Game Discussions Star Citizen Discussion Thread v12
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Ori director criticises developers for overhyping games with "lies and deception"
Original story, February 4, 2021: Moon Studios' CEO and Ori game director Thomas Malher called out other studios for mi…
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Interesting enough, CR isn't mentioned. So either the guy has never heard of Star Citizen or he's already deep into sunk cost fallacy
You dont nerd to fiddle thumbs when you can have MP romance. I think that's what really drives the enthusiasm.
Jasper, Thrust, Manic Miner, Pit fall, Elite, Q-bert, Galaxia, space invaders etc. etc. Graphical quality does not equate to playability in my opinion.
Some games look visually stunning but are lacking.
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Viajero
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SC is still too unstable, low performing and too full of bugs, glitches and crashes that make it really hard to compare to anything really. All games have bugs and issues but SC in its current state seems to be several orders of magnitude worst. I mean you can call it "space sim/game" if you want, but it just does not seem to work properly yet.
How big was your teamsize if you dont mind me asking?
The B-1 had a crew size of 4 with pretty much all crew covering a combat oriented role, usually doubling to cover engineering/technical issues during flight. Also even if you were not sitting in a turret you had the option to look outside or even change camera settings to allow for better view. This is already a stark contrast to ships the size of stadions where people are sitting in an isolated small room. It affects motivation. In your case you describe a sortie which probably took a few hours if it was a real-time simulation. My follow-up questions are
- how much "fun" did you have on that tour. Would you have agreed for another one the next day or on a regular basis?
- would your participating depend on role changing or "please more action the next time"?
- what specifically held your interest during that session? The gameplay itself or social interaction?
- what was your motivation to do it to begin with?
Mole made similar reports where he and a couple buddies just split roles on who feels like what and than go from there enjoying each others company on discord. While this works for small size teams the more people you add the less freedom you allow them during the session. WoW raids with more then 10 people usually have a "only the leader speaks" rule in place and with 40 man raids you had subchannels going. Usually when on a raid....you sit there and listen and you follow commands. You cant crack jokes and you cant do what you want because you might affect the raid for the others in a negative way. Many raids especially the random ones I participated in were done in a military manner without much fun, friendship of good humored banter. The common goal was achievements or loot. That made people do it. I started grouping and raiding in MMOs for the social aspect at first but I kept doing it because for the potential reward
Whats that reward in Star Citizen? As far as I know missions dont have a share button so the more people you take on a mission the less payout do you have. Right now the only incentive is ingame currency...in a game that is designed for the average newbie to earn his way up to capital ships on his own. Offering more than missions would only help to swamp the market with ingame currency so gold-sellers in SC?
Diversity is another thing to consider. I can get the fascination for waking up in your wake pod than running to your ship yada-yada but doing it for the 100th time? Why cant I skip this? Apply this to mission running or that bomber sortie you described. At what point does the gameplay become secondary and social interaction becomes the primary factor? Which means that the quality of said social contacts becomes the controlling factor in how much you enjoy this session. After years of grouping and raiding I can report that I crave teamwork efforts and love when they pan out but I dread other people simply because by my experience for every great guy you run into you end up with 20 jerks who ruin your fun intentionally or by their behavior.
I dont think I need to explain who Leeroy Jenkins is/was but you know why he did what he did?
Because he was bored.
We could argue why Sovapid does what he does. Is it because he likes killing other people ingame or does the rest of Star Citizen simply doesnt hold any interest to him so he does what he likes? Can you imagine him in a crew of 50? Under that aspect multicrew already is an optional activity not a major gameloop. Some people will jump at the opportunity, some will disregard it from the start. In order to MAKE multicrew a major gameloop dedicating manpower and time to its implementation I assume you ll want to have a certain % of your playerbase doing it guaranteed else it would be a waste of resources. If that was the case I would expect CIG to be able to provide or show a design paper or at least (because these papers are boring as heck) describe the intended multicrew functionalioty in detail other than "we want to eventually...." maybe something that the current implementation supports or hints at?
Star Trek crew works for the same reason why the sortie did for you. Even tho you werent used for the majority of the time you were still part of the whole thing by piower of observation. Its the reason why Star Trek crew only plays on the bridge. Capital ships in Star Citizen will have the size of a stadion with the majority of the space being cocooned in an armored shell. Out of a crew size of estimated 75 only a tiny part will have the opportunity to watch whats happening, the rest would be dependant on the internal speakers and somebody describing whats happening or entertaining them.
