Game Discussions Star Citizen Discussion Thread v12

Navigare Necesse Est · Jun 2, 2022

varonica said:
Got my latest S42 notice in email.....what?

People been saying how great SC FPS combat is compared to ED, I mean they haven't even done the basics, the sort of stuff that any FPS shooter in the last, well forever, has done, they aren't even calculating distance to target and speed of shot? What sort of FPS combat system is that? No wonder people find it so great, it's magic!

And then you see Levelcap and Jackfrags shill for it and you wonser if they ever had a clue when shilling for Battlefield

Viajero · Jun 2, 2022

Navigare Necesse Est said:
And then you see Levelcap and Jackfrags shill for it and you wonser if they ever had a clue when shilling for Battlefield

Who needs a clue if you are getting paid either way?

Navigare Necesse Est · Jun 2, 2022

Agony_Aunt said:
What the hell?

The gun is pointing in a direction, the ammo goes in that direction. How on earth are they struggling with this concept? Why are they making it so complicated?

Doors are hard. They take anything, inflate it hard to justify the inordinate amount of time bimbling around.

GuruNot · Jun 2, 2022

Agony_Aunt said:
LOL

Yep, that was pretty much my take away too. Nice to see that the locations team have moved from concept/pre-production to production though.

varonica · Jun 2, 2022

Agony_Aunt said:
What the hell?

The gun is pointing in a direction, the ammo goes in that direction. How on earth are they struggling with this concept? Why are they making it so complicated?

Yep funny that, you could be aiming perfectly and hitting your target, but they were simulating that you were aiming badly and missing? How is that even a thing? I guess this explains why players could be standing right in front of an NPC and shooting and still miss, the game was doing the missing for them!

Mole HD · Jun 2, 2022

Agony_Aunt said:
What the hell?

The gun is pointing in a direction, the ammo goes in that direction. How on earth are they struggling with this concept? Why are they making it so complicated?

Chris Roberts

PiLhEaD · Jun 2, 2022

For those not in the UK, happy Thursday.

For those in the UK, I'll be drunk from around 3:35 and for the next two days. Happy Queen'ebrations everyone!

Xink · Jun 2, 2022

Magic bullets.

Never been done before.

Navigare Necesse Est · Jun 2, 2022

VR Golgot said:
Nah, I reckon the UK filings give us enough of a steer there. They're unlikely to fudge too far there, especially with tax credits on the line. It seems likely they do have chonky staff numbers.

Linkedin stats also back up the principle:

Not to mention the absurd bespoke offices they're seemingly kitting out in Manchester.

At the end of the day though, the benefits to having high staffing numbers are legion...

a new hire is expected to be an "expert" in less than 12 weeks from hire date

confusion about what exactly management does or what newly hired "leads" do

"rudderless" direction until "last second" changes, including art and design

due to this, programmers create shortcuts that will be "fixed later"

if those programmers leave, it causes massive confusion within the team as they try and piece together solutions

this happens "often" but should be "eased" in 2020 due to new 3rd party help from an outside firm

this help involves a custom built CE toolset, better regs and code oversight

"This isn't something everyone is happy about."

this includes "dailies-like" bi-monthly updates to top brass and outside firm

the sq42 visual teaser shown xmas day was one of these

updates consist of three "courses": gameplay, in-game visuals and cutscenes

supposedly SQ42 content is already in SC - mission givers like miles eckhart are considered SQ42 NPCs

huge issue when the 3rd party played a recent SC patch (3.8?)

"They were surprised because [CR? ER?] gave them the impression of a fully-functioning game with little-to-no bugs."

640 isn't 900. Roughly it's 2/3. Yes, it'd be a significant number still. The more uncredicble it is how little has been accomplished with allegedly that many.
I mean it's mostly artists but it's mostly artists in every game production I believe.

Agony_Aunt · Jun 2, 2022

LOL, and people ask why SC is taking so long.

CIG working on making London Train Station simulator.

Agony_Aunt · Jun 2, 2022

Brain worms...

Perpetual development is the new normal. MMORPGs have been doing this forever. If they slapped a "released" or "finished" sticker on it tomorrow, but still promised to continue adding more ships, more systems, more items, more everything, then people would still be unhappy.

At this point, I don't really care if it ever gets released. That's basically irrelevant at this point because it likely never will be done so long as there are players who continue to support it. It's an iterative experience.

