Game Discussions Star Citizen Discussion Thread v12

[VR Golgot]

Spectrum continues to be a fun read.

I could not amagine this, but you made it! Well done CIG! - Star Citizen Spectrum

The game is complety unplayable... nothing works... after plus 10 years you cant even make party marker work or get rid of desync in star marine... You worked for years on new MFD and now the...

robertsspaceindustries.com

Yeah MFD / HUD gripes seem to be coming to the fore.

Always hard to tell with Spectrum these days, but amongst the kneejerk 'change is bad' stuff some of the critiques seem reasonable...

The Target Status MFD does not even show you the distance to the target anymore.... instead it shows "faction" a completly useless information... even in the far faaaar away furture when factions become a thing, this information still remains unimportant compared to the distance to the ship I target.

When you scan somebody, so I can see the playername, the playername overwrites the ship type, so it's unreadable.

The radar in the Hornet MK2 is just a pure clownshow, unreadable and completly useless. When I remember correctly the radar in wingcommander 3 (released 1994) looked better...

When I scan somebody for his components or cargo, I now have to click in the scanning mfd on "components" or "cargo"... it was 10 times better with the old HUD were the information would show up directly without the need to click in the MFD.

The fuel status only shows in NAV mode on the self status MFD.... how much fuel I have is a very important information that should be shown anytime in my HUD.

Overall as somebody who plays this game for 8 years now, I can say... nothing gets any better... you are making it worse.... stuff that worked, like HUD or MFD got changed to a point were it´s just clowny and useless.

How long you worked on these MFD? 2 years? 3? and you come up with this?

New MFD and HUD are trash - Star Citizen Spectrum

The Target Status MFD does not even show you the distance to the target anymore.... instead it shows "faction" a completly useless information... even in the far faaaar away furture when factions...

robertsspaceindustries.com

+ a feature that didn't make the cut:

So the new MFD and power management system just gave up an excellent design? - Star Citizen Spectrum

Admittedly, this isn't something most people would use, but I relied on this feature to keep me flying back to the space station with my broken spaceship for repairs. I've tried many times to lose...

robertsspaceindustries.com

 

[VR Golgot]

Possibly my favourite line, which sums up the Spectrum flavour currently:

I wish you could have seen SC at its peak in 3.21.

(The noob impressions thread it's in is also worth a peek . Can be summarised as...)

Spent £175 on two ships
Spent approx. 4hrs downloading, another 6-7hrs remapping and trying to get into my ship
Spent less than 15 minutes actually flying

First impressions are not great tbh, I get its alpha, I get that, really do. Watched Citizencon and got excited to get into this properly, but £175 later and i've had 15 minutes, lots of folks saying V3.24 has been a bad one, hoping it gets better but this has been cracy tbh and major disappointment

First impressions of a noob who downloaded yesterday - Star Citizen Spectrum

Been a lurker of SC for a longtime and did one of the free fly events last year - but couldn't get it to work at all This time however I decided to buy the titan avenger and cutlass black and hop...

robertsspaceindustries.com

 

[VR Golgot]

This has been bugging me. Have the loot pinyata drops disappeared again completely? Or are they just inconsistent or something?

Is PES not a thing anymore or another bug with 24.2?
​

Trying to play and choose to do some Bounty Hunter missions with target to found something good in NPC cargo. Get mission, found valuable cargo in target's storage, was prepare for looting all stuff. But after shutdown of enemy ship its just disappear.

Source: https://youtu.be/9zY21kvL7lg?si=75N1vBG4zoF7bcuQ

Is PES not a thing anymore or another bug with 24.2? - Star Citizen Spectrum

Trying to play and choose to do some Bounty Hunter missions with target to found something good in NPC cargo. Get mission, found valuable cargo in target's storage, was prepare for looting all...

robertsspaceindustries.com

Can't remember the last time I saw loot drops from a dead ship.

 

[Ed02350]

Pretty sure his Crytek work pre-dated him co-founding CIG with CR.

The issue Crytek raised is that he then negotiated the game license, while having prior insider knowledge of their practices etc / a potential conflict of interests.

(Turned out to be a nothingburger in court though as he had a waiver regarding just that, re the GLA).

