Game Discussions Star Citizen Discussion Thread v12

[Fishy]

I mean, if you've been proven to have lied on day 1 when you appeared on video asking for money, it probably shouldn't be a surprise that people assume you're still lying afterwards. But sure, it's the big bad internet. Funny how by comparison, even with multiple long delays and years with no news, CDPR are still predominantly taken at face value and the darling of gaming social media.

 

[GuruNot]

Absolutely the quote of the day:

on normal days we have an average of over 30,000 different people playing and at the peak during events this year we've hit 100,000 unique accounts playing in one day which is pretty impressive for a game in an early Alpha state. We are on track to have over one million unique players this year. Star Citizen already has the main gameloops of a space sim; cargo hauling, commodity trading, mercenary, pirate, bounty hunting and mining. Just spending time refining and finishing out these would make Star Citizen with all it's detail and fidelity more engrossing than any "finished" space sim you can play today.

Source: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/...atmospheric-room-system-4-years-later/3368356

 

[Cotic]

....which is pretty impressive for a game in an early Alpha state.

Let's rephrase that:

Average hourly uniques over a 24 hour period of 1250 with a max of 4166, for a game 8 years into development at a cost of $350 million... to date.

Is that impressive, really?

 

[StuartGT]

Hourly concurrent will be higher than that range. Accepted daily playtime for an average gamer is around 1-2hr, so being kind the concurrent is probably a 10th of daily uniques.

Normal day of 30,000 uniques = roughly 3,000 hourly concurrent
Event days of 100,000 uniques = roughly 10,000 hourly concurrent

 

[VR Mr Teatime]

If the CEO (is he still?) of a company that has supposedly had $300+ million invested in it, feels the need to go on a public forum to defend himself or the company(ies) he is responsible for, then there is something very wrong and something must have provoked that action. Its almost like a rerun of behaviour after The Escapist article, but without the article.

Any clues as to why, other than a deadline for SQ42's release approaching, which have never mattered previously?

 

[StuartGT]

If the CEO (is he still?) of a company that has supposedly had $300+ million invested in it, feels the need to go on a public forum to defend himself or the company(ies) he is responsible for, then there is something very wrong and something must have provoked that action. Its almost like a rerun of behaviour after The Escapist article, but without the article.

Any clues as to why, other than a deadline for SQ42's release approaching, which have never mattered previously?

Frontier's Annual Report was published on Wednesday, and contained this:

For comparison, other high-profile space exploration games that entered Kickstarter in the early 2010s have still not released at all, speaking to the challenges of the genre and to our teams expertise and ability to deliver compelling product in a timely fashion.​

That might have triggered Chris, seeing as he has been making these defensive public comments at 2am California-time these past two days.

 

[Cotic]

Hourly concurrent will be higher than that range. Accepted daily playtime for an average gamer is around 1-2hr, so being kind the concurrent is probably a 10th of daily uniques.

Normal day of 30,000 uniques = roughly 3,000 hourly concurrent
Event days of 100,000 uniques = roughly 10,000 hourly concurrent

Good point, changed it to reflect uniques rather than imply concurrency.

 

[Viajero]

Hourly concurrent will be higher than that range. Accepted daily playtime for an average gamer is around 1-2hr, so being kind the concurrent is probably a 10th of daily uniques.

Normal day of 30,000 uniques = roughly 3,000 hourly concurrent
Event days of 100,000 uniques = roughly 10,000 hourly concurrent

Those figures still sound a tad optimistic, either that or Mole has had supernatural chance to have been randomly matched in the same server with Terada so often.

By the way, didnt you also made a calc based on the data posted in those SC infogrammes? How those match with what CR has just stated?

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Leaks!

Spoiler: LEAKS!

