Game Discussions Star Citizen Discussion Thread v12

[Agony_Aunt]

Since this is the SC thread, it's appropriate to employ sophistry.

The text states "We also want to add leaving the ships so you can explore space stations or board enemy vessels or just to look around own your own." The logical OR operator requires only one of the states to be true for the entire condition to be true.

The statements are:

We also want to add leaving the ships so you can explore space stations
board enemy vessels
just to look around own your own

The first is clearly true and so is the last so the condition is met. All promises are thus full-filled. Eat your heart out Chris "What is release anyway" Roberts.

To XOR or to EOR, that is the question!

 

[Viajero]

"We will" used at the point of sale for pre-orders is very different from "we would like". You are wrong on this. No biggie.

Excusing the late delivery of grandiose pre-orders in this fashion is incredibly SC though. So that's on topic at least

This is not the thread for this discussion, but that "we will" you refer to was often caveated during the kickstarter, in the product description and the 2015 LEP sales time, including Newsletters, with statements like
-"We intend to continue expanding the game both with new content and new features"
- "We have regularly said that depending on the level of success of Elite: Dangerous we intend to continue expanding it with new content and new features"
Etc
Which made it clear future delivery was never a guarantee and up to the sole discretion of the developer. The LEP was both a very limited sale, and a not guaranteed one. Explicitely. the risk has been there since day 1 and hence why the LEP sales was probably so limited to pre release and a short window during 2015.

Having said that this is what FDEV has released so far on those plans:

Many of those original plans and intentions (ship interiors is but one) have already come to pass by the way. From Newsletter 29 where FDEV outlined what they intended to do wrt future content DLCs after initial release:

For example, our current roadmap is to add (in no particular order):

• Landing/ driving / prospecting on airless rocky planets, moons & asteroids
• Walking around interiors and combative boarding of other ships
• Combat and other interactions with other players and AIs in the internal areas of star ports (Note: EDO on the other hand offers combat in interiors of settlements and on all planetary surfaces though)
• Accessing richly detailed planetary surfaces
• Availability of giant ‘executive control’ ships to players

• Green is delivered: With EDH, EDO and Fleet Carriers. Although first person combat happens rather outside star ports not inside.
• Red is not delivered yet: no ship interiors indeed yet.
• Orange is partially delivered: EDO´s thin atmospheres, updated planetary surfaces and new biologicals. Not yet delivered things like thicker atmospheres, liquid masses or prominent flora and fauna.

All in all not a bad delivery record on their original intents post base game release.

By contrast CIG pre sales have not been limited at all, they have been sold to the totality of the backer population to the tune of 400+ millions so far and counting. And no stopping. And this is what CIG has released on their plans so far:


...



I think the "saving grace" you refer to above is a tad larger than simply anecdotal. We are talking several hundreds of millions of difference worth in terms of pre sales on "plans", plus an order of magnitude of infinity in terms of content released (base game plus several DLCs / nothing).

 

[Factabulous]

A big problem for SC is that they were very explicit about 'pledge X, get Y', so they're tied to the 110 systems/exploration etc. And (just looking from a game perspective) - 110 systems makes no sense for SC as it is today. I think most people would be fine with 5-10 systems (with planets up to the standard of Stanton). That would make for a good immersive 'verse. But they promised so many more - and very explicitly.

Things change in games. Most people would frown upon a game saying 'we want to add Big Game hunting' in a way they maybe wouldn't a few years back, and similar with slavery (though I note that somewhat bizarrely Spectrum are talking about the possibility of slavery being added today).

 

[TNTDany]

In one of the earlier iterations of this thread, years ago, I seem to recall discussion about how in 2 or 3 years, most people would be moving to SC

Well after the Odyssey fiasco a lot of CMDR's indeed moved on from Elite to SC. No question about that as many of those "Elite Refugees" end up being some of it's best content creators with years of of making exclusive Elite content.
As a matter of fact, I've just recently found The Pilot, one of the best (seriously, look up his ship review videos, they're the bomb) is actually playing SC now and making awesome content too:

And spreading ship wisdom smoothly as ever:

Good stuff!

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Well after the Odyssey fiasco a lot of CMDR's indeed moved on from Elite to SC.

The interesting thing to see will be how many stay with SC, how many leave SC (and when) for other games, and how many return to ED after trying SC for some time.

We've seen plenty of examples of people quitting SC over the years, and some ex-ED players returning to ED after giving SC a good.

Its important to not filter your view to only look at one of the flows of players.

In addition to the threads from people saying they are ex-ED players now playing SC or ex-SC players quitting or playing ED, another telling stat is the number of people subscribing to sc_refunds

r/starcitizen_refunds Subreddit Stats (Star Citizen Refunds)

Statistics for every subreddit.

subredditstats.com

The growth of which really increased in April 2020 and only slowly tapered off, but its still growing at a good rate.

One thing that will effect ED is how much FD can improve performance and whether they can get it good enough for consoles (and SC not existing on consoles means FD don't even need to compete there, so its a big driver for them).

