Game Discussions Star Citizen Discussion Thread v12
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You hit on the trick to navigating the black hole of SC for anyone new-ish...finding a friendly player who roughly knows what they're doing. Besides having likeminded company, SC is far more enjoyable in company with someone who has experience of it, if even just to sort through the myriad of confusing gameplay mechanics that those of us who play regularly take for granted... like finding your ship...where to buy armour and guns... how to navigate through mobiglas functions...or just have a moan about the bugs, desync etc, etc. Finding out for yourself can be fun, but frustrating and time consuming just navigating around the place....if you get lost in the labyrinthine mess of stations or space ports...reading the signs works since everything is signposted.Another Skeptic's First Steps into Star Citizen
Note that I also call this my "First Steps" even though I've done 2 prior free flies. I rage-quit those after less than an hour, so I'm wiping the slate clean.
TL;DR:
7/10. Overall a good impression. It lost marks for the expected alpha-game issues. It won marks for immersion and initial fun factor, bolstered I'm sure by being helped by another player who knew what they were doing.
Here's a dot list summary of my first 2.5 hours in the free fly.
First day (session #1):
- Woke up in Orison
- Can't use the Windows key to escape back to desktop. Have to use Task manager.
- Turned on FPS counter (~ r_DisplayInfo = 3). Getting 26 fps in cabin (2080Ti, 32GB, SSD).
- Looked around cabin. Nice.
- Opened cabin door. UI good. I like the F-click (there may be other/better ways???)
- Went out and looked at Orison "sky city". The expansiveness is very nice, but colour palette makes it look like a cartoon. Not believable. Not a good impression. Not sure what they were thinking. YMMV.
- Went to roof. Tried to interact with an NPC. Their eyes follow me, but no other interaction.
- Went to foyer. About 8 NPCs, two of which overlapping. A couple of other players, both dsync-ing / rubber-banding everywhere. FPS still 26 here.
- Bought an icecream cone at Ellroys. Nice!
- ERROR Disconnection (30000 error). 25 mins into game.
- Logged back in and changed to Windowed mode (to get easier desktop access).
- Back in bunk. Went outside. NPC outside cabin had bright glowing orange ears. Weird?
- Back to lobby. Lots of NPCs have these glowing orange ears.
- Walked around outside, saw the very nice whale sculpture. Went into a big building and tried to buy a ship. Not sure where I find my ship(s)?. Went back to the lobby to find visual clues to find them. Can't really see anything.
- Logged out.
Night (session #2):
- Night time in Orison so much better! Followed an orange-eared NPC outside, and night ambience is excellent, much better than the pastel daytime cartoon.
- Lighting, wind-blown petals and flags all nice. It looks a bit dated compared to recent AAA titles, but quite OK.
- Now time to find my ship...
- First building was a hospital (I think?) with insurance counters. Expansive. NPC receptionists don't interact.
- Next building, "Trade & Development Division". Very cool foyer with large holo of gas giant (Orison presumably). This is where I tried to buy a ship last time. Didn't seem to do anything. Tried again. I'm at a "Trading Console" and I think it's showing that I own 3 ships and I'm to choose one for cargo - a Mustang, Mercury or Aurora. I leave to try to find them... (I get the feeling I'm a total dweeb and should know where to go???)
- Soak in more night time ambience and watch an Orison info/advertisement screen for a few minutes. This is good. A variety of "newb mysteries" scroll by, including plushies (I think?). Coincidentally a player on global chat keeps asking for plushies? (a sinister plot unfolding?)
- Spaceport info appears! "August Dunlow Spaceport" I think? have to wait for the ads to cycle again. Unfortunately it doesn't give directions, but it appears to be a shuttle destination (3rd ad cycle confirms).
- Looking for a shuttle!...
- As I turn, a massive, and I do mean MASSIVE, hulk of a ship is slowly gliding past, a few 100 metres up above the buildings. Really nice nighttime feeling/impression.
