[Megathread] Star Citizen

[kenn9530]

So here is the thing. Would it not be much more easy to release a clear statement stating the addition of features will result in a delay, thus the 2014 date no longer applies. Remove all doubt, remove all ambiguity, do not rely on people to come up with their own understanding of events. That would be a logical way to have handled the situation, to get ahead of it as it were.



Which is where experience and planning comes to the fore.
At the beginning all of those involved had a history of game development. Thus your average joe puts his/her trust in those experienced people when they say this never done before game is something we can do and it will be done in three to four years.

Its fairly obvious to make a larger games its gonna take more time, no matter how much money they got even the first version wouldnt be made any faster since they still had to build a team up from scratch.

No amount of planning or experience can account for things you dont have or dont know you even need to make the game work, making this game an MMO needed so much more things than just a normal game.

Project management is when you set a deadline (based on the expert opinion of the developers and feature scope and financial state) and a contingency plan to extend it with another deadline (things happen). And then if you can't make the game by that last deadline - you scrap it and do some retrospection, preferably firing the responsible for the fuck up.

That's project management.

Oh, there's nothing new in SC that hasn't been done or tried before.

Like even SWG had more going for it in terms of features. You could run around on the planet surface, farm resources, build your own spaceship (or buy it from other players) fly into space and PVP, oh and they had big ships too and you could take your friends/guildmates on the same ship and fly them around, iirc you could also let them mount turrets if your ship had those - like a Corellian Transport. And it was a PROPPER MMO. They didn't have all the features from the get-go, no, they expanded. The space part was an expansion.

That is project management.



There is no game. There's no freelancer in it, there's no Wing Commander in it, there's no tactical shooter in it - whatever they are copying.

Deadlines are not a suitable term for a game in development, deadlines is a term for something that is not meant to be changed, thats an impossible fact in any game development that you cant always meet expectations.

The tech to make star citizen work had to be built from nothing, most other games just improve what they already have.

No amount of perfect project management would make star citizen develop much faster, it is being made with far less staff than any game would normally have, managing several hundred staff is a challenge in itself.

And your lying that there is no game, you can do pretty much everything that you could do in freelancer, wing commander and a basic version of a fps shooter with a more advanced version coming soon.

[Thestrawman]

Its fairly obvious to make a larger games its gonna take more time, no matter how much money they got even the first version wouldnt be made any faster since they still had to build a team up from scratch.

No amount of planning or experience can account for things you dont have or dont know you even need to make the game work, making this game an MMO needed so much more things than just a normal game.



Deadlines are not a suitable term for a game in development, deadlines is a term for something that is not meant to be changed, thats an impossible fact in any game development that you cant always meet expectations.

The tech to make star citizen work had to be built from nothing, most other games just improve what they already have.

No amount of perfect project management would make star citizen develop much faster, it is being made with far less staff than any game would normally have, managing several hundred staff is a challenge in itself.

And your lying that there is no game, you can do pretty much everything that you could do in freelancer, wing commander and a basic version of a fps shooter with a more advanced version coming soon.

Six years and not even into alpha would be pretty for any development team though. MMO or not.

[kenn9530]

Six years and not even into alpha would be pretty for any development team though. MMO or not.

As the technology evolves the games take longer to make, RDR2 took 6 years to make and is just a western version of GTA5, ESO took 7 years to develop, and both of those companies were fully staffed from the start, it took half the development time for SC to build up a company to a decent level, if you want to play the game you just have to suck it up and wait, if i was making my own game i would make everyone wait as long as it took for it to be ready.

[Majestic12]

I guess you didn't knew what you were signing up for when you pledged a video-game kickstarter. I think it would be easier if you a bit of the responsibility for that decision instead of blaming it on others.

Chris Roberts is doing exactly what he said he would do. Make the game he always wanted to do, It's dream game, "not any old game".

That there's more than enough people supporting him all these years, watching how the company keeps growing and the amalgamation of features present in the game and making Star Citizen stand out and still being unrivalled hinders whatever issue vocal minority will complain about.