If I got this right, the Cryteck work was what Crhis Roberts presented as what he had been working on for a year to creat Star Citizen, using it to gain funding through Kickstarter.

Ortwin
If Ortwin had been involved before the Kickstarter it could go either way. Securing lisense would suggest Chris Roberts really intend to develop Star Citizen regardless of how successful Kickstarter campaign was.
if Ortwin was partly responsible for JPEG selling Phlegm suggests + before Kickstarter then it's a scam designed to milk people from the beginning.
If Ortwin was involved after Kickstarter then its a scam that got refined into a more efficient operation.

 

[TNTDany]

 

[thistle]

Hey Dany, is this the re-recorded version without the teleporting Scully? The fake one?

 

[VR Golgot]

Hey Dany, is this the re-recorded version without the teleporting Scully? The fake one?

Count the crashes

(Still has this bit though...)

 

[ECity]

He does drive-by posts.

 

[VR Golgot]

If I got this right, the Cryteck work was what Crhis Roberts presented as what he had been working on for a year to creat Star Citizen, using it to gain funding through Kickstarter.

Ortwin
If Ortwin had been involved before the Kickstarter it could go either way. Securing lisense would suggest Chris Roberts really intend to develop Star Citizen regardless of how successful Kickstarter campaign was.
if Ortwin was partly responsible for JPEG selling Phlegm suggests + before Kickstarter then it's a scam designed to milk people from the beginning.
If Ortwin was involved after Kickstarter then its a scam that got refined into a more efficient operation.

Ortwin is a co-founder of CIG and was in from the start. The first CIG entity was formed 10th April 2012. (Going by Uncle Derek's old list). Ortwin's name is on the paperwork.

On the other timeline stuff:

• Crytek guys definitely helped make the Bengal demo etc which CR used in the Kickstarter vids etc.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2hETOEGt-Q&t=62s

• CIG/RSI had started crowdfunding Sept 2012, moving to Kickstarter 18th Oct 2012 (after their own website collapsed). So presumably they already had some earlier form of license (as Paul Reindell says: 'I would also work with our different licensees and in their projects and Chris was one of them'). The full blown GLA from the court case was signed off 20th Nov 2012, doubtless due in part to the new influx of cash.

---

My own take would be, CR & Ortwin set out to fake it til they made it. As was their Hollywood way. (IE they intended to make a product, but had no great moral compunctions about how they did it).

They just got lucky that the old Wing Commander crowd had cash to hand and a retro thirst. CIG merrily opened up the stretch goal bags to receive it.

And then they got lucky twice that Ben Lesnick, from that same community, knew exactly what those fans (read he himself) wanted, in terms of ships with all the modern glitz and theory-crafted features laid on upfront.

The project's feasibility died there. And the Star Citizen story began

 

[Viajero]

What is happening to all servers 3.24.2? Fire everywhere - Star Citizen Spectrum

It seems that instability is becoming more than ever. Crashes all over!?

robertsspaceindustries.com

I must say I haven't seen a single crash today, and I've hopped 5 times. On the other hand, the elevators weren't functioning, ship retrieval/claiming wasn't functioning, inventory didn't work, drinking didn't raise hydration level... Turned it off after one hour attempting to leave station

Your server was so broken that it couldn't even crash properly. Remarkable.

 

[Skizomeuh]

Amusing comparison between 2023 and 2024 Chris's speeches. Differences in body language and most importantly "words coming out before I think" speech vs "teleprompter words that are not mine but I'm forced to read"

 

[VR Golgot]

Yeah the teleprompter was notable this year. He's had the downlow prompter before, but felt a lot more glued to it this time. Did feel a little bit like a 'best behaviour' measure.

 

[VR Golgot]

So I had a skim through the Jan-Sept leavers at CIG/Turb.

The known bumps in the US are there at the start of the year. (And a strange run of lower-experience guys leaving just now in the UK, also with no job lined up.)

But I think the most interesting stories are probably:

Senior Dev Leavers at Turbulent:

• Lead Environment Artist [3y5m]
• Lead Vehicle Artist [3y6m]
• Senior Gameplay Programmer [1y9m]
• Senior Backend Developer (working on PES etc) [4y4m]
• Senior Level Artist [3y10m]
• Senior 3D Artist [1y2m]

+ 7 senior producers / devops guys. All on SC projects. MaintainX and Motive were popular destinations.

