[Megathread] Star Citizen

[1001]

Hand crafted 150.000 Worlds????? At first there were no worlds, then they had fugly lifeless procedural planets. That's hand crafting?

There's a mistake here regarding the 150,000 figure. That is actually for positioned stars in accordance with astronomy data so that constellations are correct, star types and sizes are correct and so on.

...and started working on ED long before the kickstarter.

And this is incorrect. They had undertaken some skunk works and talked about the engine getting to a point (after The Outsider) where it was capable of what they wanted to do. Braben has clarified that proper development started during the kickstarter.

That's why ED's long overdue spacelegs are nowhere to be seen. They either do it right like SC but that will take years for them as well...or they do a crap implementation which will be compared to SC and will be booed on.

Is that long overdue by a personal measure?

All they have ever said about 'spacelegs' is that it's something they would like to do in the future.

[KyrtF]

No, NMS came out with half as many features as the devs promised.

Totally irreleveant as that isn't what is being compared.

NMS went thriugh the development process and emerged as a complete game...with everything SC lacks. That includes a finalised engine, gameplay mechanics and more.

For the movie analogy...it is a released movie.

Star Citizen is in the pre-Alpha stage of development. It lacks a finished engine, netcode, gameplay mechanics and more. As far as the movie analogy is concerned, it's at the script editting phase.

It shows promise but has just as much chance of being a turkey as a hit.

That's why it bombed and that's why it got shit canned by reviewers and players alike. If you omit all of the things that the devs said they were going to put into the game for release, then it's just a bare bones game without much depth to it, it's basically Star Citizen with a bit more in the ways of features than SC has currently.

It's complete and has a working game engine.
Star Citizen has lots of promises and a game engine that is still being developed.

Star Citizen has no guarantee of success and no guarantee of release. There is no guarantee that any of he proposed features will make it to live. If everything works as planned, it could be TESB....if it doesn't it'll be the Christmas Special.

And NMS is a single player game, no matter how much the devs whip their cocks out and say it is a multiplayer online game.

By that same argument, Star Citizen doesn't exist. NMS was envisioned as an MMO and HG are working on strengthening that aspect of the game. It is as much a planned "feature" of NMS as having gameplay mechanics and a finished game engine is for Star Citizen.

- - - Updated - - -

i don't even know what NMS is even being mentioned, the game is primarily a single player exploration game with base building, thats all it is since there is nothing much else to do in the game.

Even taken at face value, thats still a lot more than what SC jas to offer at this time.

tar citizen is a custom build MMO with hand crafted worlds, heavily detailed fully interactive ships, current flight model atm is better than ED or NMS, seemless transitions with travel across the solar system and into planet atmosphere, ED and NMS have a code which did most of the work creating the universes, of which SC has created lore on each solar system.

All of which is PLANNED content and not actually live.

it takes months to even make a ship ready, all the other games don't have to do anywhere near SC to make a ship work, the time it took to make the largest ship in SC ready probably was enough to create ever single ship in ED and NMS combined.

Pointing out how flow CIG are during development doesn't help your case. Sure, CIGs messy undisciplined development process is such that the games assets and functions are created two or three times is...shall we say...less than optimal but I'm sure that eventually they will get to a point where they can release something.

If you keep up with the weekly updates and such you can clearly see the amount of detail needed for even small things in SC.

I do. Most of which is utterly unnecessary. If I wanted a life simulator I'd walk out the door. More importantly, there are higher priorities that CIG should be taking care of right now...such as a game engine, netcode, server meshing and more.

The detail you are pointing out right now will need to be redone later on because these fundamental core systems are not ready. That is why all that third party work needed to be thrown out. CIG couldn't slot modules created for CryEngine into StarEngine.

So why should I care about work that is highly likely to be removed or redone at some later point anyway?

[Wilian]

NMS is to Star Citizen what Valerian is to Star Wars

So one of the inspirations?

[Tierbook]

So one of the inspirations?

I meant the movie.

[Tonkaden]

For a new IP, while they are building up the teams as well, and making an MMO? While a new COD takes 2 years?



Yeah a new SWG...just with tons of other stuff, actual physics, first person, procedural planets, seamless landings, physics grids, etc.
Or a new NMS...just with multiplayer, actual lore, different planets, missions, multiplayer ships, etc.
So yeah, none of the above comes even close in difficulty=bad examples.
If you realy think SC is just one of the above with shiny graphics you are really ignorant.



