[Megathread] Star Citizen

[Wilian]

Stockholm Syndrome is strong with this game to this date.

[Odeezee]

the issue here is that people are being intellectually dishonest, i think primarily due to fear at least based on the responses and the vehement way in which people reply. those heavily invested in ED fear that Star Citizen will take something away from ED. i will just stop arguing about this after making this last statement; Star Citizen could fail, it could fail to be released or it could release and not be any fun (but if that happens then we backers may have failed to help give adequate feedback to prevent this), we understand that going in as it is a crowd-funded project but those who want to see it fail and think that ED is the end all and be all, Star Citizen is generating this much fear in you and it doesn't even have Star Marine or planetary landings yet. it'll be amusing to see how you guys feel after those hit in the next 1-3 months.

Final Galactic Tour Update



i am really looking forward to seeing this event in-game. CR says it's a possibility after release so it's likely to happen, it'll just be a question of when.

[Deleted]

Stockholm Syndrome is strong with this game to this date.

that's why i don't even bother to post in this thread let them "pledge" more , put more mortgages on their houses to "pledge" more, all their money if possible. i will enjoy their real life tears when it comes to an end.

[KyrtF]

ED is not even an MMO, 1 of the largest ships in star citizen has more capacity than what limited multiplayer experience you get out of elite dangerous, the current flight model now is still better than ED where ships just fly around in a circle trying to kill you, since launch elite dangerous has not released anything relevant in terms of content, unless there is actually a point in landing on a planet what is the point at all in having them, ED has spent years trying to implement features that will be at release in star citizen and since the game was not designed for massive multiplayer in ED its just going to be more of the same irrelevant features you can only play in single player.

We aren't even guaranteed that Star Citizen will be released....and again, you assume it will be an MMO - and technically, it will be, just as Elite is, and SWTOR, and EVE and many other such games. It'll certainly have MMO aspects...it'll have a lot of players and be online and be on a big map...but nothing more.
And regardless of whatever problems you have with Elites flight model...it is out, it works and it is balanced. Certainly a lot more than Star Citizens current model which relies on jousting.

ED is a half decent game but it is massively lacking in depth and meaning, yes its will still take a while before star citizen is ready but that depth will be in the game at launch, ED is a glorified single player game and only has a small number of ships which are more than just a cockpit.

ED is being expanded upon. ED is being developed. ED is getting more depth and more features. And ED is published.
There is little point comparing what ED is like NOW with what SC will be like when it launches. If SC goes with its full feature set, we are probably looking at another five years of development. If we go with Chris Roberts Minimum Viable Product we're looking at a likely 2019 release followed by patches with additional features, ships and systems.

What is Elite going to be like in 3 or 5 years? What will it add?

Attention to detail is everything in a space MMO, if there is no way to interact with things like panels in your ships, to self repairs, etc, its going to be pointless for ED to even implement ship interiors as its just going to be a room, with maybe a crew member to interact with and thats it.

Don't be silly. A lot of that interaction as you put it is simply going to be complexity for the sake of complexity, making work purely for the sake of giving multicrew something to do rather than be something of any real benefit to the game. It's going to cause other problems but since the setup is useful for other game aspects, no point no adding it. That is true for Elite, SC and other games.

As it is, you don't know how Elite plans to add multicrew. We know the devs are planning to add the ability to walk around ships and stations, and interact with the environment but we don't know to what degree. Currently they are limiting multicrew to 4 players...with talk of expanding that later....but being blunt, it's difficult to come up with enough work to keep one player occupied. And you want to boast about a player multicrew ship where they'll have nothing to do most of the time? WoW as one example has lots of trouble with guilds getting multiple players together so there is a limit.

But all of this is beside the argument. You keep trying to bring the debate to which is - or will be - better.

Which is irrelevant. The point being made is that at least as far as the industry and genre is concerned, Star Citizen is doing nothing new, nothing innovative an so far it hasn't got a lot to show for the money it has spent.

