[Megathread] Star Citizen

[Henako]

Extravagant is not really the word, but High-End and Spacious, as in, they were over capacity in their old studios and since they've been hiring and growing every year they needed more space and comfort to accommodate and attract that growth.

You can find more info about Manchester Office here: https://www.eurogamer.net/star-citiz...er-mega-studio
And about Frankfurt here: https://www.one-frankfurt.de/en/clou...-space-at-one/



No trouble in that imo. Nobody but the shareholders win when a game is rushed to release.

Gamers get a sub-par product while the Games/Companies take a reputation hit. Which, despite the influx of money hinders the games and company legacy.

Feeling sorry for seeing a game being delayed shouldn't be a thing as it's just the developer acknowledging there's work still needed to be done above releasing something they knew it wasn't ready to make bank.

Six years late. And counting.

[MrAnderson]

Six years late. And counting.

If it's not ready it's not ready.

Between having a bunch of restless gamers crying about delays or relasing an unfinished product sold as ready I'd choose the first one all the way.

In the end noise will be just noise, gone with the next wind. While a quality game can be enjoyed forever.

[qwerty123456]

It takes less than a day to polish silver and about a week to polish an actual turd. Not sure what you would call something that takes over 6 years to polish.

[Ghost of Cow]

Between having a bunch of restless gamers crying about delays or relasing an unfinished product sold as ready I'd choose the first one all the way.

That's a false equivalence that assumes the game is going to exist at all.

I mean, if we were "just polishing now" six years ago, you gotta start wondering where it is today, don't you?

[Nzx]

No trouble in that imo. Nobody but the shareholders win when a game is rushed to release.

Gamers get a sub-par product while the Games/Companies take a reputation hit.

As opposed to Star Citizen/SQ42, a game that defines the opposite of "rushed to release", where gamers get no product and the game/company has a reputation for being a black hole for the funds of suckers.

Just checking in again another couple of hundred pages later - same two people performing paid marketing work for a game developer, same absent moderator, same amount of playable SQ42 gameplay, and even more non-existent "ships" that you can spend thousands of dollars on a 2D jpg of. See you again in another year, when CIG have added "prospectable fox shit for intergalactic coffee beans" to the roadmap, delivered nothing, and kenn has told us all that, while he is not a game developer himself, he knows everything about game development, but we know nothing because we're not game developers.

[kenn9530]

As opposed to Star Citizen/SQ42, a game that defines the opposite of "rushed to release", where gamers get no product and the game/company has a reputation for being a black hole for the funds of suckers.

Just checking in again another couple of hundred pages later - same two people performing paid marketing work for a game developer, same absent moderator, same amount of playable SQ42 gameplay, and even more non-existent "ships" that you can spend thousands of dollars on a 2D jpg of. See you again in another year, when CIG have added "prospectable fox shit for intergalactic coffee beans" to the roadmap, delivered nothing, and kenn has told us all that, while he is not a game developer himself, he knows everything about game development, but we know nothing because we're not game developers.

You do realise you could spend 5 mins doing some basic research first so you dont embarass yourself, there is around 185 ships/vehicles in SC and only around 20 are not available to players and they are mostly ships that heavily focus on an actual job that needs to be inplace first so most ships/vehicles are available to players currently, they have delivered ton of things as shown in current alpha and even more is coming in the next big patch, just goes to show you prove yourself time and time again you know very little about the games development.

[Henako]

You do realise you could spend 5 mins doing some basic research first so you dont embarass yourself, there is around 185 ships/vehicles in SC and only around 20 are not available to players and they are mostly ships that heavily focus on an actual job that needs to be inplace first so most ships/vehicles are available to players currently, they have delivered ton of things as shown in current alpha and even more is coming in the next big patch, just goes to show you prove yourself time and time again you know very little about the games development.

It has to get exhausting, right? Typing the same things out over and over again? Do you just have key phrases saved in a notepad somewhere and plug'n play your responses?

[Flame6]

I picked this in something.17.1 or something Spent 40-60 hours in it. It's amazing and shallow at the moment. There's combat which is impressive, but the PVE system is just clicking a contract, jumping to the point and fighting the same bad guys as last time. No progression, moderate income.
PVP combat is a blast, but there's almost nothing stopping someone from fleeing when they're losing (I know the mantis is a thing). And the reward is almost far from ever worth it. If someone has a bounty on them and doesnt want to fight, you'll spend forever chasing them in "hyper space".
There's virturally no pirate gameplay because you can't rob folks. The msot you can do is stumble across a miner who has quantum ore.