Yeah real development ties then:
Destiny takes 2.5 half years...a fking shooter
GTA5 3 years...not an MMO, no planet, no stackable physics grids, no multiplayer ships
SWTOR 2 years...an MMO with basically no physics, no planets, no multiplayer ships..not even ships for the matter, basically a multiplayer Mass Effect.
Those are all made by huge studios/publishers, with the money already available, teams already in place, game engines usually ready.

Lets see SC then: 4 years if we go by your real development times while: started from zero (like 10 devs in a basement), had to gather funding (and constantly change plans accordingly on the fly), had to build up the studios (computers, accessories, etc), build up the teams (and set up the workflow with that). They are making a completely new IP, building 2 games simultaneously one of which is an MMO more complex than your 3 examples combined, had to completely rewrite the engine for it.

Still you argue they should have finished in the same timeframe?



Yeh they can create a game in that timeframe...a much much much smaller game, and with the team, equipment and funding there from the get go..



Money wasting and mismanagement is the prime flags haters waving around....so then please bring up one game project which was developed under the circumstances:
1. constantly changing funding which they needed to plan around
2. backers voting to go on and expand the scope so they did accordingly
3. had to build up the team and studioswhile under development
4. somewhat similar scope to SC
When you brought the example, then you can make a comparison how good or bad is SC's management. Until then it's hot air.



Yeah yeah we know, they built up a demo in 2011 with a handful of ppl, but that is count as development...they got the money end of 2012, still just a handful of ppl, and started to gather equipment and working on the project, but that's heavy development in you book.





Yeah 3.0 lost 3 planets...in the meantime the feature list grew from 2 slides to 15 pages....but yeah technically it's a shadow of what was promised....because it is much much bigger by containing stuff what wasn't promised originally.



This paragraph speaks volumes about you...you are so used to seeing shiny demos from the publishers (which has nothing to do with actual gameplay usually) that you cannot cope with an actual live gameplay. Graphics are aged? Have you seen some games released lately..especially which were waved around as SC/SQ42 killers? COD:IS...looks like shit compared to SC...ME:A...looks shit compared to SC



The news are that the winter livestream will be SQ42 fully...which is totally understandable, they are all about 3.0 now, want to get done with it, then move on.
Server meshing works hasn't even started is just you making up things again..they said before they start merging the servers they want to get the most of each individual server first.

SWTOR took waaaaaaaay longer than 2 years. It was announced in 08 and was at least a year in development by then. I think it was more like 2 years. It didnt release til 2011. Thats 5 years.

"An October 2008 preview noted some of the 12 full-time writers had been working on The Old Republic for more than two years at that point"

This all leads back to the instant gratification crowd. Nothing but a bunch of Veruca Salt's running around here.

[Majestic12]

SWTOR took waaaaaaaay longer than 2 years. It was announced in 08 and was at least a year in development by then. I think it was more like 2 years. It didnt release til 2011. Thats 5 years.

"An October 2008 preview noted some of the 12 full-time writers had been working on The Old Republic for more than two years at that point"

This all leads back to the instant gratification crowd. Nothing but a bunch of Veruca Salt's running around here.

I don't think it's unfair to be disappointed with CIG or relate it in any way shape or form with "instant gratification". Chris said he'd get SQ42 episode 1 out by 2014. It's now 2018 and it's nowhere to be seen.

SQ42 by 2014 wasn't even very unreasonable, considering Chris said during the KS that he had been developing SC for a year(Started 2011). To be factual, we're entering the seventh year in 2018 according to Chris' own word. That's just how it is.

[Tonkaden]

I don't think it's unfair to be disappointed with CIG or relate it in any way shape or form with "instant gratification". Chris said he'd get SQ42 episode 1 out by 2014. It's now 2018 and it's nowhere to be seen.

SQ42 by 2014 wasn't even very unreasonable, considering Chris said during the KS that he had been developing SC for a year(Started 2011). To be factual, we're entering the seventh year in 2018 according to Chris' own word. That's just how it is.

Of course its alright to be disappointed, but running around scream "lulz vaporware" or acting like this doesn't happen with every other major MMO trying to release is comical at best.

