was probably lower and my counter won't go lower than 1. Reminds be of how Levski used to be.


The travel time sucks. Takes 15 minutes to get from Port Olisar to Hurston. I guess because Hurston is a planet, when you QT to a location like Lorville, you end up 100+ km away and have to fly down. Same goes for getting out of atmosphere so you can QT when leaving Hurston, have to get up over 100km off the surface which takes quite a while.

Hmm... not sure what to say to that really.
 
The travel time sucks. Takes 15 minutes to get from Port Olisar to Hurston. I guess because Hurston is a planet, when you QT to a location like Lorville, you end up 100+ km away and have to fly down. Same goes for getting out of atmosphere so you can QT when leaving Hurston, have to get up over 100km off the surface which takes quite a while.

Oww, I hope that changes because that sounds really painful. How long does it take to get from the landing pad to 100km altitude?
 
Size wise. Different trains to take to different sections. Probably because it is new, but constantly lost trying to get around. Right now it is full of npc's and npc ship taking off and landing.

Although performance really takes a hit at some points. I got down to an indicated 1fps at times. But it was probably lower and my counter won't go lower than 1. Reminds be of how Levski used to be.


The travel time sucks. Takes 15 minutes to get from Port Olisar to Hurston. I guess because Hurston is a planet, when you QT to a location like Lorville, you end up 100+ km away and have to fly down. Same goes for getting out of atmosphere so you can QT when leaving Hurston, have to get up over 100km off the surface which takes quite a while.


I'm not going to say anything about the 1fps framerate. I'm sure that is not a design decision, and the developers would prefer a higher framerate. The game is a work in progress. I'm not going to bother commenting on how slow that progress is.

I'm more interested in that 15 minutes travel time. Is that a design decision? Did they look over at Elite and see how much we "enjoy" the long empty minutes waiting to reach our destination? I was hoping there was a small chance that might improve on the way Elite do their travel and have some sort of fast travel option once you've visited a destination.

I'm not saying that they should throw the baby out with the bathwater. Hutton Orbital is something I felt was an achievement to reach, but I can count on two fingers the number of times I've been there.
 
That's the problem - they didn't. They were put in for a reason. Even the simplest dev can look at the shown demo and see the price facts: "We make 5000 credits and lose ship and then we arrive to 160k Aurora and other ships, thus making the estimation for a player that they will have to do 30 such missions for Aurora, likely more if they have to pay for the insurance". It was deliberate.

Do you want to know how you can tell when it's not deliberate? When the devs tell you. Like Elite, where devs tell you "This is hot build, everything subject to change" at the start of every stream. Or by having "alpha footage only, subject to change" on the top of the video like in Cyberpunk.
To be fair, CR did say on the livestream that it was only their first pass at the ship prices... and then went and waffled about a ship matrix and the dynamic economy and it all got a bit more wishy-washy and he wasn't actually saying anything with any meaning any more. Nonetheless, they did give some indication these weren't set-in-stone prices. Probably.

Size wise. Different trains to take to different sections. Probably because it is new, but constantly lost trying to get around. Right now it is full of npc's and npc ship taking off and landing.
Sounds good that they have managed to (by the sound of it) really create a sense of scale; it's something that IMO it took Frontier a while to refine - everything was obviously big, but for a while you had no real references as to how big when it came to starports, outposts etc. With ships you at least usually have a human-sized door or two. :)
Also sounds like with loads of NPCs and ships around they're at least trying to create that "big city" feeling, which could be a very cool ambience - if they have the gameplay to make it worth spending any time there, of course.

Although performance really takes a hit at some points. I got down to an indicated 1fps at times. But it was probably lower and my counter won't go lower than 1. Reminds be of how Levski used to be.
Oof... I was assuming performance would be worse than the existing locations, but needing decimal points for the FPS counter so you can tell what it's actually at...