After all no game will be for everyone just like no movie, music, painting will be for everyone and that's ok, just move on and don't hold grudges about the ones who like things you don't like.

You're really stretching it with the victim-blaming. Let's pretend that the game we signed up for is anything like what we have today. CIG changed so many things with the game over the years that make it a vastly different game. Survival mechanics for example, was never going to be a big thing. Now they're mandatory and drastically impactful on the game experience.

Literal quote: "Plan your meals." <- In a game, rofl. No thanks.

For the record, I checked my Kickstarter and Fig account. To this date, I've backed 9 gaming projects over the years. Guess what? Star Citizen is the only one I hate with a passion.

I want this project to burn. And it will. Everything but the funding has been a total failure.

Meanwhile, your behaviour is easily explained: Sunk cost fallacy.

I'm pretty sure once the game bombs, you'll come back and say something like "it's okay, I got my money's worth for all the fun I had!". Or you'll disappear like most SC defenders have from this thread.

Meanwhile I can say that if SQ42 gets out, I will play it. Same for Star Citizen. Then I'll laugh, because the game will be nothing like anyone imagined because that game is, and forever will be, a dream. When it came to coding, planning and developing, everything collapsed.

If I asked you back in 2015 if you thought there's be no release in 2020 you would've laughed. Yet, here we are. Derek Smart was right.

[Thestrawman]

As the technology evolves the games take longer to make, RDR2 took 6 years to make and is just a western version of GTA5, ESO took 7 years to develop, and both of those companies were fully staffed from the start, it took half the development time for SC to build up a company to a decent level, if you want to play the game you just have to suck it up and wait, if i was making my own game i would make everyone wait as long as it took for it to be ready.

Cool. Doesn't change the fact that after 6 years the game doesn't even have the background systems in place. How long are you willing to wait?

[MrAnderson]

You're really stretching it with the victim-blaming. Let's pretend that the game we signed up for is anything like what we have today. CIG changed so many things with the game over the years that make it a vastly different game. Survival mechanics for example, was never going to be a big thing. Now they're mandatory and drastically impactful on the game experience.

Literal quote: "Plan your meals." <- In a game, rofl. No thanks.

For the record, I checked my Kickstarter and Fig account. To this date, I've backed 9 gaming projects over the years. Guess what? Star Citizen is the only one I hate with a passion.

I want this project to burn. And it will. Everything but the funding has been a total failure.

Meanwhile, your behaviour is easily explained: Sunk cost fallacy.

I'm pretty sure once the game bombs, you'll come back and say something like "it's okay, I got my money's worth for all the fun I had!". Or you'll disappear like most SC defenders have from this thread.

Meanwhile I can say that if SQ42 gets out, I will play it. Same for Star Citizen. Then I'll laugh, because the game will be nothing like anyone imagined because that game is, and forever will be, a dream. When it came to coding, planning and developing, everything collapsed.

If I asked you back in 2015 if you thought there's be no release in 2020 you would've laughed. Yet, here we are. Derek Smart was right.

It's your fault if you think you signed up for anything besides helping someone bring their idea into fruition. Kickstart is not a pre-order and Game development is not linear and crying about it changing along the way is completely moronic. Wanting it to fail because it's not like you want is petty and childish. Saying it will burn for years on end wont make it true and it's just sad holding such pathetic grudge over a video-game. 90 Days Top all over. No wonder you guys get frustrated by seeing the game develop and grow against all your wildest dreams.

[Aliven]

Meanwhile, your behaviour is easily explained: Sunk cost fallacy.

I believe he is a an account created to promote SC on this site and defend it. But propably not working for CIG.

Sunk cost would propably not try to attack other people.

[Elim Garak]

As the technology evolves the games take

...less time to make. There, fixed for logic.
But if you want to develop several games as one the development time increases exponentially. 2 in 1 take x4 time to make., 3 in 1 = x9, unless you increase the number of employees, but there's a limit beyond which adding more people won't increase the development speed and in fact (due to corporate bureaucracy and lowered average expertise level because bell curves - leading to more bugs and mistakes) will hinder it.