Words by CR or whoever can be spoken, Words are just words. At the end of the day, the game takes as long as it takes in the end. Thats all that matters.

[KyrtF]

Of course its alright to be disappointed, but running around scream "lulz vaporware" or acting like this doesn't happen with every other major MMO trying to release is comical at best.

Words by CR or whoever can be spoken, Words are just words. At the end of the day, the game takes as long as it takes in the end. Thats all that matters.

But it doesn't happen with any other major MMO or even other AAA games. Four years of delay and a near seven year development process that results in a preAlpha demo and an unfinished engine with nonexistant netcode isn't usual for ANY genre.

- - - Updated - - -

SWTOR took waaaaaaaay longer than 2 years.

This was in reference to the idea that we should discount the initial years of Star Citizens development because for whatever reason it didn't count. Years of work wasted and millions squandered but we should only worry about the last three years where they haven't thrown the work away.

In which case, we should only count the last part of the development of every other game so we can attempt to compare like with like

[Demoncrash]

So whats the latest ETA for Squadron 42? and will it be for sale for those who did not back the game's kickstarter?

[Malibutomi]

...and still the debate about "4 years of delay" going on completely dismissing the fact backers voted to go on and increase the scope.

Also it's totally unrelevant to compare the visible ornon visible parts of development times, because most publisher financed games are developed in silence and only shown a year before release...whereas with SC we can see it from the beginning.
Even if someones takes the full 6 years since 2011 that's a year more than SWTOR and again.
One is a story driver numbers based MMO, with no spaceflight, practically no physics, built by a big established studio with big funding ready, made in 5 years

The other is a skill based first person universe, with flyable ships, wast fully explorable planets, very complicated physics, moving celestial bodies, etc., built by a startup who had to buil the studios, teams first, gather the funding.

So SC is a year behind SWTOR while being vastly more complex, and bigger, and the team had much more challenges during development.

Exactly why should we be surprised that a bigger, more complex game takes mire time to develop, if you start with just a dozen if devs, and have to build up the teams on the fly??

[Jastall]

Is this "game" still in development?
Honestly at this point it just feels like it's the biggest, longest running scam in gaming history or something.

I followed the original KS project if I remember correctly.
From what I can tell, since it became such a big success, funding wise, the creator decided to add more and more and more and more content to the original game that the scope has gotten so massive its gonna take so many years to make.



From my point of view, it's like halfway through making vanilla wow saying "hmmmm, we need more" and then working on BC, WotlK, Cata, MoP, WoD and Legion at once.
It's so stupid and silly to add so much on top of everything. Should have focused on the "core" game so people actually had something to play, and then work on all that extra stuff as updates and new patches.

Yep, but the longer it drags on, the more bank they make from these sweet, sweet pledges and grossly overpriced ships. It's the dark side of Kickstarter, feature bloat to appease fans and bring in pledge money doesn't always translate to good or necessary gameplay mechanics.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

So whats the latest ETA for Squadron 42? and will it be for sale for those who did not back the game's kickstarter?

Last I heard, the first mission of S42 might have come out by the end of 2016...

S42 is included as part of the base SC game package, so even if you didn't back you can still get it.

[Gorsameth]

So whats the latest ETA for Squadron 42? and will it be for sale for those who did not back the game's kickstarter?

Info near christmas but my guess is, LONG.
Sq42 would logically need most of the basic systems of SC to function. Since SC is missing them, Sq42 is missing them. Both are in pre-alpha.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Yep, but the longer it drags on, the more bank they make from these sweet, sweet pledges and grossly overpriced ships. It's the dark side of Kickstarter, feature bloat to appease fans and bring in pledge money doesn't always translate to good or necessary gameplay mechanics.

The problem with that argument is that it insinuates CIG can continue dragging this out forever, when clearly that is impossible. The fanbase has been very understanding, but no one has unlimited patience - not even the fandom. They WILL have to eventually move on from the alpha to the beta and eventually pre-release stages within the next few years.

I have no doubt that Chris Roberts has every intention of delivering what he promised to us, but it is undeniable that he has a problem with continuously expanding the scope of the game during pre-production rather than just working on delivering the essentials and adding on from there. Worse is how he says that new updates will be coming out at so and so date... and they have yet to launch a year later. I'm okay with watching YT videos and reading blogs on stuff in development that is far off from launch, but please don't get our hopes up by saying something is coming out. I'd rather they finish a project and be pleasantly surprised to hear at a con or panel that an update is launching in a few weeks or next month.

