Star Citizen Discussion Thread v11
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Took at look at the recommendation, and while its interesting its a bit too cartoonish and not what I'm seeking.
Kerbal Space Program
www.kerbalspaceprogram.com
No doubt Star Citizens combo package provides exactly what some people are looking for. Its mostly coming together due to visual presentation tho because I gotta agree with others on this....nothing Star Citizen did or does is particularly exceptional from a development or design perspective. In fact most aspects of Star Citizen seem to be smaller, less refined versions of existing components from other games. We are mostly talking game quality and in this regard SC participates at the lower end of the spectrum to be honest in almost all areas.
Now with that ingredients list I cant see how SC will ever become a great game. You might argue that it already is a great game but this is individual perception. If we want to provide facts and numbers reality doesnt look as rosy. Many VR games are not much of a game but the VR aspect makes them special and outright fun. Somehow Star Citizen manages to capture that fascination and mindset even without VR.
Why am I being so negative about SCs chances in all this? Star Citizen and CIG mostly live off their "its alpha" excuse and unfinished state as is glaringly obvious with everybody who recognizes the bad state but is willing to "wait and see" if CIG can pull it off as if somehow this mound of crap will suddenly turn into gold somehow. And most positive reviews heavily lean on the end product which isnt existing right now and try to paint the existing work as something promising when in reality (cuz we talk about the existing product all the time) its an overaged cronie on crutches. The current glimpse if you will looks promising and nice but it does that because CIG polished their pre-alpha assets to an insane level which explains the duration, cost and progress rate. They didnt even start to put in content in any meaningful way yet. Whatever they have isnt even a teardrop in the lake which is the expected game. Looks to me as if CIG wildly tries out stuff to see what goes and doesnt go right now both in engine capability and backer acceptance. Thats why we end up with gameplay loops nobody ever asked for or that CIG never reported working on. Both are worrying aspects yet many backers are willing to "swallow that pill" when its a gigantic red flag to be concerned about.
If you take a hard honest look at what Star Citizens current version is capable of in the future I m not sure you are going to like the answer. "Its alpha" is of no importance and arguing over the exact start of development is a distraction. Promising alphas burst with potential just waiting eagerly for the work to start in earnest. SCs current state is barely able to run smoothly and chokes whenever small changes or additions are made. Its foundation is hardly able to carry whats already in yet by everybodies standard its "early days" and bar heavy modifcations to the engine I dont see them pulling this of. We already checked cryengine 3 and whats its capable of and some people I agree with say that even the current version is running above its design parameters which would also explain the bad performance.
By your own words you hopped on in 2013, many more have joined even before that. Not a single one of those people back then would ve been okay with a statement like "hey folks, thanks for all the millions, we are currently busy building up the company which is hard work you know. We ll report back in 2015/16/17 when we really start the work. Make sure to keep paying us money till then ey?". That nonsense is merely a mental justification (mind gymnastics) which allows accepting the heavy delays.
Even considering its an alpha (technically not even that....) theres no debating that Star Citizen is a BAD alpha compared to other examples out of the industry. And I completely disregard the visuals by saying this because graphics dont make games (for me). Features, mechanics and gameloops make games (for me). Graphics is the icing on top. Under that pretense what exactly is high quality about Star Citizen? I dont care about the "feeling" most fanboys drone on about. What are the actual qualitiesin in all this? Are the systems in place robust enough, complex enough, refined enough to allow for future add-ons and expanding of the game to the degree that is expected?
And thats where the crushing negativity lies in. Because right now Star Citizen crawls on unstable, glitchy and with thrown-together features that make recognizing a coherent picture or end result impossible. Its even worse because Star Citizen has not one single feature or mechanic "completed". Everything is WiP, everything is subject to change, nothing is fixed. Yes I m talking about the AI, the flight model, the atmospheric simulation (snort), PvP, survival mechanics and to top it all.....we are still missing more then HALF of all the stuff which would be considered "core tech" for an alpha.