And this is not a secret that only I know. Chris should be quite aware of it.

[Majestic12]

I believe he is a an account created to promote SC on this site and defend it. But propably not working for CIG.

Sunk cost would propably not try to attack other people.

Yeah, he made the account to shill for this game. It's easy to spot when you go into his post history, first thing you see is the throwaway one-liner posts to get the post count up to the required level to participate here. Then he's been here since. I wonder why MrAnderson is scared to show his real account.

The one thing I miss the most with Star Citizen is Derek Smart. He used to stream Citizencon and boy, that was fun. Prime entertainment.

This year we're not even getting a digital citizencon because CIG jumped on the opportunity to cancel the entire thing due to Corona. In other words, they didn't move it to digital and at least showed something, they flat out cancelled the event entirely.

Hint: They have nothing to show, as recent roadmap have indicated.

[MrAnderson]

I believe he is a an account created to promote SC on this site and defend it. But propably not working for CIG.

Sunk cost would propably not try to attack other people.

I've played wow for years and followed this forum since eve (like I believe most here have). I'm a backer of Star Citizen since 2013, have spent around 200$ in it because I enjoy the game and following it's progress and help in development by reporting bugs and giving feedback to the dev's, that's why I'm also an original Evocati tester. So I'm sorry If I have the extra knowledge and motivation to post about Star Citizen in the Star Citizen thread. I'm culprit of liking the game, and no I don't give a F*** if you or anyone else likes it, what I give a F* is haters shitting on it because of personal grudges or petty reasons, twisting words out of context or going as low as lying to attack it.

You can make up whatever theories and try to discredit me but you won't ever be able to silence me so you can have free reign to shit on this game with lies and personal grudges. I'll be right here posting about the game this thread is about and if I have to call out the bullshit and expose hypocrites and liars I'll do it without blinking. I'm not here promoting anything, It's irrelevant if people who dislike the game and don't want to play it. Actually it's for the best that they stay away from Star Citizen altogether. Doesn't mean I won't call out haters and cynics for their bullshit lies or childish "hope it burns" rhetoric.

...less time to make. There, fixed for logic.
But if you want to develop several games as one the development time increases exponentially. 2 in 1 take x4 time to make., 3 in 1 = x9, unless you increase the number of employees, but there's a limit beyond which adding more people won't increase the development speed and in fact (due to corporate bureaucracy and lowered average expertise level because bell curves - leading to more bugs and mistakes) will hinder it.

And this is not a secret that only I know. Chris should be quite aware of it.

Actually no and it's factually wrong. AAA games made in the 90's took considerably less time to make as they were considerably less complex than what we have now.

Yeah, he made the account to shill for this game. It's easy to spot when you go into his post history, first thing you see is the throwaway one-liner posts to get the post count up to the required level to participate here. Then he's been here since. I wonder why MrAnderson is scared to show his real account.

The one thing I miss the most with Star Citizen is Derek Smart. He used to stream Citizencon and boy, that was fun. Prime entertainment.

This year we're not even getting a digital citizencon because CIG jumped on the opportunity to cancel the entire thing due to Corona. In other words, they didn't move it to digital and at least showed something, they flat out cancelled the event entirely.

Hint: They have nothing to show, as recent roadmap have indicated.

This is my only account. If you're gonna accuse me of something worthy of a ban I'd recommend you bring evidences or you'll just end up being reported for slander.

What you miss is drama mongers. Yeah CIG is using Coronavirus as an excuse to not have a Convention that has members coming from across the world and not following health and safety advices from higher entitys. Nevermind all the other companies around the world cancelling their events too. OnlY evil CIG exists in the mind of obsessive haters. No wonder they frown upon accountability for their sayings. When you think they can't go any lower....

Meanwhile... and bringing things on track for the thread.

The Star Citizen Machinima community continues to do amazing work in the 'Verse:





Lovely work of passion for gaming and cinematography!

[Kyanion]

I believe he is a an account created to promote SC on this site and defend it. But propably not working for CIG.

Sunk cost would propably not try to attack other people.

