The Star Citizen Thread V10

[Jacques d'Orleans]

That is right Cobra no one knows, The only thing we all do know here is that CIG spend $3.9million a month which is $44.8million per year. Given that overspend, the loan, a trial next year which we all know is 100% going to happen, if they lose that possibly a huge legal bill + damages and now selling shares! well I give them 6 months before they file for bankruptcy.

The lawsuit could go on for years, just look at Epic Games v. Silicon Knights, iirc that similar lawsuit took 5 or 6 years until he went final. If CIG can keep the cash flow up, they could go for another few years. I think they won't file for bankruptcy during the next year. My assumption is the whole thing implodes around 2021.

 

[Number2]

Do we even know that? Isn't that just an extrapolation of incomplete and old data that, at best, might give some kind of lower bound?

Zetta told me, it was unambiguous and I think that Zetta has been around here for a long time so may know more than most of us (except Eagle Boy of course)

 

[Cobra1984]

So are we agreeing that this is a personal income IE wages or a share bonus, rather than raising capital for the project?

I wish I read all the posts before I commented.

If it is 17mil of wages or bonuses for the 3 staff members then maybe they will not go bankrupt.

If it a capital raising project then it may be a red flag.

Does anyone know which one it is?

I thought the dollar amount would suggest one or the other when it was published, but $17m doesn't seem high enough to be operating capital and I'm at a loss as to what the execs are up to.

I know commenters are saying it IS investment capital but I don't think anyone knows.

 

[Jacques d'Orleans]

So are we agreeing that this is a personal income IE wages or a share bonus, rather than raising capital for the project?

It's income from selling their personal shares, they are in no way obliged to reinvest that money in the company, it's their money not CIG's, they can do with it whatever they want.

 

[Number2]

Guys calm down you talking to the Mr.Nowak.....the very same man that have fun and enjoyment since the very first presentation of the AC....and yeah also same dude when I said few years back that I doubt that CIG PU can handle in "near" future hundreds of players in same instance HE claimed that this FIX is matter of weeks not monts of years.....so here we are 4 + years later and he still have a HUGE FUN and every new patch is SENSATION!!!

Zyll
To be fair to Nowak. I play the game/tech demo as well and I think it is fun, In fact I am going to log on in 5 mins, are you saying that it is not fun?

 

[Jacques d'Orleans]

And the first person to say "When a Mummy Banu ship and a Daddy Banu ship love each other very much..." gets a slap round the head with a large mackerel

 

[Number2]

It's income from selling their personal shares, they are in no way obliged to reinvest that money in the company, it's their money not CIG's, they can do with it whatever they want.

So painting it as a cash raising exercise for a company in financial trouble may be a mistake, guessing or just us being glass half empty kind of folk?

 

[Mr.Nowak]

@Zyll I am in the forum that claimed that large worlds won't make it into SC. That claimed that FPS mechanics are scrapped. That physics grids won't be added. That procedural planets are a pipe dream. Also claimed that Procedural cities are impossible. All of them are in Star Citizen and even more.

Now I hear claims of Server Meshing being impossible. Guess another tick is awaiting to be checked? So tell me what else is impossible next and as the years go by we will see it happen.

Are you going to donate me a mining ship?

I am on the side of mining being locked to Prospector being bogus too. The community is pretty angry about this. But CIG will be implementing mining lasers as ship items so other ships will be able to equip mining lasers but do them less efficiently. I think all professions should be approachable in a starter ship but not be as efficient as a profession focused ship.

I can only speak for myself, my skepticism is mostly not about the game, it is about the persons behind the game namely Ortwin F. and Crobear. Ortwin? Let me say just this, when I heard that he is in the boat with CR, I lost interest in the game almost immediately.

I met both Ortwin and Chris. They are very nice people. Ortwin even worked on one my favourite movies. Das Boots Directors Edition. I talked with him for half an hour and got offered a job which I rejected due to my passion being game development. Same kind of attentive mood with Chris too who didn't mind answering how he hoped to overcome tech debt in SC and the controversy of 2015's Kotaku article. Specifically mentioning the challenge of 64 bit large world and physics grids and how they would be fairly functional in a year but that is very complex due to the engine. Citing the need for more engineers for faster delivery.

