Game Discussions Star Citizen Discussion Thread v12

[Mole HD]

Just look at the comment section here, oh the defenders of the church is active.

New expansion for Elite Dangerous will add tens of thousands of locations to the game

First-person combat and exploration is just the beginning

www.polygon.com

I've no doubt there are some hanging around, it is Spectrum after all... but to be honest, more than a few SC backers are or were Elite players too. For the usual Star Citizen faithful, ED is the low hanging fruit...it has spaceships so they see it as a competitor or a threat to Star Citizen. It's not really, they're two completely different games...but the fact that some of them see it as a competitor/threat to SC only shows up the ones who don't get out much. I've said it often enough on Spectrum and on here...it's absolutely OK to like both

 

[lysan]

I've no doubt there are some hanging around, but to be honest, more than a few SC backers are or were Elite players too. For the usual Star Citizen faithful, ED is the low hanging fruit...it has spaceships so they see it as a competitor or a threat to Star Citizen. It's not really, they're two completely different games...but the fact that some of them see it as a competitor/threat to SC only shows up the ones who don't get out much. I've said it often enough on Spectrum and on here...it's absolutely OK to like both

Agree, my problem is CIG business model, and the slow development of the game, walking inside your ship and the modeling is great in SC, however the lack of actually gameplay with AI ships, NPC’s storyline and so on make it a no go for me to get back into.

 

[MTBFritz]

The white knights don't go into the 'other games' section of spectrum. After mentioning it...I can't remember the last time I popped in there either

nice way to out yourself there mate. And the truth finally reveals itself

 

[Mole HD]

Agree, my problem is CIG business model, and the slow development of the game, walking inside your ship and the modeling is great in SC, however the lack of actually gameplay with AI ships, NPC’s storyline and so on make it a no go for me to get back into.

Aye, playing on your own in SC is pretty dire for the most part due to the lack of NPC ships...besides mining. The few gameplay loops there are are beset by long standing bugs, lack of development and persistent server errors. Multiplayer with mates including multicrew however are the backbone of my enjoyment with SC either bounty hunting or mining. The planet side mining with the ROC buggies is very good as well as co-op mining in Prospectors or multicrew in the Mole...everything else is ridiculously poor.

 

[Mole HD]

nice way to out yourself there mate. And the truth finally reveals itself

That's almost as bad as the rumour that went around a while back on reddit and Spectrum that my alt was the Yamiks...I didn't know whether to feel slightly flattered or completely horrified

 

[ECity]

It's kind of funny that Inside Star Citizen talked about more enhancements to mining.

 

[Mole HD]

It's kind of funny that Inside Star Citizen talked about more enhancements to mining.

I'm all for it...besides being a miner...one gameplay loop almost complete is better than none at all.

Dan Trufin, the guy in charge of mining at Ci¬G is my hero...he gets stuff done and listens to the feedback from the folk that actually do mining in SC. All the improvements being added to 3.13 and subsequent patches have been suggested by us, the miners...passive sub components for the mining heads as well as active consumables...mining gadgets and HUD improvements too. So far, Dan Trufin and his team have added almost everything equipment wise we've asked for to make mining not only enjoyable but more technically specialised as a career path.

Latest ISC vid...bigger caves and mining improvements, the cave mining in Prospectors, Moles or ROCS was also a much asked for feature by those of us who do mining.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

The white knights don't go into the 'other games' section of spectrum. After mentioning it...I can't remember the last time I popped in there either

Because you hang out in the other games section of FD's forums!

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Agree, my problem is CIG business model, and the slow development of the game, walking inside your ship and the modeling is great in SC, however the lack of actually gameplay with AI ships, NPC’s storyline and so on make it a no go for me to get back into.

For me, i just laugh at the speed of develeopment, but i know it will take a long time because what CIG are trying to do is massive. Now, this is pretty similar to many a white knight's refrain. Where i differ is they say it as though its a good thing, and i'm half-certain most of them haven't really internalized just how long it is going to take, even with 600+ employees (mismanaged as they are) and even with all the money in the world.

Once you start making projections about how long it will really take, their feathers tend to get ruffled and the "they can take as long as they need" starts to be come "you FUDster, it won't take that long, once the pipelines are done the content will start gushing through".

Even with my skepticism about the time i've been proven wrong time and again by CIG in just how long things will take. Being shouted down by the faithful as far back as 2014 when i was saying it might be done by 2020... oh boy, was i wrong!

Nah, for me, its not the time, its CIG's marketing, lies, and practices that have earned them my scorn.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I'm all for it...besides being a miner...one gameplay loop almost complete is better than none at all

Maybe CIG should just change the focus and release a game called Star Miner!

 

[Skizomeuh]

... And disputable design, UX choices.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Just look at the comment section here, oh the defenders of the church is active.