While its certainly possible that you have a few friends on call at any given time to do stuff in, you know yourself how that already can become an exercise in frustration. We all have our different lives, obligations and free time windows. Teams of 5 are easy to fill, 10 is already a challenge especially as you probably dont know everybody. Again capital ships in Star Citizen.....50 players per essential personal to operate the damn thing. What IS there even to do for 50 people for hours at a time if you disregard the mundane jobs or mini games like bartender and janitor? Again, this is all pure theory at the moment because SC doesnt have it or shows any of it being possible. Its remarkable how lilttle you need to move from "what we have" before you hit theoratical territory when it comes to Star Citizen ^^
You probably want to split tasks. How do you gonna do that? Is it still 1 pilot or more (we all know what the co-pilot does on flights)? If you take in specialized personal to monitor screens and com traffic you automatically introduce a delay into combat where information flows to the command giver and back to the operating people. If you give the captain access to everything in order to avoid that delay you basically reduce the split posts to make-believe time wasters. And thats only for the people on the bridge. It all sounds like a convoluted mess and because CiG hasent provided any answers on how to solve this problem we are left with throwing ideas back and forth. A lot of these scenarios outline serious problems in long term player engagement and motivation. These questions are also directed at CiG but usually deflected by the fanboys or being ignored. What CIG adressed are "during flight mini games" which isnt of any concern because people want to know how multicrew will work, not how passengers or people in on the trip can waste their time effectively. With split tasks you will have people being better at certain things and once you recognize that you will want specific tasks for specific people reducing the available choices for people who just tag along. Like in WoW where a whole raid was depending on the main tank showing or not
Capital ship combat is already so much different to small space ships duking it out due to the sizes involved. Its probably comparable to a soldier and how he fights compared to an navy destroyer with a 70 man crew. The tasks are different, area of responsebility is different and the timescale is different. Basically in order to implement capital ship combat CIG needs to introduce enough time for capital ships to become worthwhile. Enough time to allow for information or decision lag, to allow theoretical "repair parties" to get to the damaged location and enact repairs. Which means boosting armor and shield strength to a degree where enemy forces need minutes or longer to get through.
Essentially a bullet sponge with one-hit capabilities.
While this isnt a problem in a pure PvE setting where NPC pilots might whine and cry all they want without anybody caring Star Citizen promises (and its backers are dreaming of) player controlled battles EVE style. I can only imagine how horrible the balancing effort on this will be. And knowing this is tasked by a company who solved its flight model by simply upping the numbers until you have instant stops and/or max speed doesnt fill me with confidence.
We all expect something special from multicrew but apart from the clear dreams floating around I dont have any answers or statements that would even begin to fill me with confidence. The old tried and tested approaches to this problem dont work for Star Citizen.so I would expect CiG to come up with a new solution or approach only I dont see one. The thing we should adress BEFORE we get to capital ship combat is "why?".I m sure because its gonna be fun and super duper but people only mine because of the reward, the fun while doing it is just a bonus otherwise miners would dump a full cargo hold after drilling for an hour and repeat the process never going back. WHY would people man two capital ships to duke it out other than for mock-up battles Rexshilla style? I ll probably fill another post with this ^^
I still play Division with a few buddies and when they are not available is easy to get into groups because the game supports this and provides enough options to finetine my preferences and get into the action quickly. Those sessions go from 10-40 minutes on average.
Now Division 2 certainly has a lot more content than Star Citizen, in an open world (whole city) I can traverse without loading screens and its basically space legs without the space. It DOES have character customization and classes/builds which drastically affect how I play the same content. In addition to the world filled with NPCs doing their thing (and enemies roaming around) the game also offers a huge variety of tasks and activities rotating. Apart from daylies and weeklies, PoIs, missions and strongholds you work your way up through several layers of difficulty and the team also implements special events all the time. I want to outline how much more complex and deep Division 2 is over Star Citizen here so bear with me.
Even with all these things I defintitely enjoy (hours played...dont even ask) there is one thing that killsit or often miffs my motivation.
Repetition.
Where you log in and think of all the things you "could" possibly do but everything is the same thing I already did a hundred times before. Ugh. And log off. Mind you if I end up with group drop-outs or bad players its not much of a deal to find replacements or a different group. Oftentimes having bad teammates can be the spice in the soup (but I gonna need to be in the mood for it). In addition in Division I am a full-time member of a squad and do everythjing from watching to flanking to assault to healing its a bit like Guild Wars 2 which went away from dedicated roles. So I have freedom of choice and can do whatever I want. Rock the damage meter, support the team, you name it. Even with all this freedom the game gets stale.
