Star Citizen Discussion Thread v11

[Agony_Aunt]

Back to the off topic thing about Scottish accents... I asked some random old guy if he could take a pic on my phone. He had pressed the video button...which I didn't find out till much later

Note that my wife had tucked my hair into my jacket to stop being whiplashed by it as we rode along...

Hah, nice. You totally have to do a video now!

 

[Agony_Aunt]

They certainly won't have fish suppers as good as the ones from Ellon or Inverurie

I hear the end-level bosses up there can be a bit rough as well!

 

[MTBFritz]

Thing is as 3.0 was in evocati I was also flashed with all those things Linke landing and walking on a planet. But how long would it be cool to

get up

• walk to the ship terminal
• spawn a ship
• walk to ship
• handle your Navigation via the mess of mobiglas
• jump only to a poi ( no freeflight like in ED )
• via a hidden LoD
• I think here at some point starts „the gameplay“

- doing a more or less buggy mission
Doing this with some bugs they were persistent since 3.0 I think ( spawning ships without doors and so on), or useless Multicrews ships ( yes everybody wants to be a gunner in a turret /s).

I get bored of this waiting, inflexibility and walking because it serves nothing.

My thoughts exactly but then, enough people confess that these things are all thats needed to have fun. I know that wouldnt work for me because tedious and boring busy-work is something I know from past games....never held me for long (well...worked for years in WoW) and those tedious daily activities were fleshed out, often multi-layered and supported by complex game mechanics. I understand SCs fascination in the short run. How many people explained "wow...the potential is mind-staggering" or were simply blown away from their first 10 minutes....me too.

But that memory of me being in awe of SCs space station and the option to walk around (wow...madness) has grown stale by now and I d like to fast forward past the wakingup-runningaround-gettingship-arriveatdestinationafter10minutes routine and "get to the action". Star Citizens first impression simply has run its course and I require "more" to stay tuned.

But it works on other people and from what I can glean from discussions is that these other people simply have different priorities. We dont need to use negative terms to describe those. After all they are just different, not worse. I like an immersion-factor as well and realism or the illusion of realism is something I also value. Visual aesthetik...always important. Its just that these things are at best "starters" for me wetting my appetite and keeping me in there until the real food arrives.

I m just tired of the Bacon wrapped Dates or the Goat Cheese Croquettes and while I enjoy the constant flow of beverage I am anxiously waiting for my steak...meaty perfection and rich in flavor to fill me up. In the end it comes down to different people having different tastes. I can and do wonder about these folks but maybe they see something I cant. Oh and if my time waiting for the steak is filled with a rude waiter or people walking by feeling the urge to comment on my clothes or appearance or cracking jokes at my expense loudly I doubt very much I could enjyo that steak....regardless how perfect its going to be.....

This guy is a bit emotional right now, but he also reckons 10 years

Spoiler

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/el0u1c

Source: https://old.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/el0u1c/my_opinions_of_star_citizen_lurker_since_the/?st=k52z7wr6&sh=4856a56c

I dont know. People complain about bad connection or performance and a platora of bugs. I m certainly not excusing those but all those reports read like "if it wasnt for the bugs and issues Star Citizen would be the BDSSE already" as if polishing and optimizing is all CIG has left to do.

Even polished and with good performance Star Citizen would be a shadow of a game at this very moment. I mean is that me "hating" on this poor lil project or are my expectations too high? Is it my fault for taking Chris Roberts statements and promises at face value? On the other hand he got paid on the basis of those promises and statements so that would be only fair....right? The 300+ million investment doesnt justify an "okay" result anymore....it really needs to be the BDSSE to forgive all those years of squandering money and time and nerves. All those replies with "you cannot deny the progress CIG has made" are pityful when you consider that many of those tiny improvements were made on the back of third-party accomplishments and all CIG basically did was painting nice pictures for 7 years straight.

The rebuttal often is that I am too impatient, lack the understanding or the big picture. But thats mostly because people dont know me or my experience in this topic.

