Game Discussions Star Citizen Discussion Thread v12

harder mob

harder mob
So, I gave Star Citizen another fair go... 3.9.1... is pretty good, but after playing it for longer than I have ever have before (a few solid days worth), here are my conclusions/observations, comparing SC to Elite:

  1. SC 3.9.1 is punitive. Regular dying is part of the deal. Server crashes and dying alike will waste your time by sending you back to the last station where you landed, 20 minutes a pop, on average. There is no solo mode.
  2. Ships (even big ones) are made of paper mache. Shields are nothing like Elite Dangerous shields - they go down and come back 20x faster than in Elite Dangerous. If your ship is destroyed, you get a clone of it... stuff you leave on a ship isn't persisted, and since they're made of paper mache, you shouldn't be leaving anything in it anyway. No point in naming it either, cause, again, it's made of paper mache. Missiles, if they hit you, will typically one shot you... speaking of getting one-shotted.
  3. FPS combat: NPCs can one shot you in the head. See #1 for 20 minutes a pop.
I think there's a pattern here... combat (ship or FPS) is lethal and a complete pain in the bum. The persistence (actually, the lack of persistence) of ships is annoying. The way the ships look, and the interiors? Cool... very cool. But, they're made of paper mache, so I have a hard time getting attached to them the way I have gotten attached to my Krait Phantom which I managed to get to Beagle Point and back without it blowing up. Also, the FPS is not really fun unless you can play like a CoD perfectionist... even then don't be surprised if your gun jams (doesn't fire) on you at the worst possible time, or an NPC who can see (and apparently shoot) through boxes tags you from 100m with a lucky shot to the head.

Mining is kinda fun I guess, but not as fun as in Elite Dangerous... not as profitable either. You basically have to mine well for 30 hours minimum to get enough credits to buy a decent ship in game.

Long story short, I've come away from giving Star Citizen another shot with a newfound appreciation for just how well balanced ship combat and flying is in Elite Dangerous... it also has legit exploration of a kind and galactic scope that SC will never have. Avatars are much better looking in Elite Dangerous too, on average, for when Odyssey gets here. And, it's the little things you take for granted in Elite, like say, logging off... when you log back on where will you be? Exactly where you were! How about in SC? ROFLMFAO ... roll the dice and make your best guess where you'll be. One time, I logged off in my 300i's bed on the surface of Hurston... next logon, I woke up in the bed, on the planet surface. I thought "cool!" ... until I realized it was some other planet I had never landed on... 10 minutes of Quantum travel away.

Elite Dangerous is an actual, polished, well-balanced, reliable (most of the time), AAA game with true galactic scale... Star Citizen is an amazing Alpha demo with some cool ship models made of paper mache in a very lethal, tenuous, and not-so-consistent solar system.

And, despite all my whining, I still want a Vanguard Warden, even if it is made of paper.

p.s., VR... I made the trip to Beagle Point and back in VR... weeks of RL time playing... worked flawlessly. Had some very epic, emotional moments too riding around on faraway planets (feels real.) I can wait for Odyssey VR (but not long!) SC? It feels like they've got 35,000 bugs to squash and balancing to do before they start worrying about VR.
 
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Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
LittleAnt said:
ToW is needed because testing combat with several vehicles and 40 players is really, really hard and rare in the PU. It can only be done by large orgs with good organisation. Even combat orgs can't do it as much as they want with the way PU servers works.
For instance, I've always wanted to test this sort of combat and the bigger event I've been able to do in 2 years was a 15 players one with me in an Aurora (crap in combat). With ToW it might be super easy.
AC or SM hasn't brought me any different playing experience than the PU, it will not be the case with ToW.
Click to expand...

So so close to self-awareness but you dodge it adroitly.

Let's break it down.

Nobody knows at this stage (including CIG) how many people they will eventually get on a server. So, we have a case of putting the cart before the horse here. Even if they can get it to hundreds of people on a server, what are the chances of so many people congregating in a single area to have some sort of limited combined arms fight? Why would anyone drop down to the ground to fight when they can blow people up easily from their ships? The game has bombers you know? One pass would obliterate any ground forces. Remember CIG selling bombers?

