[Megathread] Star Citizen

[1001]

[QUOTE=MrAnderson;53199474]Off course Twitch is a important metric of player engagement with a game. That's what I've always stated and stand by it. It's only normal that a new update after 3 years of draught would bring a bursts of increased engagement,

Oh come on, at least argue in good faith rather than resorting to bullcrap. The last major patch was June 2020 and prior to that there were content patches nearly every quarter.

This is why no one can take hardcore SC fans seriously, if CIG are putting out anaemic patches every 3 months it's all ok, if the other game is doing it they are in a 3 year content drought. It's pathetic tbh.

it's just too bad that what was sold as finished and released DLC was still in the alpha stage and looked nothing like the promotional shots. But I'm sure this fact isn't relevant to our righteous shiny knights of gaming morals and decency because it's not Star Citizen.

And now you care about what a company says and what it delivers, but only other companies, not CIG...

[notaltacc]

MrAnderson you seem to be under the impression that everyone shits on SC because they support ED, the same way that you and Kenn shit on ED because you support SC. Odyssey’s performance deserves and should be criticized, and clearly is based on the reviews you just shared, but so does SC, yet you are unable to accept any form of criticism towards it due your ridiculous emotional attachment to a fucking company.

This isn’t a “war” of backers vs “haters” as you keep trying to portray.

It’s what it as always been, companies trying to take as much advantage as they can from their customers, and people shitting on them over it. Regardless, it will keep happening, in fact, it will just keep getting worse, because corporate shills keep rewarding that sort of business.

[1001]

MrAnderson you seem to be under the impression that everyone shits on SC because they support ED, the same way that you and Kenn shit on ED because you support SC. Odyssey’s performance deserves and should be criticized, and clearly is based on the reviews you just shared, but so does SC, yet you are unable to accept any form of criticism towards it due your ridiculous emotional attachment to a fucking company.

This isn’t a “war” of backers vs “haters” as you keep trying to portray.

It’s what it as always been, companies trying to take as much advantage as they can from their customers, and people shitting on them over it. Regardless, it will keep happening, in fact, it will just keep getting worse, because corporate shills keep rewarding that sort of business.

These types always do this as a way to avoid dealing with ugly truths. If they can make it an "us against them" situation then "they" are only saying these things because they want to hurt "our" thing. It's a way to protect themselves with avoidance and denialism.

Frontier really dropped the ball with Odyssey, not just with performance but some of the design decisions as well, I read the new type of planetary terrain generation (very similar to CIGs) is pretty crap as well. Hopefully they get it sorted asap.

[MrAnderson]

MrAnderson you seem to be under the impression that everyone shits on SC because they support ED, the same way that you and Kenn shit on ED because you support SC. Odyssey’s performance deserves and should be criticized, and clearly is based on the reviews you just shared, but so does SC, yet you are unable to accept any form of criticism towards it due your ridiculous emotional attachment to a fucking company.

This isn’t a “war” of backers vs “haters” as you keep trying to portray.

It’s what it as always been, companies trying to take as much advantage as they can from their customers, and people shitting on them over it. Regardless, it will keep happening, in fact, it will just keep getting worse, because corporate shills keep rewarding that sort of business.

Big difference is that Star Citizen Alpha is clearly and officially an unfinished game in active development and not released and sold as a finished and polished experience, something that the latest Elite DLC was.

[QUOTE=1001;53199642]

And now you care about what a company says and what it delivers, but only other companies, not CIG...

No Mirrors?

Star Citizen Alpha is clearly and proudly a game in development in alpha stage which players can pledge to in their own website.
Frontier Developments put a DLC for sale as a finished product while knowingly perfectly that it wasn't ready in the biggest gaming store platform of the world for everyone to see just to meet the fiscal year gains.

How's that for avoiding ugly truths.

Anyone reading this thread has already noticed how strong the negative bias is against anything Star Citizen or CIG, wouldn't hurt the haters to just blatantly admit their emotional bias and get on with it.

Frontier really dropped the ball with Odyssey, not just with performance but some of the design decisions as well, I read the new type of planetary terrain generation (very similar to CIGs) is pretty crap as well. Hopefully they get it sorted asap.

Ahaha Not even close:

Odyssey planetary terrain generation is not even on par what Star Citizen planetary tech from 2015.