- Space whale sculpture looks gorgeous at night. Its plaque says to board the next Orison Discovery Tour Shuttle. Good... must be here somewhere...
- Found Discovery Tours. I'm waiting with these two lovely glowing-orange-eared lasses...
- Waited for 5 mins, no shuttle.
- A player came over and waited with me. Then spoke to me. Changed my settings to get my headset working. He's another Aussie, Yay!, comms should be good. Turns out he's owned the game for 5 years but hasn't played much.
- Then shuttle came... and went underneath us (I think)? We're both scratching our heads. He took me to a different shuttle bay 100 metres away where finally one stopped.
- "Hachi", my new SC friend, wanted to show me the ropes (Yay, please do), so I stopped taking notes. The remainder of this summary is in retrospect...
- Arrived at the space port. Shuttle ride was nice, no glitches, but other players desyncing (basically all of the time).
- The port looks very good, has great ambience too.
- See a stand of colourful (whale?) plushies... makes me smile, all good. (Emergent playtime?... nah, later)
- Hachi got his Freelancer and we took a Get-the-Box mission.
- I sat in the co-pilots seat and we chatted.
- He took me to the turret and I tried that. Very nice. Hachi was impressed with the animations as I entered/left. (He said he doesn't play much. He may not have seen them before?)
- Back to the mission, we quantum travelled to a new planet (don't remember the name).
- Very nice screenshot opportunities on the way... see spoiler below.
- F4 key (external camera mode) is great.
- Landed near a crashed very large ship (forgot the name? Constellation???). Hachi said it's one of the ships a player can own.
- The mission was good... we encountered hostile NPCs which we (well, tbh, Hachi) killed. I got hit, and got shown how to heal myself. Found 4 boxes with a time limit to get them back to the ship , then to another destination to a special "cargo chute".
Impressions of the mission
I liked it. Probably not much repeatability, but the elements were all fine. UI handling of objects is a bit clunky, and when I equipped one of Hachi's (better) weapons, I saw it but he didn't.
- Gravity works! It was nice to jump off the derelict ship and float down 40m to the surface, box in hand. For some reason I thought all gravity was earth standard in SC?
- Flying the ship from orbit down to the surface MUCH better than I expected. The mountains on the horizon and very thick atmosphere with mountains poking through made it better than ED (sorry FDev... still love you). Tbh, the planet looked more realistic and way more immersive than ED (without VR that is). But it's hardly a fair comparison. SC is a very few partially hand-crafted planets vs ED... well enough said.
- On the surface the weather is very good - wind, dust, flying "stuff", visor wetness/smears/whatever. As much as we may question the huge dev effort put into detail, it does add to the experience.
And a special thanks to Hachi who was very friendly and made my time so much easier/better.
Impressions after first 2.5 hours:
7/10
The negatives - It's obviously an alpha, with plenty of little niggly issues with UI, desync, collision detection, object invisibility. And ofc the glowing ears.
The positives - Ambience and immersion is GOOD. While I don't like some of the visual design choices, others are excellent. Orison at night is very good, daytime is bad (YMMV). The basic mission was also good. And ofc the glowing ears (by the end I was running up to NPCs just to find them... SC has given me a fetish-like fascination for them now, dammit)
Note also, FPS ranged between 24 (in Orison) and 60 fps (flying the ship).
Caveat: I suspect my overall good impressions might have been different had I not had the help of another player. Doing an entire mission, including combat, without having to learn to fly a ship (again) was very pleasant. I intend to log in again now, solo, and try to work out how to fly a ship.
Visual summary Part 1: (only 10 images allowed per post)
Global chat is the key to it, just popping in and asking will usually have someone come find you and just helping out or tagging along whilst you play. @Stinja is a fellow Aussie sceptic new-ish to SC but who's now fairly clued up on how things work. Sharing of missions between players works quite well, meaning everyone gets paid no matter who accepts the mission...with the pair of you being on the same time zone...perhaps hooking up in game would help.
