[Megathread] Star Citizen

[KyrtF]

Why are they making videos instead of working on the product?

Its part of their "transparency" pledge.
IMO, it's a marketing tool used to keep players excited and help them part with their money

The problem of course is that the resources they use creating these videos...time, manpower, money...isn't available for game development.

We'll see with 3.0 how far they'll have developed the basic engine and gameplay....that is what is important.

[masterhorus8]

Its part of their "transparency" pledge.
IMO, it's a marketing tool used to keep players excited and help them part with their money

The problem of course is that the resources they use creating these videos...time, manpower, money...isn't available for game development.

We'll see with 3.0 how far they'll have developed the basic engine and gameplay....that is what is important.

Aside from the money*, the people working on these videos aren't the same developing the game. Hell, you even just pointed out which division they work under, Marketing. It's the same bullshit that's been spewed at Blizzard for over a decade from armchair developers that that don't understand how larger companies work. "Why are they making patch notes instead of fixing the servers?!"

Otherwise, if you're saying that the time it takes for the programmers/animators and whatnot to be recorded is taking up too much time, then I do have one thing to say to you Mr. Slavedriver. Relax. These people work hell on overtime when they're in the final pushes (happened a few times last year [2016] with individual patch pushes).

*Note: I forgot that the money for a lot of these videos come form the subscriptions, not the ship sales.

[KyrtF]

Aside from the money*, the people working on these videos aren't the same developing the game. Hell, you even just pointed out which division they work under, Marketing.
Otherwise, if you're saying that the time it takes for the programmers/animators and whatnot to be recorded is taking up too much time, then I do have one thing to say to you Mr. Slavedriver. Relax. These people work hell on overtime when they're in the final pushes (happened a few times last year [2016] with individual patch pushes).

First...noone is saying the developers don't work hard.

Secondly....what difference does it make of it is marketing?
These videos are still costing money to make and still take up developer time. A developer giving an interview for AtV is NOT working on the game.

ATV and similar...regardless of which dept pays for it...is still costing development money, development time and development manpower. CIG admitted that when they brought in Burndown because they didn't want the developers distracted.

It isn't as if the developers don't have better things to do...

3.0 is 9 months behind schedule.
The game is running late.
There are over 3000 bugs that need to be removed

And CIG are having developers take time put from their job to give meaningless interviews...meaningless necause they aren't part of the promised "transparency" but part of a marketing campaign.

And what is worse is that it looks very much like CIG are developing more towards stuff they can hype to excite the player base instead of stuff the hame actually needs but is relatively boring.

[Edge-]

Secondly....what difference does it make of it is marketing?
These videos are still costing money to make and still take up developer time. A developer giving an interview for AtV is NOT working on the game.

Minimal time from the developers usually, more from the few folks that are doing the marketing/coms/video creation stuff. A developer taking 30 minutes out of a day to shoot some footage for a video isn't going to kill the games progress.

Seriously, these types of videos take pretty negligible time/budget in the grand scheme of things, and are delivering on both their promise to be transparent while also serving as tools to try to continue to drive/maintain interest and funding for the game.

This is really a pretty minor thing, and you're trying to make a mountain out of this molehill. There are a ton of other things that are far more concerning with the games development (mainly the endless delays) than the negligible costs in terms of time/money to create these.

[KyrtF]

Minimal time from the developers usually

Yes. To me its more of a problem that

1... this is marketing masquerading as "transparency"...which IMO is the answer to Takhisis' question.

2...it looks to me like CIG are prioritising unimportant aspects which can provide high impact marketing opportunities.

I can understand why they are doing it....but at the same time I simply want the game and while I know there is a continuing need for funding and that the dev time used in such aspects is minor, I still resent the distraction the videos represent.

Moreso because I feel they are more marketing and hype than actual useful information about the games progress and development and so add little value to the project.

Yes...I am critical. Some would say overly critical. But while I haven't backed the project and have no intention of doing so, that doesn't mean I don't care about the game or want to see it fail.

[masterhorus8]

Yes. To me its more of a problem that

1... this is marketing masquerading as "transparency"...which IMO is the answer to Takhisis' question.

2...it looks to me like CIG are prioritising unimportant aspects which can provide high impact marketing opportunities.

I can understand why they are doing it....but at the same time I simply want the game and while I know there is a continuing need for funding and that the dev time used in such aspects is minor, I still resent the distraction the videos represent.

Moreso because I feel they are more marketing and hype than actual useful information about the games progress and development and so add little value to the project.

Yes...I am critical. Some would say overly critical. But while I haven't backed the project and have no intention of doing so, that doesn't mean I don't care about the game or want to see it fail.

This is beyond critical. You're literally complaining that they're sharing their development with everyone. That's asinine. We don't want another Hello Games.

[Edge-]

Transparency has been used as a marketing tool for a while now by tons of companies.

Case in point -

[KyrtF]

This is beyond critical. You're literally complaining that they're sharing their development with everyone. That's asinine. We don't want another Hello Games.

No ...I'm complaining that the "transparency" isn't really that transparent because its focus is marketing, and not keeping us up to date.

It isn't intended to inform so much as to keep us excited about a project that is showing little sign of progress, is experiencing huge delays, and has so far delivered little. It hypes old tech as new and seems to be encouraging CIG to prioritise the development of non essential systems of low importance rather than the critical technologies the game still requires because of the perceived ability to hype it up.

They aren't sharing their development. They're sharing their marketing ads.

As for Hello Games...yes. NMS launched far too early. Yes...HG were pressured into doing so by Sony.

But HG were a small 16 (at most) man team that in 3 years of development managed to create a bespoke engine for their game, develop their own graphical assets, develop their own game and release it with 2 million or so copies sold.