Since then it's been improving every year and it's still as of now THE BEST undisputed fully modelled and traversable planets in the gaming scene.



It all comes down to ambition and working out really difficult game systems to work together.

As I've said before, CIG focused on micro to macro scale and Frontier focused in Macro to Micro scale because those are the best options for each game. It's not about being a good or bad decision, it's just how things are for each project.

But factually, doing the Micro (space legs, AI interaction, planetary detail, ship interiors) scale is harder than the Macro (huge planets or solar system).

Which is why Frontier is having difficulties in doing the micro stuff. Don't forget that Odyssey DLC was delayed 6 months. Console version even longer. And it released in this state for the sake of shareholders profit alone.

Food for though for the haters/ED fanboys to think before attacking CIG for taking their time.

There will be a day where haters and critics will realise the complexity of what is being done by CIG, until that day come, may Star Citizen live rent free in their thoughts while passionate gamers enjoy it's development and funding grows.

To those I say: Cya in The Verse

[Agent Smith]

300+ Million dollars and 11 years, is the game out of Alpha yet?

[1001]

Ahaha Not even close:

You're completely missing what is being referred to.

This is about how Odyssey now uses procedural generation with tiles for its planetary surfaces, which is what CIG uses.
Prior to Odyssey they did not uses tiles and the trouble with tiling is that humans are very adept at seeing repeats in the layout.

This is noticeable when viewing the planet from space.

[Kyanion]

Don't forget that Odyssey DLC was delayed 6 months. Console version even longer. And it released in this state for the sake of shareholders profit alone.

A delay of only 6 months. I bet SC fans wish it was only delayed 6 months instead of 6 years or so.

[Nerraw]

The Falcon Heavy was delayed for a far shorter time than this game.

[Edge-]

It's hilarious to me that the store for the new ship paint jobs (at least they're fairly cheap) shows them as "in stock"...like, it's a digital good. You can't be "out of stock" of it, there's no physical inventory.

CIG are gonna run outta monetization tools before the game launches at the rate they're burning through them.

[notaltacc]

Big difference is that Star Citizen Alpha is clearly and officially an unfinished game in active development and not released and sold as a finished and polished experience, something that the latest Elite DLC was.

I’m fine taking into consideration that the game is still unfinished.

But it’s far more than just an unfinished video game, by your own words it’s an unfinished game with more depth and content than most finished games.

It’s also an unfinished game that has been in development for a decade.
An unfinished game that already got over $300 million for development.
An unfinished game with a 50$ access.
An unfinished game with “microtransactions” worth up to thousand dollars.

You can’t go the entire thread bragging about this sort of shit just to conveniently forget about it when you need an excuse to brush off comments that you do not approve, plus, being “unfinished” was never a “get out of jail” card, lots of early access games in steam still being criticized and reviewed for what they are, Star Citizen shouldn’t be any different.

From the moment a company is willing to take our money, it opens itself to criticism.

[Lamnent]

Anyone thinking SC is a real game that is anything more than a gross cash grab at this point is mentally ill.

[Beazy]

It's hilarious to me that the store for the new ship paint jobs (at least they're fairly cheap) shows them as "in stock"...like, it's a digital good. You can't be "out of stock" of it, there's no physical inventory.

CIG are gonna run outta monetization tools before the game launches at the rate they're burning through them.

LoL Blizzard tried this crap too. Maybe they forgot to make the Primary Key a LONG and left it as an INT so it cant increment anymore. /lulz

[Easo]

It's hilarious to me that the store for the new ship paint jobs (at least they're fairly cheap) shows them as "in stock"...like, it's a digital good. You can't be "out of stock" of it, there's no physical inventory.

CIG are gonna run outta monetization tools before the game launches at the rate they're burning through them.

Blizzard comes to mind right away when at the very end of 2018 they made that pack with helms/mounts/pets as "grab it while you can" until their retirement 2 weeks later. As if every WoW player and their grandmas could not have them and not run out... Of course, there was a note that they might return some time later xD

[Nerraw]

What will happen first: Star Citizen releases, or SpaceX lands starship on the Moon?

[qwerty123456]

What will happen first: Star Citizen releases, or SpaceX lands starship on the Moon?

I think SpaceX terraforming Venus will happen first.

[Kyanion]

From the moment a company is willing to take our money, it opens itself to criticism.