/endrant

That's my only beef with CIG right now. We knew we were in the long haul when we signed up for this project; it's just that mishandling of PR has sort of frustrated me.

[Jastall]

The problem with that argument is that it insinuates CIG can continue dragging this out forever, when clearly that is impossible. The fanbase has been very understanding, but no one has unlimited patience - not even the fandom. They WILL have to eventually move on from the alpha to the beta and eventually pre-release stages within the next few years.

I have no doubt that Chris Roberts has every intention of delivering what he promised to us, but it is undeniable that he has a problem with continuously expanding the scope of the game during pre-production rather than just working on delivering the essentials and adding on from there. Worse is how he says that new updates will be coming out at so and so date... and they have yet to launch a year later. I'm okay with watching YT videos and reading blogs on stuff in development that is far off from launch, but please don't get our hopes up by saying something is coming out. I'd rather they finish a project and be pleasantly surprised to hear at a con or panel that an update is launching in a few weeks or next month.

/endrant

That's my only beef with CIG right now. We knew we were in the long haul when we signed up for this project; it's just that mishandling of PR has sort of frustrated me.

Oh I'm not saying it will work forever. I'm saying that there's an incentive for them to drag it out because these sources of income will dry up when they release the game, so they probably feel that they can take their time. Thing is, this is a soup that has stewed for a long time already and is nowhere close to being ready. As you say, at some point most of the guests might lose their patience no matter how amazing the cook insists it will taste. I know that if I was a fan I'd have moved on a long time ago, delays are one thing but shoddy and borderline dishonest marketing practices that may or may not be influences by a business model that sells you content before the game is halfway done crosses my personal line.

Then again maybe they don't care too much, because they know that the lambda SC fan doesn't buy these 800$+ ships, it's the handful of whales that do.

[KyrtF]

...and still the debate about "4 years of delay" going on completely dismissing the fact backers voted to go on and increase the scope.

That argument ignores that Chris Roberts wasn't neutral in that, should never have asked the question, got exactly what he wanted and managed to shift the blame for said decision to the backets.

It also ignores that it still doesn't provide an excuse for the lack of progress or the fact that core fundamentals...netcode, engine, server meshing and more...are still missing or incomplete.

Also it's totally unrelevant to compare the visible ornon visible parts of development times, because most publisher financed games are developed in silence and only shown a year before release...whereas with SC we can see it from the beginning.

Which doesn't explain the lack of progress. SC has been in development for six years. F42 has been in existence for three. Companies have written entire game engines, written entire games using that engine and released them in three years.

This argument is nothing more than a way to fob off people who don't know any better. Its true in its way...publishers don't make promises they can't keep...but the conclusion that we can't judge progress is false.

Even if someones takes the full 6 years since 2011 that's a year more than SWTOR and again.
One is a story driver numbers based MMO, with no spaceflight, practically no physics, built by a big established studio with big funding ready, made in 5 years

The other is a skill based first person universe, with flyable ships, wast fully explorable planets, very complicated physics, moving celestial bodies, etc., built by a startup who had to buil the studios, teams first, gather the funding.

And who hit the ground running because they HIRED third party developers instead of going the work in house.

Again...this argument sounds reasonable until you release it took CR only as long as it took him to pick up the phone and sign a contract before he was running a well established software development team. Several of them.

The problem is that he then decided to do an MMO, started changing the engine and decided to surprise all his third party contractors with the news that they were creating content using CryEngine for a game that CR had decided would be using StarEngine.

So SC is a year behind SWTOR while being vastly more complex, and bigger, and the team had much more challenges during development.

Hiring a third party developer team is not a challenge.

But in 5 years....SWTOR came out with content. It came out with game mechanics. It developed significant lore and story. And more
After 6 years of development....SC has not even gotten a game engine.

Exactly why should we be surprised that a bigger, more complex game takes mire time to develop, if you start with just a dozen if devs, and have to build up the teams on the fly??