Star citizen is offering the complete package with excellent graphics and attention to all the details that make a space game. Just tell me this what other game is offering for say a whole guild of 20 players to actually play on 1 ship together and be able to interact with other ships or whatever they want, hell no other game is even offering a group of 5 players to fly around space in one ship and there is only 1 ship in Elite the anaconda atm that could do that purpose.

World of Warcraft. With guilds of 25 players.
Sea of Thieves will be out next year as well.

Does it matter if the ship model is that of a seafaring galleon as opposed to a starship? In game terms, you have a number of players walking around a moving platform in an instance. Nothing more. Games have been doing that for years.

And Star Citizen isn't offering that package yet. You simply hope it will.

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This is actually wrong. SC is (will be) an MMO, but NOT an RPG. I've been over this before a few years ago. MMO and RPG are actually separate. To be an RPG, it needs to have character leveling/progression and player skills/abilities, which SC will not have since it will be player skill based and not character skill based. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Role-playing_video_game (Scroll down to the section on characteristics.)

I said it would incorporate some RPG elements. Not that it would be an RPG. I was thinking of the planned inventory systems, emotes and the like.

And calling it an Elite clone is stupid. It's a space game. Space games usually have you fly around in ships, right? If you still want to call it a clone, then almost every space game ever is a clone of Spacewar!

It's an Elite clone because Elite was the first game to offer an open world space flight with the ability to pirate, trade, fight, salvage and mining.
The original Elite is the progenitor of this type of game. Star Citizen adds better graphics, planetary landings and FPS to that but it is still pretty much an Elite Clone. If you want, ED is also an Elite clone.

[kenn9530]

We aren't even guaranteed that Star Citizen will be released....and again, you assume it will be an MMO - and technically, it will be, just as Elite is, and SWTOR, and EVE and many other such games. It'll certainly have MMO aspects...it'll have a lot of players and be online and be on a big map...but nothing more.
And regardless of whatever problems you have with Elites flight model...it is out, it works and it is balanced. Certainly a lot more than Star Citizens current model which relies on jousting.

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ED is not an MMO you can team up with 4 people currently and thats it, its like saying diablo 3 is an MMO just cause it has thousands of players but you can only team up with 5, star citizens flight doesn't rely on jousting if you fly properly you can strafe which is the most effective way and more realistic in what you would really have to do in space flight, star citizen is focusing on a more realistic approach unlike ED which is just an arcade flight mode, still things to work out but having something more realistic is what SC is focusing on. Fact of the matter is ED is not an MMO, its a single player RPG with very limited multiplayer elements. Since we don't actually fly around in futuristic space ships its very difficult to come up with a completely accurate flight model and we will have to wait and see how it evolves further.

ED is being expanded upon. ED is being developed. ED is getting more depth and more features. And ED is published.
There is little point comparing what ED is like NOW with what SC will be like when it launches. If SC goes with its full feature set, we are probably looking at another five years of development. If we go with Chris Roberts Minimum Viable Product we're looking at a likely 2019 release followed by patches with additional features, ships and systems.

What is Elite going to be like in 3 or 5 years? What will it add?

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You do know that the features in star citizen are coming in leaps and bounds, they have already almost sorted the first iteration of planet gen tech and its miles ahead of what Elite has currently or will be able to achieve is a relevant time frame, star citizens planet tech is designed purely to create proper planets to the specs they want, in Elite its all just random planet gen. And now your speculating about the release day which you think is another 5 years away, we don't know how much longer it will take but im guessing in the 2 year range from now.

Don't be silly. A lot of that interaction as you put it is simply going to be complexity for the sake of complexity, making work purely for the sake of giving multicrew something to do rather than be something of any real benefit to the game. It's going to cause other problems but since the setup is useful for other game aspects, no point no adding it. That is true for Elite, SC and other games.

