[Megathread] Star Citizen

[Mister K]

Maybe, there were other people that posted here regularly too, but left when, for lack of a better description (don't mean this insultingly) people like you came in. They got sick of hearing the same 2 arguments over and over(same ones being repeated to this day)

it's chris roberts.
it's taking too long.

99.9999999% of complaints boil down to that.


I think you will find aside from 2 people in this thread most backers are like me. We bought in with a small package, knowing Chris Roberts history, knowing they game may never release, knowing things were still being added to goals when I purchased.

Bingo

Don't really care if the game gets released as long as they keep up the development, but I am for sure not spending any more $$. Think I did about $100 in total and it stops at that.

I just hope by the next iteration of RTX cards there is more substance in the mission "story" department so the game feels more "lively". It's all well and good building game systems but it needs lore and fun missions too.

[Proskill]

The Retailator is a large ship and thus guzzles feel while the Eclipse is a relatively small ship and is more fuel efficient. If you want to farm ERTs with torpedoes then get the Eclipse as you will have a higher profit margin. Also, if you botch your torpedo pass and get blown up, you can respawn the Eclipse pretty quickly while you will be waiting a long while to use the Retailator again. The Eclipse is a small ship and is way more maneuverable. Maneuvering around a space station or a city hanger to refuel and rearm is way quicker, so you get more kills per hour. Taking the Retailator only makes sense if you are trying to blow up a capital ship, but right now the only capital ships ingame are the NPC Javelins and the Bengals and they only spawn during certain for a few days each year, and the devs made the Bengal unkillable.

but tali can carry 6 torpedoes, while eclipse only 3. thats double the amount, so technically this should be making more money per hour.
anyway, im just asking out of curiousity. tali isnt even available to buy ingame for aUEC

[1001]

Don't really care if the game gets released as long as they keep up the development

I find this so strange. Like $600 million spent and people like yourself are saying "Oh well nevermind, as long as I get something I don't care."

[kenn9530]

but tali can carry 6 torpedoes, while eclipse only 3. thats double the amount, so technically this should be making more money per hour.
anyway, im just asking out of curiousity. tali isnt even available to buy ingame for aUEC

Torps may also not be cost effective to use for many missions, just depends on thier actual restock price later down the line, they should be fairly expensive since they can either one shot or heavily damage most ships that are unaware of a torp.

[banmebaby]

Maybe, there were other people that posted here regularly too, but left when, for lack of a better description (don't mean this insultingly) people like you came in. They got sick of hearing the same 2 arguments over and over(same ones being repeated to this day)

it's chris roberts.
it's taking too long.

99.9999999% of complaints boil down to that.

Chris Roberts will always be part of the discussion as he is a constant problem within the project.

I highly doubt that you'll find many forums outside the official one and main reddit that won't talk about him quite often. That tied to the fact that just there isn't that much else to talk about, as we are still pretty limited content wise and updates just don't come out that regularly... it's why the thread just starts dropping as soon as the bickering stops.

I honestly believe that the issue is not the subject themselves, but the fallout of merely touching them.

I think you will find aside from 2 people in this thread most backers are like me. We bought in with a small package, knowing Chris Roberts history, knowing they game may never release, knowing things were still being added to goals when I purchased.

Yes, and also no, I honestly believe that while a lot of them knew about his modus operandi, many did not. In fact, I'll go a little further and say that I wouldn't be surprised that most of people weren't aware of it, as most of people that play video games don't actually engage in these types of platforms or keep up with these sort of details, we are a minority.

Also, something I probably should elaborate on, when I say that Chris Roberts is a problem, I don't mean that people like him aren't needed, progress and innovation do require people like him, the problem is when you people like him leading without anyone close to keep his feet on the ground, it just creates an endless snowball, we started with expanding into a MMO, and we are now at NPC bathroom schedules, bed sheets physics, fire extinguisher balancing, elevator panels tech and whatnot...

I also never accused you of anything but wanting to come in here an argue with Kenn and Anderson. I didn't accuse of you hating or attacking anything.

Oh, I'm not trying to imply that you are, my bad if I made it sound so.

… and as I said, yes, that's fairly accurate.

[Cloverfield]

i believe its gonna happen, eventually. its not possible now, or in the next year, or 2, or 3... but the longer the game is being developed, the more chance they find the solution. im guessing the game will release around 2030, unironically. thats plenty of time to make that happen

I hear you, and I sympathize. I was of the same opinion not too long ago as well. The thing is, CIG's track record precisely suggests that money and time are not an enabler here. The current poor state of the game after 10+ years and an industry record of 500+ millions spent indicate that CIG's issues lie somewhere else, in a place that neither time nor money can fix.