I know where Star Citizen wants to go, I know where it started. I know what other companies accomplished with similar or less and I m involved enough to pause when I learn about shell companies or loans or a myriad of other things that make me worry because from where I am standing the problems and issues are overwhelming and while it might be true that CIG is facing unique challenges its also true that after 7 years it doesnt look like that company is or will ever be able to solve them. After 7 years posts like "good things take time" or similar just sound like the hollow phrases they are. We dont go from 10 to 100% in one go. Its a steady increase and the more competent the involved people are the faster that rate. Star Citizen is at what completion realistically? 10%? 15%?

7 years and 300 million for whatever number you chose....forgive me for not being flashed by the graphics and screenshots anymore. I m still waiting for the darn steak.

So due to my priorities I couldnt really care less about "my gaming experiences" reports anymore. It was nice to learn that "some" are able to enjoy what they paid for and seem to be content with it. A few select posters hint at underlying game mechanics supporting a good experience or make it sound like SC is going somewhere but the timeframes involved are just too long and closer looks usually disenchant rather then raise hope. I am rather interested in features and gameloops being developed. These are the base for content and the quality of said content. We are not even at the point where we try to implement content or raise our content density. We are still at building the foundation and its not even close to completition. Worse.....CIGs teams seem to cook with water same as everybody else. There is no "special sauce" to the development and the water itself seems to be lukewarm at best most of the time. Design and development decisions neither appear "smart" nor "skilled" to me...not when I take a look on other games and what they accomplished.

And its also not MY job to make suggestions as to how to solve problems and make this a reality. It wasnt ME getting all those millions of dollars to make it happen. On the other hand while I dont know what CIG could possibly do to make this work I can certainly judge its efforts and distinguish between "incredibly smart" and "lazy copyjob" just like I can recognize a fracture even without being a doctor.

As the old saying goes, 'ya pays yer money and takes yer choice' ... I did that and happy with the experience so far, I wanted to properly test it first hand and not rely solely on other peoples experience or opinions.

That sounds so noble

I m glad in todays time of access and experience transportation I dont need to do everything myself anymore to enjoy the feeling or impression or learn. I dont need to put myself in harms way to experience "the thrill" or risk my life/well-being to learn life lessons or spend years to learn things videos are able to teach me in a few hours. People learning certain jobs today dont start at zero....they pick up on the knowledge of past generations. I understand the power of perspective. Sometimes doing something gives completely different feedback values then watching said activity being performed but different to you I am not in the butterfly stage anymore. It doesnt matter if flying in Star Citizen would feel good contrary to looking boring to me on screen. I am very able to isolate that feeling and put it away when I evaluate the "real questions" in the room.

What kind of game is Star Citizen right now on a technical level when I disregard emotional judgement?

It requires to take a step back and forget the feelings in order to be able to give an objective verdict.

There is hardly any objectivity in Star Citizen discussions anymore. But if you look for them (cuz they are there) they hint and point at worrying things that question Star Citizens purpose and destination. While I m sure that there are "haters" out there who simply troll and have fun pokiing the sensitives most "haters" I know (the people being called that by others) are simply people who a are able to step back and lock their feelings away.

Making emotional judgements is dangerous. It distorts reality and allows you to commit to a self-injuring course of action. Like making a sprint towards the edge of the cliff trying to stop in the nick of time to experience "the thrill" sounds like a good idea to you doing it but people who watch you do it will wonder if you went crazy or insane. Those bystanders are the people called "haters" in the SC argument.

Its great that you have a good time in Star Citizen even at its current state. Its the intention that matters of course. If you try to present your emotional experience as a reason for SC being a "good game" then you are already making a mistake. When it comes to judging technical capabilities or design decisions (actually the meat of SCs development) "fun" isnt a metric we can use. That doesnt mean you cant post your experiences but they simply wont have much weight in what people really are talking about. The question is not "is Star Citizen fun?" because "fun" varies drastically from person to person. But various posts make it sound like "fun" is the all-deciding metric in all this. And suddenly we run into a problem because contrary to people stating that Elite is "boring" or "shallow" there are obviously enough people who enjoy that game.....why are they wrong and you right?

And just like you so many people admit that they had a great time with ED for years and are now looking for something new. Others dont stop there tho and continue to bash ED and praise SC on the basis of their fleeting impulse of fun. It wont last for SC either when the next big thing comes around. I dont want to call it "short-sighted" but at the very least it sounds disloyal to me.