Star Citizen currently doesnt have that kind of content or freedom to chose from even tho some people try to portrait it as if it does. So I dare to say Star Citizen will get old quickly for the majority of people purchasing it. When I watch streams or read experience reports I always have the feeling that people "live their second life in space" and thats the actual fascination....not the game itself. This is already as niche as it can get because even out of all the players who like Star Citizen not all of them will keep doing this and will get bored. Its simple statistics of video games. I certainly know of all the flowery descriptions of what to expect and how great things will be but I base my assessment on the NOW.
What I take away the most from Star Citizen is that its a social hub because playing it with friends is better then playing solo (counts for pretty much everything). Mole keeps coming back for mining because he considers it fun. But I know from him that he plays a lot of other games and he also plays SC once in a while. A stark contrast to people who claim they have stopped playing anything else and clock thousands of hours into SC. Why? How?
Fun of course but I think it would be a mistake to project the fun of a few to the large video game population and assume it ll work for everybody else. And only listening to your hard-die fans who oftentimes have a deluded view on things is a recipe for large-scale failure.
So with your B-1 sortie and considering SCs level of desired fidelity....
Not sure how much "fun" or "intense" that ll be ^^
Anyone know what the planned largest minimum crew for a ship is?
Well, I pity you, because you clearly missed out on imho some of the best multiplayer experiences out there. For me, over the years, that has been regular time with groups of ~50 people, spending all our evenings chatting and cracking jokes. Sure, when we spot the opposition and engage, we clear the voice channel and focus more, but the whole point has always been to mix up enjoying the game and having fun with casual chat. But then, that's faction-based mass pvp, which attracts a specific kind of crowd, and generally has little to no rewards.
If you only ever dipped your toes with mmo PvE raids though, I'm not surprised you ever met tryhards and reward farmers.
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Its gotta be the Javelin.
But the "min crew" for the Hammerhead is 3. Not sure what min crew even means. You can fly it with one person. With 3 it isnt really that useful.
Bernie Madoff would claim prior art.
Its gotta be the Javelin.
But the "min crew" for the Hammerhead is 3. Not sure what min crew even means. You can fly it with one person. With 3 it isnt really that useful.
I guess at least a few of those relate to turrets. If not... and really requires 12 just to get it off the ground... ouch.
Love the max crew number as well. More people than can currently fit on a server.
Again, Hammerhead min crew is 3. But you can get it off the ground and fly anywhere with 1.
Maybe the nerf multicrew ships in the future, but "min crew" is meaningless right now.
Elite has always planned an EVA + ship interiors expansion, so at this point it feels more pragmatic to see if Odyssey does ok, and then see if those features follow in a future update.
To me anyway. (I only game in VR these days, so it’s a straightforward decision, even ignoring all of SC’s technical travails. But it’s also pretty damn easy to picture a scenario where ED adds EVA/interiors in 3 years time, and SC is still in an 'early alpha' pile of jelly state
)You only confirm that I said. No need for pity because I participated in large scale raids myself and enjoyed them same as discord channels but I would be lying or exaggerating if i said they ALL were super because they werent. How much fun a raid or group activity of that size is depends on a whole list of things and even with a pre-planned raid or match with hand-picked raiders fun can be dependant on success. In PvP scenarios where two player forces engage its natural to assume that one side will lose the fun especially when they are outgunned or outclasses. We are not talking about mock-up battles or friendly group activities here. Star Citizens capital ship combat will be more akin to EVE online large scale battles and for the most part it probably also wont be friendly get-toegtehers but life gameplay sessions meaning you rely on randoms, people you dont know well or not at all because its whats available. If the combined effort is reward driven (still a theory as we dont know anything about it so far) you can automatically add "drama" to the list.
As I said....I get Star Citizen as a social hub where you hang out with others and have fun. But how much of that is due to the game and how much to the social experience? Meaning you can as well boot up Elite and fly around especially once space legs are introduced.