So regarding alphas.....Star Citizen really is a sorry excuse. It certainly is not a shiny example for success and smart design. Any progress made on this foundation, if at all possible, will be exceptionally difficult, costly and taking a long time.
You know.....back a few years I was watching in, accepting the total chaos and misery I saw but "hoped" there would be this magic moment when an appearant mish-mash chaos suddenly jumps into focus and you realize what you are looking it. Like in art or optical illusions where taking a minute or standing at the right angle can change everything. Back then I was willing and ready to give CIG the benefit of the doubt. It all looked pretty chaotic and bad but I am not the expert here and I refused to accept that it was all a scam (tho the suspicion already was there). The optical package never was able to sway me. When the majority of backers in 2016 with the release of 3.0 were marveling about how the planets LOOKED I was taking a hard look and asked "is this really as seamless as was promised" and "is this really procgen?" and its a flat out NO to both of these questions.
Since then we have discussed how important seamless transition really is as long as the illusion of seamlessness is preserved. And regardless the answer fact is that CIGs seamless transition system is nothing special, nothing spectacular and not adding all that much to the game itself (and if you argue that yes, the seamless transition IS actually that important then yeah....not much of a game is it?). You might think it is based on the visual fluff but from a design or development perspective....not so much.
I m sorry this has become another rant, apologies.
A well written post and of a length to rival one by MTBFritz!
And here we have delusions of backers just making things up, despite evidence.
But this time it's different because "wealthy people are smart and principled".
- CIG said SQ42 would release in 2014
- Then 2015
- Then 2016
- Then they put up a SQ42 roadmap
- The roadmap promptly stalled, showing almost no progress
- Then they announced they won't update the roadmap anymore because of "spoilers", which is so stupid it is clearly a lie
- Almost a month ago they announced a SQ42 video, which still hasn't appeared.
- The only "evidence" put forth by backers is that SC is making no progress!
Hey's he's welcome to believe whatever. We have no real idea of what CIG is doing with their time and money. Because the most transparent development ever is anything but.
All we have is their marketing, which is about as trustworthy as that which comes out of EA.
If you are on the optimisitc side and see a lack of progress with SC, you might want to hope that CIG are actually hard at work in SQ42, despite their history. Especially with Calder probably breathing down CR's neck.
Hell, i'm quite willing to believe CIG are working hard on SQ42, but they are facing major difficulties, many of them similar to those they are facing with SC. Remember, they have been trying to make a functional NPC AI for years now. I'm also pretty sure that despite pressure, CR will not want to accept basic scripted NPCs and is pushing the AI team to deliver on that Bartender Tier 0 AI.
Then you have the whole business with local physics grids, performance, animations, etc.
A pragmatic manager at this point might just cut corners, put a lot of stuff on rails, focus on delivering a narrowly focused story and pray they can get it working decently before Calder calls in his chips. I'm not sure CR is pragmatic enough and will continue to fiddle and try and squeeze more and more funding in the hope that he can stave off failure.
I have recently picked up X4 on a sale. IMO its a grossly neglected competitor to Star Citizen because it incorperates space legs with seamless transition. Its a different visual style, tho not cartoonish, high quality but not as insanely as SC. I havent played it much, I even refunded it by now because gameplay as a whole wasnt my thing in the end but I sampled all the things which I see SC backers yipping about when they talk about SC.
Flight model feels nice, it transports the feeling of mass and velocity and X4 provides a large number of ships in various sizes....yes even capital size ships. Transition from ship to EVA is a back screen but getting in and out of your pilots seat is seamless without a forced animation. Getting out of your ship into the interior of a space station is also seamless. Quicker and smoother. Now there is no pick-up system or overblown animation system in place. You dont see yourself in third person but visually X4 looks very nice regarding detail and polish. It certainly captures a living breathing economic sphere better because X4 as working AI and aliens.
