The Star Citizen Thread v5

[Neo-ST]

https://www.polygon.com/2014/11/11/7193591/star-citizen-persistent-world

Someone should start holding these guys accountable for what they said, because due to texts like these they are now at $148M, yet what they talked about is nowhere to be seen.
It's called fraud based on hope. Hope that some day, people might actually see what he says.

 

[Asp Explorer]

Forget the bugs... what about the problems behind the yuge numbers of players who're supposedly going to be sharing a single environment (amount of data required to be transfered client/server & server/client plus all the back end stuff x times per second)?

The power of the Cloud will ensure that everyone will instance with everyone else playing the game, or even just on their Spectrum. You see, CIG have invented Nested Stacked Interwoven Physical Virtual Server Bladeframes. They were part of the Vision since it's very inception, and technology has only just advanced to the point where Genuine Roberts dreams can be made to come to life on lowly, soulless silicon.

Everything a Space Commando does, says, thinks is instantly transported up to the Cloud by means of the Immersion Immersionator(tm) - a physical device that transcends reality and can convert human mind impulses into digital signals in real-time with the highest levels of precision and fidelity possible - using only minute inputs that can be repeated many hundreds of times a second - and "uploads" these "commands" to the Cloud via a series of Tubes in things called "Packets".

The Cloud gathers all these "Packets" and presents them before the Elders of the Internet. After careful consideration - they are marked and priotised to be passed on to ALL the Other Players in real-time and in high-fidelity. These are decoded by the Game Client and presented to the Space Commando for their own consideration and input, in the audiovisual form of begging letters, bug fixing videos, and ship concept jpegs.

It's years ahead of it's time and truly innovative.

 

[Marak]

The power of the Cloud will ensure that everyone will instance with everyone else playing the game, or even just on their Spectrum. You see, CIG have invented Nested Stacked Interwoven Physical Virtual Server Bladeframes. They were part of the Vision since it's very inception, and technology has only just advanced to the point where Genuine Roberts dreams can be made to come to life on lowly, soulless silicon.

Everything a Space Commando does, says, thinks is instantly transported up to the Cloud by means of the Immersion Immersionator(tm) - a physical device that transcends reality and can convert human mind impulses into digital signals in real-time with the highest levels of precision and fidelity possible - using only minute inputs that can be repeated many hundreds of times a second - and "uploads" these "commands" to the Cloud via a series of Tubes in things called "Packets".

The Cloud gathers all these "Packets" and presents them before the Elders of the Internet. After careful consideration - they are marked and priotised to be passed on to ALL the Other Players in real-time and in high-fidelity. These are decoded by the Game Client and presented to the Space Commando for their own consideration and input, in the audiovisual form of begging letters, bug fixing videos, and ship concept jpegs.

It's years ahead of it's time and truly innovative.

Take my money!

All hail the mighty Asp - The true maker of the BDSSE!!!

(where do I sign up?)


*edit* Oh... wait - I've fallen for this once before

 

[Knightshark]

Someone should start holding these guys accountable for what they said, because due to texts like these they are now at $148M, yet what they talked about is nowhere to be seen.
It's called fraud based on hope. Hope that some day, people might actually see what he says.

That is nothing compared to what German GameStar does.

 

[Neo-ST]

That is nothing compared to what German GameStar does.

What?

 

[McGlashan]

I completely disagree. If they received less money, we all would have a better and more complete game by now.

I agree that the massive feature bloat that came on the back of the fundraising success was a bad thing for the game, and that the original project goals were at least somewhat realistic. In the hands of someone other than Roberts. In reality it's more likely he would have just wee'd the money away on mocap regardless, and there would be no more game than there is today. The main difference is how long it's taking him to run it into the ground.

 

[jcrg99]

https://venturebeat.com/2017/05/03/...sure-to-make-star-citizen-absolutely-perfect/

Cool. Roberts basically is starting to prepare the public for a release that will be a sort of unfinished mess, but expect "hardcore" followers be patient. (One more time he is showing his middle-finger to the huge majority of people who bought copies of the game). I can just take the conclusion following his mentality and based in his comments, that they will never stop to sell ships and jpegs (otherwise, they shouldn't be only targetting hardcore and whales)

I wonder how that repetitive fan claim "I rather wait longer for a complete, stable, bug-free game than get an arlier release in the usual state unfinished, broken from publishers" sounds now.