As it is, you don't know how Elite plans to add multicrew. We know the devs are planning to add the ability to walk around ships and stations, and interact with the environment but we don't know to what degree. Currently they are limiting multicrew to 4 players...with talk of expanding that later....but being blunt, it's difficult to come up with enough work to keep one player occupied. And you want to boast about a player multicrew ship where they'll have nothing to do most of the time? WoW as one example has lots of trouble with guilds getting multiple players together so there is a limit.

But all of this is beside the argument. You keep trying to bring the debate to which is - or will be - better.

Which is irrelevant. The point being made is that at least as far as the industry and genre is concerned, Star Citizen is doing nothing new, nothing innovative an so far it hasn't got a lot to show for the money it has spent.

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Many of the interactions will be useful like doing ship repairs/etc, we don't know exactly what we will be able to do in the ships just yet, could be in the range of installing new components to just general maintenance to keep the ship running smoothly, in the smaller multi crew ships you can hire a few npcs to cover the more menial stations so your friends can operate the turrets or chill out, if your going to be running a multicrew your most likely going to focus on things that will keep the crew busy most of the time and not just aimlessly flying around space but as in most games as long as your chatting along in TS your most likely not going to care if your not doing much for a short time now and then until you reach where you want to go.

World of Warcraft. With guilds of 25 players.
Sea of Thieves will be out next year as well.

Does it matter if the ship model is that of a seafaring galleon as opposed to a starship? In game terms, you have a number of players walking around a moving platform in an instance. Nothing more. Games have been doing that for years.

And Star Citizen isn't offering that package yet. You simply hope it will.

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and now your comparing WoW which has no relevance to SC at all, this is about the space genre, i said what other game allows you to have 20 player on a space ship, if your running on an idris/javelin your gonna need that many to operate it properly, any of the less important stations can be replaced by a few npcs and you can have a few players flying support fighters etc, its not a matter of hoping it will offer it, its a fact and already been stated many times this is a feature, yes the ships may be separate instances which is a must have or nothing would be able to handle how the game operates, all ships instances are view able by any ships nearby to see them so it doesn't matter how many instances are there your able to interact will all those instances as if they were not even there, its an invisible barrier, unlike instances in other games where you can't even peek into the instance you have to transfer.

This is a dream game for chris and he has the final say on whats in it or not, i would rather wait a little longer for a better game than a rushed game like any other, it will have issues to begin with but there comes a point where you have to either release it or not and sort things out along the way just like any other game.

[KyrtF]

ED is not an MMO you can team up with 4 people currently and thats it

You can form a wing with up to 4 people. But then you have events such as Distant Worlds which involves a lot more.

star citizens flight doesn't rely on jousting if you fly properly you can strafe which is the most effective way and more realistic in what you would really have to do in space flight

Regardless of how you feel, the output from CIG is that (amongst other factors) the current system rewards jousting far too much and so combat is hamstrung as a result. Ergo...they are changing the flight model. Therefore - the current model is broken. Usable certainly - but not suited for purpose.

star citizen is focusing on a more realistic approach unlike ED which is just an arcade flight mode, still things to work out but having something more realistic is what SC is focusing on

Seriously? The complaints I've seen about EDs flight model are that it errs too much on the realism side.

Fact of the matter is ED is not an MMO, its a single player RPG with very limited multiplayer elements.

Meaning it is about the same as Star Citizen then.

You do know that the features in star citizen are coming in leaps and bounds, they have already almost sorted the first iteration of planet gen tech and its miles ahead of what Elite has currently or will be able to achieve is a relevant time frame, star citizens planet tech is designed purely to create proper planets to the specs they want, in Elite its all just random planet gen. And now your speculating about the release day which you think is another 5 years away, we don't know how much longer it will take but im guessing in the 2 year range from now.

I said 5 years if they wanted all their launch features in at launch. Going by their own timetable, they'll only have a handful of systems ready by 2018 out of the 100 or more they promised. 2019 and a MVP seems doable however.

And it was Chris Roberts who brought up the idea of an MVP so the likelihood is that's what it'll be. Their own schedule towards 4.0 shows more focus on ships and systems than core mechanics.