Mining is cool, but there's no crafting so you're just selling it all to the vendor. A player driven economy needs to happen.
Cargo running is lame (but I believe the next patch is fixing it). You look up on a website the most profitable items to buy in your sized ship, go to a terminal, buy it, and fly it back somewhere else and sell it at a terminal. I beleive the next patch is adding cargo to physically be boxes in the ship and this will be real cool.

Salvaging is coming soon and it looks reeally neat but until I see it in action I'm going to assume its just as barebones as the rest of it.

I know I complained a lot but SC is going to be cool game someday , but currently it's lacking so many systems that its just a wide & really shallow pond.

HUGE PLUS! Yes, you can buy ships with real money but at least they let you "melt" the ship down into store credit and buy something else. They're very generous in what they allow you do with the cash shop stuff. Currently for pvp its not pay 2 win. The bigger or more expensive ships require multiple people to man effectively while the best way to kill anything is just with a small light fighter, and multiple light fighters are almost always going to win against a crewed ship.

[MrAnderson]

It has to get exhausting, right? Typing the same things out over and over again? Do you just have key phrases saved in a notepad somewhere and plug'n play your responses?

Goes both ways no?

We got all the usual tropes or most of them.

In the end it's just the results of exposing the masses to game dev iteration from inception.

Which, in a way explains why the AAA companies are so secretive about their games development.

Most gamers can't handle seeing the sausage get made, they just want to eat it.

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I picked this in something.17.1 or something Spent 40-60 hours in it. It's amazing and shallow at the moment. There's combat which is impressive, but the PVE system is just clicking a contract, jumping to the point and fighting the same bad guys as last time. No progression, moderate income.
PVP combat is a blast, but there's almost nothing stopping someone from fleeing when they're losing (I know the mantis is a thing). And the reward is almost far from ever worth it. If someone has a bounty on them and doesnt want to fight, you'll spend forever chasing them in "hyper space".
There's virturally no pirate gameplay because you can't rob folks. The msot you can do is stumble across a miner who has quantum ore.


Mining is cool, but there's no crafting so you're just selling it all to the vendor. A player driven economy needs to happen.
Cargo running is lame (but I believe the next patch is fixing it). You look up on a website the most profitable items to buy in your sized ship, go to a terminal, buy it, and fly it back somewhere else and sell it at a terminal. I beleive the next patch is adding cargo to physically be boxes in the ship and this will be real cool.

Salvaging is coming soon and it looks reeally neat but until I see it in action I'm going to assume its just as barebones as the rest of it.

I know I complained a lot but SC is going to be cool game someday , but currently it's lacking so many systems that its just a wide & really shallow pond.

HUGE PLUS! Yes, you can buy ships with real money but at least they let you "melt" the ship down into store credit and buy something else. They're very generous in what they allow you do with the cash shop stuff. Currently for pvp its not pay 2 win. The bigger or more expensive ships require multiple people to man effectively while the best way to kill anything is just with a small light fighter, and multiple light fighters are almost always going to win against a crewed ship.

Progression is tied to Reputation. The more missions you do for a faction/company the better pay you'll receive and more missions will open.

There's plenty of Pirate Gameplay, check Mongrel Squad on Youtube as they have plenty of videos of their Heists:

You can totally rob players. t's a full loot game after all and you can steal ships and sell the cargo. Citizens do it all the time during Jumptown:


The light fighter PvP meta is real Enjoying the Blade atm! Such a sexy ship.

[Cloverfield]

Somewhat like LvLCap, when the new Battlefield tanked they seem to have turned to other pastures. Kinda like when Odyssey bombed and Star Citizen saw an influx of elite dangerous players or CCP makes another dumb move and we get a new influx of eve players. This time it happened with a lot of content creators from FPS games who have a bigger player base than the traditional niche ones of the sim/space ones.

Hence the increase of players trying Star Citizen coming from games like Tarkov and such.

All the top viewed videos are curated and follow a narrative story/adventure. Variable one has some kind of strange reshade filter, BedBananas has added sounds and music that aren't from the game. I guess that's what makes them more entertaining and popular than the long ass "let's play" videos that can go for hours.

I have not particularly noticed any special net influx of players towards SC from other games. I mean, other than gamers and content creators simply trying out new games around and such, as many of us do often. Saying this because I have probably seen as well as many a testimonial of players leaving SC for other games etc. I am one such exemple.