As always, I'm usually about here and there at weird times of the day/night so adding me to your contacts list is always an option if you don't mind the constant whining about desync and bugs... I also occasionally play on the AUS servers if the EU servers are trash. I always enjoy the company too. I'm just plain 'Mole' over in SC
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It's that 6min 42sec which is the key to the whole game.
Interesting look at how the 'new' Turbulent are now adding to Ci¬G and SC...most of Turbulent's recent hires having worked together at Ubisoft, Warner brothers and Eidos. Turbulent now have a continuously expanding team of industry veterans from all disciplines that have worked on everything from Rainbow 6, Ghost Recon, The Division, For Honour, Hitman series, AC titles, Marvel universe stuff...all triple A. To all intents and purposes, a very impressive semi-autonomous team formed from devs who have all worked together previously in major studios. Interesting times indeed
I usually avoid SC Live videos of talking heads...but this one I definitely noted. I'm almost tempted to enter into wishful thinking territory and imagine that Turbulent might eventually be the deciding factor in actually making this monster into a working game... given their increasing remit of expanding Star Citizen by adding new systems, gameplay content and playable environments
Only time will tell...
I usually avoid SC Live videos of talking heads...but this one I definitely noted. I'm almost tempted to enter into wishful thinking territory and imagine that Turbulent might eventually be the deciding factor in actually making this monster into a working game... given their increasing remit of expanding Star Citizen by adding new systems, gameplay content and playable environments
Only time will tell...
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The game has a hard-coded latency, 250ms iirc, which combined with the poorly-optimised servers, all tends to feel very spongey and input-laggy.
Interesting look at how the 'new' Turbulent are now adding to Ci¬G and SC...most of Turbulent's recent hires having worked together at Ubisoft, Warner brothers and Eidos. Turbulent now have a continuously expanding team of industry veterans from all disciplines that have worked on everything from Rainbow 6, Ghost Recon, The Division, For Honour, Hitman series, AC titles, Marvel universe stuff...all triple A. To all intents and purposes, a very impressive semi-autonomous team formed from devs who have all worked together previously in major studios. Interesting times indeed
I usually avoid SC Live videos of talking heads...but this one I definitely noted. I'm almost tempted to enter into wishful thinking territory and imagine that Turbulent might eventually be the deciding factor in actually making this monster into a working game... given their increasing remit of expanding Star Citizen by adding new systems, gameplay content and playable environments
Only time will tell...
Its all rather fishy. Why do they need an external contractor so much. They've alledgedly been hiring the best of the best for years who should now have lots of experience with "star engine".
All that comes to my old skeptical mind is "exit plan"
17-30 FPS "Highly playable"
I'm no FPS snob, but 17-30 FPS is why i'm not playing Odyssey, because its damn well unplayable.
The last time i accepted those frame rates as playable was in the 1990s.
I'm no FPS snob, but 17-30 FPS is why i'm not playing Odyssey, because its damn well unplayable.
The last time i accepted those frame rates as playable was in the 1990s.
stormyuk
Volunteer Moderator
Tried free fly and while I can see it has potential it's definitely an alpha buggy mess right now.
Lifts not working or empty and you fall through the floor,
Taking up to 8 times to enter the Aurora because you clip through it constantly, Dying while running for no reason,
Ships having a fit when you lower the ramp,
Mission UIs just giving up,
Parcel delivery missions to places you can't go without trespass crime,
Ships taking damage for no reason,
Quantum drive issues having to reset it constantly,
Docking permission granted but, not giving you a landing pad,
Broken enemy UI, both FPS and Ship.
Just a few I've experienced in a couple of days trying it.
While some of it looks good, some of it looks dreadful so it's a real mixed bag graphically as it is performance wise. Plus seems to be graphically glitches happening quite often with broken textures or flashing shadows and such randomly. Apparently it's the norm.