So flying and fighting already feels great. Going EVA looks superior to Star Citizens implementation but that might be an opinion thing. X4 doesnt have millions of systems but the world that it does have is filled to the brim with content and events. Navigating through all this takes practice and learning because just like EVE.....trying to tackle everything at once can be a mouthful. Lets not start with depth and complexity because I guess that would be a point at which an honest SC backer would become embarassed. The amount of information and range of options make an UI based decision tool necessary too. I cant even begin to theorize how SC would manage this amount of stuff with their "point and click" system that is currently in place.
What I want to express is......do you look for a game "like" Star Citizen then the answer that Tippis gave you is actually true. There are several contenders out there, released and finished games which provide what SC tries to accomplish.
Or do you look for a game that "is" Star Citizen and the distinction might be minor but it makes all the difference. If you take everything SC does and how it does it and look for that in another game then SC has no peer. There is no game out there that IS Star Citizen except SC.
So do you prefer gameplay or fluff? Because what you post sounds to me like the answer is "fluff".
....are you kidding me right now?
This is one of the attitudes I find perplexing. What would you say about the design process is going to be transformative for the industry and widely mimicked?
The marketing & 'gamified' macro-purchasing, accompanying a dream pitch? Sure, I can see others looking to emulate that. But the actual design process... The take-aways I see are primarily bad practices that the industry seems to strive to avoid: The reworks implicit in doing full art during alpha; attempting to build gameplay mechanics before core tech such as networking is in place; giving engineering & design a perpetually moving target due to scope creep. Etc.
I’m sure from the inside to a player it can look like: Woo! Scale, semi-functioning physics grids, the seeds of greatness! Making hay with my mates in this cool ship I bought! Prodding the new things they added...
But I suspect from an industry perspective they’d want to see the final proved pudding (like say, with NPCs that work, persistence, finalised networking etc etc) before mimicking the baking technique
Hey, he said quantum leap. He didn't say forward! How CIG are developing the game is a quantum leap backwards!
For a start, CR has undone decades of good project management and software development best practices.
Remember the famous "We set unrealsitic deadlines in order to motivate the developers"?
Meanwhile, CR absolves himself of underestimating how long things will take.
Deadlines apparently only apply to the people who work for him.
That would be a future without any games!
Ok, not as long as yours.
But yes, i think its well written. I don't agree with all his points, but he wrote it well, presented things as being his opinion, and i'm not going to hold it against him for holding those opinions.
Those are the sorts of posts we should be able to discuss without baiting people and bullying them for holding those opinions.
The posts that i don't like are those from people like "Good News" Novak, who try and gloss over everything and pretend everything is wonderful.
Ah ok, I did wonder if you meant gameplay design over the design process.
Fair enough, I can see the appeal of large-scale seamlessness
I would note that the cake metaphor still stands here though. Because there are still seams in SC currently. And I don’t mean the various lifts / airlocks where details can be streamed in & out etc. I mean the 30ks, the deaths when physics grids fail, the missions borked by baffled AI, the trades thwarted by teleporting boxes. The failure points where their gameplay aspirations regarding seamless scale are not bridged by the current tech.
Until they get aspects like that to some form of robustness, until they actually properly prove those concepts, phrases like "what they've achieved will force a quantum leap in how future games are designed" come across as fairly vainglorious, on the game’s behalf.
It’s not just nitpicking on this front. As others have mentioned, seamlessness and scale have been targets for innumerable games. But most had to make compromises in one way or another to hit gold.
SC is still half baked. At best
Thanks. Already play X4 Foundations and have a blast with it. Its a great SP space-based game, and I've posted video of my gameplay before:
Alright then. Whats your view on it compared to SC. Where is X4 better, where does SC outshine SC?
If you are willing to answer...based on you sampling X4 already. Can you see Star Citizen becoming a game like X4 in terms of content, complexity and depth considering SCs current state, rate of progress and completion rate?