As a piece of evidence see below the trend of development progress based on CIG's actual patch content output. The downward trend is clear. But it is particularly noteworthy how the slowdown seems to be directly proportional to the increase in staff and funding in the last few years:



As mentioned, time does not seem to help much, or give more chances, to the development of SC. Neither does money. The main issues are rather related to management and to technical limitations.

In my humble opinion, in order to fix SC and CIG we would need at least two key things to happen, none of them linked to more money or time: First, CIG would need a new leadership team, one that has a very clear and pragmatic understanding of what delivering a product and precisely defining scope mean, all the while being prudent and ethical stewards of backers money and avoiding waste. Second, that new team would need to be capable of taking drastic decisions about the game scope, be honest about what is realistic under the engine technical limitations and cut features as needed until the game scope is achievable in a timeframe of 1-2 years at most.

That is in essence what happened with Freelancer when Chris Roberts left that project and Microsoft took over. Freelancer on release was far from being all that Chris Roberts wanted it to be but the game was very well received nevertheless, and it is still to this date a space game classic.

[Shakzor]

In my humble opinion, in order to fix SC and CIG we would need at least two key things to happen, none of them linked to more money or time: First, CIG would need a new leadership team, one that has a very clear and pragmatic understanding of what delivering a product and precisely defining scope means, all while being prudent and ethical stewards of backers money and avoiding waste. Second, that new team would need to be capable of taking drastic decisions about the game scope, be honest about what is realistic under the engine technical limitations and cut features as needed until the game scope is achievable in a timeframe of 1-2 years at most.

First part, definitely. But for the second, i think it'd probably be more efficient to go with a new, maybe better suited engine and start from scratch and starting with the most important core tech first, rather than the current "let's do completely optional, random shit instead of implementing the literal MMO core frame" that seems to go nowhere. And there have been games that were stuck in hell, but a new management decided "let's start over from scratch" and it actually progressed and went smooth afterwards.

And for the graph, what exactly does the "gameplay" refer to? Gameplay features like crouching, flying or NPC trading (just random examples, so you know what i refer to)?

[Proskill]

do u think chris roberts or whoever was responsible for that decision regrets now of choosing amazons lumberyard or cryengine before instead of something else? say, unreal engine. i dont know what would fit best his vision of the game

[Cloverfield]

And for the graph, what exactly does the "gameplay" refer to? Gameplay features like crouching, flying or NPC trading (just random examples, so you know what i refer to)?

See the items under the "Gameplay" header here: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/roadmap/release-view

[kenn9530]

do u think chris roberts or whoever was responsible for that decision regrets now of choosing amazons lumberyard or cryengine before instead of something else? say, unreal engine. i dont know what would fit best his vision of the game

Any engine would require a ton of work to be adapted to most games, it all comes down to the engine that is the most suitable at the time, CiG are doing great work in pushing whats possible and evolving the tech to make the game even better.

[Kyanion]

Any engine would require a ton of work to be adapted to most games, it all comes down to the engine that is the most suitable at the time, CiG are doing great work in pushing whats possible and evolving the tech to make the game even better.

Great work? As the most expensive game to create ever? Great work as a game that is pushing Duke Nukem and a couple other games as the longest time ever taken to make a game? Great work with their failed server meshing? Great work with their buggy alpha?

There are some positives in SC but holy shit to brush aside all the GLARING negatives like that is truly a wonder.

[ldev]

Any engine would require a ton of work to be adapted to most games, it all comes down to the engine that is the most suitable at the time, CiG are doing great work in pushing whats possible and evolving the tech to make the game even better.

So what tech do they have? I remember asking this several years ago and got an answer "stream to texture which will make mirrors look fantastic", to which I replied that stream to texture is commonly used for ages and racing games on PS1 had rear view mirrors. And current gen games do mirrors with ray tracing, something Star Citizen lacks, despite being a... "very advanced tech demo". lmao. 50 players per server and no ray tracing, the future is now.

[Yelmurc]

See the items under the "Gameplay" header here: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/roadmap/release-view

While CIG has slowed down with the push for SQ42, I don't think using the Release View of the progress tracker to track their progress is an accurate way of seeing things. First, they are stated that they don't list as much of the smaller things as they use to. I mean they use to list performance optimizations under core tech. They still optimizate code and performance, they just don't list it on every patch. Also, a lot of the location work for the last few years has been going into Pyro and Nyx which are sitting on a shelf until server messing.