Well...for one, picking up the phone and hiring established teams to do your development work means that CR grew his team from a "dozen" to...what? 90 and more....with just a few phone calls. He had 48....he nearly doubled his workforce with just a few calls.

This "had to build up a team" excuse is silly...because CIG hired external contractors. It was only when they decided to create Star Engine that that approach became non-viable. You can't hire cobtractors to develop for an engine that doesn't exist. Unfortunately, CR had already hired them and still kept them working.

More...simply because Chris Roberts SAYS something is bigger and more complex doesn't make it so. CIG is planning to make extensive use of procedural generation to produce its system and then handcraft them.

Just like ED and NMS then.

SWTOR didn't use procedural generation. It is handcrafted content. It has a strong story based progression system. It has factional player and PvP...and is vastly more complex than anything CIG has developed or planned as a result. Just in different ways. SC is bigger yes...but also procedurally generated.

SWTOR has a different gameplay style and focus. It is smaller because it is eschews procedural generation. But it is also an MMO that embraces many of the features SC wants to add.

SC ***plans*** a bigger game because procedural generation will allow them to create worlds and stars and planets with no human involvement. Some of those systems will receive an amount of handcrafting...most will not and will be there for exploration.

So....is SC bigger? It should be....but also.inginitely easier to create.
Did CIG have to build team on the fly? No...he hired outside contractors and third party teams.
Is SC more complex? Overall? No. Sure you could pick out individual features that received more attention, but the same is true fir any game.

But the real killer is that after $110 million spent, after six years of development, with nearly 400 people working, never mind all the past contractors and third parties...

CIG still have no finished game engine.
CIG are developing an MMO and still have no netcode
CIG are planning a single merged universe and still have yet to begin work on server meshing.

These are core fundamentsl technologies that will dictate what the rest of the game is capable of. They are the bedrock upon which the game should be created. Without these systens in place, there is no game.

And Star Citizen doesn't have them.

I believe that is a situation unheard of in modern development. Other teams develop these systems first because they have such an impact on the rest of the game. Modern development requires that solid foundation to reduce costs and development timed.

And for SC, they either aren't there or aren't finished. In a game that has been under development for six years. That's unacceptable even if we were just talking about F42s failure to develop those systems in three years. Two years should be sufficient even if it were created from scratch. Other teams have written engines in less time. It isn't even that CIG refining the engine which would be acceptable and expected..there are still huge chunks of that framework which are still not in place...large parts of what is the games foundation which need to be created.

That CIG doesn't have that foundation after six years? That it is forging ahead regardless, risking...inviting...further delays and reworks? This SHOULD be a major cause for concern for backers.

And yet you offer excuses...

[Majestic12]

...and still the debate about "4 years of delay" going on completely dismissing the fact backers voted to go on and increase the scope.

I don't think that's a very good excuse. Would a kid in a candystore say no to more candy?

Chris knew exactly what the outcome would be. His fingers were itching for more features because that's what he really wanted. As the head guy and the man responsible, Chris should be the competent guy that makes the right choice. Not among the kids that among the hype would want more just because.

Personally I voted no on that poll and yes I was in a very small minority. I wanted the original SC(I didn't even back for SQ42). I bet it you had that same poll now, you'd have a diametrically opposed result.

By using the backer poll as an argument you also indirectly say that should SC fail, it's our fault as backers because we voted for more features. Is that fair to you? Why shouldn't we hold Chris accountable?

[1001]

The polls in question for anyone wondering

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen...ls_related_to/

[Malibutomi]

Which doesn't explain the lack of progress. SC has been in development for six years. F42 has been in existence for three. Companies have written entire game engines, written entire games using that engine and released them in three years.

Yeah much smaller games, which are vastly less complicated. That is why it is a stupid comparison.

And who hit the ground running because they HIRED third party developers instead of going the work in house.

Again...this argument sounds reasonable until you release it took CR only as long as it took him to pick up the phone and sign a contract before he was running a well established software development team. Several of them.

Yeah because that doesn't involve setting up his own teams, setting up the workflow, and work together with the contractors...it's just a phone call in your world : "make me 27% of Star Citizen...hangs up"

The problem is that he then decided to do an MMO, started changing the engine and decided to surprise all his third party contractors with the news that they were creating content using CryEngine for a game that CR had decided would be using StarEngine.

