Star Citizen Discussion Thread v11

[Viajero]

I think we have to accept that the funding tracker is at least broadly true, otherwise CIG would have gone bankrupt a long time ago.

Maybe. And yet the project current status does not seem to reflect that at all. Companies have many different ways to survive for very long even with low revenue or in losses. Either way it is going to be really interesting to see how accurate it ends up being in the end.

 

[Doc-Orange]

$250 Million reached!
Link

When the December comes like expected then it will be the most successful year in funding (Source:Link above user ShonenXIII)

 

[Cotic]

I hear 7-8 years throwing around here a lot, but people tend to forget that even ED was in developement for more than a decade before it even hit kickstarter.

No it really wasn't. I don't know where you read that or why you believe it but just think about how illogical it is. If they had spent 10 years working on Elite why did they have so little to show for it at the kickstarter? That would have been the most inefficient development process ever....

People talk about 7-8 years because the crowdfunding started in October/November 2012 and CR gave interviews just prior to it saying "He had been working on the game for 1 year already, and that 2 more world be enough. Any longer and it would get stale."

 

[Tippis]

No it really wasn't. I don't know where you read that or why you believe it but just think about how illogical it is.

Simple: because “but ED” is the first line of defence whenever the absurdities of SC development is brought up, no matter how relevant or truthful that supposed comparison actually is. For the absurdity of development time in particular, Diablo III is perhaps more common (but no less nonsensical) as a point of comparison, but no-one has ever shied away from tacking on an arbitrary amount of years onto whatever game they're comparing against — often while adamantly refusing to extend the same courtesy and logic to SC.

 

[Doc-Orange]

Simple: because “but ED” is the first line of defence whenever the absurdities of SC development is brought up, no matter how relevant or truthful that supposed comparison actually is. For the absurdity of development time in particular, Diablo III is perhaps more common (but no less nonsensical) as a point of comparison, but no-one has ever shied away from tacking on an arbitrary amount of years onto whatever game they're comparing against — often while adamantly refusing to extend the same courtesy and logic to SC.

Is this wrong then?

 

[Surefoot]

Is there anyone willing to show recorded gametime? Goons keeps showing things; and despite being a Kickstarter backing it's funnier to ask here.

Show your gameplay duders

I lack the recording equipment to do this properly, but in any case that would be not so intersting for the following reasons:

• as a veteran backer i tend to avoid the buggered parts of the game or know how to circumnavigate them. This will show a more stable gameplay than what's the real experience of a new player in there.
• as said multiple times apart from the very few (counted on one hand) totally handcrafted missions that you can play ad nauseam (the novelty wears off real quick..) there is nothing really fascinating to do in there. The missions themselves are really subpar and looking at an ArmA or Battlefield stream would be a lot better for example.
• in my case that would be grinding cargo runs to Arc Corp, that would mean most of the video would consist of running across the airport and waiting aboard the flying tram. I optimized that path running straight at maximum speed. Once you've seen the sights you've seen them enough.
• the actual ship flying in there would be really boring most of the time too. Straight line, engage quantum, straight line, repetitive random interdictions with broken AI that i can escape by just hitting the thrusters or police that i have to submit to unless i want to be tagged as criminal (no way to escape detection, as stealth is not implemented...).
• the only maybe a bit cooler parts would be the take off / landings as there's a hint of interaction there, you see a bit of traffic above the airport... the on-foot parts where you actually board your ship or check your cargo visually (yeah, that's a cool part, dont ban me from the forum again for talking good about space legs..) as there's a given sense of scale of everything that you tend to lose in a cockpit-only view.
• or i would grind bounties but that's again a few spots of action in between tens of minutes of nothing (mostly quantum jumps). And the action itself is at the moment still very clunky... and there's the issue of refuelling stations not refuelling ships, which ends these sessions rather quickly as small fighter ships have a very small fuel tank.
• and i would avoid totally the "FPS" part as that is really terrible and no one serious does that.