As things stand, if you get 40 people in a single area, chances are its all organized by a single org. Whose going to fight them? All you end up with is lame Rexshilla style machinima.

And your final line just cracks me up. Despite the logical conclusion that if SM and AC didn't bring you a different playing experience, then ToW will... you instead come to the opposite conclusion.
 

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
LittleAnt said:
If I was developing a game, ToW might be something I might do.
If I want a set of data for 50 matchs of 20 min with 40 players with 4 ballistas in front of 2 hammerheads, I will not ask devs to do it.
It's 660 hours of dev time wrongfully spent just to see how ballistas and hammerheads will be used and interact with real players/teams/orgs. Multiply this number of hours by the number of combinations of vehicle/weapons you want to test and you get an insane amount of hours needed to balance all theses. Balance is done by stats and big numbers.
Also for tests, devs can be compared to players, sometimes you can form good teams with them but they never be as efficient as combat orgs. You can't really test those mechanisms if you don't see how real orgs use thems.
Click to expand...

Except its worthless data.

All you end up is data for limited variations of combat scenarios that will never actually play out like that in the PU.
 

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
Iron Golem said:
I think TOW was something to capitalize on Rex Zillas screaming bro man fist dude crowd. Roberts thinking if Battlefield and COD plus numerous other games could do it, he could offer it just for the sake of pulling in fresh fish from an untapped demographic. No actual intention of delivering, just more potential income.
Click to expand...

He probably also thought he could do it for 20% of the cost of developing it under a traditional publisher model :D
 

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
LittleAnt said:
Yes, that's certainly why it's not yet in the PTU/PU. Perhaps they wait to get Vulkan in to at least get a better framerate. It might helps players to wait for improvment on the server tickrate. Delivering ToW with awfull performances will not make it even for the whiteknights.
Click to expand...

Ah yes, Vulkan. They've been talking about that for a few years now.

Look at it this way, if CIG can't get decent performance using DirectX, while other devs can make stunning looking games on the same hardware with DirectX, why would Vulkan offer any sort of significant performance gains for SC?

Vulkan provides a different way to interact with the hardware, its not some sort of miracle system that will suddenly allow a poorly performing system to work better, unless you are talking about CIG refactoring their whole game at the same time.
 

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
sovapid said:
From CIG's latest roadmap post:



Since this is gonna affect the Star Citizen roadmap as well......

Knowing CIG fondness for buzzwords that sort of come from the software dev industry, I wonder if they are going to introduce the idea of Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployment????? Just a wild guess. But a way to get rid of a roadmap with dates. Just features with a completion rate. When something is done "to CIG standards" and ready, it can get released....


And its Agile!

🤠 🤠 🤠
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Well, after they switched to staggered development i was hoping the next step would be to switch to blind drunk development.
 

Arcondes

A
sovapid said:
:ROFLMAO: :ROFLMAO: :ROFLMAO: :ROFLMAO: :ROFLMAO: :ROFLMAO: :ROFLMAO: :ROFLMAO: :ROFLMAO: :ROFLMAO: :ROFLMAO: :ROFLMAO:

combat testing in ETF. lol

ETF members* are about screen shots and space trucking.

SC needs mixed arms combat balancing, doesnt have to be ToW. But the current ETF aint gonna cut it either.


*most, there are some in there, but not enough
Click to expand...
That’s true the most and best pvp squadrons left Sc long time ago. I remember some ETF where it was forbidden to do combat to test some mechanics....
 

Mole HD

Mole HD
sovapid said:
The performance improvement with CSOCS was huge. Don't know what you are on about.
Click to expand...
Indeed...the performance increase with CSOCS was immense...SSOCS, not so much...mainly because it broke a few things that were fine without it..
 
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Mole HD

Mole HD
Agony_Aunt said:
I remember when SDC said they were migrating to SC because its so much better than ED for PvP.
Click to expand...
SDC did migrate to SC though...I've seen one or two of them here and there, Harry, Rinzler, a few others...even had one of them on my Valkyrie for a chat a while ago ;)
 
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