Strangely enough, the bugs and other issues with SC are ignored/overlooked because ITS ALPHA. I wonder if the game will ever release, because the moment it does, it loses its alpha shield, and i don't think it would survive that for long.

 

[Cotic]

Well after the Odyssey fiasco a lot of CMDR's indeed moved on from Elite to SC.

Wikipedia would say [Citation Needed]. The only thing one can realistically say is that some people moved. What does 'a lot of CMDRs' mean? 10, 100, 1000, 1% of Elite's player base. How do we quantify that?

Personally I think that a very small number moved (out of the whole playerbase) but people like yourself with that weird tribal bent, look for confirmation, often taking it from unsubstantiated sources, ie everyone is posting about the refugees, it must be true, in the same way that people on facebook constantly seeing antivaxx posts believe that everyone they know is antivaxx.

 

[Skizomeuh]

ED: "will", "would", "could"
SC: "is", "will next month/year"

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

No this is revisionism. Ship boarding was pre-sold as part of both the Kickstarter DLC overviews and the specific Lifetime Pass purchases:



Equally, the fact that 'detailed planetary surfaces' of later DLC were meant to involve cloudscapes, liquids and complex life etc was made clear at the time:



Ship stealing and big game hunting were cast as possibilities within that, not certainties, sure. But the big beats were pre-sold as things that were coming.

What distinguishes ED from SC on these fronts, and is a comparative saving grace, is that:

They only pre-sold these elements on a few occasions, gave no time frame for delivery, didn't pitch for the same number of 'never been done before' moonshot combinations, and kept the details vague enough to give themselves developmental flexibility. So there's a greater likelihood that they can deliver on those big beats.

But it's only really a saving grace when cast against SC . Taken on its own merits, these are still undelivered, pre-sold, features, which have been dangled as carrots to make the existing game more enticing etc.

We talked about thus a while - the new folk dont care about past pronises. They look at what's there and imminent to come.
Kickstarter nollocks never mattered for my purchase of ED either.

 

[TNTDany]

Well, SC broke the monthly funding record in November and it's on course to have it's best funding year, ever which coincides with probably Frontiers worst year in a while. Didn't its share price plummeted down like 50% around that time too. Doubt it's Reddit's fault.

 

[metatheurgist]

To XOR or to EOR, that is the question!

It's always eyore.

 

[cigwatch]

Well after the Odyssey fiasco a lot of CMDR's indeed moved on from Elite to SC.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_aLESDql1U

 

[Cotic]

Well, SC broke the monthly funding record in November and it's on course to have it's best funding year, ever which coincides with probably Frontiers worst year in a while. Didn't its share price plummeted down like 50% around that time too. Doubt it's Reddit's fault.

And last year it blew past its previous record as well. That had nothing to do with Frontier then so why would it now?

There is no direct correlation here, it's not a pair of scales with Frontier's income on one side and CIG's on the other....

 

[Skizomeuh]

SC doesn't even have to release, Roberts can go on retirement, commandos don't even have to play the game: CIG has already won! \\o//

 

[Zieman]

SC doesn't even have to release, Roberts can go on retirement, commandos don't even have to play the game: CIG has already won! \\o//

 

[Mole HD]

...In addition to the threads from people saying they are ex-ED players now playing SC or ex-SC players quitting or playing ED, another telling stat is the number of people subscribing to sc_refunds..

A fair few of those subscribers to sc_refunds have never spent a penny on SC in the first place. It's mostly just an echo chamber of mildly amusing anecdotes and memes where refunds are the last topic ever discussed or asked about. It exists only to serve as a polar opposite of the SC sub from what I can gather

 

[VR Mr Teatime]

Testing if a ground air battle is just from the air, with the A2 Bomber and Ares Inferno are ground target vulnerable?

No, turns out in such a battle the Anvil Ballista is a very effective ground to air defence vehicle.

Great Video. Those bomb explosions look awesome.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qi6rwZSq4M0

The bomb explosions look OK, but there are many questions from watching that video:

Why is the bomber dropping from small arms range, let alone manpad range?
What happens if the bomb is released from a sensible 15-20,000 (or higher) feet up, is that possible?
What kind of target acquisition and tracking methods are available e.g. CCIP or CCRP?
Is target tracking disrupted by terrain?
Are guided bomb units available (GBU's) to assist in destroying moving targets?
Are there other bombs other than what looks like a high drag
Wouldn't stand-off missiles be a better/more realistic method of attack?
What indirect targetting methods if any are available i.e. lasing by SF/ground based units?
The flight time of the bomb in the last run was pretty short, but did it follow a ballistic trajectory or did it straight line to the ground?
If ballistic can they be tossed onto target?
Why did the ground vehicle get destroyed by collatoral damage, but the bomber did not even though they looked like they were a comparible distance away from the impact point?

Its all very well going oooh and ahhh over the pretty explosion effects, but not if you can't use the thing effectively in PvP/PvE combat, because the physics, sensor and guidance modelling isn't there to allow it...