So yeah you have people who fool around with the broken physics and such, but you can do it better with Garry's Mod and that would be a lot smoother in any measurable way.

 

[MTBFritz]

Is this wrong then?

By that logic Chris Roberts has wanted to make Star Citizen since 1990 turning SCs development time into absurdity....do you see how that line of argument has no other purpose then to justify SCs already long development time because it simply looks bad by itself?

 

[Cotic]

Is this wrong then?

That's not what they call entering full development though is it. And even if they did try some prototyping 10 years ago it doesn't mean they have been working on it ever since then. If you spend a month with a skeleton crew working on something and then abandon it for 4 years it doesn't mean all hands were on deck and the studio was working on it for 4 years....

It's an absurd claim.

 

[Tippis]

Is this wrong then?

It's unsourced, for one, and would put the start of development sometime in the 2011–2013 timeframe.

 

[Surefoot]

Well for starters it was a finished game 5 years ago, in which i could have full persistence, VR, and full game loops without crashing or breaking the physics engine. Cant do any of this in SC (and i am one of the early backers who joined on the promise of VR support.. where is it now ? yeah...)

 

[Tippis]

That's a fair point as well. At this point, it seems reasonably safe to suggest that the famous SQ54 beta that was due to come out in 2020 will suffer the fate of 4.0 and be shunted forward a year (or three). It will then linger there for a while before the actual game comes out, putting the release somewhere in the 2021–22 timeframe. Optimistically add another year of beta for SC on top of that, and SC might under very favourable circumstances come out in 2023 or so…

…a decade after the first playable version of the game that started its development at the same time, possibly even a decade after its full release.

 

[Viajero]

Is this wrong then?

Suggesting Braben´s references to Elite 4 and the like were the start of ED development is probably as "wrong" and ridiculous as suggesting the Star Citizen vision started to be conceived at the time Chris Roberts worked at, and later left (or rather, was removed), the Freelancer project. Or even Privateer for that matter.

Once again, his stated goal was to give the fans the game he failed to deliver last time (resulting in the lacklustre Freelancer).

That would mean Star Citizen may have started to be conceived around 20-30 years ago, depending on how you look at those projects. Fair?


The truth probably is both SC and ED started to coalesce as an actual development project at the time where both started to prepare for their respective Kickstarter, investor pitches and initial promotion campaigns. In the case of SC, CR himself is on the record confirming explicitely that timeframe is sometime during 2011. And eventhough we do not have similar on the record statements by FDEV about theirs I would asume their timeline is not too dissimilar.

 

[jmp470]

Well for starters it was a finished game 5 years ago, in which i could have full persistence, VR, and full game loops without crashing or breaking the physics engine. Cant do any of this in SC (and i am one of the early backers who joined on the promise of VR support.. where is it now ? yeah...)

No thank you for VR, why waste development time on something only a few people want? VR has a long way to go before it becomes worth it.

Has VR even caught on yet? I know they are trying to do it on consoles, to bring in more people. But, even there it’s lame, as per my kids and their friends.

 

[Tippis]

No thank you for VR, why waste development time on something only a few people want?

Because it was promised in the original pitch, unlike, say, planets, caves, subways, mobile sam launchers, TV reporting, sand worms, sandpeople, and breathing dry ice…

 

[VR Golgot]

No thank you for VR, why waste development time on something only a few people want? VR has a long way to go before it becomes worth it.

Has VR even caught on yet? I know they are trying to do it on consoles, to bring in more people. But, even there it’s lame, as per my kids and their friends.

Half Life VR is coming out before Star Citizen by the looks. There’s your answer

(Whether it’s good is subjective . Personally I think PCVR is amazing )

 

[Firkrayt]

ED was in developement for more than a decade before it even hit kickstarter.

Is this https://www.digitaltrends.com/gamin...o-development-after-15-years-of-false-starts/ wrong then?