As for planet generation - again you are simply arguing that you think SC will do the same things as everyone else - just better. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. It is also besides the point as I'm not arguing that point.

Whether or not it is better has nothing to do with innovation, hype or value.

Many of the interactions will be useful like doing ship repairs/etc, we don't know exactly what we will be able to do in the ships just yet, could be in the range of installing new components to just general maintenance to keep the ship running smoothly, in the smaller multi crew ships you can hire a few npcs to cover the more menial stations so your friends can operate the turrets or chill out, if your going to be running a multicrew your most likely going to focus on things that will keep the crew busy most of the time and not just aimlessly flying around space but as in most games as long as your chatting along in TS your most likely not going to care if your not doing much for a short time now and then until you reach where you want to go.

In short - everything I just said. Multicrew adds a lot of needless complexity alongside balancing issues simply for the sake of giving players something to do. Your Mining Stations won't see much use during a firefight but you might still want enough crew for your turrets while mining. Meanwhile, CIG have described some of their ideas and they basically come down to - One player could do this, but they are deliberately making things more complex so one player can't. Meanwhile, in combat, how many players will REALLY want to be the engineer as opposed to the pilot or a gunner? You want the MMO equivalent? How many players do you know who REALLY like tanking or Healing and who want to do that role as opposed to DPSing? They exist - butt here aren't many players. And it's worse because sometimes your ship won't have the crew space available. You have a group of 23 for your Javelin...but suppose only 15 turn up? Or your ship only has three crew stations and your crew are expected to fill multiple roles? And that isn't counting the balance issues.

Multicrew is worth adding because the basic code and systems enable other aspects of the game - but lets not try and kid ourselves that a make work system and adding complexity for the sake of complexity offers much value. It might work out...but I don't think so.

And the above is true for all multicrew games. Great idea - but horrendously complicated in practise. I know Elite is adding multicrew and I see the same problems there.

Put another way - would you rather man a turret on a ship, or bring along your own ship?

and now your comparing WoW which has no relevance to SC at all, this is about the space genre

So what? Does it matter that WoW uses a galleon skin as opposed to a spaceship skin? An example of a mechanic was asked for...I provided you with an example.

all ships instances are view able by any ships nearby to see them so it doesn't matter how many instances are there your able to interact will all those instances as if they were not even there, its an invisible barrier, unlike instances in other games where you can't even peek into the instance you have to transfer.

You do realise that Elite, amongst other games, does the same thing?

This is a dream game for chris and he has the final say on whats in it or not, i would rather wait a little longer for a better game than a rushed game like any other, it will have issues to begin with but there comes a point where you have to either release it or not and sort things out along the way just like any other game.

The problem I have is that the game is still very much a dream. CIG is boasting about all the new tech they have developed. Great. Except - when you think about it - it's new tech and systems only for CIG. The games industry has been doing similar work for years.

Look at your reaction to when I brought up WOW.

When you get down to it, 23 players in a Javelin sounds good. But all that is happening there is we have 23 players attached to a moving platform, and they are interacting with each other and objects on the platform and elsewhere in the instance. WoW was doing that 10 years ago in the Gunship battle in LK. With 40 players. The argument that deciding to giving the gunships a spaceship based skin somehow makes CIG better and innovative is ludicrous.

Star Citizen might end up better than the games I have mentioned. But that doesn't change the fact that it is adding nothing new to the genre. It isn't innovating. It isn't developing anything new. And it has precious little to show for all the money spent so far.

To put it another way...GTA took five years, and they had an experienced team well versed in the genre AND a working engine. CIG is trying to develop a bigger game with more freedom and trying to do so without a working engine, and without the same level of developer expertise. CE3 still isn't 100% ready. But that appears to be what has eaten a lot of time and money and effort. At this point in time, CIG aren't starting from scratch - but they are still only laying the foundations of the game.

They are creating the tools they will need to create the game and they've shown us a couple of tech demos to show how well they work. Not what I would call value.

