The Star Citizen Thread v 3.0

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*Mod hat off



It is actually more about how backers money should be treated with the utmost respect, about how it is not really your own, and that you should actively strive to minimize any and all waste, seek all possible cost optimizations, no matter how small and use it strictly for game development, nothing else. I think Harebrained has a much better story to tell there than CIG, possibly even than FDEV.
Indeed. As opposed to paying for more promos and conventions and ship sales to cycle back and do the same again. One of the draw cards was that the money was supposed to go to development and not advertising, but in fact so much of where it's spent goes into advertising (even if it is internal and designed to milk the fatter cows).
 
It is actually more about how backers money should be treated with the utmost respect, about how it is not really your own, and that you should actively strive to minimize any and all waste, seek all possible cost optimizations, no matter how small and use it strictly for game development, nothing else. I think Harebrained has a much better story to tell there than CIG.

Nobody knows exactly what happened, but certainly the way they had to go back on their stuff and revamp, or even open a new Office to hire industry veterans for the most complicated engine work, certainly put more costs. The company seems to react to that with the way they're moving their positions and focus teams on a single office to make it cheaper and faster, the constant delays over what they said, kinda points towards a production that wasn't working correctly.

Now the money goes toward game development in either way, even if it his by hiring new people, outsourced companies, or a new office, it's all meant to its development still. Things like he pointed about the Citizencon are wrong, for some reason the tickets existed, where they got hundreds of thousands in return to help organize such, this is why subscribers exist as well, it wasn't "CIG's spaceship", one rented hangar for ~2 hours of show instead.

At the end i feel i'm entitled to the game, not to know where they spend the money the backers backed, and as long that game is delivered, that's what really matters.
 
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At the end i feel i'm entitled to the game, not to know where they spend the money the backers backed, and as long that game is delivered, that's what really matters.
But what is "that game" exactly? What if CIG deliver no more than a shell of an FPS game in Squadron 42 and don't have the funding to complete the PU? Would you change your mind about what you're entitled to at that point?
 

jcrg99

Banned
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Actually a very interesting "rage", as long as you can get past the predictable and "de rigeur" DS bashing :p . The comparison between CIG´s and Battletech´s (which I have also backed) funds management philosophies is very very telling indeed, irrespective of the size of the bag.

It's the same kind of advice that Molyneux shared after his final frustration with Godus.
 
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But what is "that game" exactly? What if CIG deliver no more than a shell of an FPS game in Squadron 42 and don't have the funding to complete the PU? Would you change your mind about what you're entitled to at that point?

Is the game being developed. SQ42 since KS wasn't even meant to have FPS, but SQ42 story is based surrounding you being a pilot, so i don't how would they take focus out of that to deliver one FPS game. If that ever happened i wouldn't change my action, because it wouldn't matter at that point on your scenario, the outcome would be the same.

SQ42 if well done, will give them more time and funding for the actual MMO completion, that is where the real challenge of this development is, so it's a kinda safe bet to release it first, as it depends on the same gameplay mechanics as the PU.
 
CIG Ben Lesnick
wcloaf Posted: November 11

The release is content-locked and we are testing and fixing potential release builds now. It's going to be an efficient test-fix-test cycle until it's ready to go. The hope is certainly that that will not take two months, but there are always unexpected discoveries at this point that can take extra time. So far, so good, and we'll tell you if that changes!

https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/294556/well-that-s-it-then-2016-at-earliest/p4
 
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Things change in development. Ben is the community manager and a very cool person to hang out with as well. He is very nice and open about things. As he says it's pretty unpredictable but since the studio can do 17 player tests in 2.0 now I think that's far better than the 2 player tests being done a month back.
 
Things change in development. Ben is the community manager and a very cool person to hang out with as well. He is very nice and open about things. As he says it's pretty unpredictable but since the studio can do 17 player tests in 2.0 now I think that's far better than the 2 player tests being done a month back.

Disco Lando is the CM. BL has a different le. Lost that one a while back. How cool he is in person is irrelevant. In the forums he can be downright dismissive, rude and dishonest. Examples are available by the ton.
 
