The Star Citizen Thread v5

[Insignificant_The_Galaxy_Cat]

TheAgent on SA suggesting there is more outpourings of news behind the CIG Berlin Wall, as well as offering a suggestion about the sudden disappearance of Ben Lesnick from any on-screen appearances the last few months....

lol

Ben got kicked off ATV because one of Sandi's friends told her he acted more naturally than her on camera

btw the leaks have begun to flow again, there's some serious dung going down

more tomorrow

 

[CMDR_Orlando]

CR went for the full experience delivered in a complete package instead of selling a puzzle without the fun pieces and then charging for them later at full price leaving most gamers displeased.

Which was definitely the right thing to do imo. Thanks to that they have more funding and can make a bigger and better game from the ground up instead of having to settle for several low budget games delivered bit's by bit's. Squadron42 will be of better quality than it could ever be dreamed of both by Chris Roberts or even it's backers, and the same applies to Star Citizen.

Considering the first years were spent raising money and building the studios and both Foundry42 UK and GER only came to into full production late 2014/2015 what they have now is a great amount of work.

They turned their problems around and keep on working in the game delivering more and better content and with that the funding keeps on going.

When you consider that they are doing 2 games at the same time 3/4 years of active development is nothing, Elders Scroll Online took 7 years alone, they also needed to refactor most of their engine and delivered a MMORPG with a big emphasis on single-player mechanics.

Just game development business as usual. CIG will keep on going delivering updates and backers will keep play/testing them and giving them more funds. Nothing will change except we will see more and more backers and more and more funding with every new major update.

 

[Insignificant_The_Galaxy_Cat]

+1 to the above well thought post and one I tried to pen in the past and think I just gave up as not worth the effort. But want to write a bit today after reading the Kotaku article and some good responses here.

A lot of CIG fans and even the Kotaku article also get the scope of Elite totally wrong (probably just because of what they launched with at v1.0). Even before ED kickstarted, FD already spoke periodically of the next iteration of Elite, with ideas for players to start on foot with 100 Cr and have to work up to just get a ship to start flying. EVA, sneaking onto other ships on foot, big cities with NPC walking around, atmospheric planets, 1:1 scale galaxy built on current understanding of stellar processes, with accurately rotating and orbiting bodies that players can free-roam, all that was in the plan from the start of ED but not SC. FD just put them in a logical order and scheduled based on needed precedence, complexity, affordability and priority. FD didn't have the money to build a game for 5 years before releasing it, and it wasn't their strategy for growing the business either.

CR original pitch was a staged approach very alike to ED's. He changed that at some indeterminate point to a big-bang release. He has now walked back to an MVP release. Is an MVP release really able to also deliver everything at once as we so often hear from SC evangelists?

CR lack of self-control and focus on achievable roadmap/timeline are exemplified by the 1886 incident in the Kotaku article. He sidetracked his own team from what they were focused on delivering to spend months in R&D for a new, undiscussed feature of questionable value when so much basic stuff is undone and what is there is horribly broken.

It is also surprising CIG experienced game dev managers at the start of the project let common and understood team issues take root deep enough to take years to correct. My guess is that disarray would still reign supreme if it were not for Erin Roberts.

A well written post sir, but I will like to focus on the part of your post that I highlighted in bold type.

What suggestion is there (apart from the word of Roberts in the interview) that those team issues have been "corrected"? Judging by the continued protracted and troubled "progress" this project has suffered through this year, I'm wondering if the team issues have been resolved yet, or at all.

Aside from Erin Roberts coming in *yet again* to bail out Chris, there doesn't seem to be much real organization across large portions of CIG/RSI.

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CR went for the full experience delivered in a complete package instead of selling a puzzle without the fun pieces and then charging for them later at full price leaving most gamers displeased.

Which was definitely the right thing to do imo. Thanks to that they have more funding and can make a bigger and better game from the ground up instead of having to settle for several low budget games delivered bit's by bit's. Squadron42 will be of better quality than it could ever be dreamed of both by Chris Roberts or even it's backers, and the same applies to Star Citizen.

Considering the first years were spent raising money and building the studios and both Foundry42 UK and GER only came to into full production late 2014/2015 what they have now is a great amount of work.