[Gorsameth]

Sorry but I cant help myself to nitpick in. and MMO does not require X players to group to be called an MMO.

Is it a persistent online world? Can you meet a large group of players in a single location/instance?

If the answer to those 2 questions is yes, then its an MMO.

ED is only a single player game if you chose to play it as such (from what I understand) and can be played as a full on open world game.
Yes that makes it an MMO.

[kenn9530]

Sorry but I cant help myself to nitpick in. and MMO does not require X players to group to be called an MMO.

Is it a persistent online world? Can you meet a large group of players in a single location/instance?

If the answer to those 2 questions is yes, then its an MMO.

ED is only a single player game if you chose to play it as such (from what I understand) and can be played as a full on open world game.
Yes that makes it an MMO.

do you regard a game as an MMO where the max number of players you can see or interact with at any one time is 31

You can form a wing with up to 4 people. But then you have events such as Distant Worlds which involves a lot more.

Seriously? The complaints I've seen about EDs flight model are that it errs too much on the realism side.


You do realise that Elite, amongst other games, does the same thing?

The max in elite you can see at any one time is 32 including yourself so i hardly call that a lot more,

realism doesn't even come close in ED with the flight model, doesn't matter how damaged your ship is in ED you can still fly around normally unless one of your modules are completely destroyed, ships is star citizen will affect ship performance if parts of the ship are missing or thrusters are offline/destroyed.

Elite doesn't do the same thing with instances, if 2 instances of 32 players comes close to each other you won't be able to see them, they will just be a blip on the map, in SC you can peek into those instances and interact, yes there will be some limit we don't know about yet but it's going to be higher than 32.

[KyrtF]

do you regard a game as an MMO where the max number of players you can see or interact with at any one time is 31

Well...you are wrong on the Elite instance limit....and I shall note that Star Citizens limit is lower even than that.

The max in elite you can see at any one time is 32 including yourself so i hardly call that a lot more

Reality differs. Go look at some of the screen shots. Instances can have more than 32 players.

[masterhorus8]

Well...you are wrong on the Elite instance limit....and I shall note that Star Citizens limit is lower even than that.

For now. But I am curious, how does ED's instancing work? I'm going to assume it's based on specific areas. The limit for SC's instancing will likely be different. There will be a cap of (supposedly) 50 players within an instance, but the instances aren't based on area/distance but on the number of people inside (unless referring to ship instances, then it's size/area based). And these instances will interact with each other. So each of these instance bubbles will be floating around in progressively larger and larger bubbles with upwards of 50 each within. Whether that will actually work efficiently or not, only time will tell, but that's the plan. Because right now, 24 people per instance is no where near what they're wanting (I think on their internal builds, they have 36 right now. Wasn't ever able to find an official source on it, but it was mentioned somewhere).

[kenn9530]

Well...you are wrong on the Elite instance limit....and I shall note that Star Citizens limit is lower even than that.



Reality differs. Go look at some of the screen shots. Instances can have more than 32 players.

elite dangerous instance limit is 32 and concerning SC atm even in alpha is can handle more players than that.

In elite there is no guilds/clans, there is only your friends list, it is missing all the features it requires to function as an MMO. Being able to have a 4 man wing and interact with a very small amount of the playerbase is not even close to what an MMO is, not to mention it is very rare you will ever even encounter a full instance.

Also everything in Elite is instanced, each station area is a separate instance and super cruise is one big instance, SC offers a seamless transfer from one area to the next.

[Gorsameth]

elite dangerous instance limit is 32 and concerning SC atm even in alpha is can handle more players than that.

In elite there is no guilds/clans, there is only your friends list, it is missing all the features it requires to function as an MMO. Being able to have a 4 man wing and interact with a very small amount of the playerbase is not even close to what an MMO is, not to mention it is very rare you will ever even encounter a full instance.

Also everything in Elite is instanced, each station area is a separate instance and super cruise is one big instance, SC offers a seamless transfer from one area to the next.