They do company-wide tests with the 40 players, so they are likely fighting trough netcode to achieve stability up to that number, if the first release will get to that player count. But when it comes to bug fixing it's not predictable, you may run into something minor to fix, or something that will require actual more in-depth approach to get right, aka, more time.

It will be here when it is, i'll keep poking on the progress updates rather than looking for dates that might just end up unmet.
 
I got a weekend code to download the dogfighting module more than a year ago. I love space combat, but I did not enjoy playing that demo at all. Uninstalled it after an hour. If they can't get that core element right, I have no faith in the rest. My opinion doesn't matter and I don't want to sound patronising, but I feel sorry for the people who have spent serious money on it.
 
Is the game being developed. SQ42 since KS wasn't even meant to have FPS, but SQ42 story is based surrounding you being a pilot, so i don't how would they take focus out of that to deliver one FPS game. If that ever happened i wouldn't change my action, because it wouldn't matter at that point on your scenario, the outcome would be the same.

SQ42 if well done, will give them more time and funding for the actual MMO completion, that is where the real challenge of this development is, so it's a kinda safe bet to release it first, as it depends on the same gameplay mechanics as the PU.

Actually, you are wrong. Since start, SQ42 was going to have FPS based missions, not just you flying in a ship the entire time. They will have boarding, ground missions as well as your standard space ones. If I remember correctly, ground based fps makes up 25-30% of the game now.

I think the problem with the current development of CIG and it has shown so far is that CIG started to actually develop before they even had the ground work placed down, which was the design of the game and how they wanted it. They have re-vamped ships so many times because their mechanics were not nailed down or thought out, like other players using consoles, space utilization, heck even how cargo was supposed to work.

To me, this development kind of reminds me of Kingdom of Amalur, while not a bad game, it was the single player portion to a game that was being developed side by side with a MMO portion. That studio ran through $75 million and only delivered on the SP game while they ran out of funds and had to go bankrupt because they could not finish the MMO part. Not saying that will be the case of CIG.

From my perspective, they should of made SQ42 first, fleshed out all the gameplay, design decisions as well as systems to be used later for the PU. But instead they are making two games at once which has basically split their manpower between two different games. MMO's are a lot more complex to nail down than SP games, but at the same time SP games are also extremely hard to execute well.

Things change in development. Ben is the community manager and a very cool person to hang out with as well. He is very nice and open about things. As he says it's pretty unpredictable but since the studio can do 17 player tests in 2.0 now I think that's far better than the 2 player tests being done a month back.

Actually I totally disagree with that. Especially when it comes to LTI, limited ships and the topic of controllers. Ben has been nothing but dishonest in his behavior to those topics. He has long lost my trust as well as many many backers on the main forums because of their constant back peddling on promises they have made in the past.
 
Actually, you are wrong. Since start, SQ42 was going to have FPS based missions, not just you flying in a ship the entire time. They will have boarding, ground missions as well as your standard space ones. If I remember correctly, ground based fps makes up 25-30% of the game now.

I think the problem with the current development of CIG and it has shown so far is that CIG started to actually develop before they even had the ground work placed down, which was the design of the game and how they wanted it. They have re-vamped ships so many times because their mechanics were not nailed down or thought out, like other players using consoles, space utilization, heck even how cargo was supposed to work.

Uh? Where is that info that SQ42 would have fps combat since the start? I mean on the original KS hadn't mentioned that a single time, it was the next year with the FPS the discussions about FPS on SQ42 started to raise. They originally might had planned a superficial approach, like ship boarding stuff, with the actual module they might have expanded to a more "Mass Effect" mission style, if we're talking about the FPS ones.
There was a leak when data-mining the game files, that pointed some text and missions likely from SQ42 that kinda shown a bit the style they aim for.