They turned their problems around and keep on working in the game delivering more and better content and with that the funding keeps on going.

When you consider that they are doing 2 games at the same time 3/4 years of active development is nothing, Elders Scroll Online took 7 years alone, they also needed to refactor most of their engine and delivered a MMORPG with a big emphasis on single-player mechanics.

Just game development business as usual. CIG will keep on going delivering updates and backers will keep play/testing them and giving them more funds. Nothing will change except we will see more and more backers and more and more funding with every new major update.

*Pffffffft!*

Absolute gobbledegook.

Sorry, that's the only reply I could really give to that mass of letters and words.

But hey, that's your outlook Orlando, so I'll just let ya carry on being the "voice of reason" to all us heretics on this little sub-forum on the Elite Dangerous site.

 

[Stigbob]

More from the Agent :

• the leaker back in august told me there was new mocap going to be put in after citcon in october
• but! sandi has been getting paid to do the fill in mocap for the female models for the last few months
• and! sandi will also be in the new scenes in october/november
• these are not technically "reshoots" since its new material, but had to be added since some actors are no longer available or desire to work with roberts and the script was rewritten (again, for the 3rd time after principle shooting)
• the last leak on mocap shooting was $29m, is now a projected $40m+ (one person said 60m but I dont believe that)

Even more from the Agent :

unconfirmed:

• ortwin is now distancing himself from the project, requesting a buyout

confirmed

• legal ramifications for unpaid overtime due to an "anonymous letter" sent to the california labor commissioner

the last one everyone is basically confirming

 

[Insignificant_The_Galaxy_Cat]

More from the Agent :

• the leaker back in august told me there was new mocap going to be put in after citcon in october
• but! sandi has been getting paid to do the fill in mocap for the female models for the last few months
• and! sandi will also be in the new scenes in october/november
• these are not technically "reshoots" since its new material, but had to be added since some actors are no longer available or desire to work with roberts and the script was rewritten (again, for the 3rd time after principle shooting)
• the last leak on mocap shooting was $29m, is now a projected $40m+ (one person said 60m but I dont believe that)

So? What's the problem here? If any of that is true, then it just means that Squadron 42 and Star Citizen are racing towards completion!

Remember, loads of the backers are perfectly happy to wait 10/20 years, or at least allow CIG and Chris Roberts all the time that he needs to make the game that we've all been dreaming about since, well, forever!

 

[Dooguk]

CR went for the full experience delivered in a complete package instead of selling a puzzle without the fun pieces and then charging for them later at full price leaving most gamers displeased.

Which was definitely the right thing to do imo. Thanks to that they have more funding and can make a bigger and better game from the ground up instead of having to settle for several low budget games delivered bit's by bit's. Squadron42 will be of better quality than it could ever be dreamed of both by Chris Roberts or even it's backers, and the same applies to Star Citizen.

Considering the first years were spent raising money and building the studios and both Foundry42 UK and GER only came to into full production late 2014/2015 what they have now is a great amount of work.

They turned their problems around and keep on working in the game delivering more and better content and with that the funding keeps on going.

When you consider that they are doing 2 games at the same time 3/4 years of active development is nothing, Elders Scroll Online took 7 years alone, they also needed to refactor most of their engine and delivered a MMORPG with a big emphasis on single-player mechanics.

Just game development business as usual. CIG will keep on going delivering updates and backers will keep play/testing them and giving them more funds. Nothing will change except we will see more and more backers and more and more funding with every new major update.

Why do you feel the need to defend a company that is making a PC game. You come across like some kind of religious fanatic. Everyone is wrong, only Chris Roberts is right. It's weird!

 

[Insignificant_The_Galaxy_Cat]

Courtesy from a poster on SA (not going to repeat his username just in case it causes trouble).

Spoiler

https://www.twitch.tv/theastropub/v/91060089?t=33m08s

"and yes, chris roberts does keep opening his mouth and saying dumb poo poo that we all and probably most of CIG's higher management at this point goes 'that's bull ! shut up Chris'"

"like homesteading on planets?"