Many game breaking bugs encountered pretty much consistently and it appears you have to 'learn' to try and reduce their occurrence by how you play. Although some seem completely random and unavoidable. Seems lots of long standing issues get left unfixed, sounds familiar.
RSI Telemetry says my average frame rate is 45fps at 1440p but, I've seen some good performance of over 100fps and some pretty dire 20fps in places like Orison. Plus the clouds to me don't look that great and seem to be very expensive and not that great looking. Very shimmery.
Doubt I'll pledge as it seems to be developing at a tortoise pace considering the amount of money thrown at it and Devs working on it.
Ship interiors are nice but, I am getting a bit tired of going from the ramp to the bridge on the Star Runner.
System is RTX 3070, Core i7-11700k, 32Gb 3200Mhz Ram for reference. (Edit with M.2 NVMe)
I'd be interested how Odyssey compares performance wise on the FPS aspects but, not ready to pay full price for that yet. I actually quite like the FPS experience with Star Citizen.
Lifts not working or empty and you fall through the floor,
Taking up to 8 times to enter the Aurora because you clip through it constantly, Dying while running for no reason,
Ships having a fit when you lower the ramp,
Mission UIs just giving up,
Parcel delivery missions to places you can't go without trespass crime,
Ships taking damage for no reason,
Quantum drive issues having to reset it constantly,
Docking permission granted but, not giving you a landing pad,
Broken enemy UI, both FPS and Ship.
Just a few I've experienced in a couple of days trying it.
While some of it looks good, some of it looks dreadful so it's a real mixed bag graphically as it is performance wise. Plus seems to be graphically glitches happening quite often with broken textures or flashing shadows and such randomly. Apparently it's the norm.
Many game breaking bugs encountered pretty much consistently and it appears you have to 'learn' to try and reduce their occurrence by how you play. Although some seem completely random and unavoidable. Seems lots of long standing issues get left unfixed, sounds familiar.
RSI Telemetry says my average frame rate is 45fps at 1440p but, I've seen some good performance of over 100fps and some pretty dire 20fps in places like Orison. Plus the clouds to me don't look that great and seem to be very expensive and not that great looking. Very shimmery.
Doubt I'll pledge as it seems to be developing at a tortoise pace considering the amount of money thrown at it and Devs working on it.
Ship interiors are nice but, I am getting a bit tired of going from the ramp to the bridge on the Star Runner.
System is RTX 3070, Core i7-11700k, 32Gb 3200Mhz Ram for reference. (Edit with M.2 NVMe)
I'd be interested how Odyssey compares performance wise on the FPS aspects but, not ready to pay full price for that yet. I actually quite like the FPS experience with Star Citizen.
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Well Odyssey for me about 50-60 fps in planetside, station concourses, space. At 1080p, framelimit at 60 (cause I have 60hz screen) GPU is RTX2060...At settlements last time I did run some mission 60-40 (I'm mostly explorer in Elite and mostly do my time in deep black nowadays...)Tried free fly and while I can see it has potential it's definitely an alpha buggy mess right now.
Lifts not working or empty and you fall through the floor,
Taking up to 8 times to enter the Aurora because you clip through it constantly, Dying while running for no reason,
Ships having a fit when you lower the ramp,
Mission UIs just giving up,
Parcel delivery missions to places you can't go without trespass crime,
Ships taking damage for no reason,
Quantum drive issues having to reset it constantly,
Docking permission granted but, not giving you a landing pad,
Broken enemy UI, both FPS and Ship.
Just a few I've experienced in a couple of days trying it.
While some of it looks good, some of it looks dreadful so it's a real mixed bag graphically as it is performance wise. Plus seems to be graphically glitches happening quite often with broken textures or flashing shadows and such randomly. Apparently it's the norm.