Yeah he decided to do an MMO - before kickstarter...because that was the initial plan...they just didn't call it an MMO on purpose because that means WOW clone in many peoples mind. Going from CryEngine to Starengine has nothing to do with the contractor hassles.

But in 5 years....SWTOR came out with content. It came out with game mechanics. It developed significant lore and story. And more
After 6 years of development....SC has not even gotten a game engine.

Oh wow a bigger and more complicated game takes longer to develop...WOW...SWTOR is just a multiplayer Mass Effect. They had the engine, and a huge team to get go from the start. It's game mechanics compared to SC are like Tetris against EVE Online.

Well...for one, picking up the phone and hiring established teams to do your development work means that CR grew his team from a "dozen" to...what? 90 and more....with just a few phone calls. He had 48....he nearly doubled his workforce with just a few calls.

This "had to build up a team" excuse is silly...because CIG hired external contractors. It was only when they decided to create Star Engine that that approach became non-viable. You can't hire cobtractors to develop for an engine that doesn't exist. Unfortunately, CR had already hired them and still kept them working.

This is the thing we talked about, they had to adopt to the changing of funding constantly, that is why they had a much harder time developing than the studios who knew from the start what they working with. CR didn't want to expand the team because he didn't know how much money they will have in the future...when it was clear it's a constant stream of income they started hiring and building up the teams...which is the desired way to software development...do as much as you can in house.

More...simply because Chris Roberts SAYS something is bigger and more complex doesn't make it so. CIG is planning to make extensive use of procedural generation to produce its system and then handcraft them.

Just like ED and NMS then.

Yeah completely different...

SWTOR didn't use procedural generation. It is handcrafted content. It has a strong story based progression system. It has factional player and PvP...and is vastly more complex than anything CIG has developed or planned as a result. Just in different ways. SC is bigger yes...but also procedurally generated.

If you think SWTOR is vastly more complex than SC you are simply delusional. It's a simple hacknslash MMO with laser guns. No physics, no planets, no ships, no multiplayer ships, no EVA. It is stat based...an excel table with nice graphics. It is vastly less complex than building a game engine with millions of square miles of space, moving celestial bodies, many ships all with working interiors, and their own physics grids.

So....is SC bigger? It should be....but also.inginitely easier to create.
Did CIG have to build team on the fly? No...he hired outside contractors and third party teams.
Is SC more complex? Overall? No. Sure you could pick out individual features that received more attention, but the same is true fir any game.

You mean infinitely harder to create? They need to write the tools first to populate a vast game, they needed to crate the engine first because no engine is capable of what they need, they have infinitely more work building up every ship, station and location, so it works well in first person, the physics don't bug out etc.
Saying SWTOR is harder to make than SC is like saying a book is harder to make than a whole cinema with all the building, electronics, sound system etc. Both tells a story, but one is a simple way, the other uses all sort of advanced technical stuff to show a more complex experience.

But the real killer is that after $110 million spent, after six years of development, with nearly 400 people working, never mind all the past contractors and third parties...

CIG still have no finished game engine.
CIG are developing an MMO and still have no netcode
CIG are planning a single merged universe and still have yet to begin work on server meshing.

110 million spent...which is a figure you pulled out from your lower part ofc...trying to sell it again as fact.
Again..it takes more time than other games because it's more complex, and they had a much harder time to start..if it takes longer than they are not the end of the development yet...sooo they don't need to be done with everything.

These are core fundamentsl technologies that will dictate what the rest of the game is capable of. They are the bedrock upon which the game should be created. Without these systens in place, there is no game.

Stating they are not working on them stupid at the first place...assuming they could have be done with those faster is again stupid, because they have most of the same people who wrote Cryengine, it's safe to assume noone could do that better and faster than them.

I believe that is a situation unheard of in modern development. Other teams develop these systems first because they have such an impact on the rest of the game. Modern development requires that solid foundation to reduce costs and development timed.

Yeah CIG could have done that...but it would be stupid to not work on other assets of the game in the meantime. It seems you'd prefer if they would have gone silent after the kickstarter then emerge like 3 years later and say, ok we are done with the engine and netcode, now we will start drawing spaceships. Most probably they wouldn't have made it further than they did this way.

