I think this thread became like a special place for people disappointed by SC to gather with a lot having different reasons why to be disappointed. I might be wrong but I also get the feeling that the people who are disappointed are mainly so due to not getting what they wanted from the game. What I see on the more supportive crowd on the SC part is that they don't mind that the CIG devs are releasing late or not having some features they would want now being implemented later since they do not look at SC as a usual video game. They look at it as a unique project that will not take 5 years release and end. They are looking at this as a 10+ year game that they will invest most of their time in to and that is step by step adding features as they go.
Of course the crowd here has varying disapproval of CIG. And since this is the internet I also read a lot of armchair CEO talk which is totally unnecessary. I don't mind critical people of a project I just shy and don't feel like posting when people write things that are openly attacking and insulting figures. I mean at the end of the day I don't think that if anybody here wants to change anything this is the forum to express that.
Here is a good link to do it for example:
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/52b87k/rantteam_bonding_thread_14/
I would also like to say that SC live as it stands has anywhere from 3 hours to 10 hours of gameplay if you play it with friends. On the topic of it including no content I totally disagree. There is a lot of work and content that has gone in to 2.5. When you are building a game the many systems need to be implemented and tested and reiterated upon. Star Citizen is doing exactly that. The live game is actually pretty fun and yes a bit buggy but since SC players who play it know how it was a year ago and two years ago they clearly see the steady progress and less and less bugs.
Again I have to underline I am not saying SC live 2.5 is full of content or bug free or that it is perfect. I am just stating that it is not as bad or useless as many here seem to state it.
On the point of Star Citizen missing dates. This is what they are more criticized for and yes it is partially because of Chris Roberts, the funding of the project and most of all the technological challenges of such a project. However you look at SC it is a huge challenge to accomplish. No engine supports what SC wants to do. No engine is the best fit for SC not even a new one since setting that up takes at least 2-4 years. So either way SC has to overcome much heavy tech development which is what the past two years of recruitment were focused on.
They also have bad habits. Like announcing internal hopeful release dates. I think most of you know how it goes in software or game development. Internally it looks like you will get a build out in the next 3 months. When that time comes especially depending on the complexity of what you are working on things can change and will change it will take 5 or even 6 at times depending on scale these can go up to be 1-5 years too. Star Citizen only makes this topic worse. But that ties in to the interesting part of the community. They don't care as long as CIG get's it right eventually.
Star Marine seems to be the worst example and I see many people saying that CIG does playable tech demos at each show and releases nothing. This is totally untrue. Each gamescom CIG showed things they released the single exception is Star Marine. August 2013 they showed the Hangar module and released it that month. Mid 2014 they showed off AC in PAX and it released in June. August 2014 they showed improved hangars, racing and the first planetside landing location Arccorp and a very early multi-crew demo. The Racing and Improved Hangars and Arccorp released right after within that month. The Multi Crew was very early so it took longer. At Gamescom 2015 which I attended they showed off 2.0. A pretty huge space are with all the stuff you can do and they released is 3 months later due to the immense technical challenges but it still released within a good timeframe and it had so many things that tie in Star Citizen together.
So there are basically two things that have not shown adequate progress or release time which are Star Marine and Squadron 42. Now the first one is being released next month so we will talk about how it ended up when it's out. But it was a tough time because of their contractor and prolly because of all the engine changes that they were going through but in the end it really doesn't matter depending on what comes out next month. Or even if then if the development of SC goes like it goes. It will get improved upon even more until it is right. Which is what happened with many mechanics in SC and is still happening and it's hard to challenge this when you see the 2014 game.
About Squadron 42 not much they can show there since it's a single player story and they wouldn't want to spoil it. They said 2016 and the company announced that it is feature locked with several tech being worked on for 3.0 to be ported over it and it awaiting polish. My guess is Squadron 42 will get either an end of the year release (which I totally doubt) or a late Q1 release.
I think SC has a herculian task under their hands. They are simultaneously working on literally 3 different games. Star Marine, 3.0 which has the biggest tech and gameplay changes in Star Citizen ever period and also a huge Singleplayer campaign at the same time. While many here say that this game won't be out until 2025 I think it's because they are not keeping up on the development and they are always setting up release expectations. When you follow the SC development closely they talk and show about what is coming online and then it comes out so it is pretty normal since you watch the progress as it goes along. It's not like that from the outside though. You don't have much info for months and months and then you hear or see a delay. OR when a portion of the game releases you do not have the information and the development update knowledge that people follow the project do.
That's why the SC Community is very loyal and bound to Star Citizen. They see most of what the developers do and work on. They see them start from being something talked about to it being something that is getting released to live. The entire process makes a lot of SC people not give a damn about release dates or time constraints.
From a usual customer to product point this might sound insane but this is no usual project nor usual relationship between a game and it's community. Hence why people tend to attribute cult like saying to SC fans. Because they are not your usual crowd but I can personally vouch for how helpful they can be compared to other games I have run across. The SC community gives away game packages to new players, makes guides and mostly go the extra mile to help people that are new to the game for example. A small section of the community can also be extra defensive though which is always a reaction to mostly game criticism.
That part I think comes from the fact that if you follow the project very closely outsiders tend to know way less than you do. When they complain about things that you know will be fixed in the next patch or are being addressed there is always this disconnect between information. Also that small section of the community really fell in to the fact that their financial contribution is high valued to them so any attack to that contribution could be an attack on them. I do not support this behavior at all.
It's quiet the complex topic running for the past 5 years now but I think many people predicted that SC won't be here in the past years. That they won't have their mini pu or the planetside. Many still claim that it is a failed project. But I think CIG and SC will be here for many many years to come. With what they have shown and the amount of real passion which I personally can vouch for since I met a couple of them are real and are the main drivers of the project. With each year Star Citizen is looking more likely to advance to be better (less buggy and more content) and increase it's player base.
The end of the year and the beginning of next year will surely prove my points to be true.