It does seem likely, but not like we can prove it or do much about it.

- - - Updated - - -

Yeah, he made the account to shill for this game. It's easy to spot when you go into his post history, first thing you see is the throwaway one-liner posts to get the post count up to the required level to participate here. Then he's been here since. I wonder why MrAnderson is scared to show his real account.

The one thing I miss the most with Star Citizen is Derek Smart. He used to stream Citizencon and boy, that was fun. Prime entertainment.

This year we're not even getting a digital citizencon because CIG jumped on the opportunity to cancel the entire thing due to Corona. In other words, they didn't move it to digital and at least showed something, they flat out cancelled the event entirely.

Hint: They have nothing to show, as recent roadmap have indicated.

Ironic considering they went out of their way to dig up 6 year old posts people made.

Of course they have nothing to show, they miss deadlines left and right, par for the course.

[Elim Garak]

Actually no and it's factually wrong. AAA games made in the 90's took considerably less time to make as they were considerably less complex than what we have now.

The concept of AAA games didn't exist in the 90s. AAA term appeared near the 2000s and widespread use by 2010.

But let's see.

(I'm going to list games that were developed solid without issues like "tried developing it for console A then switched to console B and thus delayed, I also exclude games that do not list the exact year of the development "start", I ignore "early idea came in" and "a skeleton team started experimenting in", I will exclude games from the series made on the same engine with the same technology - because that would be cheating)

Baldur's Gate - 3 years, Final Fantasy VII - 3 years. that's 1997-98

Let's jump 10 years: Mass Effect - 3 years. Assassin's Creed - 3 years. That's 2007-08

10 more?

Assassin's Creed Origins - 3 years.

Hm, it looks like the game quality and size increase - but the development time remains the same. QED.

And the only games that took longer to develop are those that have a lot of management issues or too much creative freedom. I.e. bad developers.

[Cyclone Jack]

Deadlines are not a suitable term for a game in development, deadlines is a term for something that is not meant to be changed, thats an impossible fact in any game development that you cant always meet expectations.

It's obvious that you know absolutely nothing about software development or project management. Please stop pretending that you do.

[Odeezee]

Hello Odeezee, nice to see you again. For a moment I thought you nutted up and vanished like MasterHorus did after Star Citizen's continous failures.

/sigh

I absolutely do know what disingenuous means. In fact, let's search it up for a moment.



... Which is precisely what I mean. Saying "community voted for it lol" to every single criticism with regards to featurecreep today does not help your case. With all cards on the table, nobody in that poll expected to go 2020 with no game. We used to joke about not getting anything for 2015 or even 2016 for fuck sake. Nobody believed this would happen, not even me at the time. And that's not even all.

To be objective here, the "switch" of resources(all hands on Squadron 42) was not always a thing - and you know this too. This happened because under Chris' management, CIG could not deliver Star Citizen, not for the estimated delivery dates +-18 months, or anywhere near that. The reason why everyone is on SQ42 now is simple: It was an emergency measure. CIG does not have infinite funding and you can be damned that if SQ42 bombs, the project is over right on the spot.

I am curious now, too. Do you deny that the fate of the entire project rests on SQ42 or not?

i am sorry, but you do not understand the meaning fo the word. if you are using it in this context. you say you are an original backer but don't remember stretch-goals? those are literally milestones where backers voted with their wallets to have added to the game. how is this even debatable? and the switch to focusing on Squadron 42 was LITERALLY inevitable as it had to come out before Star Citizen as the events literally lead into the MMO and that is how players earn their citizenship. you cannot read the future and cannot predict how Squadron 42 will do or whether if it bombs it will spell the end of the project so please save the bluster, it's cringe af.

I love this part, Odezee! It sounds like you're reading the Terms of Service on your second screen. Yes, I know what I agreed to when I pledged the game back in the day. That's precisely why I refunded my main account after CIG started armoring up for failure. They went from humble game devs to scummy marketers.