Other than maybe ships I don't think it's a good way to track SC progress over time. And even ships are a lot more complicated now and it gets messy with variants. CIG is the only game in town making anything close to what SC hopes to be. I hope they are successful; I'll continue to watch the development.

[kenn9530]

So what tech do they have? I remember asking this several years ago and got an answer "stream to texture which will make mirrors look fantastic", to which I replied that stream to texture is commonly used for ages and racing games on PS1 had rear view mirrors. And current gen games do mirrors with ray tracing, something Star Citizen lacks, despite being a... "very advanced tech demo". lmao. 50 players per server and no ray tracing, the future is now.

They have a ton of different tech that they have developed for the game, like the gen 12 renderer so they can fully implement vulkan, the game doesnt need ray tracing but they will be putting it in the game at some point, so SC doesnt lack anything it has whatever they want to put into the game, also we have 100 player servers, as usual you dont know whats actually going on with the game or not, a very clear trend in this thread too many ppl with no idea.

[Cloverfield]

While CIG has slowed down with the push for SQ42...

I would tend to agree with you in that I am pretty sure CIG has, for a while already, invested a larger portion of its human resources into SQ42, and that will inevitably impact the PU patches content, no doubt. The thing is, that rational is underpinned by an expectation of a SQ42 release sooner rather than later, otherwise the argument of technical limitations and management incompetence for the slow down would still be the most logical one.

I mean they use to list performance optimizations under core tech. They still optimizate code and performance, they just don't list it on every patch.

So, do you mean CIG was just padding their release view with useless clutter that were later withdrawn? I am shocked, shocked I tell you!

Either way, even if you remove performance optimization from the patches it showed up (2018-2020 period) the overall trend remains largely exactly the same for that category: 8(2018), 13(2019), 4(2020), 1(2021), 1(2022).

Also, a lot of the location work for the last few years has been going into Pyro and Nyx which are sitting on a shelf until server messing.

Sadly, that is not really a very consoling argument in this discussion. As mentioned, one of the reasons for progress slowing down to a crawl is precisely technical limitations in CIG´s engine and code. But that is by the by, there are still 7 categories more, Characters, AI, Gameplay, Ship, Vehicles, Weapon items and Core Tech, where CIG´s actual delivery track record has come to a halt as well and for which you would need to find additional rationalisations.

[Proskill]

Fuck it, today I'm gonna reinstall SC, but on a HDD. I know it isn't optimal, but I have no other choice.

I think it's gonna be enough to scratch my itch from time to time and remind myself why I keep uninstalling it xd

[banmebaby]

CiG are doing great work in pushing whats possible and evolving the tech to make the game even better.

So what tech do they have?

They have a ton of different tech

Bad dum tssss ~

Fuck it, today I'm gonna reinstall SC, but on a HDD. I know it isn't optimal, but I have no other choice.

I think it's gonna be enough to scratch my itch from time to time and remind myself why I keep uninstalling it xd

Told you before my dude =P If you have the cash, right now with xmas sales and black friday sales, it's a good time to pick yourself up a 1tb SSD.
Got myself one just for video games, a small one just for windows and I have my HDD for all the rest of the shit, no more space problems.

[Proskill]

Told you before my dude =P If you have the cash

yeeeah... im poor. unfortunately

[Kyanion]

They have a ton of different tech that they have developed for the game, like the gen 12 renderer so they can fully implement vulkan, the game doesnt need ray tracing but they will be putting it in the game at some point, so SC doesnt lack anything it has whatever they want to put into the game, also we have 100 player servers, as usual you dont know whats actually going on with the game or not, a very clear trend in this thread too many ppl with no idea.

100 people so many in a MMO. Big servers. Much Wow.

Now SC does not lack ANYTHING and it has whatever they want to put into the game, even if the tech does not exist yet. So does this mean we can expect a fully VRMMO experience now too? SC is the most magical game ever, it can do no wrong! You heard it here first.

[ldev]

They have a ton of different tech that they have developed for the game, like the gen 12 renderer so they can fully implement vulkan, the game doesnt need ray tracing but they will be putting it in the game at some point, so SC doesnt lack anything it has whatever they want to put into the game, also we have 100 player servers, as usual you dont know whats actually going on with the game or not, a very clear trend in this thread too many ppl with no idea.

gen 12 - as it's 12th try to modify cryengine? Well you know what they say - thirteenth time's the charm.