Game Discussions Star Citizen Discussion Thread v12

[ZeeWolf]

Never go full groundhog...

Letter From the Chairman - Dec 2020

Roberts makes it sound like there has been significant disruption during the pandemic in which other developers released entire games.

Good thing the store remained open and Chris, Sandi Erin and all of their directors board suffered no disruption to their c-suite exec salaries phew.

also:

We also kept improving our subscription programs in 2020, evolving them further away from the old model of supplying video shows and delivering more tangible in-game benefits. This year, subscribers of both subscription tiers received complementary in-game flair including weapons like the Ultiflex Combat Knives and new electron-powered pistol and sniper rifle; cold weather outerwear; utility items like the QuikFlarePro glow sticks and Greycat Pyro Multi-tool; combat gear like the Overlord and Paladin helmets, and various Overlord armor suits; and fun items like faithfully reproduced Second Tevarin War uniforms and Wowblast toy pistols that fired foam projectiles. Subscribers also got to enjoy monthly free flies of some of our most popular newly flyable ships, including the Cutlass Red, Cutlass Blue, Carrack, ARGO MOLE, Sabre, Avenger Titan, Esperia Prowler, and the M50; not to mention a perk new to 2020 of subscriber-exclusive cross-chassis upgrades. The amazing new flair and sub perks were a real hit with players this year, and led to our best year of active subscribers yet.

Star Citizen

Reclaim the stars in the exciting new Space Epic from legendary game designer Chris Roberts.

www.kickstarter.com

Real quick, Star Citizen is:​

• A rich universe focused on epic space adventure, trading and dogfighting in first person.
• Single Player – Offline or Online(Drop in / Drop out co-op play)
• Persistent Universe (hosted by US)
• Mod-able multiplayer (hosted by YOU)
• No Subscriptions
• No Pay to Win

FAQ:

Is Star Citizen “free to play”? A subscription game?

To play Star Citizen you need only to buy the initial game. There will never be a monthly charge for usage. Some in-game items may be available as microtransactions, but we will NEVER sell anything that can’t be acquired through honest (and fun!) gameplay.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Never go full groundhog...

Letter From the Chairman - Dec 2020

Ah, no mention of ToW in the letter from the chairman.

Seems more and more likely its been Sataballed.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

This is one reason 3.18 will be in extended testing, expected 3 months.

They are not going to allow you to build pyramids with random crap, i'm using that as an example because that's the first thing people did with the limited persistence that's already in and working, you would walk in to the central lobby at port Olisar and you would be knee deep in helmets, because someone thought it would be funny to spend a few hours creating a swimming pool of helmets. So they culled how many helmets you can have in one area.

They know people have a sense of humour, that people will find a way of doing stupid stuff for giggles, they will work their way through all this stuff as its happeining to stop people breaking it.

Where/how does CIG plan to draw the line between dropping an item in your hab, which will always be there regardless of which server you spawn on, dropping an item in a bar, dropping an item in your ship, dropping an item on a friends ship, dropping an item on a random ship, dropping an item on a planet, etc?

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Where/how does CIG plan to draw the line between dropping an item in your hab, which will always be there regardless of which server you spawn on, dropping an item in a bar, dropping an item in your ship, dropping an item on a friends ship, dropping an item on a random ship, dropping an item on a planet, etc?

I doubt they have any clue. And if some dude down the trench indeed knows - they keep it to themselves because the Crobbers vision drains any intelligent design attempt in favour of a bizzarro concept that will never work out.

 

[VR Golgot]

This is one reason 3.18 will be in extended testing, expected 3 months.

Chrissy baby says they'll consider clean up in busy hubs (including an actual janitor, like Bartender 3.0 would help with performance ). But that wouldn't stop people building trash wickermen out in the wilds...

The base fact is that the game performs badly now, aims to add a ton more performance-impacting stuff, and is essentially made of edge cases... (What happens if an Idris carrying 40,000 hypodermic needles headbutts a trash wickerman on a planet? Etc...)