As they are creating 2 games at once, but both of them depend on the same mechanics, so both SQ42 and PU benefit each other, the downside of this is a slower development, but on the longer term things will flesh out as a whole around the same time, that would have been different if they created SQ42 first and then started from scratch on the PU. If we really notice in depth what is done on the PU, is pretty much the gameplay mechanics and stuff SQ42 needs, even the ship pipeline with the big capitals, including the Idris are prioritized over it. But here they are also walking on "muddy grounds", this is, they are experimenting a lot things that might or might not work well, others come first before they have tech ready, for example the Planetside Procedural Generation planets is already being used for some places, as space stations, but currently Arccorp, Nynx are fully hand-crafted, it will they will review that again to implement PG, to see.
 

Viajero

Volunteer Moderator
*Mod hat off

He is very nice and open about things.


Well, I dont know about that man. 7 months on I am still waiting for this one:

https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/257642/can-anyone-find-the-pledge/p1

Ben´s participation in this issue doesnt precisely exhude "opennes" tbh. Creating that completely isolated page link was a bit of an insult to our intelligence even. But I am not too worried, I am sure together we can find the most appropriate rationalization for this aswell :p .
 
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dayrth

Volunteer Moderator
@MaxLexandre

You have mentioned a lot of things that CIG are doing or planning and how they are going about it, but I have not seen anything to confirm them. for example:
...hire industry veterans for the most complicated engine work...
...Things like he pointed about the Citizencon are wrong...it wasn't "CIG's spaceship", one rented hangar for ~2 hours of show instead.
...SQ42 since KS wasn't even meant to have FPS...
..SQ42 if well done, will give them more time and funding for the actual MMO completion, that is where the real challenge of this development is... it depends on the same gameplay mechanics as the PU.
...They do company-wide tests with the 40 players...
As they are creating 2 games at once, but both of them depend on the same mechanics, so both SQ42 and PU benefit each other...
...what is done on the PU, is pretty much the gameplay mechanics and stuff SQ42 needs, even the ship pipeline with the big capitals, including the Idris are prioritized over it....
..they are experimenting a lot things that might or might not work well, others come first before they have tech ready...

Are you able to give any sources?
 
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To quote the very late Charles Mackay:

"We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first."

...and of course,

"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one."
 
Is the game being developed. SQ42 since KS wasn't even meant to have FPS, but SQ42 story is based surrounding you being a pilot, so i don't how would they take focus out of that to deliver one FPS game. If that ever happened i wouldn't change my action, because it wouldn't matter at that point on your scenario, the outcome would be the same.
What I'm getting at is that your point-of-view is one way of looking at things (i.e. that you've paid your money and you'll get what you get, for better or worse (and you don't want worse so you'll relentlessly assume the better scenario)). The other point-of-view, the one that a lot of people in this thread have, and the one you argue against, is that there are obvious signs that CIG aren't "doing right by" their pledge in that they're constantly and consistently shifting the goalposts, which puts the whole project at risk. At $60m they apparently had enough money to deliver "the game", presumably at that point it being a $60m game. Now they're trying to deliver a $94m game, and the more the money goes up, the more the expectations of the community go up, and the more risk the whole project contains.

You're right that Squadron 42 at Kickstarter didn't have a defined FPS element to it. AFAIK that was introduced in the stretch goals, and my (possibly jaded) view is that the FPS aspect is slowly overtaking the space flight aspect.

SQ42 if well done, will give them more time and funding for the actual MMO completion, that is where the real challenge of this development is, so it's a kinda safe bet to release it first, as it depends on the same gameplay mechanics as the PU.
For what it's worth, I agree. IMO the only way CIG can salvage this thing is to get Squadron 42 out of the door and into the hands (and hearts and minds) of the mainstream gaming community. It'll allow them to put resource back where it should have always been, and that's creating a PU where space flight is at least as compelling in terms of gameplay as planetside.
 
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@MaxLexandre

You have mentioned a lot of things that CIG are doing or planning and how they are going about it, but I have not seen anything to confirm them. for example:
Are you able to give any sources?