The main enemy of the first episode will be Odin Munitions Corporation. Vanduul would be the main enemy in the second episode. You will be disappointed if you think you are gonna have a big fight between you and alien in the first episode.
(PU) After Pyro is done, the next system will be Nyx.
There'll be 4 playable systems in SQ42: Vega, Odin, Terra, and Killian. Currently, only Odin can be free explored.
You can create your own character in chapter 2. The character you use in chapter 1 will a default character. Chapter 1 is for experiencing the story background, something like a tutorial section.
The HUD of the Vanduul ships is being rebuilt.
By the end of SQ42 story, you can choose to continue to serve in the SQ42 (continue the single-player game) or join the persistence universe (PU).
The main story is about 25 hours of playing time (varies with different people).
The length of each chapter is different, chapter 1 is about 45 minutes to 1 hour; chapter 3 is about 30 minutes; chapter 4 is about 5-8 hours; and chapter 7 is about 2 hours. So the is not count game length by chapters. Each individual chapter is driven by the story content, and the timing is completely different.
The 2017 one hour demo is half of chapter 7 and clips from other chapters.
Until chapter 10, the ship you are given to fly is Gladius.
Although the main enemy is OMC, Vanduul is the biggest threat and will strike you hard when they come up to the stage.
In Polaris' commercial video in 2016, the burning city is New Corvo. This scene is also in SQ42. The Polaris commercial video can be seen as an official spoiler for the opening promo of the SQ42 story.
The officially released Bishop's speech video is in-game, too. You'll see it when lying on a med-bed.
You'll serve on Idris. During the service, you can go out and explore freely or pick up side missions, but only in the Odin system.
The ways to complete some tasks are varied. Like other AAA games, you can choose to fight it through, or you can turn off some communication array to finish the task, and so on. I (AA001) have tried a certain task. There are 5 ways to complete. Include fighting through, eliminating one by one, sneaking through, hacking the security system, and using EMP.
You can "borrow" NPC's ship, even if it's an enemy ship.
Your mothership is not stationary but always moving. When you go out to explore or do missions, the mothership will be in a cruise state. You can go back when you need supplies.
Vanduul's main appearance in the story is at the beginning and end.
There is an internal friendliness system in-game. Your relationship with NPCs will be reflected in their subtle expressions when they are speaking to you. In addition, there'll be some practical benefits after you become friends with NPCs.
Although the character creation is in chapter 2, you can choose a gender at the beginning of the story
The fastest way to complete SQ42 story? You can choose after you finish customizing your face to not join UEE Navy. Then congratulations, the SQ42 story is over.
Retaliator's torpedoes are not only used to blow up enemy ships.
Try to practice more mercenary missions in PU, especially the ones that need to clear defense turrets efficiently.
Don't like the ending of TLOU2? Good news! SQ42 won't be like it either.
You are not a superhero, you'll continue to grow in failure.

All leaks said here are referring to a game version date to July 2019. Things may be changed as the game develops.

General:
SQ42 will use the same launcher as SC. The game launcher will be redesigned.
SQ42 is originally scheduled to release in 2016, but was pushed back and remade. Then in 2018, a lot of contents had been remade again. But as now all contents planned are basically finalized.
Many things in SQ42 are made by hand, as the result, it'll be more lively than the procedurally generated ones in PU.
The battlefield scene in the newest version is about 3 times spectacular than the 2017 version to increase the excitement.
The option for the player to choose to stay in SQ42 or join PU is now moved from the ending to Chapter 2 where players creating their own character.
The only thing AA001 is worried about SQ42 is the FPS AI because it's using the same one in PU. But we all know CIG is improving FPS AI.

Ships:
All the flyable capital ships in SQ42 are in the polishing stage now.
There is no chance of piloting a capital ship in SQ42. The main ships you'll be using are fighters. There's a mission required to fly a Retaliator. Another mission requires to use the Titan exosuit.
Other than all the ships that have already been shown and leaked, there are no more new, "undiscovered" ships in SQ42.
The player will fly Gladius #87, call sign Baron 2. Oldman's fighter is Baron 1.
The player will experience the capital ships in the order of Javelin → Idris → Bengal, The ships' names are G[xxxxxxx], Stanton, and K[xxxxxx]. Javelin will have big uses in Episode 2 and 3 of the game, but that's a future far from now.
There'll be more than one Bengal-class ships in SQ42.
Javelin will Kamikaze attack something.
The Retribution is brought on the plan because of the Kamikaze attack by the Javelin.
The Retribution is working in progress and will appear in Episode 1 of SQ42. It will debut in Chapter 2 as in the construction stage (Like how CIG showed off the Kraken in Lorville in 2018 Citizencon).
In the Squadron 42 Cinematic Teaser from 2018, the scene of the holograph shown how a person died [2:18] takes place in a Xi'an cargo ship.
The Kingship will be wrecked.

Story:
The first person you'll meet on the Bengal is Brian Weiters. You can find his story (a book review) in a comm-link “2934: A Dreamer Dreams” where he was still in school (as it's 11 years before the game of SQ42 begins).
Your choices are related to whether if a teammate NPC can survive or not. Please treasure them. If they died, they died for good. But there are some NPC who are killed because the story needs them to die which there's no way to save them.
The war between humans and Vanduul can't leave Banu. Banu people are no ordinary merchants. They can be slave traders, Intelligence traders, or arms dealers. Banu plays a certain role throughout the whole story.
Besides Sato Karne (the leader of the OMC), another main antagonist that has a name in Episode 1 is Thul'Óqquray, a Vanduul clan leader who commands a fleet includes a Driller.
(Only speculation) Admiral Bishop may not play an absolutely positive role because some actions of him are taking the old path of Messer (like increasing the budget from the Vanduul attack). P.S. Bishop is on the Retribution.
In the demo from 2017 where you pick up your weapon [15:30], you can also ask for weapon attachments and ammo from that NPC now.
When you first arrive on the Idris, someone is speaking ill of you behind your back. And you still need to greet that person.
The comm arrays are been hacked and monitored.
You can kill slave NPCs in-game.
Shubin is the traitor.
There is a third enemy party besides OMC and Vanduul, and it's the weakest on all these three.
You wouldn't be able to finish the game if all you can do is FPS or dogfight. You need to learn how to get along with NPCs, like drawing out the truth from prisoners
The character acted by Sandy Gardiner will not die in the story.

