Star Citizen Discussion Thread v11

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What makes me think that this kind of "hey kidz" reporting still holds more truths than the BBC click "investigation" will?

I guess BBCs "investigation" will contain as much information....only its hyped up to be more. Kinda like Star Citizen is hyped up to be a "real" game and not just a playable tech demo.
 
I guess BBCs "investigation" will contain as much information....only its hyped up to be more. Kinda like Star Citizen is hyped up to be a "real" game and not just a playable tech demo.

I would like to back a Kickstarter come on-going crowd funding campaign to investigate the Kickstarter come on-going crowd funding campaign that is Star Citizen. I will start with a minimum pledge raising to a range of larger pledges in exchange for perks that I would like to pay for this using some kind of crowd funding bank account which doesn't exist at this time but will be "ambitious" and "awesome" and "nobody has ever done it before" and "whatever you want".

Or perhaps

I will write to Chris Roberts weekly or monthly to express my excitement for his project and give him an "Alpha" example of my eventual pledge to his project which he can cash in upon release of the game in full at which point I will release my actual pledge in release format cash.

I will also hold an annual convention called BackerConCitizenConCon in which CIG staff can sit in front of a projector screen and see me wearing a Steve Jobs style turtle neck while I talk excitedly about the possibilities of my eventual pledge upon release. I will show some "example" monetary numbers at the screen represending my eventual pledge (they might be wrong, but it's alpha so everything's fine) and be really enthusiastic about the priority of my pledge when it goes into full release.
 
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In MY personal opinion its make a lot of fun to play SC even in the actual alpha! YOU can see it in a different way and I wish ED all the best - but for my personal set of criteria its like the difference between black and white TV and colour TV. Mybe the black and white TV has better content but I would never go back from colour TV to b/w.

To me, the killer argument is VR support. ED has it. SC has not, no matter what C. Roberts waffles about. AFAIK, you CANNOT simply tack on VR support as an afterthought. Well, I tell a lie: You CAN, but your customers should have iron-cast gullets, and should be really capable of suppressing the gag reflex & motion sickness . . . that, and you shouldn't care how crap it looks like.

No VR -- no money from me. Plus, I find it ridiculous that a mere game entices players to spend thousands of bucks on in-game things. Not everybody has enough disposable income to finance that, and some might be driven over the edge by it. I'm not saying that's CI's fault, but I'm not letting my son (11) near SC.
 

Viajero

Volunteer Moderator
To me, the killer argument is VR support. ED has it. SC has not, no matter what C. Roberts waffles about. AFAIK, you CANNOT simply tack on VR support as an afterthought. Well, I tell a lie: You CAN, but your customers should have iron-cast gullets, and should be really capable of suppressing the gag reflex & motion sickness . . . that, and you shouldn't care how crap it looks like.

No VR -- no money from me. Plus, I find it ridiculous that a mere game entices players to spend thousands of bucks on in-game things. Not everybody has enough disposable income to finance that, and some might be driven over the edge by it. I'm not saying that's CI's fault, but I'm not letting my son (11) near SC.

Although I wouldn’t go to the extreme of ruling out a game for lack of VR alone, the fact is VR is one more of the promises made by CR and CIG. CR even had the nerve to ride (for free) the wave of the Rift and Vive initial launches buzz and popularity to assure to us that VR was around the corner in SC at the time... And funds have been pledged on that VR basis.

I also believe, just imo, that a proper and efficient VR implementation is a reasonable proxy (not a guarantee though) for the overall quality and thought given to the design of a game. It commands some “respect”. VR imposes several added complications and limitations to pancake design that devs need to fully consider in combination with everything else, especially if the game has to work in both modes. Not easy.
 
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You can't simply port a game to VR that wasn't designed for VR. It just doesnt work like that. Maybe in a cockpit sim using VR as advanced headlook. But not in a shooter, a FPS experience which SC strives to be, too. It will always be just an advanced headlook in the FPS, until you get sick from the whacky VR.

VR in FPS would be doing things you simply can't do with KB/M or controller. Like doing one thing with left hand and one with right hand in the VR. At the same time, of course. And you'd not go sick of it, because it isn't just a bobbing camera.
 
Considering how much criticism this game has received over the years you would imagine if they could showcase their ability to make quality games they would have.
I wonder how successful they would be without the propaganda and how enthusiastic the backers would be if their only insight was based on the game and patch notes.
 
CIG has managed several other tech milestones until now.
Dear sir, there are two problems with that.
First, SC milestones do not include neither beta nor release, they do include non-existent AI, deadly doors and killing ramps instead. That's not great.
Second, for 7 years now the list of milestones to achieve grows faster that they are reached. That's just horrendous.

With milestones like this CI will never reach the target of delivering a product, in fact, they are clearly headed the wrong way. The end of their road is embezzlement, not success.


Kinda like Star Citizen is hyped up to be a "real" game and not just a playable tech demo.
Sadly, most believers of Genuine Roberts don't understand the difference.
 
Although I wouldn’t go to the extreme of ruling out a game for lack of VR alone, the fact is VR is one more of the promises made by CR and CIG. CR even had the nerve to ride (for free) the wave of the Rift and Vive initial launches buzz and popularity to assure to us that VR was around the corner in SC at the time... And funds have been pledged on that VR basis.