 

[Snarfbuckle]

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

I think the physics can be called a work in progress and not too implausible.

Ah, three similar events that happened in reality although it did not include welding at a rock...

https://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2003-03.html 100 meter flight distance
https://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2013-01.html 400 meter flight distance
https://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2001-24.html 28 meters flight distance

 

[Snarfbuckle]

My thoughts exactly but then, enough people confess that these things are all thats needed to have fun. I know that wouldnt work for me because tedious and boring busy-work is something I know from past games....never held me for long (well...worked for years in WoW) and those tedious daily activities were fleshed out, often multi-layered and supported by complex game mechanics. I understand SCs fascination in the short run. How many people explained "wow...the potential is mind-staggering" or were simply blown away from their first 10 minutes....me too.

I'm horribly enough somewhat in that boat.

At one level it's an immersion thing to go from A-B, plan the flight, set destination, check prices and go to the ship, power it up and go on the adventure.
At the same time...commuting to work might be "exciting" the first two times but then it becomes a chore and a routine.
We will most likely have a similar grind like in Elite for factions of different kinds and like the engineering characters but in this case perhaps for mission givers.

I think there needs to be a middle ground.

• Put living quarters linked directly to a personal hangar so we do not have to commute to get to our ship (we have airport hotels today and it makes sense for career pilots to use them).
• Have players be able to shop whatever they need and have it delivered to the hangar (perhaps add a premium for the delivery since items like guns and stuff might be available on another planet...)
• Travel time i think will be solved when they get done with adding services like ship transportation and commuter service for those with small ships. If i can cut down travel to 2 minutes instead of 15 by taking a capital ship bus across a star system and have my ship waiting for me at the destination it would increase my enjoyment and playtime flexibility a LOT and make some of the other tedious things more acceptable.

 

[kilvenny]

ED is a game that has been released for five years and had no significant content additions that benefit mature players in a considerable number of months (some might argue years!), it is therefore judged accordingly. Actually if you look closely and look at the reports from new players of ED you see the same burst of enthusiasm you see with SC, it's just drowned by the wall of players who have been around for five years and played it to the death. This is what you expect from a mature game with little content additions.

In contrast an unreleased game is always treated in a different fashion. The releases of SC always focus on eye candy and providing things for players to look at. The constant evolution of the planets surfaces, we just hit V4.0 provide a bump of impetus and interest. Each time the planet tech has been iterated or a new biome introduced it provides a bump of interest. In its unreleased state, lack of complete game play loops and persistence it presents a fun environment, that changes in some fashion every 3 months. if you just want to rock up and have fun with your mates and enjoy whatever the last three months has added this is the place to be.

I think they have stumbled on a unique format that hits the palette of a subset of gamers who just like the experience and some have the desire to fund it in an exponential fashion to the way a gamer would normally fund a game. The accountant in me, looks at the numbers and sees that 300M+ has so far not gone very far.

In other words some see the flaws and walk away or observe with fascination what is going on and others passionately embrace it.

 

[Snarfbuckle]

The accountant in me, looks at the numbers and sees that 300M+ has so far not gone very far.

Agreed, if we judge by what we only can see, then the money has not gone very far.

That said, i doubt 500 people are navel gazing and twiddling their thumbs so a lot of content is most likely made, the question is more how well they are tying it all together into a useful whole.

After all, the only thing we can judge it by at this point is their testing ground.

 

[Viajero]

After all, the only thing we can judge it by at this point is their testing ground.

An 8+ year old testing ground at that. Early days.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

ED is a game that has been released for five years and had no significant content additions that benefit mature players in a considerable number of months (some might argue years!), it is therefore judged accordingly.

And the thing is, we are allowed to critique ED, but SC we are not, despite both being in development for roughly the same amount of time, simply because ITS ALPHA!

And yet some SC backers will criticise ED for its flaws while defending SC based on that.

Perhaps FD should have slapped an alpha label on ED for the past 5 years and then ED could have been "protected" from criticism as well.

 

[Snarfbuckle]

An 8+ year old testing ground at that. Early days.