The fact CIG is one of the most opaque game developers in terms of live players statistics does not help much in this discussion. But I suspect that, if those influx you mention were a clear net increase for SC, CIG would have already decided to publish live stats a long time ago (hopefully in an auditable way), which they have not yet after almost a decade.


As for Jackfrags curated SC videos the point was that their curation is likely much more extreme than in many of his other regular curated videos for other games. The main reason being the correspondingly extreme brokenness of SC. As mentioned above the likelihood of those being a sponsored job by CIG (directly or indirectly) are quite high, which always helps when the product is difficult to work with.

Nobody but the shareholders win when a game is rushed to release.

That does not necessarily follow, no. At least not as a rule. In fact when a product is rushed and its quality deficient the shareholders often suffer like the rest of stakeholders in the venture. See for exemple share price of FDEV in the year following Odyssey release. Admittedly FDEV has released many other actual games unlike CIG, in addition to Odyssey, with which they can hedge some bad calls; but still the logic is quite simple: Bad products lead to loss of sales which lead to bad results which lead to loss of share price.

Shareholder (and board) control is a key balance mechanism of proper corporate governance, one that is sorely lacking at CIG (unless the Calders investment got them a significant say in CIG strategic decision making).

Feeling sorry for seeing a game being delayed shouldn't be a thing as it's just the developer acknowledging there's work still needed to be done above releasing something they knew it wasn't ready to make bank.

Nothing to object to that statement... if the company working on it does it on its own dime (i.e. be it with its own resources, by raising equity or by getting loans, all of which comes with very specific obligations). Their money, their call, knock yourself out. Delaying a product comes with its own costs and risks though, but that is the company prerogative. Their money, their rules.

But when those delays are instead crowdfunded by backers (towards whom CIG does not have any significant obligation) that were requested a very specific amount of money for a very specific product on a very specific estimated timeline, and when that product is not shipped anywhere near that estimated timeline (to the tune of overall delays of 8+ years now) after having received almost 10 times the amount of money asked... And when that company keeps asking those backers even for more money after all that time with still no product release in sight.. Then we really need to ask ourselves if that company is even minimally competent to do what they promised to do after all. Either that or we have maybe entered full on potential fraud territory. Or both.

[MrAnderson]

I have not particularly noticed any special net influx of players towards SC from other games. I mean, other than gamers and content creators simply trying out new games around and such, as many of us do often. Saying this because I have probably seen as well as many a testimonial of players leaving SC for other games etc. I am one such exemple.

The fact CIG is one of the most opaque game developers in terms of live players statistics does not help much in this discussion. But I suspect that, if those influx you mention were a clear net increase for SC, CIG would have already decided to publish live stats a long time ago (hopefully in an auditable way), which they have not yet after almost a decade.

Well it's noticeable only to those who play and engage with it's community. There's been a big influx of new players in the servers asking for help. Specially since last year when the game was picked up by a bunch of big youtubers and streamers that focus on FPS games (Battlefield, Tarkov etc), the crowd playing got definitely bigger and younger. The increase in stats of everything engagement with the game, from content creators, to streamers to viewers all grew, which is backed by increase in citizen number and funding growth. The increase is such that CIG created a "help the new player program" thing that rewards players for serving as guides and as directed efforts into making a tutorial as stated in one their weekly shows.

As for Jackfrags curated SC videos the point was that their curation is likely much more extreme than in many of his other regular curated videos for other games. The main reason being the correspondingly extreme brokenness of SC. As mentioned above the likelihood of those being a sponsored job by CIG (directly or indirectly) are quite high, which always helps when the product is difficult to work with.

Jackfrags, like most big content creators knows what gamers enjoy to watch and he tailors his videos towards that. He has a nice balance between narrating it's adventure, cool gameplay and witty humour. Something that seems to be a popular mix.

That does not necessarily follow, no. At least not as a rule. In fact when a product is rushed and its quality deficient the shareholders often suffer like the rest of stakeholders in the venture. See for exemple share price of FDEV in the year following Odyssey release. Admittedly FDEV has released many other actual games unlike CIG, in addition to Odyssey, with which they can hedge some bad calls; but still the logic is quite simple: Bad products lead to loss of sales which lead to bad results which lead to loss of share price.

Shareholder (and board) control is a key balance mechanism of proper corporate governance, one that is sorely lacking at CIG (unless the Calders investment got them a significant say in CIG strategic decision making).

Don't think so, I think FDEV pushed odyssey because they needed end the financial year with a funding boost so that their shareholders could get their big fat bonus. Same happened with Cyberpunk.