On one hand sure, but on the other hand it just means that Star Citizen will always be one step behind it's competition on a feature that greatly enhances the experience of the genre it's in and that's not a good look. (In fact, we all know how much Roberts hates being in that position.)

If, and I mean IF all caps and bold and italics IF Star Citizen manages to reach a state where it's reasonably playable and has a significant amount of content to make me consider logging in and doing so I will always face a choice.

Play SC on some monitor, or play Elite/NMS in VR.

The latter will always win that choice because it's my preferred method of playing these sorts of games. Other games, sure. I won't dab on Eldin Ring because of a lack of VR, but that's because I don't expect to play miserable 3rd person RPGs in VR. I expect, however, to fly my internet spaceships in VR.
 
SOCS is coming and limited persistence too with 3.8. CIG has managed several other tech milestones until now. I don't see them stopping. It's not a matter of if but when.
That's the SOCS that wasn't even a thing until the initial OCS implementation turned out not to be the jesus patch many fans were similarly hyping prior to its release, and CIG retconned it into separate client and server parts so that of course it was the server-side tech that would be the real deal, and anyone who claimed otherwise didn't understand game development and obviously wasn't following SC closely. Still, they had technically delivered the client-side part, and even though it made no noticeable difference to anything I expect that's one of the "tech milestones" on your list, just like all the other failed jesus patch contenders such as network bind culling and serialised variables.

And when SOCS doesn't magically unlock all of SC's potential? A new buzzword, and a new future patch to evangelise. Round and round it goes.
 
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That's the SOCS that wasn't even a thing until the initial OCS implementation turned out not to be the jesus patch many fans were similarly hyping prior to its release, and CIG retconned it into separate client and server parts so that of course it was the server-side tech that would be the real deal, and anyone who claimed otherwise didn't understand game development and obviously wasn't following SC closely. Still, they had technically delivered the client-side part, and even though it made no noticeable difference to anything I expect that's one of the "tech milestones" on your list, just like all the other failed jesus patch contenders such as network bind culling and serialised variables.

And when SOCS doesn't magically unlock all of SC's potential? A new buzzword, and a new future patch to evangelise. Round and round it goes.
Same with persistence. CIG were adamant in past publications that persistence was already in the game. Now it's going to be added. Tomorrow will have had it in the game from the start of dev. It's all just buzzword iteration.
 
That's the SOCS that wasn't even a thing until the initial OCS implementation turned out not to be the jesus patch many fans were similarly hyping prior to its release, and CIG retconned it into separate client and server parts so that of course it was the server-side tech that would be the real deal, and anyone who claimed otherwise didn't understand game development and obviously wasn't following SC closely. Still, they had technically delivered the client-side part, and even though it made no noticeable difference to anything I expect that's one of the "tech milestones" on your list, just like all the other failed jesus patch contenders such as network bind culling and serialised variables.

And when SOCS doesn't magically unlock all of SC's potential? A new buzzword, and a new future patch to evangelise. Round and round it goes.

You've got to keep up with the news. Server meshing is the new Jesus tech that will save SC. SSOCS is getting close to completion, so better to get ahead of that failing to provide the declared thousands of players in a single instance by kicking the can down the road in advance.
 
My personal view is the current status quo will continue for a considerable while. We have not reached the tipping point yet. Funding levels are still pretty good. A careful reduction of staff to right size to their incoming pledges in the New Year would allow them to sail on wards for a decent while. My guess is as they reach the tipping point and they can no longer reduce staff without it being obvious the game will be declared released. That way they will have delivered something. If release is a success they will continue if not then they have a justifiable reason to close down.
 
My personal view is the current status quo will continue for a considerable while. We have not reached the tipping point yet. Funding levels are still pretty good. A careful reduction of staff to right size to their incoming pledges in the New Year would allow them to sail on wards for a decent while. My guess is as they reach the tipping point and they can no longer reduce staff without it being obvious the game will be declared released. That way they will have delivered something. If release is a success they will continue if not then they have a justifiable reason to close down.


So pretty much like any other company, except this company is a 1 or 2 hit wonder. Just like the stock AMRN or any other company that brings 1 product to market, makes a ton of money, then has to reimagine itself to stay relevant.

The question really is: What happens when the funding slows down? Do they collapse studios, rent themselves out to Hollywood, or creat the next moon landing?
 
So pretty much like any other company, except this company is a 1 or 2 hit wonder.

You mean a success, not a hit. A hit implies a quality product that is released to critical and audience acclaim. Step one: they need to release. Step two: it needs to be a hit.

As a backer since before the kickstarter campaign I give it a 23% chance of reaching step one, even giving the extremely liberal use of the word release as "just declaring it released when they run out of money" and a 1% chance of them reaching step 2.
 

Viajero

Volunteer Moderator
So pretty much like any other company, except this company is a 1 or 2 hit wonder. Just like the stock AMRN or any other company that brings 1 product to market, makes a ton of money, then has to reimagine itself to stay relevant.

The question really is: What happens when the funding slows down? Do they collapse studios, rent themselves out to Hollywood, or creat the next moon landing?

Except in that case CIG would not have been just any other company. It would have been a company funded by backer money to universal record levels, with no externally imposed deadlines of any sort and that has had virtually complete freedom and no publisher control to deliver the product they promised to said backers.

And that nevertheless failed at it. That would be an equally universal record level kind of mismanagement, incompetence and failing.
 
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