- - - Updated - - -

I agree that the massive feature bloat that came on the back of the fundraising success was a bad thing for the game, and that the original project goals were at least somewhat realistic. In the hands of someone other than Roberts. In reality it's more likely he would have just wee'd the money away on mocap regardless, and there would be no more game than there is today. The main difference is how long it's taking him to run it into the ground.

That is possible considering his history. Starlancer and Freelancer wouldn't see the light of the day wasn't by Microsoft and a years more of work than estimated.
And he was basically kicked out of those projects. Final decisions weren't on him anymore.

 

[Asp Explorer]

I wonder how that repetitive fan claim "I rather wait longer for a complete, stable, bug-free game than get an arlier release in the usual state unfinished, broken from publishers" sounds now.

Hmm how about:

Really it is all about constant iteration from launch. The whole idea is to be constantly updating. It isn’t like the old days where you had to have everything and the kitchen sink in at launch because you weren’t going to come back to it for awhile

Genuine Roberts - 2012

 

[Knightshark]

What?

I think they bring a top news article for every concept, every anything that comes from CIG, where they just repeat the press statements by CIG without any criticism. The headline for 3.0 was "3.0 will already be released in June", as if they are not 6 months late but early. No criticism at all. SC is the most covered game, no other game receives more attention. On the other hand, 50% of all their ED news are critical or bad news (delay, PvPers take FD hostage, etc.). And this a one of the major if not the major german gaming mag. The reason is that the entire (99%) german SC community is active in the GameStar forums.

 

[Osmanthus]

The headline for 3.0 was "3.0 will already be released in June", as if they are not 6 months late but early.

What a bloody joke.

 

[Britney]

They sucessfully changed the approach and perception of the production process for the game. It is not about a defined, finished product anymore, but about a process of constant development and improvement. The most visible fanbase of the game has accepted this already since a long time. I wonder if this was intended from the beginning of the crowdfunding process when they opened their own funding platform and collected more funds although the original funding goal was reached already.

Here also lies the key to understand why there is not more frustration of the fans when it comes to missed deadlines and releasing concepts instead of actually working virtual worlds.

 

[Zetta]

I think they bring a top news article for every concept, every anything that comes from CIG, where they just repeat the press statements by CIG without any criticism. The headline for 3.0 was "3.0 will already be released in June", as if they are not 6 months late but early. No criticism at all. SC is the most covered game, no other game receives more attention. On the other hand, 50% of all their ED news are critical or bad news (delay, PvPers take FD hostage, etc.). And this a one of the major if not the major german gaming mag. The reason is that the entire (99%) german SC community is active in the GameStar forums.

I had seen something about this recently, how they were producing a staggering amount of articles for Star Citizen, especially in comparison to the amount they had written on something like World of Warcraft in the 13 years since its release.

 

[Asp Explorer]

I had seen something about this recently, how they were producing a staggering amount of articles for Star Citizen, especially in comparison to the amount they had written on something like World of Warcraft in the 13 years since its release.

Are they preparing to hit the general public with an overpowering leaflet campaign showcasing the rich and deep lore of the Star Citizen universe?

Hollywood Class Storyline - Yay!

Famous Actors - Yay!

Unique Aliens - Yay!

We need a Boo-Ya pubup to mark all these accomplishments. Sign me up for Bar Citizen!

 

[robbyp]

It truly is amazing. Here we have a project which has been going on for 5 years now. Been promised to be finished years ago. Still in Alpha. Lots of reports on the internet on how goals are missed, features are delayed, how its all a bit fishy...

And still people keep on funding it.

Which leads me to think we are all doing it all wrong. The idea of raising money to produce something to sell at a particular time and date is wrong.

No, the new way is to make up something, promote it endlessly, do a few good video mock ups and jpgs, promise the moon, keep them waiting and waiting, and wait for the money to come in.

 

[DLewth]

It truly is amazing. Here we have a project which has been going on for 5 years now. Been promised to be finished years ago. Still in Alpha. Lots of reports on the internet on how goals are missed, features are delayed, how its all a bit fishy...

