SC just looks kinda dull. Detailed, yes, but dull. I'm getting flashbacks to the overly serious beige FPS games from mid-00s until recently where some of that stylised look has crept back in.
Here comes the "potential" thing and what it does.
I remember CIG releasing the PU to backers in 2014? The hangar before that was kinda meh, it looked nice but it didnt really grab my attention. But the PU....wow....that was something different. 6 years later Olisar is still pretty much the same, some details changed but its the same old wake up in bed - walk/run around - order your ship - walk up to your ship and enter - fly off
Its a very simple gameloop but it was amazing at the time and it showed very clearly what Star Citizen could become aka potential. I think I remember Yamiks stating something similar the very first time he tried out Star Citizen in 2015. He was blown away by the sheer potential and the immersion factor.
But what can I say? Waking up in bed, running around and flying your ship gets boring quickly. Its simply not enough. After a while you dont have the sudden rush of excitement anymore when you run around or walk up to your ship. Its just what you have to do in order to get where you want to be. Not a problem you might think because its an alpha so they are going to add new stuff. And people praised CIG on their first take and waited eagerly for whats coming next.
Ships look nice but its a skin for the most part because as extensive testing discovered there is very little simulation going on in Star Citizen which is supposed to be a space sim. So new ships are really worthless if they dont add new gameplay elements to the project. Most dont. They look different and all of them have extensive lore but very little of the capabilities actually manage to reach the alpha.
In the following years CIG mostly changed details and minutia. Changing pixel color and creating ships with even higher pixel count. The UI changed and maybe it was needed but why did it take years?
Planets look nice but again....its a skin for the most part. I seriously doubt SC planets are procedurally generated and CIGs own guarded statement in this matter only raises suspicion as to how much "generation" is actually involved. The times required to deliver planets and moons points to heavy handcrafting and again....while the surfaces look nice there really isnt much to it. SC planets level of detail doesnt make the underlying technology "superior" or even "groundbreaking" because the level of detail comes at a cost so its a trade-off. I have no doubt that CIG
wanted to have EDs procedural capabilities combined with superior visual presentation but they simply dont have it. In terms of procedurally generation capabilities ED still is unmatched...what exactly SC is is unclear at the moment.
I try to picture myself as a "tester" and yeah...walking on a planets surface is nice...the first couple of times but with nothing to do but wait for the next handcrafted location every 3 or 4 months......WHY would I keep logging in? Whats there to "test"? Whats there to experience beyond the same thing that I already experienced before?
I get that most "veterans" have developed a kind of routine which allows them to enjoy the PU and what SC provides but if you would be a real tester, log in when something new arrives, test it, turn in your reports then wait for the next patch to test new stuff.....you would probably delete SC from your harddrive because of the slow pace.
From the outside CIG and Star Citizen look like a busy factory. Thick black smoke is coming out of its chimneys, its glowing with lights at night and the place looks immensly busy with hundreds of people milling around. The numbers we get from CIG verify this. Lots of resources going in. Heavy focus and effort by its workforce. Why are the actual results so disappointing and take months then? I get that some things take time but nothing SC does is groundbreaking or designed from scratch. In regards to the FPS animations they were able to take cryengines out-of-the-box capabilities and truth be told.....in 2020 it even looks the same as back in 2014 animation wise. All the footage we got from locomotion 2.0 never made it in. CIG simply created a nice looking skin on top of the basic avatar....I m not sure they need praise for that because its visual fluff. Where is the progress in animation, interaction, damage model or simulated physics?
Non-existing.
No doubt CIG changed the basic cryengine heavily but its not really appearant because next to zero value tickles down to the consumer. Instead things run worse, slower and the more they try to add the more they break. So you could call the engine "messed up" all the same because the results we can observe actually confirm that assessment.