And for SC, they either aren't there or aren't finished. In a game that has been under development for six years. That's unacceptable even if we were just talking about F42s failure to develop those systems in three years. Two years should be sufficient even if it were created from scratch. Other teams have written engines in less time. It isn't even that CIG refining the engine which would be acceptable and expected..there are still huge chunks of that framework which are still not in place...large parts of what is the games foundation which need to be created.

Again the pointless and dumb comparisons...other teams written engines in less time...no they didn't, and if they did it was less than half as complex as StarEngine.

That CIG doesn't have that foundation after six years? That it is forging ahead regardless, risking...inviting...further delays and reworks? This SHOULD be a major cause for concern for backers.

And yet you offer excuses...

I'm not offering excuses...i just can't stand if people pretending they know better what is going on in a company from the outside than the company itself. Also can't stand if people trying to sell their opinions based on those false beliefs as facts.

There are some facts tho:
Noone built a game the way CIG does (constantly changing funding,which they need to adapt)
Noone built a game where backers voted to expand the scope so they needed to adapt to this
Noone built a game this size and scope while needed to build up the studios and teams under the development
Noone built a game with a scope this big

Yes these are the same point i have asked you to bring just one example game which fits them so you can base your opinion on comparing the two...and ofc you failed to bring any...and as we don't have any examples of similar development where devs done better (or worse) than CIG and CR all the statements of "wasted time and money","mismanagement", etc are baseless.

Yes they had bumps, and struggled to adapt to the increased scope and money flow, setting up their workflow, but finally they did and they are on the right track now.

[Odeezee]

That's why ED's long overdue spacelegs are nowhere to be seen. They either do it right like SC but that will take years for them as well...or they do a crap implementation which will be compared to SC and will be booed on.

Actually i'm fairly surprised so many people who bring up ED and NMS in comparison cannot realize SC takes a lot more time because the need to design all the ship and station interiors to be functional, working and match the exterior, implement very complex physics grids (player on a space bike which has it's physics grid - in a ships physics grip - which is in a planet's physics grid, which rotates and orbits). Whereas the other games been done with all those with a few menus and a cockpit view.

too true!

Of course its alright to be disappointed, but running around scream "lulz vaporware" or acting like this doesn't happen with every other major MMO trying to release is comical at best.

Words by CR or whoever can be spoken, Words are just words. At the end of the day, the game takes as long as it takes in the end. Thats all that matters.

this! crowd-funding was meant to afford CIG the time to develop the game at their schedule and not some publishers (or fans) it was literally one of the main reasons for it, but people want to take every opportunity to reduce the amount of time CIG have to develop so we can have another NMS or ME: A? no thank-you! as long as CIG are making tangible progress, updating us and allowing us to test and take in our feedback, i am more than happy to wait, even though i would prefer if the game was already out.

...and still the debate about "4 years of delay" going on completely dismissing the fact backers voted to go on and increase the scope.

Also it's totally unrelevant to compare the visible ornon visible parts of development times, because most publisher financed games are developed in silence and only shown a year before release...whereas with SC we can see it from the beginning.
Even if someones takes the full 6 years since 2011 that's a year more than SWTOR and again.
One is a story driver numbers based MMO, with no spaceflight, practically no physics, built by a big established studio with big funding ready, made in 5 years

The other is a skill based first person universe, with flyable ships, wast fully explorable planets, very complicated physics, moving celestial bodies, etc., built by a startup who had to buil the studios, teams first, gather the funding.

So SC is a year behind SWTOR while being vastly more complex, and bigger, and the team had much more challenges during development.

Exactly why should we be surprised that a bigger, more complex game takes mire time to develop, if you start with just a dozen if devs, and have to build up the teams on the fly??

it's as though some people no longer wish to be intellectually honest and just think that your feelings about something count as some form of fact in lieu of evidence. with arguments like anyone could have made the space game CIG are making and then proceed to give examples of games like E: D which, while being a space game, is sorely lacking in many features already in Star Citizen for as people will tout "an already completed and fully functioning game", while glossing over the fact that even according to FDev, they want to add many of the features in Star Citizen, so E: D is neither completed nor fully functioning but whatever, i guess we are living in a fact-free world now. /sigh.

i am really looking forward to the Citizencon panels and presentation this Friday and i am happy for the attendees who get to try out some Alpha 3.0 goodness there too.