Game Discussions Star Citizen Discussion Thread v12

[Xink]

Let's put some things in perspective here.

CryEngine3 is a 12-year-old engine released in 2009. SC itself is between 8-9 years old at this point and had a recommended spec of a GeForce 680 when that card was new according to CIG. You telling me today's PCs are "too slow" to cope with an 8 year old game built with a 12 year old engine?

Not to mention according to CIG/RSI/whatever-they-calling-themselves-now own telemetry data, the game keeps getting slower and slower with each patch and load times keep getting longer and longer.

That's an almost 3x average load time increase since 3.7.

If SC performs poorly the fault lies with the game, not what it is being run on.

Except the super duper offline dev builds that always run smoothly and have no performance issues they put on screen whenever a journalist visits their office. But hey, don't even have to show that now no one works in an office.

 

[LittleAnt]

Nope. It adds absolutely zero to a spaceship kind of gameplay, and more importantly, completely distracts from the initial main goal of the game, which was to be a "space sim", with fleet ...

Completely disagree at 110%.
Exploring giant caves with a ship without crashing it in the tunnels, mining special elements, finding special POI, etc is something a lot of us want to experience with ships. Everyone having played Subnautica know what giant caves can bring to a ship's gameplay.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

So, apparently the Morphologis/Linus stream is over. It ended on a 30k. Can't think of a more fitting ending.

 

[Surefoot]

Completely disagree at 110%.

Well I was from the early backers of the project. I was promised a "space sim" with heavy Wing Commander overtones. Not a Descent or Subnautica clone. Again, caves add NOTHING to a game centered on ships (which are sold at extraordinary prices), do you think you will fit an Idris in there ? Lol. Lets be serious, this thing will go the same way as many other fluff features added then dropped over the years. Tell me again, how many people play Star Marine ? And you didnt answer - since now we can see that in 2021 they will spend the WHOLE year doing these caves and "polishing" Stanton system, when do you think we will have 100 systems (which was to be the "minimal, at launch number", after which proc gen would be used to generate thousands of systems needed for exploration gameplay...).

Exploring giant caves with a ship without crashing it in the tunnels, mining special elements, finding special POI, etc is something a lot of us want to experience with ships. Everyone having played Subnautica know what giant caves can bring to a ship's gameplay.

Then... go buy and play Subnautica. It's a released, complete game, that's even quite good actually. Let space sim fans try and get their space sim game. One of the huge issues with SC is the incredible scope creep, it tries to be everything else but what was initially promised. Also underwater gameplay addicts should go to that game and not to SC...

 

[Vetinari]

I even had some random lunatic on Spectrum suggesting Star Citizen detects if you have Elite Dangerous installed and runs like crap if it finds it...

LOL

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Well I was from the early backers of the project. I was promised a "space sim" with heavy Wing Commander overtones. Not a Descent or Subnautica clone. Again, caves add NOTHING to a game centered on ships (which are sold at extraordinary prices), do you think you will fit an Idris in there ? Lol. Lets be serious, this thing will go the same way as many other fluff features added then dropped over the years. Tell me again, how many people play Star Marine ? And you didnt answer - since now we can see that in 2021 they will spend the WHOLE year doing these caves and "polishing" Stanton system, when do you think we will have 100 systems (which was to be the "minimal, at launch number", after which proc gen would be used to generate thousands of systems needed for exploration gameplay...).

Then... go buy and play Subnautica. It's a released, complete game, that's even quite good actually. Let space sim fans try and get their space sim game. One of the huge issues with SC is the incredible scope creep, it tries to be everything else but what was initially promised. Also underwater gameplay addicts should go to that game and not to SC...

I think its a matter of priorities. If CIG want to spend time making caves at some point in the future, post release, then whatever. But they should focus on delivering the game they promised first, that is the best damn space sim ever. Or plural, since backers paid for that. The more time the spend faffing around on fluff for SC the less they are spending on SQ42, which seriously, should have been done a good while ago (and CIG even claimed it was almost ready on multiple occasions starting back in 2014/2015 - you know, when the faithful say they were still building the company).