Dear sir, thank you for providing that link. Let's read the headline together, shall we?
"Elite Dangerous goes into development..." and the date is 2013.
That means that Elite Dangerous was made in just two years, from the moment when it went to development till the release date.

Two major lines from the rest of the article :
"David Braben has been threatening to make Elite 4 for a decade and a half."
"Frontier opened a Kickstarter to fund Elite: Dangerous on Nov. 5"
Please note that the article talks about two different projects from the same studio. One got no funding and was never done, other got funding and was released in two years.

Now back to CI. They have two projects too, but both of them got funding and none was released in 7 years after that. That, dear sir, I call a failure.

 

[jmp470]

Half Life VR is coming out before Star Citizen by the looks. There’s your answer

(Whether it’s good is subjective . Personally I think PCVR is amazing )

It will be interesting for sure. Like I’ve stated previously, VR has a long way to go, but has great potential.

 

[jmp470]

Because it was promised in the original pitch, unlike, say, planets, caves, subways, mobile sam launchers, TV reporting, sand worms, sandpeople, and breathing dry ice…

Things change obviously. Either you stay or go. Those who go, cool. Those that stay, cool. But, to back it today off of 2012’s promise is just silly.


And judging by the money coming in now, people prefer the development today. Hence the record setting 2018 and 2019.

 

[ArAsH]

Dear sir, thank you for providing that link. Let's read the headline together, shall we?
"Elite Dangerous goes into development..." and the date is 2013.
That means that Elite Dangerous was made in just two years, from the moment when it went to development till the release date.

Two major lines from the rest of the article :
"David Braben has been threatening to make Elite 4 for a decade and a half."
"Frontier opened a Kickstarter to fund Elite: Dangerous on Nov. 5"
Please note that the article talks about two different projects from the same studio. One got no funding and was never done, other got funding and was released in two years.

Now back to CI. They have two projects too, but both of them got funding and none was released in 7 years after that. That, dear sir, I call a failure.

Elite Dangerous is Elite 4, they just changed the name. Don't get me wrong, I love Elite, been playing it since I had my Amiga 500, I'm not bashing it or anything, but Braben has beel working on Elite 4 since 98. There has been steady work on it from at least 2003 till 2008, I know cause I was folowing the project while playing Vendetta Online in the meanwhile to sattisfy my Elite cravings. Cobra engine was developed then and there. So yea, it's been in developement a lot longer than you think. Again, I love Elite, been playing it since I was a kid back in the late 80's, but the redeculousness in this thread towards SC, I have no words for that.

 

[Tippis]

Things change obviously.

They really don't. If it was the product people bought in 2012, it is the one they are owed in 2022. There are some pretty hefty laws in place to ensure this.

But, to back it today off of 2012’s promise is just silly.

The 2012 promise is still something CI¬G must deliver. As such, buying the game for the features promised back then makes all the sense in the world. Well, apart from the tiny detail that CI¬G is a wholly dishonest company lead by a thoroughly untrustworthy person who has a history of not delivering what he promises…

…but presumably, since things obviously change, if SC ends being a mobile emulation of Epic Pinball, then that's fine by you.

Braben has beel working on Elite 4 since 98. There has been steady work on it from at least 2003 till 2008

…and you have sources to prove this, presumably? Or are we going to have to go down the rabbit hole where SC ends up having been in development since 1993?

Cobra engine was developed then and there.

Elite is not the Cobra engine and the Cobra engine is not Elite. Or are we going to have to go down the rabbit hole where SC ends up having been in development since 1997?

The “redeculousness in this thread towards SC” is only born out of the citizens ridiculous insistence on assigning timeframes and development logic to other games that they refuse to also afford SC. The simple fact of the matter is that Elite 4 (the MMORPG, not Elite Dangerous) was always slated to begin development once The Outsider wrapped out. Initially that was supposed to be 2009. The whole thing ground to a halt and 2010 was spent trying to shop around and save that project, but to no avail. In 2011, The Outsider was formally taken out behind the shed — this is where development of Elite Dangerous actually may have started in any real sense.