What you call progress is subjective. Here is a page on feature creep:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_creep

haha, why are you so obtuse? what you call feature creep is literally the reason for the record breaking backing for this project. the initial pitch managed a, though great for the time, mere 7 million in funding compared to the 293 million after the scope was increased, hence progress. CIG are not making the original pitch of the game and have not been since the stretch-goals were enacted in early 2013 a few months after the kickstarter ended. if you think that CIG are such scummy marketers, vote with your wallet and don't support them. see? problem solved. you don't have to play the game, there are plenty of other games out there that would love your support.

Chris has a history of doing this, see Freelancer. Do you honestly feel there's been no feature creep in Freelancer? What about Star Citizen in relation to marketed dates in the past?

To me, both are textbook cases of feature creep.

To be clear: Feature creep isn't some thing people just say, it's a real thing, no matter what people may think subjectively(like you do when you say "progress" instead for instance).

/sigh. idc what CR did with Freelancer as i did not play it and so, i will judge him based on the actions of this project. Star Citizen no longer has "feature-creep" as they finished expanding the scope of the re-imagined Star Citizen/Squadron 42 at the end of 2014. everything, and i do mean EVERYTHING that has been added since are things literally promised in the stretch-goals. so no, objectively SC/SQ42 do not have any feature-creep currently. ironically, you are the one misusing the term, not me.

Yes, they did release the financials - but not by their own initiative. It was the investor(that saved the project by the way) that basically demanded this. Without it, CIG would've never done it. They were prepared to never live up to their original promises and practically spit the backers in the face because we have no real face, or voice. We're just a bunch of folks that CIG doesn't answer to.

That's not the case for the titan investor, though. When he enters the room, Chris gets on his knees.

By the way, the financials proved Derek Smart right - CIG didn't have much cash on hand at all at any given time - and the "if funding stopped, we'd still deliver the game" is completely out of the window.

why so much conjecture? have you read the contract between the investors and CIG that stipulated that CIG had to release it's financials to the public? if so, please by all means educate us all. and how did the investors "save" the project? do you mean they saved the project by investing money earmarked specifically under contract for the marketing of Squadron 42 and NOT the development of the game, which CR specifically did so as to not dip in the backer money for marketing? why do you speak with such confidence from a place of abundant ignorance? unless you are privy to the actual contracts and CR's mind, you could not possibly have any idea, so why speculate and be all hyperbolic? /sigh

also when has DS ever been right? they literally have investments and can take out loans if needed, so why keep lying about the financial health of the project. and do you want them to just amass money from backers and just sit on it instead of using it to develop the game? your argument makes no sense. smh.

I agree with you here with one comment: Chris should've been thrown off the project a long time ago and replaced with Erin. Almost all problems with CIG's communication stems from Chris Roberts himself. Who would you prefer, Erin or Chris for Star Citizen?

why are you like this? smh. this game would not even exist if not for CR, i want to play the game CR wants to create, his stretch-goals are why i backed. and CR hired Erin, so.../sigh

Hmm.. well, as an old-school MMO player, I think accessibility doesn't necessarily mean good.

haha, you can't be serious?

LTI marketed as exclusive -> Not exclusive anymore -> Massive selling of LTI Tokens -> "Btw, you can never lose a ship you paid real money for regardless of insurance"-drama.

it changed due to insurance changing and becoming more of a slight money sink than initially planned. that's development.

Warbonds get released, prioritizing new money over those of us who already cashed in and supported the project early. Those who supported the project when it needed it the most, should be taken care of - not spat upon.

LMFAO, are you really crying over the "option" to buy a ship for a few dollars less with new cash than with store credit? did they take away your ability to use store credit? no? then what are you complaining about ffs? come on man, do you just want to complain when you have literal solutions to all of your problems?

CIG actually trying to put CitizenCon behind a paywall - they fully deserved the nuclear bombs that were shot at them over the interwebz for this. The fact that anyone thought it'd be a good idea is mindboggling. Then again, it probably came from Chris or Sandi worrying about the cash coffers.

wow, hahahaha, i can't with you. they were going for a more professional setup since people always complained that their Cons were prone to hitches and bugs, they floated charging backers to view it online, people refused and then they reversed it within like 72 hours and yet you are still complaining? dude...are you okay? this doesn't seem healthy man.

