[Megathread] Star Citizen

[CogsNCocks]

Of course they're a minority but that doesn't stop them accounting for the majority of the funding and that is bound to influence CIG's decisions, it's evident from the price range of ships that currently exist.

I don't care if the whales don't want my criticism, it doesn't mean I'm not allowed to speak it.

Of course you can speak it, but that doesn't stop your speak from being a bunch of uninformed nonsense.

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I assume one thing and one thing only; they want to see the game finished and released. What I'm questioning is the legitimacy of the claim that spending more money is driving anyone closer to that goal - CIG seems very comfortable just creating cheap 3D art (in comparison) for mostly promotional videos and asking abhorent sums of money for ... nothing of concrete value.

I'm exaggerating for the sake of the point, of course. I don't think they are throttling development to milk more money on purpose. But they aren't exactly trying hard either, 3.0 specifically proved that point.

You must be joking, CIG are sitting on the most advanced tech in the gaming industry, not bad for not trying hard. There's already 50+ flyable ships in the game, so there's some concrete value for you right there. The JPEG jokes are idiotic and out of touch. CIG have 475 employees and are expanding the team even further, you need money for that to happen, so no raising more funds is not throttling development.

[Krigaren]

I assume one thing and one thing only; they want to see the game finished and released. What I'm questioning is the legitimacy of the claim that spending more money is driving anyone closer to that goal - CIG seems very comfortable just creating cheap 3D art (in comparison) for mostly promotional videos and asking abhorent sums of money for ... nothing of concrete value.

I'm exaggerating for the sake of the point, of course. I don't think they are throttling development to milk more money on purpose. But they aren't exactly trying hard either, 3.0 specifically proved that point.

As someone who was super hype about the game back when it had ground-breakingly epic graphics and promised to be the next generation of Wing Commander back in 2011, I've long ago lost my luster once they started selling 3D renderings of ships for $2,000 or more without a single bit of actual playable data. This, after they had the single most successful crowd funding campaign of all time, easily raking in AAA game title sums of money already.

Then the feature creep started, and I gotta tell you, after 7+ years of broken promises and buggy, nigh unplayable test environments, I have no doubt the game will come out, but have significant doubts about the quality of the finished product. I've been burned by Chris Roberts before and bought into this same hype when Freelancer came out, and he Molyneux'ed us.

My prediction? We'll get Squadron 42 by 2020, and then some shell of Star Citizen a few years after that, which will never live up to all the promises due to "technical issues".

Meanwhile, Elite Dangerous will be there the entire time, providing all the features Star Citizen promises, but in a (by that time) 5+ year old game that managed to launch within 2 years of it's Kickstarter.

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There's already 50+ flyable ships in the game, so there's some concrete value for you right there. The JPEG jokes are idiotic and out of touch. CIG have 475 employees and are expanding the team even further, you need money for that to happen, so no raising more funds is not throttling development.

Why?

Why did they spend time, money and valuable resources developing 50+ ships, the vast majority of which were sold before they were little more than concept renderings and promises. There's only one obvious answer: Money. They wanted more money.

This game should be finished by now. It should have released and had operating servers for at least a year by now. There's no excuse for the time and effort being used to develop an unfathomable fleet of ships when the game has been in development for 7 years and is no where near complete.

Could you imagine WoW delaying it's release for 7 years due to feature creep and devoting their time to developing 50+ different races and all of their cosmetics? That's insane, and it's extremely telling how completely messed up CIG's priorities are. But as long as they're still pulling in hundreds of thousands - if not millions - from their whales over all that time, where's their incentive to produce a finished product? They have infinite time and evidently infinite funding, and that is NOT a good omen for this game.

[nocturnus]

There's nothing stagnating about Star Citizen's development Mr know nothing.

This made me laugh a bit

There's already 50+ flyable ships in the game, so there's some concrete value for you right there.

Ah, well in that case who needs a game! There are "already 50+ flyable ships guys"! There's no actual game yet, but that doesn't matter, right?

As long as there are shiny new ships to lure in stupid people.

[CogsNCocks]

This made me laugh a bit

That's because you're a fool.

Ah, well in that case who needs a game! There are "already 50+ flyable ships guys"! There's no actual game yet, but that doesn't matter, right?