Many game breaking bugs encountered pretty much consistently and it appears you have to 'learn' to try and reduce their occurrence by how you play. Although some seem completely random and unavoidable. Seems lots of long standing issues get left unfixed, sounds familiar.
RSI Telemetry says my average frame rate is 45fps at 1440p but, I've seen some good performance of over 100fps and some pretty dire 20fps in places like Orison. Plus the clouds to me don't look that great and seem to be very expensive and not that great looking. Very shimmery.
Doubt I'll pledge as it seems to be developing at a tortoise pace considering the amount of money thrown at it and Devs working on it.
Ship interiors are nice but, I am getting a bit tired of going from the ramp to the bridge on the Star Runner.
System is RTX 3070, Core i7-11700k, 32Gb 3200Mhz Ram for reference.
I'd be interested how Odyssey compares performance wise on the FPS aspects but, not ready to pay full price for that yet. I actually quite like the FPS experience with Star Citizen.
You need to install SC on a SSD like did. Then you’ll have no problems what so ever!Tried free fly and while I can see it has potential it's definitely an alpha buggy mess right now.
Lifts not working or empty and you fall through the floor,
Taking up to 8 times to enter the Aurora because you clip through it constantly, Dying while running for no reason,
Ships having a fit when you lower the ramp,
Mission UIs just giving up,
Parcel delivery missions to places you can't go without trespass crime,
Ships taking damage for no reason,
Quantum drive issues having to reset it constantly,
Docking permission granted but, not giving you a landing pad,
Broken enemy UI, both FPS and Ship.
Just a few I've experienced in a couple of days trying it.
While some of it looks good, some of it looks dreadful so it's a real mixed bag graphically as it is performance wise. Plus seems to be graphically glitches happening quite often with broken textures or flashing shadows and such randomly. Apparently it's the norm.
Many game breaking bugs encountered pretty much consistently and it appears you have to 'learn' to try and reduce their occurrence by how you play. Although some seem completely random and unavoidable. Seems lots of long standing issues get left unfixed, sounds familiar.
RSI Telemetry says my average frame rate is 45fps at 1440p but, I've seen some good performance of over 100fps and some pretty dire 20fps in places like Orison. Plus the clouds to me don't look that great and seem to be very expensive and not that great looking. Very shimmery.
Doubt I'll pledge as it seems to be developing at a tortoise pace considering the amount of money thrown at it and Devs working on it.
Ship interiors are nice but, I am getting a bit tired of going from the ramp to the bridge on the Star Runner.
System is RTX 3070, Core i7-11700k, 32Gb 3200Mhz Ram for reference.
I'd be interested how Odyssey compares performance wise on the FPS aspects but, not ready to pay full price for that yet. I actually quite like the FPS experience with Star Citizen.
No update from me today. Got home late from work, and turned in early thanks to a growing headache.
Tomorrow’s my proverbial weekend, so I should be able be able to squeeze in a couple of sessions.
If they're veterans they probably know the Visionary and his track record. So they either here for the money whatever hurdles will come from Lord Almighty loony ideas, or they're free from him because he no longer has his grasp on the development process. Shadows of Freelancer fate once again.Interesting look at how the 'new' Turbulent are now adding to Ci¬G and SC...most of Turbulent's recent hires having worked together at Ubisoft, Warner brothers and Eidos. Turbulent now have a continuously expanding team of industry veterans from all disciplines that have worked on everything from Rainbow 6, Ghost Recon, The Division, For Honour, Hitman series, AC titles, Marvel universe stuff...all triple A. To all intents and purposes, a very impressive semi-autonomous team formed from devs who have all worked together previously in major studios. Interesting times indeed
I usually avoid SC Live videos of talking heads...but this one I definitely noted. I'm almost tempted to enter into wishful thinking territory and imagine that Turbulent might eventually be the deciding factor in actually making this monster into a working game... given their increasing remit of expanding Star Citizen by adding new systems, gameplay content and playable environments
Only time will tell...