For a relatively small outfit (~182 overall staff, with other projects outside SC) this does feel like experience jumping ship again now the market's warming up.


The Noisy Audio Narrative:

Both small teams in theory, Audio & Narrative lost:

• Director of Audio
• Senior Lead Narrative Designer
• Lead Narrative Designer [who seemingly penned this striking Glassdoor]
• 3x Sound Designers
• 2x Dialogue Designers

(Dave Haddock, the unemployed Outlander gopher who has risen to Narrative Director, has also marked himself as an ex-employee since August. But given he presented at Citcon I'm guessing that's a mistake )


Senior Dev Leavers at CIG:

Some other leavers of note are:

• Principle Gameplay Engineer
• Lead Character Artist [SQ42]
• Lead Systems Designer
• Senior Environment Artist
• Senior Animator
• Senior Programmer
• Senior UI Programmer
• Senior Level Artist
• Senior Designer

And on the production side the likes of Papy as Live Game Director and Jake Ross as Lead Producer. (Along with 4 other Snr Producers / Managers / Directors and a glut of general game producers, mainly on the US side).

 

[Fizzatron]

Yep.

19/11/2012
$6,000,000

"Star Citizen will launch with 100 star systems."

CIG could be in trouble if a group of backers decide to sue them.

Simple to fix. Have 100 places you can visit with nothing there, or just some placeholder planets if they're feeling generous. Or go down the deflection route and employ shills to say that the five star systems contain more than all the star systems in Elite combined, so technically SC contains far more than 100 systems, check mate.

 

[Fizzatron]

Comments are quite fawning. Might this be the start of a new backer rush?

 

[VR Golgot]

So catching up on some Citcon absurdities.

They've decided they need to add more hangars to all existing landing zones, to reduce waiting times...

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quC7Va6ZrkQ&t=488s

(Isn't that what instancing was supposed to fix? )

 

[McGlashan]

If I got this right, the Cryteck work was what Crhis Roberts presented as what he had been working on for a year to creat Star Citizen, using it to gain funding through Kickstarter.

Ortwin
If Ortwin had been involved before the Kickstarter it could go either way. Securing lisense would suggest Chris Roberts really intend to develop Star Citizen regardless of how successful Kickstarter campaign was.
if Ortwin was partly responsible for JPEG selling Phlegm suggests + before Kickstarter then it's a scam designed to milk people from the beginning.
If Ortwin was involved after Kickstarter then its a scam that got refined into a more efficient operation.

I have no doubt that Roberts thought it would be easy peasy for a rock star like him to develop both games. S42 as originally pitched ought to have been straightforward, since it was just a spiritual successor to games he had already made, on modern (for 2012) tech. Where he lost the plot was SC, which was never well defined and required expertise far outside of his wheelhouse. That spiralled out of control, and took S42 with it, but somehow (or because of the lack of specificity) the money rolled in. His cut must be deep into 8 figures by now. He's been all but absent from the actual development for years, and is only rolled out for the 'Con. Meanwhile it seems like Ortwin was modelling the business around his Hollywood accounting skills. That's not even a "scam" so much as just the only way he knows how to do business, with Roberts as his useful idiot.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

So catching up on some Citcon absurdities.

They've decided they need to add more hangars to all existing landing zones, to reduce waiting times...

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quC7Va6ZrkQ&t=488s

(Isn't that what instancing was supposed to fix? )

Didn't work very well apparently. But ok, they add some more hangars... but if the game is to be popular, it won't matter how many hangars they have, short of having hundreds.

 

[Viajero]

So catching up on some Citcon absurdities.

They've decided they need to add more hangars to all existing landing zones, to reduce waiting times...

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quC7Va6ZrkQ&t=488s

(Isn't that what instancing was supposed to fix? )

I suspect that CIG is not capable of even making a robust instancing system so they have to push to the brim whatever they can, and to heck with stability.

 

[Cosmo]

Simple to fix. Have 100 places you can visit with nothing there, or just some placeholder planets if they're feeling generous.

There's one problem: CIG published the lore with in-depth descriptions of many important planets. So if it doesn't include that stuff then it's false advertising. Here's a long list of systems.

For example: