Game Discussions Star Citizen Discussion Thread v12

[VR Golgot]

Someone mentioned predictions earlier. Which reminded me of...

Zaphod's Prediction for Dec 2020:

We're half way there. Let's have a quick refresher:

I think that about this time next year, things will be a lot clearer.
They're going to meet their current deadlines for SQ42, mostly because they have to. SC will follow soon after.
Don't expect ship sales to stop though. That's not gonna happen.
Also, I've never believed they would release with all of their kickstarter goals delivered (100 systems being the biggest of these, imo).
But they're going to deliver something and call it a release.
It'll be fun to see how many people they manage to infuriate when it happens.
Regardless... SDC will be there to harvest all the salty tears, and all will be right in the 'verse.

He's still got some slack there. SQ42 beta only pushed back one quarter since then.

Will something arrive by Q4 2020? Will it be the comedy 'prequel' option of TheAgent's tips? Something that merrily goes toe-to-toe with October's Squadron release? A glass cannon that falls to pieces?

Will a similar SC offering follow soonTM after?

Guess we'll see...

(So long as it proves as funny as Mr.Nowak's prediction for 2019 I don't mind )

Spoiler

2018 was a great year for me and for many people who backed this project. Most podcast and community orgs iterated the fact that compared to all years this has been the best due to new tech and content deliveries. As usual instead of being more closed CIG decided to be even more transparent and revealed the last two things that were not public. The Squadron 42 production roadmap and their financials. At this point CIG is the most open AAA studio in the game development industry. This week CIG also became the highest valued space video game company (496mil) blowing past Frontier at 360 and CCP at 425 million dollars.

My expectations for 2019 is the full delivery of Arccorp and MicroTech and all of its cities, outposts and moons. The repair, salvage and refuel mechanics. The addition of the second solar system. Possibly Nyx. Let's see how next year goes but if this year is any indicator SC will become even bigger and will reach a wider audience. I'll go grind that prospector now and see how long it takes me to get it.

 

[Rørik Þrumsålr]

Which is actually quite realistic, but doesn't make for the best gameplay experience.

It's realistic in the sense that the ships are capable of it, but very unrealistic in practical application. The human body reacts very poorly to lateral G's in practice. Almost as bad as negative G's in fact. Real space ships ranging from the Mercury Capsule all the way through Apollo, STS and the current Orion & Dragon still always execute a Roll+Pitch. Yaw is still used almost exclusively for correction.

 

[Viajero]

That's a strange angle of criticism to take in the Frontier Forums, given the developments Elite has taken, not just with David Braben's role (and his proposed vision!), but every prominent creative voice in the project. I imagine it must be difficult for the many Elite fans who agree with you on this, to reconcile their opposing narratives about these two parallel trajectories.

Not that I need agree or disagree with the point made but there are few key differences in those "narratives" (?), as you say, that need to be highlighted and that make things very easy to reconcile and understand.

Chris Roberts is the head of a record breaking crowdfunded project, to the tune of 300+ million and counting that has not yet delivered what backers have been paying for (still are). He has had for over 8+ years an ethical, moral and commercial obligation to be a reasonable steward of all the funds pledged by others, and to continuously be held to account by virtue of that trust and money still being conferred to him as we speak on a daily basis, but without a product worth of the name yet in sight.

By contrast David Braben was up front and center present all throughout during the crowdfunded period for Elite including the offline gate fiasco. Braben honored the Kickstarter and crowdfund with a delivered product within 2 years and exposed himself up (and Elite) fully to the critics and reviews of the whole market for good or for bad with the consequences that we all are aware of.

Following that FDEV and Braben continued developing the game on their own money, resources, and more importantly, their own risk. Wether Braben now decides he wants to be more or less present for Elite or take a back seat is his own decision, and rightfully so. The market (us) will judge his actions with its proverbial wallets. Either way it is still his own money, his own resources, his risk, and therefore his rules.

In the mean time, and 8+ years on, CIG and Chris Roberts is still taking zero risks in this "most ambitious of endeavors" still using and risking everyone´s money except theirs. The least he can do is frikking show up.

 

[Asp Explorer]

The least he can do is frikking show up.

You just don't understand showing up development.

The scene needs to be flawless. His muse needs to be nurtured. Randomly coloured text in a development CLI has to pass Graphics and Leadership QI. Lighting has to be dimmed just so. Camera setup must be absolutely flawless....

