Even someone despising CIG can be impressed by the graphical tech aspect of SC and what have been done in this domain. It's hard to deny them some efficiency on the graphical part for a game of this scale...
at the same time the graphical representation has zero value in determining the progress of the project or the quality of the game (you know...the main point of discussion). It just seems so ridiculous to focus on the visual aspect because thats the only thing SC stands out of. And I would debate the "efficiency" somewhat fiercly when you consider that what they show has cost them the better part of 8 years and multiple hundreds of millions of dollars. Nice looking....yes. Efficient....hell no. With this kind of resources gone into it it
better looks good. No need to compliment them tho when far more important stuff then the make-up looks absolutely terrible or is missing.
Its also fact that CIG is working with outdated tech so regardless how much pixels they polish and place by hand....the result is going to lose shine and fall behind the competition running on current tech and already does. It still looks nice but the difference is quite appearant under load aka when playing.
I recently wasted another few hours on SC streams because twitch rammed the suggestions down my throat based on my past selections and sampling 10+ streams over the course of 3 or 4 hours I can say.....
Star Citizen really has nothing to offer. It looks bland, what people do IF they do anything looks tedious, many dont even crank up the settings because they get more frames or less bugs on lower settings which at the same time destroys Star Citizens only strong point. I know the gorgous looking 4k pictures floating around but truth be told....I didnt see any of that in the 3 or 4 hours I skimmed through the streams. It wasnt crash city but still, whenever a stream crashed I switched to a new one which explains the 10+ streams. So I pretty much got hours of
pure gameplay out of the evening.
All of the streams had one thing in common.
Brave streamers sitting through absolute boredom trying to cover travel times or crashes/bugs with funny anecdotes. Laughing with friends and the chat going absolutely bat crap crazy over nothing. I decided to just lurk in silence and observe but it was hard. I realize that there seem to be good times to be had in Star Citizen but obviously those good times are rare and hard to grasp. Most of the time it was just a boring slog. In fact watching the streams has only enforced my view on the project making it abundently clear that SC has problems the dev team seems to be unable to fix. Everybody is waiting for a miracle fix, even the devs. I m just coming out and asking if thats good project development and worth the support and trust directed at CIG.
Considering how early in development the whole project is ("early days" as stated by the devs numerous times this year alone) it seems absolutely absurd to stop and point out how nice Star Citizen looks. Why is that important? How is that a factor? Why are critical issues with performance or coding swept under the rug, ignored or sidelined while people go shill mode over the visual asthetic?
I try to take a step back and look at this from a distance and I think its very clear that CIG is focusing maniacal on the visual aspects because thats
all they have. There is nothing else. No clear directive, no grasp of the projects scope or difficulties/challenges, no solutions and no design paper that outlines what needs to be done.
CIG is sabotaging itself at this time by their responses or the lack thereof. Also the results which are even worse then in previous years. This drought also brings up the people who desperately search for an angle, any angle really to justify or explain what they see as clearly as the next guy in an attempt to stay onboard and not turn "hater" out of necessity. With some people its "ah as long as it looks good I m cool with whatever happens" and thats fine by me. The issue I have is when these people with a superficial understanding or interest try to tell other people how they "got it wrong". CIG has tried to ignore its community and that hasnt worked too well. The remaining white knight defense force was unable to stem the "flow of hate" until news outlets picked up on it and spread it even more. Their one attempt of damage control has backfired spectacularly and STILL....even now....the CEO remains absent as does the head of marketing. It would be funny if it wasnt so shady and us talking about hundreds of millions of dollars at risk.
Don't bother going crazy over your hardware, it is indeed on the borderline of requirements (8 GB ram and that 960 Gtx), but a big part of the problem is server side.
Its still funny that LittleAnt tries to tell him he cannot play it with that which he obviously can. Just not very good but its very possible. I get the alpha excuse as its touted whenever bugs or performance issues are brought up but CIGs focus for the last 8 years have been polishing. And its still really really bad. I wonder if they even
could improve performance anymore even if they wanted? The latest improvement in performance have been won by cutting back rather agressively on how the rendering works. It was a good first step but at the same time could mark the absolute best the team is able to achieve. If its a sign of improvement I d expect more of that and soon. With each passing month of waiting for responses or results costing millions I dont think CIG can make an uptick then sit back on their laurels and cash in for the next 6 months before they do something. This isnt how alphas are supposed to work. Thats how scams work.