The travel time sucks. Takes 15 minutes to get from Port Olisar to Hurston. I guess because Hurston is a planet, when you QT to a location like Lorville, you end up 100+ km away and have to fly down. Same goes for getting out of atmosphere so you can QT when leaving Hurston, have to get up over 100km off the surface which takes quite a while.
Oh dear... I figured travel times would be shorter since they were shrinking everything down. Another balance pass to come on QT speeds, presumably...?
 
Dunno. Long travel times aren't a bad thing imho, they should help with the social scene in the hubs and give a point (both rp-wise and gameplay-wise) to the trips. Look at ED's bubble and its ridiculously short travel times. You're playing on the galactic scale and yet:

"OMG, this planet is totally starving! People are dying! We're desperate! Oh the hunger! Quick, please deliver us food from that agricultural station 3 minutes away to avert planetary disaster!"

Of course, even then some players complain that it takes too long so it all boils down to which player base you decide to cater for (yes, I know, in the case of SC it's all of them...). And while I'm pretty much in the long travel time camp, given multiplayer probhibits time compression, I'd like some interesting travel, not just an Alpha Centauri style point and watch Netflix. If SC is going that way, they'll have to keep pimping minigames though, as while the pilot might be enjoying doing his stuff, passengers are likely going to get bored.
 
Then there is this:

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/telemetry

Feast your eyes on the apparently (real time?) updates of what fps and performance people get in game in the PTU (if you can believe the figures).
I believe it quite easily, as it uses average FPS. If you get 50 FPS for 20 minutes of flying in empty universe and 2 FPS for 2 minutes in port before you crash, your average FPS is still 45.6 FPS.
 
This is good good for Star Citizen?

As for that performance matrix....does CiG ask for permission to collect client data upon installation of Star Citizen?
Related to travel times - QT could be quicker indeed, but time to orbit for a big planet seems reasonable as there is a speed limit to ships. I am not that shocked about global travel times as these should be taken not lightly given how small the SC "universe" is...

When installing the client you do sign up an EULA, i think they put some provision about data collection, same goes for crash reports they do ask about it.

On another unrelated topic i am burning karma on the SC subreddit pointing out to the cultists that "realism" and "immersion" take quite a hit with sounds in space, and players moving around like Quake/Unreal Tournament characters (without the rocket jump...) or those infinite instant accelerations, or players standing in a ship that cannot feel G forces while the pilot does. They really are rabid here and instead of invoking the Rule of Cool (for sounds in space) they try and push some pseudo science on me..
 
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@Surefoot

Well "immersion" has different values to different people. If you subject Star Citizen to physical laws and realism then theres almost no immersion left but that evaluation is quite rigid and almost no game today "wins" that apart from a few select points. Go with your gut feeling instead and suddenly immersion can mean lots of things. In Star Citizen I think its undoubtedly Space Legs only that it comes at the price of a game tho I believe people when they say "there is a game in star citizen" only that regardless how you measure it....when it comes to Star Citizen there will be only losers in the end because I dont believe for a second that the possible game at the end is worth the development price. Even people who are only in for the min would have had to wait 7 years minimum (assuming they release 2019) for this game.

Its an interesting topic for discussion but trying to initiate it where you did I m not surprised that you are being heavily downvoted or reported. Nowadays the typical SC defender is so touchy and paranoid that front-loaded testimonies of utter loyalty and love/admiration for the game are ABSOLUTELY required in order to avoid the knee-jerk reactions and even that is no guarantee.
 
Well "immersion" has different values to different people. If you subject Star Citizen to physical laws and realism then theres almost no immersion left but that evaluation is quite rigid and almost no game today "wins" that apart from a few select points. Go with your gut feeling instead and suddenly immersion can mean lots of things.

This is a very important point to make. Immersion — at least in discussions related to SC — is an immensely misused term, and the funny thing is that, while what creates immersion will vary a lot from one person to the next, what immersion is is fairly simple to explain.

Immersion is whatever keeps you in the game world. Anything that takes you out of that world; anything that reminds you of what you're doing; anything that shatters that good old suspension of disbelief; anything that kicks you out of that escapism for whatever reason is unimmersive. It has almost zero relation to any kind of realism, much less to visuals and presentation — it has to do with expectation. An experience that behaves in a way that you expect will draw you in; an experience that does not will be jarring and remind you that this is a game will do the exact opposite.

Realism can be utterly ruinous to immersion because reality can be… well… kind of boring, and you don't expect your games to deliver boredom. You expect some affordances and accommodations that cut away some (or, really, huge chunks) of that reality in favour of the fantastic because it's just that much more entertaining and game-like. Even simulations will know not to simulate everything because that takes away from the expectations of being wholly focused on the very specific nitty-gritty detail you want to simulate — everything else is once again chaff. But again, all of that rather depends on what you expect from your game and your simulation, respectively.
 
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Realism can be utterly ruinous to immersion because reality can be… well… kind of boring, and you don't expect your games to deliver boredom.

Oh I don't know - I was watching someone livestream the latest SC build last night - very pretty, but mostly standing around - nothing I would recognise as gameplay from any other game.
 
For many RDR2 critics I've read (quoted are Ghost of a Tale's dev tweets), it's funny how they all totally work replacing the name by Star Citizen:

Alright, I officially ran out of patience with #RDR2. Take away the graphics, what's left is a frustrating clunky game, dragging far behind other contemporary offerings in terms of fun, ergonomics and user-friendliness.

There's a valuable game design lesson here though: Earn your players' respect, offer them reasons to fall in love with your world. Don't assume it, don't demand it. Also (and I thought by now this is common knowledge) more realistic does not necessarily equal more enjoyable.

Finally to all of you who love the game I say this: I genuinely envy you. But as it stands I've got no more time to waste on this.
 
Oh dear... I figured travel times would be shorter since they were shrinking everything down. Another balance pass to come on QT speeds, presumably...?

If they did that it would be the old Freelancer game where we could almost see the entire system with our eyes. At least now the distances feels somewhat astronomical.

That said...Hurston is a SMALL system which means there will be far longer travel times. But AFAIK there are apparently (or rather is planned, will one day become something) of in-system jump points as "short cuts" which would be quite nice.
 
In Star Citizen I think its undoubtedly Space Legs only that it comes at the price of a game (...)
I would tend to agree, but the space legs player movement is so unrealistic that it immediately kills this feeling. Instant accelerations, huge spring loaded jumps, instant changes of direction.. When watching the SC streams with a lot of people moving around, it's like one of these accelerated scenes from Benny Hill. It's arguably funny in the latter, not really immersive though... Immersion, yeah that would be the Thief series, that would be System Shock series, that would be SOMA..

Its an interesting topic for discussion but trying to initiate it where you did I m not surprised that you are being heavily downvoted or reported.
Yeah that's sad because it's a rich topic. Space is actually noisy ! But noises come from different sources like your own ship or whatever is hitting on it. ISS is notoriously very noisy. I think that someone ought to try it in a space sim, as Battlestar Galactica proved it creates a fantastic mood and atmosphere in a sci-fi series. KSP had space noise too and it's a bit sad given how realistic it could get (with some mods)...

Realism can be utterly ruinous to immersion because reality can be… well… kind of boring, and you don't expect your games to deliver boredom.
My 1200+ hours on ultra realistic modded KSP and a lot of hours on DCS kinda disagree. It creates a longer, deeper game experience by creating a richer environment, whose parameters you will not exhaust in mere seconds.. Also, in that context (Star Citizen) i was promised the "BDSSE" in which there is "simulator". I was not expecting GTA-in-space unless you want to twist the language and call GTA a driving simulator.. :) I expect the promised flight model to fix at least the ship flying part by adding some piloting skills to the mix, but the player character movement is still killing it for me, i am seeing a FPS game not a simulation. (i did play FPS games a lot, and generally like them, but that's beside the point)
 
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