Game Discussions Star Citizen Discussion Thread v12

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
Sometimes i find myself hoping backers get a good game. Then sometimes i find myself hoping they get what they say they want instead.

TL;DR: Let's not settle for another mindless flashing lights time waster that numbs us with ease of grind and sure reward in exchange for time. Let's not settle for the dirty water that game companies have given us to date.

"Do not, my friends, become addicted to ease. It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence!"

As is always the case with a major patch that introduces yet more of the game that Chris Roberts has envisioned, there are a flurry of posts decrying what has come to pass.

You might have seen Mad Max Fury Road. In that film, the main villain Immortan Joe dispenses water to his subjects, who frantically gather it up in buckets and pails and what have you. He chastises them not to become addicted to water. It's deliciously sarcastic.

But, in games, don't we become addicted to ease? Our lives are busy and harried and we sometimes want to just look at blinking lights and increment credits and unlock accomplishments and stack up gear and make kills and feel like a badass. We need our dopamine hit.

I know this opinion could be standing in the wind, but what we have in Star Citizen is a challenge. It's not shaping up to be the monkey's cocaine lever, dispensing easy pleasure. The mechanics can be tough to grok, and initial misunderstandings, early play accidents, and adapting to life in the verse can be frustrating. You'll get killed by ladders, your ship's ramp will occlude through the planet surface and blow it up, your mission trigger will fail to fire off, some other fine human specimen will pad ram you or otherwise try to balance the pain of their deficiency by inflicting ruin on you. All of that, I've experienced bunches of times. But the payoff when it all starts to click is great.

Since people seem to be excited about the Death Mechanic--Let's talk a bit about the Death Mechanic: The Death Mechanic moderates play. It forces choices. It imposes the need for some circumspection. Do you bring a bunch of valuable equipment into a hazardous situation just because you like to have all your stuff with you everywhere you go? You might need it. But you might not. And uselessly hazarding valuable equipment will result in loss--sooner or later. Do you rush right in, Billy Badass, and try and slay all the bad guys like you're Neo in The Matrix? Or do you take a more cautious approach? Is every death just, deserved, and sensible? Hell no. But Star Citizen is a work in progress, unfinished, incomplete.

About Playing versus Testing: Right now, in the game's "alpha state" playing is something that can happen but sure isn't guaranteed. Is this a point that CIG's marketing department is muting? Or is it something more and more people are just scrolling over and not reading, because I see more and more people complain--and I can sympathize with this--that all they want to do is play the game.

What about the Inventory System: The Inventory System is genius. Your ship is your backpack, your magic bag so to speak, where you keep your things. But it's not totally magical--it is subject to forces in the game to include other players. But it's a great way to make ships--and in particular your main ship that you have kitted out and stocked up--important. They matter. I love it. Now that I've spent some time messing with it, and with the various planet-based storage locations, I get it. It makes good sense.

Right now, surviving the game is playing the game is testing the game. Thank you for your service. Everyone who guts through those first several steps is a gaming badass, in my opinion. Taking a breath when something confusing or hilariously bad happens. Getting on chat and asking for help. Getting over that frustrating bug that you encountered. Finding a workaround. Learning what not to do to incite the bug in the first place. Making your first Issue Council post. All these are productive ways to express frustration. But militating calls for an easy game by eliminating core mechanics that will shape this game into something truly excellent? I can't agree with that.

Let's not settle for another mindless flashing lights time waster that numbs us with ease of grind and sure reward in exchange for time. Let's not settle for the water that game companies have given us to date. Let's look for The Green Place, to use the Mad Max reference again.

That said, I am mindful that The Green Place that was the destination of refuge sought for was a wasteland. It existed as an idea, but the reality was gone. I don't want a game that is a wasteland of punishing mechanics and arcane buttonology and processes. But I DO want a game that is a challenge, that requires some sincere effort to be good at. And so far, CIG is delivering on that. Will things get easier? Yes. Will there be tutorials and guides? Sure. CIG has said that they are guided by a desire for the game to be challenging, easy to begin but difficult to master, that makes sense and is fun over "real."

Part of that is the player base itself rising to the challenge. And that is why I say that perhaps we are addicted to ease.

Some of these calls for ease and hands raised in the air that the Death Mechanic is the end of the world are too purple by half.

Have faith that all things will find their balance, and don't succumb to FUD. It will be okay.
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thistle

T
Mole HD said:
You can still make credits, you can still lose them too but not to 30k's...which is nice... but it's not about the in game earned credits...it's about waking up every 10 minutes in a hospital bed wearing a cardboard nightshirt realising that you've lost all the pointless but nice stuff you like...the armour, the guns, the stuff you found in a box at an outpost that you shoved in your ship inventory that now vanishes every time you have to reclaim the ship at a terminal...it's too much tedium to bear, no sense of achievement...nothing except frustration.
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Ouch.
 

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
Ebob said:
Church of Roberts is in session - do not disturb!
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It always is

1637006854701.png


There was a time when this would mainly hover around 2-4k when there wasn't a ship sale on.

Either:

a) People are spending even more on ships than ever before (crazy, why?... oh, maybe because of the wipe? Did the wipe do what it was meant to do, drive sales?)
b) Its all made up
c) CIG are padding it with investment money gained from another big investment, which happened in the last month or two but we won't hear about it until December (shades of 2019?)
 

[VR] Merkir

[VR] Merkir
Trinity Star said:
One final screen from this game, the only ship I was left with in 3.15 and a ship they completely broke, cockpit displays unusable, missile hud broken so no missiles and new upgrades just disappeared. That was for the final straw, the game is more geared to group play anyway and seems to be even worse than Odyssey in wanting to become some FPS CoD type affair of which I have little interest in. I have gifted out what items I could and the account is scheduled for deletion.

View attachment 275264
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Really enjoyed your regular screenshots. They were always a breath of fresh air. 👍
 

GuruNot

GuruNot
Agony_Aunt said:
It always is

View attachment 275306

There was a time when this would mainly hover around 2-4k when there wasn't a ship sale on.

Either:

a) People are spending even more on ships than ever before (crazy, why?... oh, maybe because of the wipe? Did the wipe do what it was meant to do, drive sales?)
b) Its all made up
c) CIG are padding it with investment money gained from another big investment, which happened in the last month or two but we won't hear about it until December (shades of 2019?)
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Almost as much as my hourly rate .... I wish!!
 

Mole HD

Mole HD
kilvenny said:
I finally folded and watched someone stream 3.15. First stream other than from the con for years. It was late at night, but I was stone cold sober. I joined part way through the stream as the streamer hailed the ATC (STC perhaps). Landing pad was allocated, but there was nothing visible on the HUD. No obvious marker on the station either despite flying around it several times. The streamer rehailed and just got told they had already hailed. The streamer made light of it and decided to do something else. I switched off. This is basic stuff after all this time, but what really shocked me was the attitude of basically a shoulder shrug and lets do something else, as if this sort of glitch was the norm. There also seemed no way to cancel the request and rehail. So, gave every appearance of flawed design and buggy implementation. Given that the pad request handshake is a very basic aspect of a space flight game it was sobering. Glad I am still zero invested.
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That bug happens very rarely...from experience. When it does, you can cancel the request from the ship MFD or just back off from the station and rehail. Working around or with the bugs in SC is just something we regular players do and have done for every successive patch from the beginning. If you freak out over the tiny things...and we all do, believe me...it's time to go play something else for a while. It rarely gets better, only the tolerance and frustration levels vary :)
 

Mole HD

Mole HD
Surefoot said:
Let's hope that Jesus Server Meshing patch addresses the buggered landing pads at Area18, broken ATC, and that perennial refuel/repair bug because these have been there for longer than the whole development time of any other game ever published.
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The refuelling thing works on and off...server backend dependent...like most of the bugs in Star Citizen. One day it works, next day it doesn't...it's a proper pain.
 

Mole HD

Mole HD
Agony_Aunt said:
It always is

View attachment 275306

There was a time when this would mainly hover around 2-4k when there wasn't a ship sale on.

Either:

a) People are spending even more on ships than ever before (crazy, why?... oh, maybe because of the wipe? Did the wipe do what it was meant to do, drive sales?)
b) Its all made up
c) CIG are padding it with investment money gained from another big investment, which happened in the last month or two but we won't hear about it until December (shades of 2019?)
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Ship sales are up...the wipe was timed to perfection after a year and a half of folk buying their favourite runabouts in game...then they lost them all. Marketing 101, create a perceived dependance ;)
 

metatheurgist

metatheurgist
Trinity Star said:
I will probably take more of interest in Elite again, at least there you can just go off and explore and do your own thing, I did a lot of the engineering in Odyssey and generally had few issues with bugs. Star Citizen lost me when they announced the wipe and then didn't actually wipe until months later with the release of 3.15, during that time there was no actual motivation in trying to achieve anything, get new ships so I drifted off and got busy elsewhere, starting back and finding your sole remaining ship was basically scrap well...
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I look forward to your "A citizen plays ED" series. (y)
 

Mole HD

Mole HD
I see the gold sellers are at it again already...

200k aUEC would take an average newbie player a couple of hours to earn in an Aurora starting with 5k aUEC...the gold sellers haven't had time to grind out or find an exploit for the big money yet, it'll get a lot worse...and Ci¬G are all patting themselves on the back whilst promoting a supposedly 'fair' gaming enviroment through installing Easy-Anti-Cheat to prevent folk cheating in the pointless and broken pew :cautious:

Your priorities are screwed Ci¬G, sort this crap out.

Screenshot 2021-11-16 at 03-49-50 Star citizen 3 15 (live) - 200,000 auec-Fast Delivery fast d...png
 
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Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
Mole HD said:
I see the gold sellers are at it again already...

200k aUEC would take an average newbie player a couple of hours to earn in an Aurora starting with 5k aUEC...the gold sellers haven't had time to grind out or find an exploit for the big money yet, it'll get a lot worse...and Ci¬G are all patting themselves on the back whilst promoting a supposedly 'fair' gaming enviroment through installing Easy-Anti-Cheat to prevent folk cheating in the pointless and broken pew :cautious:

Your priorities are screwed Ci¬G, sort this crap out.

View attachment 275381
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And it gets wiped with the next wipe anyway.

The people who buy these are either dumb or just so loaded with money they simply don't care.
 

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
So, i see that once again, thanks to statements from CIG, backers are saying that all these years CIG simply have been working on the tech and now things are finally coming together and the real development will now start.

Shades of 2015, 2016, 2017 etc....

I guess it won't be long before we start seeing people say "Development only really started in 2021"
 
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