Only then can the wonder of Genuine Roberts be revealed in his full handwaving majesty - with a deliberately croakey "Oh I didn't see you there!"

PC gaming will be saved.

 

[LittleAnt]

but SC doesn't have the complexity of Ultima nor the dogfight of red baron!!! lol

yes, all the checkbox are not checked.

 

[ZeeWolf]

That's a strange angle of criticism to take in the Frontier Forums, given the developments Elite has taken, not just with David Braben's role (and his proposed vision!), but every prominent creative voice in the project. I imagine it must be difficult for the many Elite fans who agree with you on this, to reconcile their opposing narratives about these two parallel trajectories.

You are assuming that everyone on this forum has some kind of collective point of view on this? You've kind of "straw-manned" me and everyone that agrees with me as "Elite fans", that's very dismissive.

I don't make that connection though as with many other crowdfunded project Elite at least had a realistic crowdfunding to release period that they were present for. You will have to detail these "parallel trajectories" as I suspect they are tenuous and nothing to do with Chris Roberts' current association with Star Citizen.

That's a good argument not to try and stretch your crowdfunding objective over a decade or so isn't it? Otherwise be damn sure you aren't suddenly finding you can no longer meet your obligations due to "personal" reasons. Don't turn around months after the Kickstarter finishes having not met the delivery date and say "hey I need hundreds of millions of dollars and as much time as possible to make it just right" and then eight years down the line quietly slip away into the night when the mansions built leaving backers with a multi planet space deliveroo sim that if it isn't crashing to desktop leaves players locked to substandard framerates in a world where NPC's t-pose while standing on chairs and hope NOBODY NOTICES.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Whatever happened to all that anyway? Did any of it ever make it to the light of day?

What does your wallet tell you?

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Just the very occasional 'Pillar Talk' for the fans. Interpret that inverse aspect as you wish

As far as we can tell, Chris hasn't done a Pillar Talk since last year. The one shown this year with him in looks like it was shot back-to-back the previous year, further reinforced by some the stuff they were talking about being out of date. So its something they hung onto to show later.

There was another video, early on this year (i think it was this year, not end of last) which generated some giggles with CR on a conference call with like 30 people where they were discussing the fashion of NPCs on a moon, and then we listened to the designer who explained how Chris rejected the first designs because they were not what he envisioned so they had to do them again (why CR couldn't communicate his vision the first time is a question).

From this we learned that CR is still trying to micromanage everything in the project rather than providing high level guidance. Also CIG engages in meetings with far too many people sitting around listening to things they have no need to be involved in. This is one of my pet peeves in business and something i've put some effort into stamping out wherever i can. One client insisted on hours long meetings with around 30 people involved where they discussed every aspect of every project with all the project leaders, rather than breaking them down into smaller meetings. So much time wasted that could instead be summarized in meeting notes for anyone who is really interested. They also loved to do another pet peeve of mine where two or three people would get into massive side disccusions, dragging the meeting on even longer, instead of someone saying "Ok, this is something we can discuss after this meeting. Let's set up a meeting after this to discuss this topic that nobody else needs to be involved in".

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Someone mentioned predictions earlier. Which reminded me of...

Zaphod's Prediction for Dec 2020:

We're half way there. Let's have a quick refresher:




He's still got some slack there. SQ42 beta only pushed back one quarter since then.

Will something arrive by Q4 2020? Will it be the comedy 'prequel' option of TheAgent's tips? Something that merrily goes toe-to-toe with October's Squadron release? A glass cannon that falls to pieces?

Will a similar SC offering follow soonTM after?

Guess we'll see...

(So long as it proves as funny as Mr.Nowak's prediction for 2019 I don't mind )

This is one of the funny things about SC. Going back a year or two looking for prediction posts (positive or negative) and seeing how they worked out.

Apparently nobody understand fidelity development well enough to make accurate predictions though, and that apparently includes CIG!

 

[ECity]

yes, all the checkbox are not checked.

Is it too much to ask the BDSSE for the planets to move?

 

[sovapid]

Is it too much to ask the BDSSE for the planets to move?

I don't really care if the planets orbit or not. Rotating gives day/night cycles which is interesting. Orbiting does not add to the game play. In fact, with how SC does interdiction, it is going to break game play.

 

[amigacooke]

Either way it is still his own money, his own resources, his risk, and therefore his rules.

ED is being developed with Frontier’s money, which in my limited understanding of how publicly listed companies work, is not the same thing as David Braben’s money.