Very well written and you sum it up nicely. When you are a company and you go public with a game be it in Alpha or Beta and start taking money for it you are open to criticism, hate, hype, hope, white knights, haters, fanboys, etc. The important thing to remember is that final judgements can be passed down to games in Alpha, many a game does NOT make it out of Alpha because of poor choices, negativity, refunds demanded and so on.

Some companies go above and beyond to have a predatory cash shop, pay huge fees to access the game as if it was launched in a completed state, basically making testers pay for it and essentially paying for hopes and dreams. It is scummy that these people have take this long and taken in this much money only to have such an incomplete product.

- - - Updated - - -

Blizzard comes to mind right away when at the very end of 2018 they made that pack with helms/mounts/pets as "grab it while you can" until their retirement 2 weeks later. As if every WoW player and their grandmas could not have them and not run out... Of course, there was a note that they might return some time later xD

Yeah I remember that and Blizzard was rightly lambasted for it because it was scummy bullshit. Didn't stop them from DOING it but they deserved every bit of hate they got. Those helmets, the winged guardian cub and I forget what else should have just stayed on the shop, not a fake 'retirement, but maybe not! lolz' kind of bullshittery.

[Corvus]

MrAnderson you seem to be under the impression that everyone shits on SC because they support ED, the same way that you and Kenn shit on ED because you support SC. Odyssey’s performance deserves and should be criticized, and clearly is based on the reviews you just shared, but so does SC, yet you are unable to accept any form of criticism towards it due your ridiculous emotional attachment to a fucking company.

This isn’t a “war” of backers vs “haters” as you keep trying to portray.

It’s what it as always been, companies trying to take as much advantage as they can from their customers, and people shitting on them over it. Regardless, it will keep happening, in fact, it will just keep getting worse, because corporate shills keep rewarding that sort of business.

This so much. I myself really enjoyed Cyberpunk 2077 but I am not going to pretend that there aren't issues with it, and these issues are mostly down to the top levels of the company and project management. Kind of what is happening with SC really.

There is no such thing as a perfect game and there never will be. And there is nothing wrong with criticising a game that you like. I've done it many times, even with games I like and recommend to others.

[GreenJesus]

So why don't they just focus on making it playable and then release expansions with new features down the road? I guess they are making more money stringing people along for donations?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

So why don't they just focus on making it playable

Because they can't.

They used the CryEngine as the engine for their game. People on other forums have gone into more depth about the problems with it but the gist is that this may have been a really bad move. Furthermore, the game has been in development for almost a decade now. There is a lot of tech debt. Many programmers who were on the team during the early days are no longer around, which means as time goes on the gap in knowledge on how the intricacies of the engine widens. The current team might no longer be able to make the big changes to the engine required to make it adequate for the next phase of the game.

The game is meant to be an MMO, but the servers are incapable of hosting 50 players and 5 planets before crashing within 2 to 4 hours. And the planets aren't even populated with wildlife or NPCs; there are only NPCs in the handful of cities and outposts and stations in the game. The devs had had to continually remove content (that was already developed) from the game because there is just too much stuff for the servers to handle. If the servers can't even handle that, then there is no way the servers can handle a MMO of thousands of players and many different star systems populated with wildlife and NPCs on the surfaces of the planets. With such server instability, the game will never be anything more than it already is right now. The devs have tried assuring the playerbase that they are working on "server meshing" that is supposed to be the magic fix for the server problems. In early 2019, they said they had a working prototype of server meshing, but then literally never mentioned it again. It has been over two years since they said that, and at this point I don't think it exists. They obviously won't admit that because it means that there is no hope for the game climbing out of the state it is in right now.

Also, as I said a few days ago, they did some rather backwards game design. They sold ships based off of gameplay ideas that hadn't been designed yet, gameplay ideas that would affect the development of every ship in the game. They sold hundreds of ships. Now they have a design for gameplay like salvage, but the design would mean going back and redesigning the hundreds of ships they already made. This would be a huge, massive investment of time on the part of the artists and game designers that would set the game back years. Why do that when you can just make more small ships and sell them to the whales? Hence why salvage as envisioned in that video posted a few pages back will never be added to the game, among many other gameplay ideas.

That means the only way they are going to keep making money is by making small ships for the whales.

[Corvus]

Sounds like the logical choice would have been to finish the single player game first and then do the multi player. Bit late for that now.