And still people keep on funding it.

Which leads me to think we are all doing it all wrong. The idea of raising money to produce something to sell at a particular time and date is wrong.

No, the new way is to make up something, promote it endlessly, do a few good video mock ups and jpgs, promise the moon, keep them waiting and waiting, and wait for the money to come in.

So, the same as any other religion.

 

[Herbrand]

It truly is amazing. Here we have a project which has been going on for 5 years now. Been promised to be finished years ago. Still in Alpha. Lots of reports on the internet on how goals are missed, features are delayed, how its all a bit fishy...

And still people keep on funding it.

Which leads me to think we are all doing it all wrong. The idea of raising money to produce something to sell at a particular time and date is wrong.

No, the new way is to make up something, promote it endlessly, do a few good video mock ups and jpgs, promise the moon, keep them waiting and waiting, and wait for the money to come in.

I work in software development, and estimates are very often missed even in relatively small projects. Star Citizen is a beast on its own, and what they are trying to achieve is indeed something that has not been attempted before, so there is a lot of R&D involved.
That they have been making progress is undeniable, the questions in my opinion are:

1) Will they have enough time / funds to polish it to a triple-A level?
2) Would a different management alleviated some of its problems, and if yes how?
3) Will the current network / server infrastructure be sufficient to support the incredibly complex level of interaction they have planned?

Beyond all the (unnecessary) salt and partisan criticism, this is the heart of the issue. It's obvious to me that Chris Roberts bit more than he can chew, how much wine is going to be necessary to swallow it?

 

[Ian Skippy]

I work in software development, and estimates are very often missed even in relatively small projects. Star Citizen is a beast on its own, and what they are trying to achieve is indeed something that has not been attempted before, so there is a lot of R&D involved.
That they have been making progress is undeniable, the questions in my opinion are:

1) Will they have enough time / funds to polish it to a triple-A level?
2) Would a different management alleviated some of its problems, and if yes how?
3) Will the current network / server infrastructure be sufficient to support the incredibly complex level of interaction they have planned?

Beyond all the (unnecessary) salt and partisan criticism, this is the heart of the issue. It's obvious to me that Chris Roberts bit more than he can chew, how much wine is going to be necessary to swallow it?

No, yes, no. Not sure what can be discussed there?

 

[Herbrand]

Thank you for your personal opinion on the matter. I am, of course, a tad more optimistic, although I mostly agree on 3); the servers required to run an instance with multiple multi-crew ships, must cost quite a lot of money to rent, I think that the bill to have all that processing power would be prohibitive.

I remember reading on the Valve development blog that Left 4 Dead had to use network trickery to allow syncing all zombies across all players. Now that was 10 years ago, 4 years ago I though that in 4 years there would be improvements in cost of this infrastructure, but if they are planning to sync every. Single. Item. in all ships, I think only an incredibly fast internet connection would do it.

In the end, I think they will have to severely limit the amount of players in each instance, but CIG knows best.

 

[lysan]

I work in software development, and estimates are very often missed even in relatively small projects. Star Citizen is a beast on its own, and what they are trying to achieve is indeed something that has not been attempted before, so there is a lot of R&D involved.
That they have been making progress is undeniable, the questions in my opinion are:

1) Will they have enough time / funds to polish it to a triple-A level?
2) Would a different management alleviated some of its problems, and if yes how?
3) Will the current network / server infrastructure be sufficient to support the incredibly complex level of interaction they have planned?

Beyond all the (unnecessary) salt and partisan criticism, this is the heart of the issue. It's obvious to me that Chris Roberts bit more than he can chew, how much wine is going to be necessary to swallow it?

I find it very odd that software development is the only area where estimations and project management is "difficult".

 

[Toumal]

I work in software development, and estimates are very often missed even in relatively small projects.

By years? I worked in some big projects, the biggest with a total budget of 2.1 Billion Euros, and we had a total delay of 6 months (mostly due to industry members trying to push their own immature technologies and then finding out that making them reliable takes a lot of time). And those 6 months were pretty embarassing.

So no, the situation surrounding SC is neither normal nor is it excusable really.