 

[Hydrino]

ED is being developed with Frontier’s money, which in my limited understanding of how publicly listed companies work, is not the same thing as David Braben’s money.

Weel, he is majority shareholder, so there's that.
But techically you are correct, it is FD corp money.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Is it too much to ask the BDSSE for the planets to move?

The turtle moves!

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Giggle worthy thread

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/hq15gb

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/hq15gb/buy_ships_ingame_vs_real_money/


Not sure if a realist or being sarcastic

When the game ships to retail in 2030 ....

And they seem to be all fine with this idea.

Eventually the goal is that you will have to either physically load your ship yourself (every single container), or pay local NPCs to load it for you - but either way, all containers will need to be physically loaded. And this means that a ship like the Hull C may potentially take a long time to load / unload (as you'll need e.g. Argo MPUV or similar to drive each crate out to its allocation loading arm, etc).

How can anyone think this is going to be a good thing? I'm pretty sure CIG will walk back on this idea, and backers at that point will agree it was a silly idea and CIG are doing the right thing, but for now they think its a good thing. If it happens like this it will be incredibly tedious either loading up ships or waiting for NPCs to do it. They never seem to think of how these things will actually work in reality, just that it sounds cool.

 

[sovapid]

How can anyone think this is going to be a good thing? I'm pretty sure CIG will walk back on this idea, and backers at that point will agree it was a silly idea and CIG are doing the right thing, but for now they think its a good thing. If it happens like this it will be incredibly tedious either loading up ships or waiting for NPCs to do it. They never seem to think of how these things will actually work in reality, just that it sounds cool.

It will suck, pointless waste of time. Kinda like ship transfer timers in Elite.

 

[LittleAnt]

Eventually the goal is that you will have to either physically load your ship yourself (every single container), or pay local NPCs to load it for you - but either way, all containers will need to be physically loaded. And this means that a ship like the Hull C may potentially take a long time to load / unload (as you'll need e.g. Argo MPUV or similar to drive each crate out to its allocation loading arm, etc).

How can anyone think this is going to be a good thing? I'm pretty sure CIG will walk back on this idea, and backers at that point will agree it was a silly idea and CIG are doing the right thing, but for now they think its a good thing. If it happens like this it will be incredibly tedious either loading up ships or waiting for NPCs to do it. They never seem to think of how these things will actually work in reality, just that it sounds cool.

It's something I want to do manually too (if it's not too long) from time to time. If you don't want or it's too long (Hull C) NPC will do it for you. If you do not want to wait, just take another ship and do something else during the loading (or other social/maintenance activities), you don't need to be on the ship being loaded. A lot of big transports (don't know for the Hull C) have one or two internal space where you can have a little ship and/or ground vehicle.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

It will suck, pointless waste of time. Kinda like ship transfer timers in Elite.

What ship transfer timers? (owner of a fleet carrier )

 

[Agony_Aunt]

It's something I want to do manually too (if it's not too long) from time to time. If you don't want or it's too long (Hull C) NPC will do it for you. If you do not want to wait, just take another ship and do something else during the loading (or other social/maintenance activities), you don't need to be on the ship being loaded.

Hold up, manually or with NPCs, it will take time. But anyway, pretty sure CIG will never actually implement this.

As for the do something else during the loading. Come off it, when you are wanting to trade, you're wanting to trade. Not sit around a space bar emoting. You take another ship and again, you're doing something other than you want to be doing.

Sovapid is right to poke fun at ship transfer times in ED, although that could largely be solved and kept by adding a send ahead feature to them rather than just having it be come to me.

In short, its just wasting time for the sake of wasting time and fidelity. Just abstract it away. If really needed and people really need their immersion factor, have it loaded by conveyor belt, which can load a hundred units in a minute or something.

Otherwise it will have a cool factor once, but when grinding away (and you've got to admit, a lot of people doing trading will simply be doing it to grind for credits), you don't give two hoots about fidelity, you want efficiency.

Unless you want SC to be an exremely niche game, where anyone suggesting that ships should be loaded instantly is immediately told they don't understand fidelity development, thereby pushing away a vast majority of potential players, then some things should be abstracted away.

Remember what happened with Hellion.

 

[sovapid]

It's something I want to do manually too (if it's not too long) from time to time. If you don't want or it's too long (Hull C) NPC will do it for you. If you do not want to wait, just take another ship and do something else during the loading (or other social/maintenance activities), you don't need to be on the ship being loaded.

ugh

do something else like play another game that doesn't punish the player?