 

[Hydrino]

These days I work with cloud stuff, not that long ago I had an interview with a rising small games company that's building some Azure based stuff for online games. They had a test in which I had to write a small web API to control a 'virtual pet', so there were methods to feed it and get a response regarding its status. My solution involved storing the current server time when the 'feed' function was used as "time last fed", that way when the player called the 'status' function it would simply find out when the pet was last fed at which point it would update it to record if it had died etc, so there are no 'loops' or 'cycles' involved and everything is just one line of code to extrapolate the state of the pet and one line of code to store the 'last fed' time/date. The pet isn't dead until the player asks if it so.

I don't know if Roberts is just sugar coating what, behind the scenes is very normal programming behind the scenes or if he's involved. If games development was anything like he said it was, he wouldn't pass the above interview test to be a programmer. He'd write a massive monolythic CPU internsive real time game loop that stored and calculated a multitude of 'real world' cool factors like digestion ratios, stomach acid and defication rate all for which the player gets no possible gain other than being told that the pet died because they hadn't fed it lately.

+Quality Post.

 

[Skizomeuh]

Absolutely the quote of the day:

Source: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/...atmospheric-room-system-4-years-later/3368356

If, say, I'd get 5 30K in my daily session, will I count for 1 or for 5 in their counter?

 

[Hydrino]

This is really hard to believe.

 

[StuartGT]

Those figures still sound a tad optimistic, either that or Mole has had supernatural chance to have been randomly matched in the same server with Terada so often.

By the way, didnt you also made a calc based on the data posted in those SC infogrammes? How those match with what CR has just stated?

Yep, the infographic last year (for Jan to Oct 2019) gave an average hourly concurrent of 1300 players.

 

[Viajero]

Yep, the infographic last year (for Jan to Oct 2019) gave an average hourly concurrent of 1300 players.

So either that infochart was wrong or Chris Roberts is wrong. Or the actual average play time is much, much less than those 1-2 hours you asumed.

Also both can be wrong

 

[Skizomeuh]

He definitely does have a point about the sort of extreme backlash they get, and as you noted there are plenty of people in this thread who that applies to.

I'd say you reap what you sow. And I'd add that venting here, a place quite remote to Chris' fragile eyes and ears, a place which was for a long while one of the rare places where we could express our concerns freely, may be the least effective place to hurt the project.

I won't speak for everyone here but I mostly vent only here, and on a french general gaming forum. I even rarely vent on my Twitter.

So no, people criticism is not responsible for the situation. I absolve myself of that.

 

[Asp Explorer]

1-2 hours of gameplay in Star Citizen is worth 100-200 hours in any other AAAAA^A^A title.

There is more gameplay in that stuffed penguin than there is in the whole of Skyrim! And best of all, these are still early days!

Take fullest advantage of these earliest stages of Alpha! Come and build a universe with me, Wobblechin Waveyhands! Gasp as you battle the mighty Vandull, tremble at the thought of encountering real Hollywood talent, embark upon a journey through an entire incomplete star system in a vast and unimplemented 'Verse! Admire the finest elevator panels that have ever been imagined. Relax after a tense SATAball game with your cannot-tell-if-human-or-AI teammates with a hot Hairy Roberts. Take the kids to pet the Sandwurmie while avoiding deadly ramps! Spend hours in between 30K's learning to say "Where is my spaceship-shaped USB drive?" in Banu, and buy an Idris!

 

[Tippis]

So either that infochart was wrong or Chris Roberts is wrong. Or the actual average play time is much, much less than those 1-2 hours you asumed.

Also both can be wrong

If something was said by Chris, it's a very safe bet that it was wrong so at least that part is covered. So the only question is the infographic, and if that was also based on something Chris said, then there's your answer.

 

[McGlashan]

Bad news, CR have not flown away, nor is dead

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robertsspaceindustries.com

You're right, it's bad news for SC.
It means the speculation that investors might have decided to rein in his utterly directionless "management" were wishful thinking. Instead, it's back to the usual meaningless word salads, whale-baiting descriptions of supposedly amazing features that will - if they appear at all - be utterly underwhelming in practice just like all the others, claims of advanced development progress which will ultimately prove to be unrealistic, delusional claims of SC's grandeur, and then a tantrum when his triumphant return to the forums isn't met with the universal awe and reverence he feels he deserves.

 

[Skizomeuh]

@LittleAnt : what can we take as trustworthy in the two Chris Almighty posts BTW?

 

[StuartGT]

So either that infochart was wrong or Chris Roberts is wrong. Or the actual average play time is much, much less than those 1-2 hours you asumed.

Also both can be wrong

Or that more players are playing this year than last year