Meh, as Einstein said, time is relative.

And with the first 2 years basically wasted it's closer to 6 years and they started a company from scratch and yadda yadda you know the rest.
To me, the time used to do what they AIM to do, is not that bad and there are several games with a smaller scope that took at least as long.

I mean, let's just pick out some data from the following article:

10 Games That Spent the Longest Time in Development - Overmental

Delayed games are pretty commonplace, and can happen for any number of reasons. Sometimes game-breaking bugs crop up late in development, maybe the team

overmental.com

L.A. Noire

spent a long, long time in development, but not because of any major issues in the game’s production. Instead, the seven years spent on the game could largely be attributed to the its ambitious plans, which included an original engine and, at the time, extremely complex facial motion capture and animation.

The technology needed to create the game eventually ballooned the budget to somewhere in the range of $50 million, making it one of the costliest video game productions at the time.

This one is the most telling and fits SC quite well.

• Ambitious plan (a full blown campaign, expanded with procedural planets, an MMO...)
• Complex motion capture and animation (Full performance capture, eyetracking, facial speech tracking)
• Redesigning the engine (armwrestling the Cryengine into doing what they wanted...and then realizing they needed more so moved code to Lumberyard)

Prey - Prior to its release in2006, Prey had been in development in one form or another since the mid-90s. The game was originally envisioned by 3D Realms (this won’t be the last time that name appears on this list) as a flagship title for their in-house engine, similar to what Epic Games did with Unreal.

A series of possible directions were outlined by project lead Tom Hall, but were thrown out a year later when he left to found Ion Storm with John Romero. 3D Realms assembled a new team to continue development, and over the next half a decade or so, the game went through a number of new iterations before the process was completely rebooted in 2001.

Another game where it took ages and it was restarted and rebooted before being released.

Diablo III

- Work on the sequel began just a year after Diablo II was released, although it would be another seven years before the studio would officially announce the game at Blizzard Worldwide Invitational in 2008. It would be another four years after that before the game finally hit store shelves.

And this from a rather large studio.

This is not to say that it is the norm, not at all, but it is definitely not unusual and normally the end user only get information about it a few years before release. For many other games we might also add a few years of prototyping to their time in development the main difference is that CIG decided to make their prototyping, alpha stage and testing looking pretty...and rather public.

 

[Tuub t Tute]

They certainly won't have fish suppers as good as the ones from Ellon or Inverurie

That old gadgie sounds like Robin Galloway from the infamous "Peter Reid, fae Peterheid..." Radio sketch

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=m_C0axennQw&feature=emb_logo

 

[MTBFritz]

In other words some see the flaws and walk away or observe with fascination what is going on and others passionately embrace it.

Sure and thats whats happening for every game....no exceptions really. The extremes in community interaction and their frequency tho....thats extraordinairy. We all know very well how bad things can go in SC discussions within a few posts and for SC thats pretty much the norm. Other games have the same posts, the same worries, the same discussions but those other communities handle it differently and dont allow it to become as all-consuming as the "war" we have on this topic.

I think the background and reasons for that are equally important to a games development (bad press basically). And while its easy to make a general statement early on ("those guys are crazy or stupid") things change when you put in some effort to try to figure out actual reasons.

I believe that Star Citizens community is in part CIGs responsibility. And its actual state is in part so bad/toxic because of CIGs actions/inactions in the past. The everyday-tone in Star Citizen reflects directly on CIG and its employees. You cannot just stand by idly and watch your consumers tear each other to shreds. People are responsible for their own actions of course. Just because you have a fan doing stupid things in your name doesnt mean it was you doing them or allowing them but you absolutely have to take actions to distance yourself from it or make a public statement to deescalate.

Through the years CIG has shown a tendancy to hide behind its most vocal pro-fans who pick up the banner and make explanations and statements in their name. Its a runaway train by now with people thinking they are speaking from a point of expertise and the yanking-back-to-remind-you-of-your-place only always happens when its directed against critics but almost never when a fan speaks highly of SC or exaggerates things. You cannot micro-manage forums and people are going to be people of course meaning there are always some hotheads who overdo it and trigger a crapstorm. And as a company you have to rely on your community to handle the worst and only step in when its really extreme and threatens your own reputation.