Remember when all SQ42 missions were communicated as beyond grey-box in 2016? Practically almost finished? Then all of a sudden it was not - and they kept throwing out "answer the call" marketing like usual. What happened is Chris, like he is known to do, just decides to scrap the entire thing.

Now it's 2020 and we still have nothing. That really shows you what's been going on with SQ42. And now soon, we're going to get a video. I predict they will announce "no beta this year" and then the shitshow will begin. I could be wrong on this of course, but that's what it leans towards.

how are you so misinformed? i mean it is as though you go out of your way to stay in the dark. the missions were in grey-box, but they wanted to increase the quality so they redid them after some play-throughs, that's iteration my guy. i mean we were told that SQ42 would enter a closed beta at the end of the 3rd quarter this year 2020 and based on feedback, they will then work their way to release. but that was before 'Rona, so i am sure we should expect a 3-6 month delay for the closed beta. but we will be getting a SQ42 update video once they are done redoing the one they felt was too wordy, and did not show enough. so once they add more footage we will get that along with a new roadmap that better shows the state of the project.

The original plan was to have an account with ships and one without, I always figured that buying ships would take away from the game experience and that was undeniable, so I wanted one where I could experience the progress naturally.

isn't the point of backing for other ships just to support the funding of the games? /shrug. i always planned on being a space hobo so i think my career path is still set on that.

I promise though, if we get a good and stable patch, I will try the game again.

hey only if you want to, no need to hate game on something you don't like, i mean unless you don't mind doing that. i play for fun and what's there is fun for me when i get on. i cannot wait for the stability and refinement of open beta, but i can deal with some instability and bugs for now and give feedback where i can. just ask one of us in here to take you around if you try the alpha, as it is very unforgiving to those unaccustomed.

no other company has raised as kickstarter SUCH amount of money over SUCH a long time and has had so many gameplay heavy features be removed or postponed so hard.

you do know that the game is in active alpha development, right? so features are expected to be postponed, i don't think any feature as yet has been removed. by postponed i mean postponed until before a full release.

God, that sounds awful. I hate survival elements in games and really prefer when they let you turn that stuff off like in Subnautica. This game might just be a pass for me in this case. Shame, it looked interesting if you could get past the confusing stuff.

well, you cannot turn it off, but you have to be playing for like 4.5 hrs straight without drinking anything in-game to die of thirst, unless you are in a hot environment with the wrong equipment on and doing a lot of running, at which point you would need more water. for food it's once every 6 or 7 hours i believe.

Survival mechanics...


Ugh... I hate them.

the ones in Star Citizen are pretty good and not intrusive. they give people a reason to bump into each other at hubs once every 4-7 hours.

Darn

Really wish that when you disconnected from a server while in a party, you got a five minute grace period to log back in with your spot in the server still reserved for you.

I was showing a new player around, how to use a star map, how to do missions, guiding him to a station so we could heal him up and get him food, how to restock, etc, when I got stuck and had to relog to try to fix the problem. Then, when I tried logging back in, the server was already full (50 people, when I left it became 49/50, apparently it filled right back up right before I could log back in to it), so I couldn't join him on that server. I can't even PM him from the main menu screen either, so for all he knows I said "brb relogging" and then I just stiffed him.

it is really fussy as it depends on the cause for the disconnect, but it tries to keep your spot, but it's kinda rng atm. you know where to get the pop-up to rejoin is under the chat section, right? you no longer get that big splash notification to rejoin last instance. and i am so jelly of your dehydration experience and double-vision, it sounded really awesome.

At this point they should know better. So yea, I'd call them liars too.

haha, ok. smh.

That was my point: SC is not a game, yet and I doubt it ever will be one. They promised to release the original pitch game back in 2014. They will just continue to feature creep until only the hardcore fans who buy expensive ships remain and then the game will die.