"yea homesteading on planets, yea, thanks Chris for opening your mouth! we're not going to see that for two years if we actually do see it. you know? and I think that in general we probably have too much of a scope. But I think people are expecting more from the scope than what they are actually offering with the scope. Because what CIG has offered, on paper, officially, is multicrew ships, first person combat, trading [etc. etc]. and that's it. And we're already hitting...with 3.0 release that will be about 40% of what the game is. It doesn't have all the content in it yet but it has all the features...."

"...at some point you just Sean Murray all over yourself. And noone wants to go full Sean Murray. Because you hype the moon and you deliver a puddle."

Hmm, that lack of self-awareness... The almost-but-not-quite realizing that things are not going right at CIG before scapegoating another developer for his own "failings" (which was done with a fraction of the budget and team size as what Roberts is doing... and at least he *released* a product to market).

It's eye-opening.

 

[Neo-ST]

Why do you feel the need to defend a company that is making a PC game. You come across like some kind of religious fanatic. Everyone is wrong, only Chris Roberts is right. It's weird!

Hey, you're not allowed to say that. Arrest him!

Spoiler

 

[Marak]

Why do you feel the need to defend a company that is making a PC game. You come across like some kind of religious fanatic. Everyone is wrong, only Chris Roberts is right. It's weird!

Be fair, Orlando is a fan of SC and giving his views in a balanced way. When people tell me ED is 'an inch deep' I tend to defend the game in a similar way.

If there were no SC fans here this place would get boring very quickly.

 

[CMDR_Orlando]

I'm not defending a company! I'm saying that for me, as a gamer that wants the very best gaming experience no-holds-barred, Chris Roberts decision was spot on. And there's a lot of other gamers like me, that's why they keep getting money and delivering updates!

It's all about the games, the rest is just the normal game development problems that every company faces when they try ambitious stuff. Staff leaving/being fired, assets/work being ditched because they didn't worked as expected and so on. Just things that happen everyday in the industry. It's game development. 5 years is nothing for a game of this magnitude, just look at last guardian and Final fantasy for example. Just single-player games and 10 years of development each.

Chris Roberts is building the most ambitious game with money of gamers all under the public eye, ofc it will make the news.
The main thing is that developing keeps on going and keeps showing meaningful progress.

 

[Hydrino]

If you go back to the Kickstarter promise timeline, Elite was released very late, and should have only had a 1 month Alpha and 1 month Beta phases. Frontier also used the Kickstarter money to leverage venture capital interest.

If you cast your mind back to just before, and just after launch, a lot of people were saying that Elite was 'unfinished' them. More had bought into the 'vertical slice' or 'these things are placeholder' arguments. And I do think a lot of people were surprised at what got released. Even though it was obvious nothing much would change from Gamma to 1.0.

As to whether RSI will have the cash to ever actually finish their magnum opus, well, that remains to be seen doesn't it? It is surprising that people are still throwing that much cash at the project. In the meantime, I'll be happy playing 'incomplete' Elite.

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You obviously follow SC far more closely than I. It was an outside impression looking in, that they seem to have more to show these days that actually feels like there is a tangible game somewhere, rather than just (all) flashy art and videos. <Shrug>

Bottom line for me is that both games have, and will disappoint in some aspects, both have the potential to amaze in others. It's also madness to want either to fail. Nor do I believe that either Roberts, or Braben, are scamming people - they do both seem passionate about what they do, even if delivery is a bit problematic.

Minor point, FD went public, not with venture capital, per se.

As for the offline mode being cut- that was the only thing FD took off the table basically completely.

And here's the rub for CIG fans, when FD cut offline mode and folks started complaining, the forum mods *stickied* a thread for refund discussions for those wanting refunds and they moderated out anyone trying to White Knight or shout down the negative discussion. They let it ride as long as it was respectful/ no cursing type stuff. And that included links to sites promoting lawsuits and descriptions of how to get a refund. This is not much different from how the ED forums are managed now, with very few threads getting locked, even if they have rather rude posts towards FD and 'rage quitting' posts.

Compare that to how CIG handles criticism on its forums, requiring polls, relegating everything to a hidden thread, deleting posts, etc. Imagine what happens at MVP launch, maybe they close the forums for a long period of maintenance?