This place has a prime example for this when our own Ben Perry steps into the fray to "correct" a misunderstandment in regards to 64bit positioning and discusses the technicality so obviously reads and reacts but remains silent whenever gross exaggerations are made on behalf of Star Citizen or when pro-fans state obvious fallacies in regards to SCs capabilities.....just silence then. Not his job, yep. Not CIGs job either it seems ^^

Its great when people dream about your project. Thats what you want. There is always that point tho where you want to provide a reality check and remind everybody of whats what so people dont get off the planet in their hype-stir. And CIGs take on this is quite extreme.

CIG and its official spokespersons have personally attacked individuals, spoken of "hate" and similar statements over the years to empower their faithful and generate the concept of an enemy. All the community feedback CIG produces is always directed at its believers only. To placate, to enforce and support trust and funding. With the current state of the SC community at large I would have expected a responsible company to step in looooong ago to prevent what we have now. But either by incompetence or intentionally CIG let this thing go out of control. Over years....they have remained silent and watched from their hole. They certainly see the flames, somehow they dont think its their problem.

And this level of disregard from their position only seems justifiable when you consider that they use the drama as a distraction from the "real problems". Its that or its pure stupidity but in year 8 I seriously doubt this thing is making it "randomly" anymore.

 

[Arcondes]

Agreed, if we judge by what we only can see, then the money has not gone very far.

That said, i doubt 500 people are navel gazing and twiddling their thumbs so a lot of content is most likely made, the question is more how well they are tying it all together into a useful whole.

After all, the only thing we can judge it by at this point is their testing ground.

Reminds me on an evocati chat with some QA‘s what the Evocati get to Test is all what the have. There is no secret build. Was in 2017 I think .

 

[MTBFritz]

All the comparisons with games which "took at least as long" make it sound like Star Citizens has a definite development time established to allow that comparison? As such its at best a reminder to "keep the cows in the village" and not run off with wild speculations. Not sure if stuff like...

"8 years for THIS?? thats pityful"

...Is fearmongering tho. What we know for certain is that Star Citizen is not done yet. And trying to make an educated guess based on whats missing or needs work it looks like they are going to take a few more years to get anything done (double-digit estimates not as hilarious as they were back in 2015.....). So while all those comparisons equal in development time count for games that completed their development in the time.....Star Citizen sits well below half time but has gone through financial resources like no other. And the results....well thats what we are discussing mostly isnt it?

Its so crystal clear to me but I guess it deserves repeating. Comparing Star Citizen to other games who took as long only underlines the severe problems this game has and just because some of those comparisons resulted in good games doesnt mean SC is going the same way not when you consider where they actually are in terms of development and what kind of issues they still have this "late" in development. If some other game took 8 years to develop it also wasnt sitting on a barebones skeleton or doing fundamental design decisions at the end before release. And while its true that most of those games didnt allow an insight into its making so we dont know what kind of problems they had Star Citizen does (allow a limited glimpse) so its problems are prominent, outstanding and obvious. And adressing them isnt impatience or entitlement but rather justified points that need response. And not from the wanne-be experts in the community either.

But last I checked CIG refuses to answer any "hard" questions and stays with the handpicked propaganda-routine.

@Snarfbuckle
The handpicked examples you bring up would be defended to the hilt by people who rationalize that the first few years dont count for reasons. Because in hindsight immediate "start" of D3 was realistically a floating idea before development "really" started. You disregard and ignore that yet in the same breath you reserve that for CIG because they had to create a company first. You realize how biased that sounds?

If you stay with these examples and your choice of interpretation then I see no reason to move my own stance in regards to development start for Star Citizen being 2011 and folllowing your D3 logic I would even take Chris Roberts "I always wanted to make SC but had to wait for the technology to catch up" statement to establish that Star Citizen development really started 1992 or something equally ludicrous. But even under best conditions full-fledged production started in 2012 at the end of kickstarter as they started using and expending money. I m not sure how you can justify the expense of 10-15 million dollars over 2 years as "school money" or if you really want to do that in the name of "ramping up" because strangely there is no ramping up to be seen. In regards to critical development items Star Citizen has been stagnant or even slowing at best. The "illusion" of progress is achieved by branching into new things that never were a concern, provide some short-living progress in those tracks and drop them and find something else when the going gets tough.