I m not saying that "Star Citizen cannot be this". I m saying that I dont see Star Citizen ever living up to the glory people describe in other games because I dont see SC being capable of it. Your example is a first person shooter on a limited map. Apart from the jokes and social interaction how much did the games performance and option-variety affect your fun if you try to be honest? Would a bad hit box or lag affect your enjoyment? When people dream up svenarios where dozens of people come together routinely to man a capital ship so they can engage an enemy force that justifies that effort in the first place I simply dont believe it. Its possible yes but it will probably stay the exception based on SCs cuirrent state. Apart from the game requirements and content to allow this you also have the human factor in a life game environment so sorry to say but your 50 man evenings on a FPS shooter game simply dont compare to Star Citizen, cannot be applied and thinking it ll be the same is simply naive IMO. Thats why some of us ask these questions to begin with. I for one because I know full well that apart from the great times I had in MP situations I have far more stories of bad ones I could share.
How will the game deal with these situations? Its an open invitation for discussion, I dont expect anybody to provide clear cut answers when even CIG cannot be bothered to provide any. With different people playing the same game and affecting each other I also think simply saying "I pity you"based on assumptions isnt much of a contribution in regards to this topic. If you dont understand the risk of multiplayer games, especially large scale ones I m not sure its me who deserves pity. I m pretty sure you cannot simply dismiss questions and concerns because you had a few good quake battles ^^
Is that just a number randomly picked or do we have any ideas as to what those roles will be by the way?
Having all turrets manned isnt part of the minimum crew and truth be told I m quickly running out of ideas what those jobs will be to get the whole thing going.
- Pilot
- Captain
- sensor officer
- com officer
Forget that...in Star Citizen only the pilot is really necessary to get a ship moving. Why wouldnt he? Star Citizen ships are heavily automated meaning the pilot presses a button and the ship does whatever. Neither does the landing gear need to be reeled in manually nor is there anything in the game so extensively detailed that the pilot couldnt multi-task it like sensor feedback or communication. Real life naval travel has bridge crews but even here, you dont need more than a couple guys to get the ship moving. One at the rudder and one in engineering. You add more people due to the extensive doctrines in how things are done. The com traffic is extensive, you might want to add people who handle incoming calls or relay whats happening to the crew. All the captain really does is being responsible so he holds all decisions and people listen to him because its about a multi-million dollar object at risk if taken on a hike willy-nilly.
Star Citizen LIVES off these mental pictures we all have about ship bridges and Star trek eposodes but if the game doesnt force players into certain activities and actions most of them will be an illusion and wishful thinking. Just throwing the fantastic hype out there is fair at the very start of development but this far in I think its fair to ask "how are you going to accomplish that"?
Take the 12 here. Why is it 12? What will the roles be? If CiG provided the number its safe to assume they thought the whole thing through and know why the number is 12. Or is the 12 just a placeholder right now because 80% of the crew duties and operations are not implemented yet? If thats the case again....why 12? Because its used a lot in SCs defense I ll bring it up too
"its just a video game dude"
Mostly enacted when the questions become too uncomfortable and I agree, for gameplay reasons simplification or unrealistic stuff is welcome. I like to see my laser blasts and I also like the sound in space. Correctly calculated and simulated thrust/mass/inertia can be hard on the player but considering who the player base is here I dont think it would be much of a problem. Here CiG is the one failing to implement it correctly, not becausse its a video game.
Actual ships in real life require minimum crews to operate and function efficiently. You can get a cruise ship moving with 1 guy. Its impressive but taken into a video game 1:1 would result extremely tedious gameplay people would shy away from. And when people dream up these massive player battles many have pointed out and I think its again fair to ask....what will all these people do? If you are not the Pilot and you are not a gunner you are basically just watching. Even the captains only role is to boss people around and no doubt many who envision these scenarios see THEMSELVES in that role where others listen to them and obey their every command. Kids on a power trip. And willing to pay for that privilege.
Its just a video game and still....CIG felt the need to list this number of min crew which only summons more questions for people who like to think things through. With my opinion of CIG I believe that its an arbitrary number listed to make buyers feel good about their investment. "oh wow with 12 people this is going to be a POWERHOUSE, well worth the 1200 bucks" and "its my ship if people want to fly with it (limited supply) they gonna listen to me and I decide who comes along". Truth be told multicrew in Star Citizen right now isnt more than wild fantasies especially as we know how ship combat works, even the available ships where you need 2 minutes and a map to get out (so pretty big).. Will capital ship combat be really that different apart from scale that it requires dozens of people? And if CiG doesnt share any details as to why and how they are going to shape this....do you think its fair to say they either have nothing or are at the very first steps regarding capital ships? If you consider the gameplay changes and introduction of new game loops that would be required...how many years from now will players fly an Idriss?