 

[Dooguk]

Didn't mean to offend anyone, but no way would I be so vocal about a video game.

Guess the Romans had it right with their "bread and circuses".

 

[Hydrino]

CR went for the full experience delivered in a complete package instead of selling a puzzle without the fun pieces and then charging for them later at full price leaving most gamers displeased.

Which was definitely the right thing to do imo. Thanks to that they have more funding and can make a bigger and better game from the ground up instead of having to settle for several low budget games delivered bit's by bit's. Squadron42 will be of better quality than it could ever be dreamed of both by Chris Roberts or even it's backers, and the same applies to Star Citizen.

Considering the first years were spent raising money and building the studios and both Foundry42 UK and GER only came to into full production late 2014/2015 what they have now is a great amount of work.

They turned their problems around and keep on working in the game delivering more and better content and with that the funding keeps on going.

When you consider that they are doing 2 games at the same time 3/4 years of active development is nothing, Elders Scroll Online took 7 years alone, they also needed to refactor most of their engine and delivered a MMORPG with a big emphasis on single-player mechanics.

Just game development business as usual. CIG will keep on going delivering updates and backers will keep play/testing them and giving them more funds. Nothing will change except we will see more and more backers and more and more funding with every new major update.

CR pitched an MVP followed by incremental updates, same as FD. CR tilted to this big-bang statement to defend the lag time and scope creep (which he originally said would not delay the game but just give more content at release).

CR has recently moved back to MVP delivery and 'continue to work on it as long as players fund us'.

How can supporters reconcile believing in "big-bang you are getting everything all at once", against CR own MVP announcement that doesn't even define the MVP feature set?

*addition; and all those other games 7 years in development had private funding, did not make public promises over and over about dates and features, and they cost less. Remember CR own words were that since CIG is not marketing or giving profit back to private investors, every $ is actually equivalent to 2-4 $ (his words), so his budget is already at least $250 MUSD by CR own logic.

 

[Neo-ST]

Didn't mean to offend anyone, but no way would I be so vocal about a video game.

Guess the Romans had it right with their "bread and circuses".

I don't think you said anything wrong

 

[Dooguk]

I don't think you said anything wrong

Thank you. Faith in humanity restored.

 

[hairychris]

More from the Agent :

Even more from the Agent :

unconfirmed:

• ortwin is now distancing himself from the project, requesting a buyout

If true that is NOT good.

Still, if true it's absolutely hilarious.

confirmed

• legal ramifications for unpaid overtime due to an "anonymous letter" sent to the california labor commissioner

the last one everyone is basically confirming

Getting on the wrong side of a labo(u)r lawsuit is a fantastic way to spend millions of dollars.... [blah]

 

[Insignificant_The_Galaxy_Cat]

Didn't mean to offend anyone, but no way would I be so vocal about a video game.

Guess the Romans had it right with their "bread and circuses".

Yo, you said not a thing wrong. Neo was imitating some of the more zealous supporters of Star Citizen with that response. He wasn't being serious.

 

[Neo-ST]

Yo, you said not a thing wrong. Neo was imitating some of the more zealous supporters of Star Citizen with that response. He wasn't being serious.

Yes. He's new, he'll learn

 

[Asp Explorer]

If true that is NOT good.

Still, if true it's absolutely hilarious.

Delicious, most delicious

 

[CMDR_Orlando]

CR pitched an MVP followed by incremental updates, same as FD. CR tilted to this big-bang statement to defend the lag time and scope creep (which he originally said would not delay the game but just give more content at release).

CR has recently moved back to MVP delivery and 'continue to work on it as long as players fund us'.

How can supporters reconcile believing in "big-bang you are getting everything all at once", against CR own MVP announcement that doesn't even define the MVP feature set?

CR pitch was to gather a small amount of money to show investors that there was a demand, he got way more than that, enough to ditch investors and do it the way he wanted. Fully fledged game, anyone that knows CR knows he won't settle for mediocrity, that's why he left mid-project in the Freelancer development, despite it ending up as a great game anyway it wasn't up to par with Chris Roberts standards.