Flight model
FPS mechanics
AI
class mechanics

and a host of other things....all sidelined for "later" improvement. Existing since the very start. Other items like land control or claims have been dropped alltogether from development talk after they got milked for some bonus cash. Only that the devs hardly touch these old issues anymore because theres always something new which takes priority. Star Citizens development is a delay game that CIG is playing fully aware at this point. And IMO they delay as much as they can before even the last fan wakes up and realizes this isnt going anywhere.

 

[MTBFritz]

Reminds me on an evocati chat with some QA‘s what the Evocati get to Test is all what the have. There is no secret build. Was in 2017 I think .

Yep, that explains the NDA too.

Doesnt change the fact that many people still believe there are secret development builds running on customized computers and that there is a trove of new stuff CIG can dig into at any time.

 

[Tippis]

CIG and its official spokespersons have personally attacked individuals, spoken of "hate" and similar statements over the years to empower their faithful and generate the concept of an enemy. All the community feedback CIG produces is always directed at its believers only. To placate, to enforce and support trust and funding. With the current state of the SC community at large I would have expected a responsible company to step in looooong ago to prevent what we have now. But either by incompetence or intentionally CIG let this thing go out of control. Over years....they have remained silent and watched from their hole. They certainly see the flames, somehow they dont think its their problem.

And this level of disregard from their position only seems justifiable when you consider that they use the drama as a distraction from the "real problems". Its that or its pure stupidity but in year 8 I seriously doubt this thing is making it "randomly" anymore.

You're being overly charitable here. It's not just a matter of “let” — you got it right in the first place: they have actively encouraged, engaged in, and enabled that kind of behaviour and those attitudes to the point where the instances can't even be properly discussed any more because they're so outrageous that any illustration would be moderated and removed because of how insulting and (seemingly) abusive those examples would be to the perpetrators. And this is not just some of the regular excesses of the community; it's CIG's own community managers, and the community leaders that those managers have openly supported.

There are all kinds of more or less conspiratorial reasonings that could be offered why these people are not as much at the fore-front as they used to be, but irrespective of why they are now gone, it is an unequivocally and objectively good thing that they are because it's not nearly as much as an exaggeration as it should be to say that they were a plague on the entire SC community.

 

[MTBFritz]

has this course of action from CIG stopped with the removal of these people tho?

 

[Tippis]

It's less public, at least, but that could indeed be a problem of its own…

 

[Snarfbuckle]

Reminds me on an evocati chat with some QA‘s what the Evocati get to Test is all what the have. There is no secret build. Was in 2017 I think .

I never said i though there was a secret build laying around except perhaps SQ42 which is a different ball of wax altogether.

I think they have assets, tools and things to build other things if we are to believe they have the tools they said for procedural system creation and a nifty little toolkit with solar system data.

What the Evocati can test (with other players as well) is the prototyping of mechanics within the PU for how things will function and CIG can also work and present their planet tech and whatever they want to test.

No point of wasting server space on things until things work as it should, why have 10 system to test in when 1 works?

Now they want to test jumps between systems so they add another system.

 

[Snarfbuckle]

@Snarfbuckle
The handpicked examples you bring up would be defended to the hilt by people who rationalize that the first few years dont count for reasons. Because in hindsight immediate "start" of D3 was realistically a floating idea before development "really" started. You disregard and ignore that yet in the same breath you reserve that for CIG because they had to create a company first. You realize how biased that sounds?

It might indeed sound biased, which was not my point. I merely wanted to point out that SC is not alone in the "sloppy productions department" because on the other side of the argument we have those that praise companies like Blizzard as well and berating CIG.

I also think that CIG was far more optimistic than what was realistic at the time in how quickly they could make a game and that they indeed wasted the money for the first 2 years and that they indeed count for development, I'm just saying they did scrap the majority of assets they did for that time, basically a few years of prototyping and assets down the drain - that's not saying they did not learn a lot in that time on what they should really be doing.

And i do not disagree with your points.