Ortwins brother Gundolf is the director of Cologne Game Lab and he is one of the most reputable media professors in Germany. I don't understand how anything negative can be expected from them? I mean Chris gave up on his sleep at Gamescom 2015 to talk to each and every fan. He came to the bar even the next day with 3 hours of sleep and dark circles under his eyes and answered each question and talked to all people there without exceptions.

I asked Sandi about CR's work behavior. She said it is too much for him to handle everything and that he needs other people to work and control different aspects of the game. Which resulted in Erin picking up production and CR unloading lots of work to other talented producers. He admitted that he was too detailed and everywhere around the project. Honestly these people aren't as evil as many paint them to be. They are just people working hard on a product that is complicated and ambitious. Just like any human they made mistakes too. Micromanagement, optimistic promises, bad outsourcing for example.

But they have learned and got past these mistakes. Their tech debt has lessened to just Server Meshing (Which is huge 2-3 years) and their production has switched to a quarterly release schedule (as much as possible 3.3 being the tech focused delay). Promises are gone. Now CIG mentions 10 times that they hope to blabla and not will blabla. Outsourcing is at the bare minimum. Mostly the website stuff.

 

[Tippis]

Zetta told me, it was unambiguous and I think that Zetta has been around here for a long time so may know more than most of us (except Eagle Boy of course)

Ok. That still puts it firmly in the land of “shaky extrapolation of incomplete data” though. It's not something I'd put in the “know” column without a number of qualifiers (lower bounds and all that).

I can only speak for myself, my skepticism is mostly not about the game, it is about the persons behind the game namely Ortwin F. and Crobear.
I am absolutely convinced that what he see right now is a repetition of the Freelancer development debacle just without Microsoft stepping in and saving the day.

Pretty much that for me too, yes. At no point in the last 7 years has CRobber et al. given any reason to trust that anything has changed since Chris last tried this idea. At almost every turn, CIG has given every impression of repeating all the mistakes that plagued the gang's previous exploits: the skewed priorities, the inability to meet deadlines, the over-scoping, the misuse and waste of resources, the full gamut of of management errors, to say nothing of Chris' continued arrogance and hubris, as fuelled by ignorance of the gaming industry now as it was 25 years ago.

On top of that, there's a new layer of skeeziness. The kind of financial shenanigans that got the dynamic due sued and thrown out of Hollywood is back in full force, with a company setup that is more reminiscent of a money laundering scheme; the constant revisions of their own obligations and trying to circumvent consumer legislation; the almost complete lack of openness as far as where they're going and how they intend to get there; the numerous instances of copyright and IP violations; their outright lying to… oh… everyone every time they have to rewrite history.

We're entering year 8, and the whole development process is an absolute shambles — they have yet to build a foundation for any of the supposed core features of the game, and instead of trying to figure out the boundaries of the box they will eventually have to work within, they just keep doing reworks of things that shouldn't even be in the game yet, frantically putting out the latest fire rather than addressing the systematic errors that cause them to flare up at every opportunity. And the only people who can stop it are the ones who adamantly refuse to because they confuse this state of affairs with progress and with being the norm.

 

[Asp Explorer]

I asked Sandi about CR's work behavior. She said it is too much for him to handle everything and that he needs other people to work and control different aspects of the game. Which resulted in Erin picking up production and CR unloading lots of work to other talented producers. He admitted that he was too detailed and everywhere around the project. Honestly these people aren't as evil as many paint them to be. They are just people working hard on a product that is complicated and ambitious. Just like any human they made mistakes too. Micromanagement, optimistic promises, bad outsourcing for example.

But they have learned and got past these mistakes. Their tech debt has lessened to just Server Meshing (Which is huge 2-3 years) and their production has switched to a quarterly release schedule (as much as possible 3.3 being the tech focused delay). Promises are gone. Now CIG mentions 10 times that they hope to blabla and not will blabla. Outsourcing is at the bare minimum. Mostly the website stuff.

The handbag knows nearly as much about game development as Genuine Roberts does. Outsourcing cannot be at bare minimum considering the lulzworthy amount of corporate entities they have spawned.

There is still no game.

Buy an Idris!

 

[Mr.Nowak]

3.4 PTU is open to all!

Also a cool timelapse of JT druglab activity.

[video=youtube_share;LRb3G5aLjDM]https://youtu.be/LRb3G5aLjDM[/video]

There is still no game.

And still people play everyday and it has more interest than other games. So odd. I wonder why...

 

[Tippis]

Now I hear claims of Server Meshing being impossible. Guess another tick is awaiting to be checked? So tell me what else is impossible next and as the years go by we will see it happen.

What will happen is the same thing that has happened every time in the past: what they initially describe will turn out to actually be impossible — be it because they lack the competence or because it would just outright break the laws of physics — so instead they turn to the same solution that everyone else has used for the last decade or two, claiming that it was the never-done-before super-special solution they were describing.

At no point has CIG done anything that is impossible. All they've ever done is present impossible visions, only to then turn around and do the regular thing instead.

The handbag knows nearly as much about game development as Genuine Roberts does. Outsourcing cannot be at bare minimum considering the lulzworthy amount of corporate entities they have spawned.

…also considering the amount of fancy new features they keep adding that are just ready-made third-party modules and middleware.

 

[Asp Explorer]

And still people play everyday and it has more interest than other games. So odd. I wonder why...

Because they can't even get that right.

 

[MTBFritz]

So people are playing what? Or do we have different perceptions of reality? I see thousands playing everyday and enjoying themselves. It's ridiculous on one corner of the internet people claim there isn't a game.

Certainly not SQ42 but thanks for the info. By the way, where do you get the player counts from? Is there a third party site tracking individual player log-ins? Or is it an estimate on your own?

Zyll
To be fair to Nowak. I play the game/tech demo as well and I think it is fun, In fact I am going to log on in 5 mins, are you saying that it is not fun?

I dont know how often it was mentioned already. Nobody said its not fun for you. "Fun" is simply no parameter when trying to evaluate the productive quality of Star Citizen. If you claim to have fun good for you. Zylls point is that personal fun is brought up to determine if a game is "good" or "bad" and this is at best an individual factor, not one you can bring up in order to defend the games qualities yet Mr.Nowak does exactly that for quite a time and I ll be honest when I read his descriptions and consider how long he claims to have fun playing the game 20 hours a week my first thought is "must be a sucker for punishment" but yeah, thats in the eye of the beholder isnt it?

Its sometimes annoying when we discuss the shortcomings of CiG in regards of reliability (you know dates and expected deliveries) the circle goes back to "but its insanely fun so its good" which simply is not the case. When we discuss underlying coding problems resulting in glitches arguing that its "fun" doesnt fix nor explain the issue. You know how many 5% rating games out there going for 0.99 cent...universally regarded as "crap games" have players who still have "fun" playing them?

So people ask questions to figure out HOW the mentioning of fun helps in this argument. Because the flight model doesnt work right. Gravity only works partially and not reliably. Simulated effects were marketing speech and dont exist. Orbital mechanics are half-baked as in the moons rotate but dont orbit. Persistence is a placeholder at the moment meaning you lose progress if you crash. There is no sign of a working AI, loading screens are identified countering the claim of seamless. The whole picture doesnt look nearly as good as the fun-tainted descriptions make it out to be thats why "fun" is so worthless when you address these things.

If I would be invested in Star Citizen I would be worried at how unfinished everything is. Things that were expected some time ago are still missing or are pushed further back. Old promises are suddenly tied to long-away features which reeks of sorry excuses. And while CRoberts and co can do with their shares whatever they want I dont think that selling shares of your own company has ever in the history or shares upped consumer confidence. In fact a lot of invested backers are worried and I dont think that some people claiming to have fun will reassure these people when their own experiences are completely different to the descriptions given.