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

The bomb explosions look OK, but there are many questions from watching that video:

Why is the bomber dropping from small arms range, let alone manpad range?
What happens if the bomb is released from a sensible 15-20,000 (or higher) feet up, is that possible?
What kind of target acquisition and tracking methods are available e.g. CCIP or CCRP?
Is target tracking disrupted by terrain?
Are guided bomb units available (GBU's) to assist in destroying moving targets?
Are there other bombs other than what looks like a high drag
Wouldn't stand-off missiles be a better/more realistic method of attack?
What indirect targetting methods if any are available i.e. lasing by SF/ground based units?
The flight time of the bomb in the last run was pretty short, but did it follow a ballistic trajectory or did it straight line to the ground?
If ballistic can they be tossed onto target?
Why did the ground vehicle get destroyed by collatoral damage, but the bomber did not even though they looked like they were a comparible distance away from the impact point?

Its all very well going oooh and ahhh over the pretty explosion effects, but not if you can't use the thing effectively in PvP/PvE combat, because the physics, sensor and guidance modelling isn't there to allow it...

Why is the bomber dropping from small arms range, let alone manpad range?
Lol

What happens if the bomb is released from a sensible 15-20,000 (or higher) feet up, is that possible?
See next question.

What kind of target acquisition and tracking methods are available e.g. CCIP or CCRP?
Lol

Are guided bomb units available (GBU's) to assist in destroying moving targets?
LMAO

Are there other bombs other than what looks like a high drag?
Rockets

Wouldn't stand-off missiles be a better/more realistic method of attack?
No. Comes down to tech level. Why not use bomb in a gravity scenario? Missiles are more expensive. So is the computer that calculates CCIP and CCRP data. I guess they had trouble moving it through the doors.

What indirect targetting methods if any are available i.e. lasing by SF/ground based units?
I know you're kidding. But maybe a crafty dev will one day come up with it. it's a no-brainer collab gameplay mechanic.

If ballistic can they be tossed onto target?
Yes. if it's ballistic then it's ballistic.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Well, SC broke the monthly funding record in November and it's on course to have it's best funding year, ever which coincides with probably Frontiers worst year in a while. Didn't its share price plummeted down like 50% around that time too. Doubt it's Reddit's fault.

One thing that has become abundantly clear over the years is funding in doesn't affect how much gets produced. We've also noticed from CIG's financials that they need every dollar of that funding because CR seems to think he can keep growing the company indefinitely, with plans to hire over 1000 more people in the coming years, more than doubling CIG's current number of employees (including contractors). CIG will have to sell more and more ships (and people will have to be willing to buy them) to avoid CIG going under.

The record funding isn't a good thing, it will just encourage CR to spend even more. You'd have thought going into the red in 2019 would have been a wake up call, but Calder bailing him out obviously made him think someone will always pony up the money. He never learned his lesson from the Freelancer days.

Also, "Sandra!". Is it possible for you to discuss SC without bringing up ED? ED's financials have zero bearing on SC. Its share price recently plummeted because of JWE2, not because of ED. I understand comparisons can be drawn with ED and SC, but JWE2 is a bit of a stretch. Unless you are going for the FD bad, therefore SC good angle, which i think you will find is a silly argument.

CIG are very good at selling dreams and promises to backers. They are not doing that well at converting those dreams and promises into reality.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

A fair few of those subscribers to sc_refunds have never spent a penny on SC in the first place. It's mostly just an echo chamber of mildly amusing anecdotes and memes where refunds are the last topic ever discussed or asked about. It exists only to serve as a polar opposite of the SC sub from what I can gather

Its best damn cult of memes around!

And your avatar!!!! What have you done!?

 

[VR Golgot]

I think the "saving grace" you refer to above is a tad larger than simply anecdotal. We are talking several hundreds of millions of difference worth in terms of pre sales on "plans", plus an order of magnitude of infinity in terms of content released (base game plus several DLCs / nothing).

Sure. But where did I say otherwise?

(I mentioned a bunch of metrics, not anecdotes, which show SC to be worse on almost every front. I only didn't mention pre-order monies taken because I thought that was pretty obvious )

This is not the thread for this discussion, but that "we will" you refer to was often caveated during the kickstarter, in the product description and the 2015 LEP sales

Sure. But none of that changes the clear nature of the pre-order.

you will be able to experience the inside of starports and interact with other players and AI characters, and even board other people’s ships in space and take them by force

...

You can purchase the Lifetime Expansion Pass here.

(source)

Etc etc.

It's daft to seize only on the caveats, as some do, and try to argue that therefore these aren't clear and obvious pre-orders. (With all the rights for consumers and obligations for the provider that a pre-order entails).

It just comes across as notably hypocritical to criticise SC's many excesses on this front, and then give FDev a complete free pass on their 'dream future' marketing and use of early pre-orders for the same.

They pre-sold a product. Fans have a right to expect something which resembles the item described. That's it ¯\(ツ)/¯

It just so happens that SC has described an impossible product with an eagle's head, a Javelin's body, and 10,000 working feet. And that's both funnier, and far more dubious on a consumer rights front