What is telling is that after 9 years and over 400 million they still haven't delivered on the game they said they could do for 5.5 million and in just 2-3 years.

 

[Surefoot]

I think its a matter of priorities. If CIG want to spend time making caves at some point in the future, post release, then whatever.

Yeah adding manually crafted POIs after the game is released is totally fair play. That would be the normal process for a software project too - first deliver the core value (the famous 80/20 rule) so people can start using the product, then add the peripheral features. That's software development 101.

 

[LittleAnt]

Yeah adding manually crafted POIs after the game is released is totally fair play. That would be the normal process for a software project too - first deliver the core value (the famous 80/20 rule) so people can start using the product, then add the peripheral features. That's software development 101.

Caves are a special biome. The teams doing biomes are not competent to help realising capital ships, flight models, etc. CIG has the money to sustain a biome team beside other team, it's not about priorities.

And I don't want the 'normal' process for SC. ED follows this normal process and they don't have caves nor ship interiors after a decade. I play ED, it's fun but I can 't get hooked to it like I am with SC because of all those 'low priority features' that are missing (EVA, caves, ship interior, metro or FPS combat).

 

[Vetinari]

I think its a matter of priorities. If CIG want to spend time making caves at some point in the future, post release, then whateve

Wouldnt be the BDSSE without caves though would it? Or without bartenders, or repairer, or elevators, or trains, or each bullet being tracked for damage, or engineering roles on ships, or Air rooms, or fires breaking out that, or everything else they have said will be in it.

Wouldnt be thfamous 80/20 rule) so people can start using the product, then add the peripheral features. That's software development 101.

Ah but CIG are doing it backwards, everything at once not foundations and build.

And I don't want the 'normal' process for SC. ED follows this normal process and they don't have caves nor ship interiors after a decade.

If SC followed this 'normal' process they would have their own priorities after release so caves could be number 1 coz they'd be in charge. Pointless comparing it to another game with different priorities, especially when Frontier are actually delivering on their priorities...in the grand timescale they said it all would happen. Elite hasnt got worse with every update, it just adds more gameplay to the game. SC is currently removing things to try and make other things work. If theyd made the other things work first like 'normal' then they too would be adding stuff except youd have had a proper game for the last 6 years.

 

[ECity]

...caves add NOTHING to a game centered on ships (which are sold at extraordinary prices)...

CIG does caves because they can. They don't do 1000 player servers with persistence because they can't. It's a confidence scam. They have to give the appearance of progress.

 

[ECity]

Don't you think that by reposting video clips from well known Star Citizen shills and drawing attention to the SC content they're being paid to produce you're achieving exactly the opposite of what your life mission seems to be?

The primary mission is lulz, which is mission accomplished.

The Morphologis/Linus stream (and his Twitch chat) demonstrates how experienced players know how to avoid bugs, or to execute the workarounds (just change your gender! reset your account! don't get in the turret now!, etc.).

 

[VR Golgot]

It's a confidence scam

How dare you good sir! It’s called 'fake it til you make it', a renowned strategy with a worldwide acknowledged pedigree

 

[MTBFritz]

The game Chris describes can't be made. They could do Hellion II.

We don't really need video of Star Citizen. It is streamed 24 / 7.

I beg to difer. Many streamers are offering an entertainment channel where real gameplay is often curbed, feigned, overshadowed or disgarded for the sake of laughs, viewer interaction and impression. If Mole offers videos for the purpose of showcasing Star Cititzen "as it really is" I m all for it given I trust him enough to actually show reality and not what we "want" to see like most streamers do. If anything producing verifiable evidence often helps to produce factual results which are all around a win-win situation.