The game has issues....there is no denying it. Yet you have people who are either extremely lucky to not run into them or simply lie about experiencing them themselves and you end up with stories like "runs smoothly and solid for hours, not a single crash, not a single glitch, perfect" which is really hard to believe when I can jump into a random live stream at any moment and see that things are different. It would be different if reporters would admit bugs and glitches and performance issues and still claim to have fun because you know....its an individual factor which varies from person to person but in these cases the game morphs from a pre-alpha tech state to released AAA quality based on how much fun one has.

So I m thinking biased reports, exaggeration or outright lying about whats really happening (denial) otherwise we would have a ready amount of footage showing this from hundreds of sources, not just a few. The few cherry picked links dont really help when again...I can pick a random twitch stream at any time and observe a different quality then whats described.


As a sidenote....conmen usually have charisma which makes em sympathetic. I wouldnt base my decision on someones working capabilities on a chat I had with him but maybe I m too german for that. And trust me I m one of the "give people a chance who dont have such-and-so license" but CiG had a lot of chances by now and blew em all and CRoberts himself has a history of getting chances and blowing them.

 

[Mole HD]

Companies house is a UK Government run organisation, so if there are 2million dollars mentioned in a official form, he better pays his taxes otherwise he could end up in HMP Pentonville.

Just a point of order...HMP Pentonville is a womans prison

 

[Asp Explorer]

Just a point of order...HMP Pentonville is a womans prison

I spent a week in Craiginches

Spoiler

putting in CAT V

 

[ianw]

Their tech debt has lessened to just Server Meshing (Which is huge 2-3 years)

Surely their "tech debt" includes fixing all the broken stuff - which is rather a lot of stuff - before they even try to think about server meshing?

ETA your post is a perefect example of citizenthink. You all talk about stuff as though it's done - all these things they've overcome. When in fact they haven't done them - they're not working properly and until they are they really can't be ticked off.

 

[Mole HD]

I spent a week in Craiginches

Spoiler

putting in CAT V

Aberdeen's finest institution...

 

[Asp Explorer]

Aberdeen's finest institution...

Talking of which - is it even in Star Citizen yet?

 

[Jacques d'Orleans]

I met both Ortwin and Chris. They are very nice people. Ortwin even worked on one my favourite movies. Das Boots Directors Edition. I talked with him for half an hour and got offered a job which I rejected due to my passion being game development. Same kind of attentive mood with Chris too who didn't mind answering how he hoped to overcome tech debt in SC and the controversy of 2015's Kotaku article. Specifically mentioning the challenge of 64 bit large world and physics grids and how they would be fairly functional in a year but that is very complex due to the engine. Citing the need for more engineers for faster delivery.

Ortwins brother Gundolf is the director of Cologne Game Lab and he is one of the most reputable media professors in Germany. I don't understand how anything negative can be expected from them? I mean Chris gave up on his sleep at Gamescom 2015 to talk to each and every fan. He came to the bar even the next day with 3 hours of sleep and dark circles under his eyes and answered each question and talked to all people there without exceptions.

I asked Sandi about CR's work behavior. She said it is too much for him to handle everything and that he needs other people to work and control different aspects of the game. Which resulted in Erin picking up production and CR unloading lots of work to other talented producers. He admitted that he was too detailed and everywhere around the project. Honestly these people aren't as evil as many paint them to be. They are just people working hard on a product that is complicated and ambitious. Just like any human they made mistakes too. Micromanagement, optimistic promises, bad outsourcing for example.

But they have learned and got past these mistakes. Their tech debt has lessened to just Server Meshing (Which is huge 2-3 years) and their production has switched to a quarterly release schedule (as much as possible 3.3 being the tech focused delay). Promises are gone. Now CIG mentions 10 times that they hope to blabla and not will blabla. Outsourcing is at the bare minimum. Mostly the website stuff.

OK, I'm asking you serious now, do you get briefed before spouting that PR babble bullsh*t or are you really that kind of naive?
Also Ortwins brother Gundolf is not part of CIG, so why even talk about him? He's unimportant to the case.