I think they were down in projections due to the lacklustre reception of the Jurassic DLC so they had to use Odyssey to compensate.
Yes their shares them plummeted after but because they were already inflated by previous covid boost and hype around the new releases.

Nothing to object to that statement... if the company working on it does it on its own dime (i.e. be it with its own resources, by raising equity or by getting loans, all of which comes with very specific obligations). Their money, their call, knock yourself out. Delaying a product comes with its own costs and risks though, but that is the company prerogative. Their money, their rules.

But when those delays are instead crowdfunded by backers (towards whom CIG does not have any significant obligation) that were requested a very specific amount of money for a very specific product on a very specific estimated timeline, and when that product is not shipped anywhere near that estimated timeline (to the tune of overall delays of 8+ years now) after having received almost 10 times the amount of money asked... And when that company keeps asking those backers even for more money after all that time with still no product release in sight.. Then we really need to ask ourselves if that company is even minimally competent to do what they promised to do after all. Either that or we have maybe entered full on potential fraud territory. Or both.

Well but they are working on their own dime. A backer, or pledger or crowdfunded doesn't get dibs on the money they give to the company. That's basic crowdfunding knowledge. Just like potential delays and changes of course during development. Basic game development knowledge. It's up to consumers to do the homework beforehand, read the conditions of the bargain and then decide accordingly if they're willing to put up with the risks.

If not, they can just stay in the sidelines and wait until they feel the risks are worth it. Which as the game becomes more developed and fleshed out, more and more gamers seem to decide that is worth it. As shown by the yearly increase in players and funding respectively.

[banmebaby]

it's just the developer acknowledging there's work still needed to be done above releasing something they knew it wasn't ready to make bank.

Yeah, totally dude, and it clearly shows:

[IMG]

@ https://imgur.com/a/P9PZSNw
#datesarenotdates #foreverdelayedgamecantbebad #coping

[MrAnderson]

If it's not ready then it's not ready and good on them for sticking to working on it to be the best game it can be.

Much better than stating it plays great, market it as such and then release it unfinished or even worse, abandon it like some AAA companies do. Looking at you Anthem.

Better to have gamers crying because they can't wait to play your game than crying because you released a rushed and broken game to make a buck.

[banmebaby]

If it's not ready then it's not ready and good on them for sticking to working on it to be the best game it can be.

Much better than stating it plays great, market it as such and then release it unfinished or even worse, abandon it like some AAA companies do. Looking at you Anthem.

Better to have gamers crying because they can't wait to play your game than crying because you released a rushed and broken game to make a buck.

You are purposely missing the point as usual.

People understand it’s not ready. That’s not the problem.

The problem is that “it’s almost ready”, “it’s ready later this year”, “it’s ready next year”, “just missing a bit of polish”, and “you’ll see it soon” every year since 2014.

It’s almost like they know that it’s doesn’t need to “be ready” to “make bank”, it just needs a little bit of hype every now and then.

But yes, it’s scientifically proven that delays translate into extra quality, just ask Duke Nukem.

[MrAnderson]

If it's not ready it's not ready though.

And precisely why it doesn't need to be ready to make bank (Because what makes bank is Star Citizen/Ships) that CIG can afford to not release an unfinished product like many studios are forced to make bank.

Other big studios are in such position and take their sweet time developing their main games. Kinda like Rockstar with GTA Online generating cash that will allowed for the long development time of RedRedemption 2 and now GTA VI or Blizzars with their crown jewels.

[banmebaby]

If it's not ready it's not ready though.

People understand it’s not ready. That’s not the problem.

Better to have gamers crying because they can't wait to play your game than crying because you released a rushed and broken game to make a buck.

And precisely why it doesn't need to be ready to make bank (Because what makes bank is Star Citizen/Ships) that CIG can afford to not release an unfinished product like many studios are forced to make bank.

Let’s see if I understand, it’s better to have people “crying” because that they can’t play a game that is “almost ready” since 2014, then to have them “crying” that they “rushed” a broken release to make a buck, even though they already made a buck with it? Sounds legit.

Other big studios are in such position and take their sweet time developing their main games. Kinda like Rockstar with GTA Online generating cash that will allowed for the long development time of RedRedemption 2 and now GTA VI or Blizzars with their crown jewels.

“In such position” ;D

Yeah, I know, It’s crazy how company’s smaller projects will later on fund bigger projects.

It’s this constant need to hype your project by lying every year about its current state just to make a buck out of an “unfinished”, “not ready”, “broken” game was completely needless from the get go.