Darkfyre99 · Jun 2, 2022

Navigare Necesse Est said:
640 isn't 900. Roughly it's 2/3. Yes, it'd be a significant number still. The more uncredicble it is how little has been accomplished with allegedly that many.
I mean it's mostly artists but it's mostly artists in every game production I believe.

Of course, proper AAA game studios have that many artists on staff because they’ll have multiple games in various stages of production. By by time the art teams start their work, the game design, core technologies, and gameplay teams have already done the hard work. By their own admission, CIG still haven’t even designed many critical technologies and game loops, let alone have people working on the grey box version.

Agony_Aunt said:
LOL, and people ask why SC is taking so long.

CIG working on making London Train Station simulator.

And here I was impressed that Chris Roberts hadn’t wasted resources making those arcade games functional…

Agony_Aunt · Jun 2, 2022

Darkfyre99 said:
And here I was impressed that Chris Roberts hadn’t wasted resources making those arcade games functional…

You just know he's going to do that sooner or later.

You'll be able to go up to those arcade machines and play Wing Commander, created by Chris Roberts, produced by Chris Roberts, written by Chris Roberts, coded by Chris Roberts, special thanks Chris Roberts.

ECity · Jun 2, 2022

3.17.1 is so compelling that SaltEMike spent his 4 hour "Star Citizen" stream not playing Star Citizen.

Viajero · Jun 2, 2022

Agony_Aunt said:
LOL, and people ask why SC is taking so long.

CIG working on making London Train Station simulator.

That imo is not an example of the reason it is taking so long. That is actually just a symptom, or a consequence, of the actual reasons.

Some of the main reasons it is taking CIG so long are abysmal management and organization skills, generalized incompetence to deliver, and self inflicted severe technical blockers for core elements such as network, physics, AI etc. As a result CIG needs to come up with useless “shiny” and bling stuff as a filler and to divert backers attention from the real issues.

VR Golgot · Jun 2, 2022

Navigare Necesse Est said:
640 isn't 900. Roughly it's 2/3. Yes, it'd be a significant number still. The more uncredicble it is how little has been accomplished with allegedly that many.

Yep sure, but it's just enough to challenge the 'fraction' idea. IE that they're running something way more skeletal than the claimed headcount. (Which was ~700 in 2020, ~780 in 2022 (+ ~130 at Turbulent)).

I'm not sure if the Linkedin stats are a projection, or based on members alone, but either way it's going to be a ballpark figure. (Plenty of devs & broader staff may not be on Linkedin etc. Anecdotally, whenever I check in on devs featured in SC vids, I'd say at least a third don't have a Linkedin presence etc)

It seems reasonable to assume, alongside the actually audited companies house accounts, that they do have sizeable staffing, quite possibly in the ballpark that they claim.

Which leaves us with the: "Why so little produced, comparatively?" question. Which is intriguing in its own right

. (I'm happy enough to subscribe to the: "SQ42 in absolute dev hell" rationale, alongside the: "Chris really is trying to make an impossible game. And that's impossible." angle regarding SC

)

Navigare Necesse Est said:
I mean it's mostly artists but it's mostly artists in every game production I believe.

It seems CIG do lean towards the artist-heavy end of the scale. Here's a comparison a Goon did in 2018:

Linkdin data Looks like employment has been pretty steady slowly building, doesn't look like there has been any sudden ramp up or decline. Though turn-over looks to be twice as high as other game studios, gives some credibility to the toxic workplace claims.

What struck me was how many artists they have, considering all the groundbreaking working and tech they are supposedly doing they are very light on engineers and technical people, even evil publishers doing the boring same old have orders of magnitude more tech people.

The ratio of engineers to artists
EA - 1.3 per artists
Blizzard - 0.77 per artist
Ubisoft - 0.7 per artist
Bethesda - 0.6 per artist
Rockstar - 0.4 per artists
CIG - 0.29 per artist

Average Employment in years
EA - 5.7
Blizzard - 5.7
Ubisoft - 5.5
Rockstar - 5.2
CIG - 2.5

cigwatch · Jun 2, 2022

Mole HD said:
Chris Roberts

Yeah, this is called the Roberts field. It bends reality and common sense.

cigwatch · Jun 2, 2022

Agony_Aunt said:
LOL, and people ask why SC is taking so long.

CIG working on making London Train Station simulator.

Not unless they also simulate the TFL staff pushing people into trains. That server meshing-enabled, hundreds-of-characters-in-a-room thingy will finally be useful.