I do hope option 2, as it means we may finally see some results in our lifetime and a more consistent and cohesive development progress.
Interesting look at how the 'new' Turbulent are now adding to Ci¬G and SC...most of Turbulent's recent hires having worked together at Ubisoft, Warner brothers and Eidos. Turbulent now have a continuously expanding team of industry veterans from all disciplines that have worked on everything from Rainbow 6, Ghost Recon, The Division, For Honour, Hitman series, AC titles, Marvel universe stuff...all triple A. To all intents and purposes, a very impressive semi-autonomous team formed from devs who have all worked together previously in major studios. Interesting times indeed
I usually avoid SC Live videos of talking heads...but this one I definitely noted. I'm almost tempted to enter into wishful thinking territory and imagine that Turbulent might eventually be the deciding factor in actually making this monster into a working game... given their increasing remit of expanding Star Citizen by adding new systems, gameplay content and playable environments
Only time will tell...
Didn't @WotGTheAgent "leak" that all this was already happening? Something like Calders are pulling the strings and moving key development away from Chris Roberts & CIG to Turbulent to get the project on track?
He did indeed. Partly why I noted the conversation with Turbulent in the vid
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To give the Spectrum muppet some benefit of the doubt...even at 20-30 fps, SC does seem a lot smoother than it ever has previously, a few mates...even me... have noticed and passed comment on it when we've been playing. It's more about frametimes than actual fps in SC's case, not so jarring with fps all over the place. Even the likes of Orison at 25-40 fps is very smooth as you're wandering around it, no stuttering or texture loading. I've seen a few comments on the free-fly experience mention it too... so it's not just me imagining it, sometimes it's hard to tell with SC17-30 FPS "Highly playable"
I'm no FPS snob, but 17-30 FPS is why i'm not playing Odyssey, because its damn well unplayable.
The last time i accepted those frame rates as playable was in the 1990s.
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To give the Spectrum muppet some benefit of the doubt...even at 20-30 fps, SC does seem a lot smoother than it ever has previously, a few mates...even me... have noticed and passed comment on it when we've been playing. It's more about frametimes than actual fps in SC's case, not so jarring with fps all over the place. Even the likes of Orison at 25-40 fps is very smooth as you're wandering around it, no stuttering or texture loading. I've seen a few comments on the free-fly experience mention it too... so it's not just me imagining it, sometimes it's hard to tell with SC
Yes, i can understand how lack of jitter from textures loading can make low FPS seem better than it is. I used to have the opposite problem a bit in ED when it was on a regular drive. When i dropped out of SC sometimes i'd get a lot of jitter as a planet/station/whatever loaded in, yet my FPS was recording 60.
Now with Odyssey (and same with SC last time i tried it) things load just fine, but the frames are a killer.
Can't play a twitch based game at less than 30 FPS.
Ooh, I hope so ... That actually does sound promising ... If they could prioritise SQ42 and sort the elevatorsInteresting look at how the 'new' Turbulent are now adding to Ci¬G and SC...most of Turbulent's recent hires having worked together at Ubisoft, Warner brothers and Eidos. Turbulent now have a continuously expanding team of industry veterans from all disciplines that have worked on everything from Rainbow 6, Ghost Recon, The Division, For Honour, Hitman series, AC titles, Marvel universe stuff...all triple A. To all intents and purposes, a very impressive semi-autonomous team formed from devs who have all worked together previously in major studios. Interesting times indeed
I usually avoid SC Live videos of talking heads...but this one I definitely noted. I'm almost tempted to enter into wishful thinking territory and imagine that Turbulent might eventually be the deciding factor in actually making this monster into a working game... given their increasing remit of expanding Star Citizen by adding new systems, gameplay content and playable environments
Only time will tell...
A project being taken away from CRoberts so it has a chance of being released ??...Surely Not ....