[MrAnderson]

Still don't see where's the issue. Changes during development are the norm. Whatever plans made in year X or Y can become irrelevant in year Z.

In the end If a game is not ready to release and it's studio has the option to devote more work towards it that's the best option.

Certainly much better than being forced to rush it (most certainly while inducing huge ammounts od crunch to it's developers) and release it unfinished and broken.

It does a disservice both to it's players and to the company/dev's.

[Kyanion]

Let’s see if I understand, it’s better to have people “crying” because that they can’t play a game that is “almost ready” since 2014, then to have them “crying” that they “rushed” a broken release to make a buck, even though they already made a buck with it? Sounds legit.

Crazy isn't it? I love when people compare a game that is taking assloads of money through crowdfunding, a fully functional cash shop and a price to get into the game in a perpetual Alpha to games that are developed in house like RDR2 and Cyberpunk.

Who cares if RDR2 and Cyberpunk took 20 years to come out, it isn't crowdfunded. They aren't relying on a cash shop to help them finish the game as it is being built.

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Most gamers can't handle seeing the sausage get made, they just want to eat it.

Well good thing for you then that CIG lies about SQ42 and has been lying about it for years now. But hey it just needs more polish. So much polish that by the time it releases it will be so bright it will reflect the sun and burn your house down.

The problem is you can't see the 'sausage' getting made with SQ42. CIG is not transparent about it, they say things but show nothing. Greybox since 2016 or so? Sure it is! Toss more money plz!

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It does a disservice both to it's players and to the company/dev's.

It does a disservice to it's players and backers by lying about what is going on. If CIG was up front about what was going on though, they likely wouldn't be getting as much money would they?

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Certainly much better than being forced to rush it (most certainly while inducing huge ammounts od crunch to it's developers) and release it unfinished and broken.

Sure or you could have a Perpetual Alpha that is a buggy mess that can't handle many players, crashes often and is lacking in many many forms of promised content despite being in alpha for YEARS.

Glacier slow release games never really end well and there are plenty of examples of that. This game is no where near done. So what happens when we hit year 15? Just handwave it away saying 'nope, still not ready!!' and accept it? That's what I expect you to do. Year 20? Same thing? Prolly.

[ldev]

Is MrAnderson turning into kenn? always_have_been.jpg

[MrAnderson]

Crazy isn't it? I love when people compare a game that is taking assloads of money through crowdfunding, a fully functional cash shop and a price to get into the game in a perpetual Alpha to games that are developed in house like RDR2 and Cyberpunk.

Who cares if RDR2 and Cyberpunk took 20 years to come out, it isn't crowdfunded. They aren't relying on a cash shop to help them finish the game as it is being built.

Doesn't really matter how a company gets their money though. It's their money to use as they see fit. Be it money from other games sale releases, ongoing cash shops, going public, personal investors, government funds, crowdfunding. In the end it's the companies money, so as long as they abide by the lawful terms agreed they can use it as they please to develop their games as they wish and for how long as they see fit independently of whatever people think of it.

Quite straightforward.

In the end, It's up to gamers and investors if they want to decide to keep playing/supporting/funding said company and it's games.

Well good thing for you then that CIG lies about SQ42 and has been lying about it for years now. But hey it just needs more polish. So much polish that by the time it releases it will be so bright it will reflect the sun and burn your house down.

The problem is you can't see the 'sausage' getting made with SQ42. CIG is not transparent about it, they say things but show nothing. Greybox since 2016 or so? Sure it is! Toss more money plz!

It does a disservice to it's players and backers by lying about what is going on. If CIG was up front about what was going on though, they likely wouldn't be getting as much money would they?

If the game it's not ready then it's not ready, no one better than the company doing it to decide upon so. As a player one just has to be happy that they are dedicating such time and money working on their game.

Again, if someone has a problem with that decision they can decide not to play/support/fund such company. But, considering that more and more players keep giving CIG more and more money every year that seems to be non issue.

Sure or you could have a Perpetual Alpha that is a buggy mess that can't handle many players, crashes often and is lacking in many many forms of promised content despite being in alpha for YEARS.

Glacier slow release games never really end well and there are plenty of examples of that. This game is no where near done. So what happens when we hit year 15? Just handwave it away saying 'nope, still not ready!!' and accept it? That's what I expect you to do. Year 20? Same thing? Prolly.

Like all games and projects, some people will enjoy and play them while others don't. No harm in that, plenty of games to choose for everyone and plenty of gamers to support many different games. Such is the way of video-games and their development.