It's just incredibly likely that the gun glitching around on a table somewhere (and occasionally playfully clipping through the ship and destroying it...) is going to be top of the list for 'non gameplay essentials that we can cull' if the time ever comes to actually ship a reliable game.

Chris's 'physicalised world' fantasy for a massive MMO is a dead end. Something will have to give...

Or it can just stay a comedy jankfest forever. (Which is actually the most likely scenario, IMO )

 

[StuartGT]

Surprise, it's more than 1 year we know it. Another surprise, it's when a company can't change what's not working that the game die (I let you wonder which company I am talking about).

Good news! Looks like Chris gave new stats

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/usmf3g

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/usmf3g/chris_gave_us_updated_playerbase_and_backer_stats/


4700 hourly concurrent is not dead I presume?

 

[Intrepid3D]

Where/how does CIG plan to draw the line between dropping an item in your hab, which will always be there regardless of which server you spawn on, dropping an item in a bar, dropping an item in your ship, dropping an item on a friends ship, dropping an item on a random ship, dropping an item on a planet, etc?

All that is fine, anything that is sensible is fine, that's how it works now, i can place a Finley Space Whale Splushy on the centre console in my MSR cockpit and he will stay there, for as long as i don't destroy the ship he is always there, sitting on my dashboard, or whereever i chose to put him.

I can't do that with guns, because they are not persistent, i have a gun rack in my ship, if i put guns in it they disappear if the ship despawns, once full persistence is in those guns will stay in my gun rack, anything will stay where ever i put it, what i can't do is fill a room with stuff, there is a limit to how much stuff i can have in one area, that area is currently a radius of about 50 meters, or one ship.

He's a bit too big for the dash.

 

[Skizomeuh]

After all, we all know every feature, its bugs, and more importantly what is not done, so it can be easy to focus on the cup half empty, rather than full.

No darling Chris, the problem isn't about half whatever... It's about the cup being a strainer you can't help but keep puncturing and adding handles in awkward places.

 

[VR Golgot]

Good news! Looks like Chris gave new stats

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/usmf3g

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/usmf3g/chris_gave_us_updated_playerbase_and_backer_stats/


4700 hourly concurrent is not dead I presume?

Oh this is awkward...

And we have had nearly 1 million New Accounts created since then, and more than half a million New Pledging Players join the game.

vs

From the crowdfunding tracker spreadsheet [tallying the official tracker] the total accounts in December 2020 were 3.4 million, and today it's at 3.8 million, so not quite the nearly 1 million new as Chris said but 400k instead. These are free and paid accounts of course.

Who to trust

 

[Agony_Aunt]

All that is fine, anything that is sensible is fine, that's how it works now, i can place a Finley Space Whale Splushy on the centre console in my MSR cockpit and he will stay there, for as long as i don't destroy the ship he is always there, sitting on my dashboard, or whereever i chose to put him.

I can't do that with guns, because they are not persistent, i have a gun rack in my ship, if i put guns in it they disappear if the ship despawns, once full persistence is in those guns will stay in my gun rack, anything will stay where ever i put it, what i can't do is fill a room with stuff, there is a limit to how much stuff i can have in one area, that area is currently a radius of about 50 meters, or one ship.

He's a bit too big for the dash.

Ok, not guns (didn't you just talk about leaving your gun in your hab and it being persistent?).

But whatever. What decides on what and where something should be persistent? Has CIG actually outlined this? Or its just more hand waving?

 

[VR Golgot]

Reddit is just surreal. Wall to wall excite over The Letter, with bright claims of rejuvenated faith and this being a new beginning.

And it's literally just a carbon copy of the grand 2020 announcements which didn't happen, with various roadmap slippages pencilled in for the forseeable.

Amazing...

 

[Viajero]

Oh this is awkward...



vs



Who to trust

This is a discrepancy of more 50% from what Chris says in the letter. Any particular reason why we should trust the rest of the figures he has made up in it?