As long as there are shiny new ships to lure in stupid people.

Have you seen the roadmap for this year? Plenty of gameplay incoming! Lets see how that pans out before spewing your uninformed bile all over the place. The wide variety of roles for different ship goes to the very heart of what the gameplay is, so the ships are just kind of necessary...

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Why?

Why did they spend time, money and valuable resources developing 50+ ships, the vast majority of which were sold before they were little more than concept renderings and promises. There's only one obvious answer: Money. They wanted more money.

This game should be finished by now. It should have released and had operating servers for at least a year by now. There's no excuse for the time and effort being used to develop an unfathomable fleet of ships when the game has been in development for 7 years and is no where near complete.

Could you imagine WoW delaying it's release for 7 years due to feature creep and devoting their time to developing 50+ different races and all of their cosmetics? That's insane, and it's extremely telling how completely messed up CIG's priorities are. But as long as they're still pulling in hundreds of thousands - if not millions - from their whales over all that time, where's their incentive to produce a finished product? They have infinite time and evidently infinite funding, and that is NOT a good omen for this game.

To be fair a few of those ships are just variations of a base model.

Of course they wanted money, the game doesn't have a publisher, it's funded by the backers. No money, no game.

You're out of your depth if you think the game should be finished by now. It's only been in proper development for five years not seven. It's not just a game that's being developed, but also the cutting edge tech driving the game as well.

WoW is like space invaders compared to Star Citizen, your comparision is laughable, maybe learn something about game development and then return to this thread a few years. Although, your IQ is probably a little low for it so probably don't bother wasting your time and just stick to your braindead WoW rotations.

Oh and Elite Dangerous can do barely anything that Star Citizen can. That boring basic game gave me PTSD from all the loading screens and the grinding.

[Cracked]

You must be joking, CIG are sitting on the most advanced tech in the gaming industry, not bad for not trying hard. There's already 50+ flyable ships in the game, so there's some concrete value for you right there. The JPEG jokes are idiotic and out of touch. CIG have 475 employees and are expanding the team even further, you need money for that to happen, so no raising more funds is not throttling development.

I'm not going to argue on things that neither you nor I can objectively prove. CIG certainly made significant advancements compared to stock Lumberyard, but in terms of raw graphics capabilities, stock CryEngine or Frostbite are ahead just by looking at the products created using them. Lumberyard hardfork happened before some major pipeline changes were introduced and Amazon was never able to merge those.

Nevertheless, what I was talking about is that systems development is usually done pretty fast, but it's the content creation that takes time. In case of Star Citizen, it seems like they can't even land on what systems the game should be built upon, so content creation is *impossible*, which is the reason they keep coming up with the same things over and over (ships). Like.. they needed 2-3 ships to actually implement and refine systems which could be further extended, instead of starting with 50 ships for which they need to design systems. That's just not how game development is done, they are doing it the other way around. Which is not to say that it can't work sometimes, but not on this scale. And the feature creep only compounds to this problem.

The number of employees doesn't mean a thing. Projects that had over 2000 people working on them for years have failed before and will fail in the future. "Too big to fail" certainly isn't a thing that applies to gaming industry. I actually admire the decision to instead focus on getting *something* done with Squadron 42, just like Blizzard decided to do with Titan / Overwatch. But that doesn't mean I don't see it as false advertising, it's misallocating the resources you were given for a specific purpose.

Btw, out of those 475 people, how many do you think are working to get Squadron 42 released so CIG can get a reliable source of funding, and how many are working on SC? It doesn't take a genius to figure out. The roadmap might seem ambitious to a n00b, but truthfully isn't. Taking 6 months to implement object container streaming? It's not cutting edge tech, WoW has been using a version of it since 2008, a certain open source engine comes with level streaming out of the box and heck, indie studios have been able to implement it in Unity, which is really inflexible in this regard.

[Majestic12]

Are you still at it you silly ol'bugger? lol

Aye, I'm going to follow Star Citizen until the very end. Leaving the project for a while gives a fresh view om things as well, and after seeing Kingdom Come, I am only further convinced of the mismanagement that has occured with Star Citizen as a project.

Nice to see you again.

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I'm exaggerating for the sake of the point, of course. I don't think they are throttling development to milk more money on purpose. But they aren't exactly trying hard either, 3.0 specifically proved that point.

This describes the situation really well, and I agree with you.

Since CIG said they'd stop ship sales once the game releases, and ship sales being the bulk of their income, why would they ever push for the release of the game?

They haven't, and they won't in the future either. They have zero economic incentive to try to break this cycle.

This is being purely objective by the way, the claim here being one which I doubt even the most hardcore backers would not agree with.

[CogsNCocks]

I'm not going to argue on things that neither you nor I can objectively prove. CIG certainly made significant advancements compared to stock Lumberyard, but in terms of raw graphics capabilities, stock CryEngine or Frostbite are ahead just by looking at the products created using them. Lumberyard hardfork happened before some major pipeline changes were introduced and Amazon was never able to merge those.

Stock Lumberyard and stock Cryengine are exactly the same thing except for different licences and Lumberyard has tools for its cloud server tech. Frostbite is limited to very small environments, and isn't really that great. They struggled to make Mass Effect Andromeda in Frostbite and look how that turned out lol. Not sure why you would bring Frostbite into this, it looks decent enough, but it can only do small scale stuff.

Nevertheless, what I was talking about is that systems development is usually done pretty fast, but it's the content creation that takes time. In case of Star Citizen, it seems like they can't even land on what systems the game should be built upon, so content creation is *impossible*, which is the reason they keep coming up with the same things over and over (ships). Like.. they needed 2-3 ships to actually implement and refine systems which could be further extended, instead of starting with 50 ships for which they need to design systems. That's just not how game development is done, they are doing it the other way around. Which is not to say that it can't work sometimes, but not on this scale. And the feature creep only compounds to this problem.

None of this has any basis in reality, why don't you watch some of their Around the Verse series so you can understand better why it's taking time. They have a dedicated team who build ships. The entire core gameplay model is based around having lots of ships with lots of different roles to play. Maybe you don't understand the point of the game.

The number of employees doesn't mean a thing. Projects that had over 2000 people working on them for years have failed before and will fail in the future. "Too big to fail" certainly isn't a thing that applies to gaming industry. I actually admire the decision to instead focus on getting *something* done with Squadron 42, just like Blizzard decided to do with Titan / Overwatch. But that doesn't mean I don't see it as false advertising, it's misallocating the resources you were given for a specific purpose.

That's true, projects with a lot of employees can still fail, but they still need a lot of manpower to make the game anyway. Those big capital ships have more work gone into them than some entire AAA games and are very labour intensive to build.

Btw, out of those 475 people, how many do you think are working to get Squadron 42 released so CIG can get a reliable source of funding, and how many are working on SC? It doesn't take a genius to figure out. The roadmap might seem ambitious to a n00b, but truthfully isn't. Taking 6 months to implement object container streaming? It's not cutting edge tech, WoW has been using a version of it since 2008, a certain open source engine comes with level streaming out of the box and heck, indie studios have been able to implement it in Unity, which is really inflexible in this regard.

Most of the assests between SQ42 and SC are shared, I would think there only a minority of developers working only on SQ42 for that reason. Your comment about object container streaming is ignorant as it comes. It's obvious you have no software engineering experience. There isn't a one size fits all object container streaming solution that is the same for all games. The implementation and complexity of the solution is going to vary from engine to engine and project to project. Star Citizen has to deal with planets covered in cities and massive captial ships and space stations with intricate interiors that are in motion with huge differences in relative speeds which makes everything vastly more complicated compared to a basic static low poly environment like WoW. It's like comparing the static precaculated lighting model used in the original Doom compared to the dynamic physical material rendering models of today and saying that they are the same because it's just lighting lol.

[Cracked]

Stock Lumberyard and stock Cryengine are exactly the same thing except for different licences and Lumberyard has tools for its cloud server tech. Frostbite is limited to very small environments, and isn't really that great. They struggled to make Mass Effect Andromeda in Frostbite and look how that turned out lol. Not sure why you would bring Frostbite into this, it looks decent enough, but it can only do small scale stuff.

No, Amazon bought the rights to use CryEngine codebase a couple of years ago. Since then, they went separate routes, Lumberyard team is trying to rework almost every system implemented by the engine, so I'm not even sure why they bought the rights in the first place. Maybe because it was a really solid starting point to get a product out there asap. CryEngine focus more on improving and pushing state of the art in rendering. Using Lumberyard also locks you into using Amazon cloud services for servers, unless you want to run your own center. I don't think that will be a big problem for SC, but it may turn out to be a bitter pill when the game actually releases to masses.

Most of the assests between SQ42 and SC are shared, I would think there only a minority of developers working only on SQ42 for that reason. Your comment about object container streaming is ignorant as it comes. It's obvious you have no software engineering experience. There isn't a one size fits all object container streaming solution that is the same for all games. The implementation and complexity of the solution is going to vary from engine to engine and project to project. Star Citizen has to deal with planets covered in cities and massive captial ships and space stations with intricate interiors that are in motion with huge differences in relative speeds which makes everything vastly more complicated compared to a basic static low poly environment like WoW. It's like comparing the static precaculated lighting model used in the original Doom compared to the dynamic physical material rendering models of today and saying that they are the same because it's just lighting lol.

You attack me, but you show your own lack of understanding quite clearly. Streaming objects into the scene has little to do with polycount and in fact, the same basic solution can be applied to any game in need of such tool. Simpler games do it by hand-specifying when to load/unload which "containers", but automated solutions are quite commonplace. In fact, many, many games implement the system as an extension to existing LoD systems, which works amazingly especially if the user has SSD. I will acknowledge that every game has its own set of requirements, but naming it as a main feature of a 6 months iteration cycle is dumb. For the record, I've worked in game development for some years now.

And btw assets creation is really not what requires the most staff or time in the development cycle of a game.

[Post]

My prediction? We'll get Squadron 42 by 2020, and then some shell of Star Citizen a few years after that, which will never live up to all the promises due to "technical issues".

This is exactly what's going to happen. It's incredible that after this long, after seeing so many other projects and the zealots defending them only to have them fail horribly, that people don't learn. This CogsNCocks guy has no idea that he's just like all those other people who defended bad games with their lives and made themselves look really bad while doing so.

[CogsNCocks]

No, Amazon bought the rights to use CryEngine codebase a couple of years ago. Since then, they went separate routes, Lumberyard team is trying to rework almost every system implemented by the engine, so I'm not even sure why they bought the rights in the first place. Maybe because it was a really solid starting point to get a product out there asap. CryEngine focus more on improving and pushing state of the art in rendering. Using Lumberyard also locks you into using Amazon cloud services for servers, unless you want to run your own center. I don't think that will be a big problem for SC, but it may turn out to be a bitter pill when the game actually releases to masses.

Yes, but CIG swapped over before any significant rework took place.

You attack me, but you show your own lack of understanding quite clearly. Streaming objects into the scene has little to do with polycount and in fact, the same basic solution can be applied to any game in need of such tool. Simpler games do it by hand-specifying when to load/unload which "containers", but automated solutions are quite commonplace. In fact, many, many games implement the system as an extension to existing LoD systems, which works amazingly especially if the user has SSD. I will acknowledge that every game has its own set of requirements, but naming it as a main feature of a 6 months iteration cycle is dumb. For the record, I've worked in game development for some years now.

There's still more to the SC object container streaming than what you're saying, and it is interdependent on other features like bind culling that are still being developed in tandem. Anyway, the reason it's listed as a main feature is because once it's implemented that will be a major milestone for when huge amounts of content can be added into the game. The backers keep asking when more content like planets, systems and capital ships be added. CIG says that will happen once object container streaming is complete, so consequently they added object container streaming to the roadmap because the community asked for it to be there. Of course, you would know that since you're an expert on all things Star Citizen as you've shown me in your previous posts

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This is exactly what's going to happen. It's incredible that after this long, after seeing so many other projects and the zealots defending them only to have them fail horribly, that people don't learn. This CogsNCocks guy has no idea that he's just like all those other people who defended bad games with their lives and made themselves look really bad while doing so.

This Post guy has no idea that he's just like all those other people who trashed promising ambitous games with their lives and made themselves look really bad while doing so. It hasn't even been that long by the way, especially considering the scope of the project and that it's a new IP. Good grief the average gamer really does have a warped idea about how long games take to make.

[Rennadrel]

As someone who was super hype about the game back when it had ground-breakingly epic graphics and promised to be the next generation of Wing Commander back in 2011, I've long ago lost my luster once they started selling 3D renderings of ships for $2,000 or more without a single bit of actual playable data. This, after they had the single most successful crowd funding campaign of all time, easily raking in AAA game title sums of money already.

Then the feature creep started, and I gotta tell you, after 7+ years of broken promises and buggy, nigh unplayable test environments, I have no doubt the game will come out, but have significant doubts about the quality of the finished product. I've been burned by Chris Roberts before and bought into this same hype when Freelancer came out, and he Molyneux'ed us.

My prediction? We'll get Squadron 42 by 2020, and then some shell of Star Citizen a few years after that, which will never live up to all the promises due to "technical issues".

Meanwhile, Elite Dangerous will be there the entire time, providing all the features Star Citizen promises, but in a (by that time) 5+ year old game that managed to launch within 2 years of it's Kickstarter.

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Why?

Why did they spend time, money and valuable resources developing 50+ ships, the vast majority of which were sold before they were little more than concept renderings and promises. There's only one obvious answer: Money. They wanted more money.

This game should be finished by now. It should have released and had operating servers for at least a year by now. There's no excuse for the time and effort being used to develop an unfathomable fleet of ships when the game has been in development for 7 years and is no where near complete.

Could you imagine WoW delaying it's release for 7 years due to feature creep and devoting their time to developing 50+ different races and all of their cosmetics? That's insane, and it's extremely telling how completely messed up CIG's priorities are. But as long as they're still pulling in hundreds of thousands - if not millions - from their whales over all that time, where's their incentive to produce a finished product? They have infinite time and evidently infinite funding, and that is NOT a good omen for this game.

Art teams need something to do. The team that models ships, is only doing ship models. The teams that do environment design are not the same people who do ships.

[1001]

Oh and Elite Dangerous can do barely anything that Star Citizen can. That boring basic game gave me PTSD from all the loading screens and the grinding.

Except, you know, have an actual game with more than 3 planets and missions and mining and salvaging and combat and trading and exploration and aliens and progression and persistence... yeah fuck that wannabe game that runs at more than 15 fps...

[nocturnus]

That's because you're a fool.

Said the clown talking about stuff he doesn't understand. Oh my

Have you seen the roadmap for this year? Plenty of gameplay incoming! Lets see how that pans out before spewing your uninformed bile all over the place. The wide variety of roles for different ship goes to the very heart of what the gameplay is, so the ships are just kind of necessary...

You know, if your naivety keeps you happy, who am I to break your bubble? You're such a brainwashed zealot you might as well start your own church.

Oh and Elite Dangerous can do barely anything that Star Citizen can. That boring basic game gave me PTSD from all the loading screens and the grinding.

You're hilarious buddy, keep em coming!

[CogsNCocks]

Said the clown talking about stuff he doesn't understand. Oh my

Excuse me, I do the insulting around here. What don't I understand exactly? I understand that object container streaming is different for a game where everything in the environment is in constant motion and asset heavy objects like capital ships can be required to load on a client in an instant while juggling hierarchies of physics grinds, compared to a static world like WoW where everything has fixed coordinates and the world can be neatly compartmentalized into areas that are stitched together and be loaded into and out of memory based on the players position.

You know, if your naivety keeps you happy, who am I to break your bubble? You're such a brainwashed zealot you might as well start your own church.

Naivety? About what? Two ambitious games being developed openly gets unfairly trashed by idiots like you who think games just magically appear out of nothing in perfect form otherwise there must be something wrong with developers and supporters of the project

You're hilarious buddy, keep em coming!

And you're just another larper who thinks that playing games makes him an expert on development.

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Except, you know, have an actual game with more than 3 planets and missions and mining and salvaging and combat and trading and exploration and aliens and progression and persistence... yeah fuck that wannabe game that runs at more than 15 fps...

And yet there's still more fun to be had in Star Citizen in its current state than boring Elite Dangerous despite its back of the box feature list. Star Citizen 3.0 runs at 30 - 40 fps for me so now you're just lying about that as well.

[1001]

And yet there's still more fun to be had in Star Citizen in its current state than boring Elite Dangerous despite its back of the box feature list. Star Citizen 3.0 runs at 30 - 40 fps for me so now you're just lying about that as well.

Really? Haha, that's a good one. Dude, you've got a brown streak on your nose.

If 3.0 is so feature packed why do a large number of the subreddit regret telling people to buy in prep for 3.0 and most admit to playing other games as there is just nothing to do right now? The sub is made up of the more hardcore backers so if anyone would be playing it's them... https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen...e_to_wait_for/

I especially like how because you claim to be getting good fps it must mean everyone is getting good fps and therefore I'm lying, and yet

16 fps https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen...latest_driver/
20 fps https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen...t_with_an_ssd/
2 fps https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen...low_fps_fixed/
15 fps https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen...ay_but_i_quit/
etc

There's one person here who wants to play fast with the truth and it's clearly not me.

[CogsNCocks]

Really? Haha, that's a good one. Dude, you've got a brown streak on your nose.

If 3.0 is so feature packed why do a large number of the subreddit regret telling people to buy in prep for 3.0 and most admit to playing other games as there is just nothing to do right now? The sub is made up of the more hardcore backers so if anyone would be playing it's them... https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen...e_to_wait_for/

I'm expressing my dislike for Elite Dangerous more than anything here. A game where you spend 90% of your time in supercruise watching a number countdown.

Star Citizen is a game in development so obviously it isn't appropriate for a lot of people at this stage as you have correctly pointed out, so what? I would argue that Star Citizen already has far more features than Elite Dangerous built into the core experience(space legs, seamless travel, npc's with AI etc...). Elite Dangerous features are mostly just a lot of menu options and abstract progression systems bolted onto a fairly simplistic core experience. You're falling into the trap where you judge the development progress of a game based on how much stuff there is to do for the player which shows you have no idea what you're talking about.

I especially like how because you claim to be getting good fps it must mean everyone is getting good fps and therefore I'm lying, and yet

16 fps https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen...latest_driver/
20 fps https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen...t_with_an_ssd/
2 fps https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen...low_fps_fixed/
15 fps https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen...ay_but_i_quit/
etc

I don't deny some are having severe performance problems but that isn't my experience with the game at the moment. The severe performance issues is not a universal thing. Besides CIG have extensively outlined the reasons why these issues exist and the solutions they have in the pipeline to deal with them, so it's a bit silly to keep rattling on about it as a way to trash the game. Come back when the solutions have been implemented into the game and then make your judgements. Better yet, watch this and learn something instead of being disingenuous all the time.

[nocturnus]

unfairly trashed by idiots like you

Ah, there it is, the ad hominem. It didn't take you long, as expected.

You're the perfect example of a zealot that has dropped all objectivity. You know, I pitied people who'd wasted money on this mockery. But you, you seem to be emotionally invested, which is even worse.

Anyway, at least there's one person enjoying the "game" at amazing frame rates right now. Good for you!

[CogsNCocks]

Ah, there it is, the ad hominem.

As expected, it didn't take you long.

I told you that I'm the one who does the insulting around here, what more is there to understand? If you want to be a disingenuous strawman abusing twit, then prepare for a barrage of ad homniems just as you deserve.

[nocturnus]

I told you that I'm the one who does the insulting around here, what more is there to understand? If you want to be a disingenuous strawman abusing twit, then prepare for a barrage of ad homniems just as you deserve.

I'm fine with that, since all it does is strengthen my point; you're an insecure individual, with an apparent suitcase of suppressed feelings. You're easily drawn out and get very emotional when being set straight. This results in primal behaviour motivated by anger rather than ratio. Ergo, you insult.

My advice? Go see someone about it.

[CogsNCocks]

I'm fine with that, since all it does is strengthen my point; you're an insecure individual, with an apparent suitcase of suppressed feelings. You're easily drawn out and get very emotional when being set straight. This results in primal behaviour motivated by anger rather than ratio. Ergo, you insult.

My advice? Go see someone about it.

I called you an idiot and a fool. Two categories that fit you perfectly, and decided upon after extensive objective analysis. Nothing emotional going on here bucko.