There are a few space games that do the same kind of thing, including some survival-based ones like No Man's Sky, and a few others whose names escape me right now. They all have that seamless universe. I would also add Space Engineers to that mix, Dual Universe, Starbase (from Frozenbyte), and maybe Ubi will unstick their fingers and release Beyond Good and Evil 2 which is also full scale with space legs...
Also Infinity: Battlescape is now looking good and is in beta, though there is no space legs, there is full transition from space to full size planets and very nice and smooth big scale combat.
So it's not like there is no choice. Besides KSP can be made really good looking with just a few mods, though it's very hardcore realistic. Still quite enjoyable and yes it's also fully seamless, despite using an outdated Unity engine.
Here Star Citizen is the outlier, where despite $300 million they never managed to coax the engine into producing a fully working game, everything is built on shaky foundations, some parts are actually completely smokescreen made up by the yes-men that CRoberts hired after competent engineers dared to tell him not everything was possible. This culture is what led to the current situation, where they still have no design for the overall game, no working engine for what they want to achieve, and an infinite loop of fruitless engineering and dirty scaffolding patches to try and prop up something that keeps the dream and whale money rolling.
And yes that "smokescreen" shows up through the many cracks, such as the beyond salvageable physics engine, the complete and utter absence of MMO networking design, the many hardcoded behaviours that make any mechanics addition a multi-year multi-million dollar endeavour.. want an example ? just one. Docking. Think that one will be delivered before 2025 ? Think again
Bought and played NMS early on, but found it lacking what I wanted. In fact, my disappointment in it is what partly drove me to SC.There are a few space games that do the same kind of thing, including some survival-based ones like No Man's Sky, and a few others whose names escape me right now. They all have that seamless universe. I would also add Space Engineers to that mix, Dual Universe, Starbase (from Frozenbyte), and maybe Ubi will unstick their fingers and release Beyond Good and Evil 2 which is also full scale with space legs...
Also Infinity: Battlescape is now looking good and is in beta, though there is no space legs, there is full transition from space to full size planets and very nice and smooth big scale combat.
So it's not like there is no choice. Besides KSP can be made really good looking with just a few mods, though it's very hardcore realistic. Still quite enjoyable and yes it's also fully seamless, despite using an outdated Unity engine.
Here Star Citizen is the outlier, where despite $300 million they never managed to coax the engine into producing a fully working game, everything is built on shaky foundations, some parts are actually completely smokescreen made up by the yes-men that CRoberts hired after competent engineers dared to tell him not everything was possible. This culture is what led to the current situation, where they still have no design for the overall game, no working engine for what they want to achieve, and an infinite loop of fruitless engineering and dirty scaffolding patches to try and prop up something that keeps the dream and whale money rolling.
And yes that "smokescreen" shows up through the many cracks, such as the beyond salvageable physics engine, the complete and utter absence of MMO networking design, the many hardcoded behaviours that make any mechanics addition a multi-year multi-million dollar endeavour.. want an example ? just one. Docking. Think that one will be delivered before 2025 ? Think again
They're two completely different games. X4 Foundations is a SP game allowing players to do whatever they want within the bounds of the X universe, including building fleets, space stations, and managing it all. The interface can be a bit clunky, and I'd like to be able to walk around in some of my large vessels, other than being restricted to just the bridge/cockpit, or hangar - but don't see that coming in that game. Nor do I see the developers allowing planetary or moon landings. Neither do I have any desire to see it go multiplayer.
X4 Foundations still includes lots of bugs and glitches, some of which I've reported - but its still an enjoyable game.
So "better" really isn't a fair question IMO. Much as I see E-D a different kind of game from SC that's still enjoyable, I see the same for X4 Foundations.
Has CIG ever said the Beta would be public? I don't think they have.
I don't think it will be - had that discussion in ETF chat today.
That's a Navy that has a lot of gold toilets...
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