I'm sad to see so much negativity towards Star Citizen here. I had hoped to see sci fans happy to see another space game with a huge scope being worked on, no matter if it takes a long time to release. 3.0 is almost in our hands, and you still find reasons to criticize, with points that were already cleared in the ATV's, that showed the complex mission system, how they plan to fill the worlds with NPC's and playable content, and so on.
Even in the current presentation, which was so cool, you find such silly reasons to criticize. Instead of being amazed by the fact you can fly in a futuristic city, anywhere you want on the planet, or go seamlessly into space, and travel to another planet, you criticize the fact the buildings repeat and are like in Blade Runner? Come on, seriously... They even showed in the presentation that they have a simple system in place to generate those buildings and it was clear there that those you can't visit will be similar to each other. They made tools to make generating large scale content easier, and its obviously very complex. The fact that it works will speed up production.
Be more positive, a lot of people are working on this, not only CR, and they deserve respect and admiration for their achievements, which are obvious for anyone watching the ATV's, even before the release of 3.0.
hmm I think people have as much right to be negative about this subject as any other subject on this forum.
I started finding it extremely difficult to "be more positive" about Star Citizen about three years ago when it was obvious they were more interested in raising funds than producing a game. I read many other people's comments criticising this project, the missed dead-lines, lack of direction, lack of game-play development, continued ship sales and considerable questions surrounding critical path stuff like network technology and scalability. I used to laugh at people that pursued refunds having understood the risks of backing a crowd funded project.
I think it was about last year when they produced yet another smoke and mirrors demonstration that had nothing to do with the build they are targeting at your hard drive (something else Chris Roberts specifically said he wouldn't do at the start) another "proof of concept" demo (a questionable piece of FPS game-play that apparently had no real context in terms of what the player would be doing and lead up to a random sandworm) while the actual "game", the thing you can download, the thing they update, is obviously weighed down in technical debt that I dreaded downloading updates and couldn't see myself ever enjoying playing the thing. They simply have no idea how these tech demos will work around any game logic and they still don't have the critical underlining network tech figured out - absolutely vital early on in an MMO proposal like this which would have an eventual bearing on their capability of delivering everything they propose in trade show demonstrations.
One year ago Chris Roberts went on stage and announced 3.0 to be released around Christmas 2016 then went through bullet points concerning 4.0 and subsequent updates (to be delivered throughout 2017) and I thought "this is your very last chance, if you don't show real progress in 2017 I'm done with you". Months later they moved the goal posts again talking about how they had discovered project planning, patting themselves on the back and announcing the "3.0" plan they subsequently forgot about once they couldn't carry it out. The inconvenient truth that Star Citizen fans can't seem to answer for me is this; if the stuff they are showing in these demonstrations is done then why aren't they able to put it on your hard drive? When will you be playing it? Why are they demonstrating it if they don't know? They are producing these demonstrations purely to raise more cash, to keep everyone paid a bit longer, in a vicious circle where they seem to focus mainly on these demos and concept sales when the fundamental game logic should be in the hands of the people that wanted a game. MMO's need a huge amount of refinement in the hands of people actually playing them.
I'm done with Star Citizen, done with CIG and yeah I got my refund. I'm a fan of Space Games but not perpetual crowd funding, I'm a fan of work produced by competent developers able to create something that stands up on it's own merits available in a box, made to be played. Star Citizen is something else entirely, it's a funding drive riffing off nostalgia and the "Chris Roberts" brand, While I'm sure they still think they are making a "game" I think the collection of funds is their primary concern now and CitizenCon just further confirms this, sorry if it's difficult to be positive about yet another tech demo of flying about that you won't be playing on your PC next year or the year after. Sorry if that's sad, but Chris Roberts made it sad. He jumped on the work started by the likes of DayZ and others which have sadly turned PC gaming into an experimental market of poorly supported, un-fun, unfinished concept work with endless days of self congratulatory "making of" videos. It offends me as a former games developer, it offends me as a current software project manager.
I'm sorry if you're offended for the people that work on this but if they are that hurt by internet comments then the forum section of another game product in the same genre is somewhere I'd avoid if I was that sensitive. I like the space tech demos they have created but I'm not aware that they were taking the public's cash to create a company that made space game concept demoware. Visuals aren't everything to me anyway, I'm old school and prefer game-play which I found it difficult to extract as a proposal over the years. I have no flippin' idea what people will be doing in Star Citizen and reading the average backers comments on various forums I can safely say after half a a decade, that neither does anybody else.
Flying over PG cities pulling faces into their web-cams I guess.
Even if they somehow pull a game out at some stage I'll find it difficult to be very positive about the process in which this game was made.