Theres a game I used to herald in the past white knighting until I realized what I was doing. Statements like "huh, I almost never encounter these issues guys and I play a LOT" which eerily resembles what we hear from the SC community. At some point I decided to sit down and put my mind where my mouth was documenting my play sessions and meticulously counting issues, bugs andf probabilities. It was a stark lesson in biased perception or blind spot if you will and I really couldnt argue with my own findings.

Basically there is nothing bad about something like this. It might confirm what everybody already knows or it might produce an insight valuable to some people. I welcome the effort involved which is on a whole different level of magnitude than saying "I cant be arsed to stream my gameplay but I ll defend the game no matter what"

 

[MTBFritz]

Don't you think that by reposting video clips from well known Star Citizen shills and drawing attention to the SC content they're being paid to produce you're achieving exactly the opposite of what your life mission seems to be?

You'll note that out of those of us posting here who actually play Star Citizen...very few of us watch or repost Twitch stream content from the shills

its the same phenomenon that enables this threadnaught to keep going you know. Coming ini to shill and provoke when the thread itself slows down and would eventually drop to second page but the very same people who wonder about the fascination and activity of this thread are the ones keeping it alive and going ^^

 

[MTBFritz]

@caves

Making caves in a space sim isnt necessarily a bad thing. "The more the better" is a credo that universally holds true. But everything can become harmful if you do it too much, also no exceptions. I always thought that if all the clutter and sidestuff CiG is working on was developed on the side as secondary byproducts it would be fine. The problem is that the company focuses heavfily on these secondary byproducts and they dont seem to be able to advance the actual game because of it. The secondary things eat up all the time, resources and focus so the project as a whole doesnt progress. This has been the case for years already because whatever CiG implements that some people chose to interprete as "going slowly" is always coming with a rats tail of issues that sabotage the whole thing even more.

1 step forward, 2 steps back.

Welcome to development hell. IMO caves and similar stuff (bartended AI etc) could easily be dropped and forgotten until the actual game is done and released. Get your things together first thing before you allow yourself to be distracted by all the stuff you want to do eventually. And if Bartended AI and cave gameplay are as critical to overall development as some people say than I dont understand the hold-up. If the companies maajor focus would be on solving these things it would be a matter of (a short) time to get it done. Only thats not happening in Star Citizen where every blocker or issue is added to a long list of things and forgotten while the developers look for something else to add..

With the way things are going Star Citizens release is not a question of "when"...its very much a question of "if at all" and if I were a backer and hoping for a development success I would be very worried about all the things I can observe.

CIG does caves because they can. They don't do 1000 player servers with persistence because they can't. It's a confidence scam. They have to give the appearance of progress.

Unfortunately this seems to be the truth which means that every new thing coming up only confirms this statement

 

[ECity]

I beg to difer. Many streamers are offering an entertainment channel where real gameplay is often curbed, feigned, overshadowed or disgarded for the sake of laughs, viewer interaction and impression.

I have no issue with Mole doing a video. I'm just saying it's like adding an eyedropper to a firehose. There are all kinds of SC streamers. They are all doing different things, with varying degrees of honesty / skepticism. It's all covered.

SaltEMike can be brutally honest. Redlir hates the current flight model. Captain Berks has been trying ED, with some honest comparisons.

Of course all those streamers also talk as if SC will be great and it can't possibly be a scam.

 

[Darkfyre99]

Caves are a special biome. The teams doing biomes are not competent to help realising capital ships, flight models, etc. CIG has the money to sustain a biome team beside other team, it's not about priorities.

And I don't want the 'normal' process for SC. ED follows this normal process and they don't have caves nor ship interiors after a decade. I play ED, it's fun but I can 't get hooked to it like I am with SC because of all those 'low priority features' that are missing (EVA, caves, ship interior, metro or FPS combat).

You really don't get it, do you?

This kind of thing happens after you've finalized the core of your game, coded it, gotten it stable, added the gameplay loops, and gotten them stable, and developed the content creation tools necessary to flesh out your game.