Again with these dumb statements.

If you think 32 player instances is to small to qualify as an MMO state that. But guilds is by no means a requirement for an MMO, almost all of them have it because people sometimes enjoy being social but stop sticking on random qualifiers.

And the problem with your argument is that you compare a finished product to a design document.
If SC can deliver on total seamless transitions in a massive open world environment with realistic damage models then sure it would be amazing but its really easy to promise grand things in a piece of text. Its quite another to get it functioning in game and have it be a good feature at that.

If you want to convince people, stick to what exists, not what is promised.

[masterhorus8]

Again with these dumb statements.

If you think 32 player instances is to small to qualify as an MMO state that. But guilds is by no means a requirement for an MMO, almost all of them have it because people sometimes enjoy being social but stop sticking on random qualifiers.

And the problem with your argument is that you compare a finished product to a design document.
If SC can deliver on total seamless transitions in a massive open world environment with realistic damage models then sure it would be amazing but its really easy to promise grand things in a piece of text. Its quite another to get it functioning in game and have it be a good feature at that.

If you want to convince people, stick to what exists, not what is promised.

You do know that the seamless transitioning is already in, right? And they showed that it works with the planet transitioning. So that feature is already working.

[Rennadrel]

Even if SCs PU isn't in alpha until the end of next year or later, it will still be lightyears ahead of any game current or future for graphics and physics. Even 2-3 years from now Star Citizen will still look next generation, while ED looks like a pile of shit.

[Gorsameth]

You do know that the seamless transitioning is already in, right? And they showed that it works with the planet transitioning. So that feature is already working.

I don't play SC, I don't follow SC closely. I'm just slowly growing old while waiting for a release date and slightly annoyed that 2 people are comparing fact with fiction.

[masterhorus8]

Even if SCs PU isn't in alpha until the end of next year or later, it will still be lightyears ahead of any game current or future for graphics and physics. Even 2-3 years from now Star Citizen will still look next generation, while ED looks like a pile of shit.

I'd say that end of next year (or whenever they finish their 3.0 cycle) is when beta starts. That should be when it's feature complete, right? It should technically be in alpha right now.

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I don't play SC, I don't follow SC closely. I'm just slowly growing old while waiting for a release date and slightly annoyed that 2 people are comparing fact with fiction.

Fair enough.

[Rennadrel]

I'd say that end of next year (or whenever they finish their 3.0 cycle) is when beta starts. That should be when it's feature complete, right? It should technically be in alpha right now.

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Fair enough.

I still view it as being pre-alpha in the sense that it doesn't have a full feature set to test. Once it gets a full feature set, I'd find it odd to say it's in beta at that point, because it would still need extensive testing as a whole package. But eh, I guess it's subjective, I just don't see it going from alpha straight into beta after 3.0.

[masterhorus8]

I still view it as being pre-alpha in the sense that it doesn't have a full feature set to test. Once it gets a full feature set, I'd find it odd to say it's in beta at that point, because it would still need extensive testing as a whole package. But eh, I guess it's subjective, I just don't see it going from alpha straight into beta after 3.0.

Well, CIG is calling it alpha right now, ie Alpha 2.6 is coming out soon and we're on Alpha 2.5 right now. I was just under the impression that alpha wasn't feature complete and beta was. And beta is for the bug fixing/optimizing.

[Rennadrel]

Well, CIG is calling it alpha right now, ie Alpha 2.6 is coming out soon and we're on Alpha 2.5 right now. I was just under the impression that alpha wasn't feature complete and beta was. And beta is for the bug fixing/optimizing.

I would assume that there will still be features and additions after beta then, which is why I wouldn't completely call it a beta.

[Majestic12]

You do know that the seamless transitioning is already in, right? And they showed that it works with the planet transitioning. So that feature is already working.

Until we can actually try it for ourselves, It's best to take whatevee they show with a grain of salt. They're playing it in a controlled, staged environment. Don't give credits where it isn't due.