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

All that is fine, anything that is sensible is fine, that's how it works now, i can place a Finley Space Whale Splushy on the centre console in my MSR cockpit and he will stay there, for as long as i don't destroy the ship he is always there, sitting on my dashboard, or whereever i chose to put him.

I can't do that with guns, because they are not persistent, i have a gun rack in my ship, if i put guns in it they disappear if the ship despawns, once full persistence is in those guns will stay in my gun rack, anything will stay where ever i put it, what i can't do is fill a room with stuff, there is a limit to how much stuff i can have in one area, that area is currently a radius of about 50 meters, or one ship.

He's a bit too big for the dash.

I was expecting something far more impactful. An Armstrong moment of gaming so to say. I still have a tingling of "game-changing" in my ear.

 

[Intrepid3D]

I was expecting something far more impactful. An Armstrong moment of gaming so to say. I still have a tingling of "game-changing" in my ear.

No there is nothing game changing about it, its just another thing added to it, it enables personal homesteads, pick a spot on a moon or planet and build your base, that base, compound, whatever... and everything in it is persistent, think of it like Rust in space. Space Rust.
Which is a neat thing, to be based at your own personal home somewhere out there.

 

[varonica]

This is one reason 3.18 will be in extended testing, expected 3 months.

They are not going to allow you to build pyramids with random crap, i'm using that as an example because that's the first thing people did with the limited persistence that's already in and working, you would walk in to the central lobby at port Olisar and you would be knee deep in helmets, because someone thought it would be funny to spend a few hours creating a swimming pool of helmets. So they culled how many helmets you can have in one area.

They know people have a sense of humour, that people will find a way of doing stupid stuff for giggles, they will work their way through all this stuff as its happeining to stop people breaking it.

So how do they determine your important helmet from the rest. You put your gun on a table, I or several people scatter several hundred around, how do they know to leave your particular one?

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Reddit is just surreal. Wall to wall excite over The Letter, with bright claims of rejuvenated faith and this being a new beginning.

And it's literally just a carbon copy of the grand 2020 announcements which didn't happen, with various roadmap slippages pencilled in for the forseeable.

Amazing...

SaltEMike has fell for it... again. Unbelievable. How can anyone follow CIG for so many years, be told the same stuff over and over again, year after year, and still believe that this time will be different?

 

[Intrepid3D]

So how do they determine your important helmet from the rest. You put your gun on a table, I or several people scatter several hundred around, how do they know to leave your particular one?

I'll give you a current example.

Most people like to make their base Area 18, because it has the most convenient amenities, shops and stuff.

What people do when they arrive there is clear out their inventories of all the crap they don't want, quite often when you're walking around there you see these little mounds of discarded stuff, people are literally just dropping all the crap they don't want on the floor.

If i'm near one of these little mounds and try to do the same, i often do,i can't drop anything, it says in red text there is too much stuff here.

It doesn't chose who or what to prioritise, which is perhaps something they need to think about, if they need to i'm sure they will look for a solution.

In the last patch they added selling to shops, so you can now sell all your unwanted crap, there are a lot less random molehills of stuff around area 18, i've even seen people pick stuff up to sell, or use.

 

[varonica]

It doesn't chose who or what to prioritise, which is perhaps something they need to think about, if they need to i'm sure they will look for a solution.

So what you are saying is, they won't know, and if it becomes an issue they will try and fix it later? That's....not a good way to plan things out, ask any software designer how much changing the target of a system after everything is already written causes big issues, it might in fact require a rewrite of the entire system, but then CIG are probably used to that by now.

 

[Intrepid3D]

So what you are saying is, they won't know, and if it becomes an issue they will try and fix it later? That's....not a good way to plan things out, ask any software designer how much changing the target of a system after everything is already written causes big issues, it might in fact require a rewrite of the entire system, but then CIG are probably used to that by now.

As i said, this is one of the reasons for the extended 3.18 testing, as CR said they expect people to do daft things with this and they will use the time to workout solutions.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Wouldn't it be better to prevent the "daft things" up front and have not to workout solutions in reaction? Design should be proactive, not lag behind and be dependent on the whims of users moods.