Why?

First and foremost, it lets you know exactly how much resources (time, money, bandwidth, latency, server resources, and client resources) will be available for other stuff like visuals, environments, models, and other content that enhances the core gameplay loops. This is necessary, because all these things are limited. Once you know what your game needs, you then know what resources you've got available to do everything else. CIG is doing

You don't hire large teams of artistic types to do work until everything is in place for them to do the work. You have a very small team to create assets for testing purposes, and that's it. Hiring them before everything is in place means you're paying them to do unnecessary work: work that will be scrapped as plans change, that need to be refactored as parameters change, or as is frequently the case in SC... working on marketing videos and machinima videos that CIG try to pass off as live gameplay.

When I look at Star Citizen, I don't see a game that's spent ten years and $400 million in development. I see a game that's barely started development. Games with tiny teams and at most several million dollars show up Star Citizen, gameplay wise, time and time again. EVA? Plenty of space games have them. Caves? Several of them have them too. Ship interiors? Yep. Cityscapes? You betcha. FPS combat? Yes! All of the above? Right-er-roonie! Oh, and one of those games has all that and VR!

The only thing that Star Citizen has going for it is its pretty (though increasingly dated) visuals. And pretty visuals does not a good game make. They can certainly enhance a good game, but not make a bad game good all on their own. And that is what I see when I look at Star Citizen livestreams: a bad game. A bad game that I made the mistake of Kickstarting, because I wasn't familiar with Chris Roberts long history of game development mismanagement, financial mismanagement, and dubiously ethical behavior.

With the exception of mining, it's pretty much in the same state as it was nine years ago, when Chris Roberts claimed all the core work was done, and all he needed was a couple of years and a few million to add the content. Here we are, nine years and 400 million dollars later, and where is the game he promised would be ready in 2014?

Nowhere to be seen.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Caves are a special biome. The teams doing biomes are not competent to help realising capital ships, flight models, etc. CIG has the money to sustain a biome team beside other team, it's not about priorities.

And I don't want the 'normal' process for SC. ED follows this normal process and they don't have caves nor ship interiors after a decade. I play ED, it's fun but I can 't get hooked to it like I am with SC because of all those 'low priority features' that are missing (EVA, caves, ship interior, metro or FPS combat).

Firstly i would say it is a matter of priorities and this should also go hand in hand with their hiring as well, who they need and when. Furthermore, those doing biomies will include moddlers and artists, who can work on spaceships.

While CIG appear to have plenty of money/income, they do not have enough to finish either game. CIG have shown themselves to be bad stewards of backers funding. They almost ran out of money in 2018 and were only saved by the investment from Calders and we still don't know what the basis for that agreement was. CR was also shown to be talking out of his rear end in 2015/2016 (can't remember exactly when it was) when he said if funding dried up then they could finish SC with the sales of SQ42. As it turns out, SQ42 was nowhere near ready and still isn't.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Yeah adding manually crafted POIs after the game is released is totally fair play. That would be the normal process for a software project too - first deliver the core value (the famous 80/20 rule) so people can start using the product, then add the peripheral features. That's software development 101.

Some backers (and apparently CIG) have the 80/20 rule backwards in their head. They seem to think if they spend 80% of the time building pipelines and only 20% content then the last 80% will magically appear in the last 20% of time.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

First and foremost, it lets you know exactly how much resources (time, money, bandwidth, latency, server resources, and client resources) will be available for other stuff like visuals, environments, models, and other content that enhances the core gameplay loops. This is necessary, because all these things are limited. Once you know what your game needs, you then know what resources you've got available to do everything else. CIG is doing

CIG (and some backers) seem to assume that time and money are infinite and that all technical issues can be overcome with a can-do attitude. CR himself said he doesn't like people who say something can't or shouldn't be done. He gets rid of those people, therefore surrounds himself with yes-men. That is an almost guaranteed way to ensure you fail to deliver on anything.