The first, the Germany Office that opened on Feb this year, hired vets from cryengine, including the Crytek studio lead, that is now responsible pretty much for that engine work, from revamp the whole netcode of cryengine to be creating the procedural generation tech, that's known on the progress reports weekly/monthly of each studio.
The second one, is simply known, the event is not new, the hangar they rent for the event is where Concorde is, that i think is mostly some short of museum people can also visit, also tickets as said on the event page "Citizen Con tickets, available below, are £40 in order to cover the cost of the event.".
The 3rd one, i also asked where it was the information that it had FPS, because we can poke on the pages, and that is not mentioned even once as one original feature of SC.
The 4th one, Well that is very known, the whole space FM/combat, multi-crew, FPS, planetside are examples of the same gameplay mechanics we're to have around SQ42, this is also why for quite 3 months already they're already intensive under work on AI far updates go, as things like crew AI is essential for SQ42, and a feature on the MMO where NPC crew ships also to exist. Idris for example is a capital ship that as we can see on the SQ42 demo already exists as it's needed for it, also to exist on PU.
The 5th one, that source is from RTV, on 2 different ones, the first one was their aim for 40 players, the 2nd one was about doing tests with 40 players company-wide because they didn't had 40 QA people.

There's far too much information on this spread on so many places, that is not easy at all to get specific links for all the sources here.

- - - Updated - - -

What I'm getting at is that your point-of-view is one way of looking at things (i.e. that you've paid your money and you'll get what you get, for better or worse (and you don't want worse so you'll relentlessly assume the better scenario)). The other point-of-view, the one that a lot of people in this thread have, and the one you argue against, is that there are obvious signs that CIG aren't "doing right by" their pledge in that they're constantly and consistently shifting the goalposts, which puts the whole project at risk. At $60m they apparently had enough money to deliver "the game", presumably at that point it being a $60m game. Now they're trying to deliver a $94m game, and the more the money goes up, the more the expectations of the community go up, and the more risk the whole project contains.

You're right that Squadron 42 at Kickstarter didn't have a defined FPS element to it. AFAIK that was introduced in the stretch goals, and my (possibly jaded) view is that the FPS aspect is slowly overtaking the space flight aspect.

Not really that, you assumed the worse case scenario on your question, being the project on your scenario out of money, meaning its failure on the delivery of the PU, asking for where did they spend the money wouldn't change the fact we wouldn't get neither the game, neither our money back, that's why i said, i wouldn't change my action on that case. But FPS won't overtake the flight aspect, one of the game biggest heights, specially on endgame, is multi-crew and that is the biggest feature on gameplay if we talk about actual Ships. FPS was always hyped because Roberts wanted things like being able to board ships, also included on the multi-crew aspect, then expanded to exist on more of the game, but Star Marine being a FPS match-based game by itself keeps it outside the PU, what is cool.
 
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dayrth

Volunteer Moderator
The first, the Germany Office that opened on Feb this year, hired vets from cryengine, including the Crytek studio lead, that is now responsible pretty much for that engine work, from revamp the whole netcode of cryengine to be creating the procedural generation tech, that's known on the progress reports weekly/monthly of each studio.
The second one, is simply known, the event is not new, the hangar they rent for the event is where Concorde is, that i think is mostly some short of museum people can also visit, also tickets as said on the event page "Citizen Con tickets, available below, are £40 in order to cover the cost of the event.".
The 3rd one, i also asked where it was the information that it had FPS, because we can poke on the pages, and that is not mentioned even once as one original feature of SC.
The 4th one, Well that is very known, the whole space FM/combat, multi-crew, FPS, planetside are examples of the same gameplay mechanics we're to have around SQ42, this is also why for quite 3 months already they're already intensive under work on AI far updates go, as things like crew AI is essential for SQ42, and a feature on the MMO where NPC crew ships also to exist. Idris for example is a capital ship that as we can see on the SQ42 demo already exists as it's needed for it, also to exist on PU.
The 5th one, that source is from RTV, on 2 different ones, the first one was their aim for 40 players, the 2nd one was about doing tests with 40 players company-wide because they didn't had 40 QA people.


Thanks for that :)
 
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