People point to the row of ships available and I dismiss that as an argument for quality because again....most ships are just nice looking skins with hacked stats. The performance numbers are not simulated in any way. All you need to do is fly one or watch a ship flying to understand that. They vary in weapon and module hardpoints but thats just minutia, its not an explanation for why theres months in between each ship or indicates heavy effort going into the design of one. Except for mining the gameplay loops connected to many ships are still missing. Even the "Drop ship" doesnt have any specialized feature tied to it that would justify its existence or price tag. All it does is open its ramp and you hop out and you have more chair spots.....wow....I m blown away. After watching CIG for years now I see them trying to think of a
different looking ship to sell but thats all it really is.....different looking. So just another skin. Multicrew isnt really in. Interior damage model isnt in. Refueling, docking, repair, medical gameplay. If the physics grid and its limited capabilies wouldnt prevent them from creating bigger ships (obvious reason) there really is nothing to designing and building a capital class ship. But as the bigger ships represent mini-levels inside levels and the engine very clearly has problems handling that it seems very obvious why the big ships, sold for thousands of dollars APIECE are still missing. Even the scripted footage we got was barely able to run.
What exactly was CIG doing all those years? Painting nice pictures?
Because it looks like it to me. There is close to
no actual work going on in this project. We wait 3 or 4 months and get detail changes. Most highly anticipated things turn out subpar or straight out disappointing, are mostly broken on arrival or break the game or are dropped or pushed back. There is so much to look forward to in Star Citizen, hundreds or things people wait for. But all of them are always in the future, always require more patience and lots and lots of money. The battle royale mode now was unneeded, unwanted and not communicated to the community (transperancy, the biggest joke about Star Citizen) but no doubt this sidetrack project will "help" people to wait another year or more because you can bet your next paycheck it wont be ready in 2020. As a backer waiting for the game you always only look to the future, waiting for your wishes to become reality. All you need to do is look over the past years you already waited and evaluate what you got for the time and money spent and I dont mean "your" money specifically but all the hundreds of millions of dollars which were pumped into this project according to CIG. With the kind of results CIG has I really wouldnt call for attention pointing to all the money you received or trumpet out how much money you are getting each month....it makes this whole thing look even more like a scam,
I m not even invested and I m outraged about all this. I look up to people who have given up or manage to stay calm in the face of all those lies, those false claims and the constant underdelivering. And I fully understand anybody who vents at CIGs incompetence and the scammy nature of the project that it has turned into. Analyzing the past years its pretty clear to me that CIG
has to know it cannot do this. They got all the information, they have actual experts sitting on it so there is no way they are unaware of the dillemma they are in. Maybe the average working drone doesnt have the whole picture and have doubts but trusts in the other teams or leadership to make it happen. But Chris Roberts cannot NOT know. Its not a question of time when you lack the engine, the coding or the know-how to deliver what you sold/promised. Simply waiting for technology to catch up to your promises isnt work done. Thats hoping on a lucky break. I am not surprised the backers have no idea how CIG is going to make this a reality and thus take it on faith. If CIG would actually have any idea how to solve the problems and deliver the game they promised why are they not sharing that information? Why dont we see actual results coming out of this company nonstop? Why is it next to impossible to get a clearcut answer from CIG on anything? Whenever I listen to a dev or the head honcho himself I feel confused and like the reply didnt even touch my question at all.
I can promise a gorgeous fireplace then throw some sticks on the ground and wait until somebody else invents the lighter. Thats a scam right there and I refuse to give CIG any kind of praise for things that are weak shadows of what they actually announced in the past or simple copy jobs from existing games. This goes for ingame solutions as well as for designs. When it comes to creativity or groundbreaking stuff.....CIG never really had a foot in the door.
Star Citizens ONE SHINING MOMENT was back in 2014 when the PU first became available to the public. Everything after that was smoke and mirrors and hasnt advanced the game itself.
Thats the reason why I call it a scam today and maybe this wall of text wasnt needed but I felt like sharing so...../flip