/sigh. there are way more backers now than there were during the original kickstarter pitch, so no, there are many backers who only have a package and a starter ship joining all the time. there are also many large streamers who stream the game occasionally who, if i had to guess, have had a large influence in more backers coming to the game over the last 10 or so months. i mean just look at their funding this year so far, in just 5 months, they have almost as much as the 3rd best year to date. /shrug

the mighty Javelin Destroyer over Hurston:



Carrack on Microtech:



Idris (Squadron 42 home base capital ship) above Microtech:

[TriHard]

OH boy, sure looking forward to the release of this game in 2077!

[Kyanion]

/sigh

A lot of sighs and images. Still no release date on the game right? Right. I mean I'd say more but you what, replied to nineteen posts at once there? Who is going to slog through all of that? Not me.

[Jastall]

OH boy, sure looking forward to the release of this game in 2077!

Think of all the carefully curated screenshots we'll get in the meantime!

Don't think about how much micro(?)transaction money will be required to finish the damn thing in the first place, if that's ever possible.

[kenn9530]

...less time to make. There, fixed for logic.
But if you want to develop several games as one the development time increases exponentially. 2 in 1 take x4 time to make., 3 in 1 = x9, unless you increase the number of employees, but there's a limit beyond which adding more people won't increase the development speed and in fact (due to corporate bureaucracy and lowered average expertise level because bell curves - leading to more bugs and mistakes) will hinder it.

And this is not a secret that only I know. Chris should be quite aware of it.

What are you talking about, when companies develop games with different techs it takes longer to make, RDR2 took 6 years to make as its a development of the tech used in GTA5, SC needed to make the tech first so obviously its going to take a while, most of the tech needed for the game now wouldnt of been needed for the first version of the game since it was not an MMO.

You mention companies which are just making the same game over and over taking 3 years, they have already done most of the work and dont need to build everything from nothing, making an MMO requires much more than a basic sandbox game and being a game in space makes it even more complex.

It's obvious that you know absolutely nothing about software development or project management. Please stop pretending that you do.

You have already proven you know nothing about game development, you fail to understand the game being developed and why it takes longer than standard sandbox game.

[Cyclone Jack]

You have already proven you know nothing about game development, you fail to understand the game being developed and why it takes longer than standard sandbox game.

Software development is software development. And yes, I do know game development, because I've worked in the industry, doing modeling, animation, and programming. Milestones and deadlines are crucially important to keep everything on track. Are they missed? All the time, but that doesn't make them any less important. These help keep focus, and help project managers estimate when certain features or toolsets will be complete, freeing up various teams to move between different tasks within the greater project. You can deny deadlines all you want, but that doesn't make them any less relevant, and it doesn't give RSI a free pass. RSI desperately needs better project managers, and the really need someone who can put Chris in his place. Erin has done a pretty good job, but he's only one man.

And no, I don't fail to understand the game being developed. They have done a pretty outstanding job with their toolsets, and a number of big milestones, and they've shown that their focus is on modular asset development, which is absolutely the right direction. The problem is that they're constantly working on the details before the foundations have been poured, causing them to redo massive amounts of work, or to put a ton of development into aspects of the game that shouldn't be seeing the light of day until beta or later. Unfortunately, everything about Star Citizen relies on their network and databases, and until all of that's done, the core mechanics of the game are spinning their wheels, because the current infrastructure can't support it, which means they have all these employees that can't work on these key features, so they're working on fluff content that has no place in the current development timeline. It also doesn't help that they miss 50% or more of their own milestones and deadlines, causing more parts of their development to hiccup and stutter. Then we get to S42, which appears to have been completely scrapped at one point and started over, judging by their own past presentations and current road maps.

[Kyanion]

What are you talking about, when companies develop games with different techs it takes longer to make, RDR2 took 6 years to make as its a development of the tech used in GTA5, SC needed to make the tech first so obviously its going to take a while, most of the tech needed for the game now wouldnt of been needed for the first version of the game since it was not an MMO.

And that means what? Were things things communicated before they took the vote to their backers? Doubt it. And RDR2 actually released so yeah. Don't compare SC to a game that got finished. SC is years off from being done, YEARS.