New expansion for Elite Dangerous will add tens of thousands of locations to the game

First-person combat and exploration is just the beginning

www.polygon.com

From the article

Social hubs will primarily be built for efficiency, Hughes said, with quest givers and vendors positioned in roughly the same location from site to site. Players should expect more intimate interactions, including questlines with lots of dialogue. But the architecture will look very much the same from place to place.


“Time is money in Elite,” Hughes said, “so we didn’t really want people to have to find it laborious to engage with these [social hubs] when they’ve got stuff to do. So we’re trying to find that really fine balance between them feeling unique within the three kind of categories that I outlined, that they’re efficient to navigate through, and they have a real visual punch.”

Now for CIG's approach

Let's make the planetary bases sprawling hubs where each is unique and takes ages to learn where you need to go or find anything.

I mean, there are pros and cons to both approaches and not say CIG's approach is bad, especially with fewer locations. Its not an approach that would work well in ED i think. But it does highlight a very different philosophy behind the game.

Like Mole says, despite both being space games with kind of similar gameplay, they are very different games.

 

[Surefoot]

They are also talking a lot, and probably spending a lot of millions on caves, which are probably the most useless thing for a space game.

 

[Mole HD]

They are also talking a lot, and probably spending a lot of millions on caves, which are probably the most useless thing for a space game.

You can see the idea of caves for the guys designing them at Ci¬G have a very different meaning compared to those of us who asked for them to be bigger. Ci¬G imagine orgs living in them, envisaging battles for control of them as shown in the ISC vid...those of us who asked for them were all imagining driving a ROC in there to go mining and nothing more.

Since the caves were introduced, I've only visited them a couple of times. The first time was after they were initially introduced which nearly put me off going down there forever. I met a random dude creeping around down there in the dark and nearly crapped myself in fright...very atmospheric sound wise and visually...almost too much so. Since that first time, I went back down in a cave when they introduced the cave missions...looking for a body. I was lost underground for nearly an hour before I gave up and suicided out of there.

They're an impressive feature...but absolutely meaningless in the context of the intended associated gameplay which was initially FPS mining or NPC pirate hideouts to raid...the latter was never added and FPS mining as a thing has almost vanished due to the overall mining improvements and shift in focus to ROC mining. Hence why they added the investigation missions to justify their existence and inclusion. That didn't work out too well either...and why we asked for bigger caves we could fly and drive in with ship/ROC mining resources in there to make the inclusion of caves on planets a worthwhile addition. If Ci¬G persist with this silly notion of huge PvP or even PvE battles to control caves, they're even more delusional than I could give them credit for...it's not happening.

 

[Vetinari]

"Time is money" - im not 100% sure that both companies dont share that philosophy but just implement it in different ways....8 years $300m....time is money indeed

And someone (could even be DS himself), in a quote from around 2014 KS days said something like "It cant be done for less than $300m and 10 years". With any luck they were right all along.

 

[Surefoot]

They're an impressive feature...but absolutely meaningless in the context of the intended associated gameplay which was initially FPS mining or NPC pirate hideouts to raid...the latter was never added and FPS mining as a thing has almost vanished due to the overall mining improvements and shift in focus to ROC mining. Hence why they added the investigation missions to justify their existence and inclusion. That didn't work out too well either...and why we asked for bigger caves we could fly and drive in with ship/ROC mining resources in there to make the inclusion of caves on planets a worthwhile addition. If Ci¬G persist with this silly notion of huge PvP or even PvE battles to control caves, they're even more delusional than I could give them credit for...it's not happening.

Also we have to consider these caves are 100% hand crafted, at great expense. Going even further from the famous dreams.txt of procedural generation....

 

[Mole HD]

Also we have to consider these caves are 100% hand crafted, at great expense. Going even further from the famous dreams.txt of procedural generation....

Aye, it's looking increasingly like SC will never progress beyond the Stanton system. The entire project has become a marking time exercise in providing pointless filler content to fluff out the only system the game engine and networking can manage whilst dreaming of tech that either doesn't already exist or is far beyond CiG`s ability to implement....in a time scale that's measurable in human rather than geological terms anyway.

 

[Firkrayt]

That's almost as bad as the rumour that went around a while back on reddit and Spectrum that my alt was the Yamiks...I didn't know whether to feel slightly flattered or completely horrified

Why not both?
I'm pretty sure Yamiks was completely flattered and slightly terrified at the same time.

 

[VR andysonofbob]

I have just now read through all twelve threads.
Conclusion: SC > ED

Up your game FD!

 

[Asp Explorer]

I have just now read through all twelve threads.
Conclusion: SC > ED

Up your game FD!

How can you reach any form of conclusion from a pre-alpha work in progress at the very earliest stages of development that will be subject to innumerable changes as various pipelines come onstream?