NMS shows the problems with a publisher....HG were forced to release an incomplete game at an overinflated price.
But it also shows up CIG in a bad light....HGs 4-16 devs were able to do what CIGs 400 have not done and were able to do so in less time, with less money and have gone on to expand the game and patch away many of the issues.

Do we want another HG? The big problem with NMS is that it overhyped itself, it underdelivered and it was released at a price point far above what it deserved.
CIG are currently overhyping SC, they have underdelivered to date, and there are people have essentially paid thousands of dollars for the game. We DO have another HG.....just one that is more open about their desire to prioritise ship sales over game development, one which is over twenty times larger and one with at least ten times the budget.

[Majestic12]

Yes. To me its more of a problem that

1... this is marketing masquerading as "transparency"...which IMO is the answer to Takhisis' question.

2...it looks to me like CIG are prioritising unimportant aspects which can provide high impact marketing opportunities.

I can understand why they are doing it....but at the same time I simply want the game and while I know there is a continuing need for funding and that the dev time used in such aspects is minor, I still resent the distraction the videos represent.

Moreso because I feel they are more marketing and hype than actual useful information about the games progress and development and so add little value to the project.

Yes...I am critical. Some would say overly critical. But while I haven't backed the project and have no intention of doing so, that doesn't mean I don't care about the game or want to see it fail.

I'll even come in and defend CIG on this one and I'm one of the biggest criticisers in this thread. The making of videos and communicating with the community is part of the pledge. It's not directly tied to transparency or marketing, it is tied to the documentary that they promised and the communication. They have staff specifically working on this and it's all koscher, since it was part of the pledge.

Granted, sometimes even backers forget CIG's pledge. When the "road to Citizencon" video came out last year people did not seem to be aware of such and have forgotten about it in the past.
People also have a tendency to praise CIG for laughable things, such as the time when CIG supposedly had "invented" object-oriented programming.

These videos fall perfectly in line with the pledge so it's all good though. However, the fact that people forget and/or haven't read the pledge in years show how drawn-out SC has become. CR said himself that anything "over 2 years" would basically make everything be stretched out and dull. Now we're in year 5.

[masterhorus8]

No ...I'm complaining that the "transparency" isn't really that transparent because its focus is marketing, and not keeping us up to date.

It isn't intended to inform so much as to keep us excited about a project that is showing little sign of progress, is experiencing huge delays, and has so far delivered little. It hypes old tech as new and seems to be encouraging CIG to prioritise the development of non essential systems of low importance rather than the critical technologies the game still requires because of the perceived ability to hype it up.

They aren't sharing their development. They're sharing their marketing ads.

As for Hello Games...yes. NMS launched far too early. Yes...HG were pressured into doing so by Sony.

But HG were a small 16 (at most) man team that in 3 years of development managed to create a bespoke engine for their game, develop their own graphical assets, develop their own game and release it with 2 million or so copies sold.

NMS shows the problems with a publisher....HG were forced to release an incomplete game at an overinflated price.
But it also shows up CIG in a bad light....HGs 4-16 devs were able to do what CIGs 400 have not done and were able to do so in less time, with less money and have gone on to expand the game and patch away many of the issues.

Do we want another HG? The big problem with NMS is that it overhyped itself, it underdelivered and it was released at a price point far above what it deserved.
CIG are currently overhyping SC, they have underdelivered to date, and there are people have essentially paid thousands of dollars for the game.

I'm really not sure you know what the word "hype" means if you think that CIG showing off what they're putting in during their AtV videos counts as hyping. As I said before and will only say 1 more time. SC's audience does the hyping. CIG putting their stuff into their videos isn't. If they removed what you call "hype", then we would literally learn nothing about what they're doing with the game.

hype1
/hīp/
noun
1.
extravagant or intensive publicity or promotion.
verb
1.
promote or publicize (a product or idea) intensively, often exaggerating its importance or benefits.

None of the videos that CIG are doing are extravagant, intense, or exaggerated. They literally are saying what they're working on and what it'll be used for in their videos that go over something new every week. It's not CIG's fault that people think that RTT was the next newest/best thing since sliced bread. Hell, I'm seeing more hype over the new ship that CIG is pushing out soon™ with CIG trying to calm people down saying that it's nothing special (something about a "game changer" for an upcoming ship, but not this next one) than I saw regarding the RTT stuff you were venting about for the last few pages. In-depth != Hyping.

We DO have another HG.....just one that is more open about their desire to prioritise ship sales over game development, one which is over twenty times larger and one with at least ten times the budget.

/facepalm
You're legit just whining for the sake of whining at this point.

[KyrtF]

I'll even come in and defend CIG on this one and I'm one of the biggest criticisers in this thread. The making of videos and communicating with the community is part of the pledge. It's not directly tied to transparency or marketing, it is tied to the documentary that they promised and the communication. They have staff specifically working on this and it's all koscher, since it was part of the pledge.

That isn't the issue I have. Granted, I'd prefer they'd work on the game but as I said above, this would be a relatively minor (or should be) use of a developers time.

The issue I have with them is that their focus - to me anyway - is obviously more towards marketing and upselling the game with an eye towards encouraging people to pay more into the game.

A game that was supposedly fully funded at $30 million. A game whose continued funding has allowed CIG to use the excuse "We are delaying the game because we are expanding it and adding new features" - which to me is yelling "feature creep" and "changing the specs halfway through development". A game whose funding model is such that CIG and CR have said that they don't need investors.

Transparency - to me - would be CIG being upfront and honest about the development, its issues, where they are and what they are doing. Using these videos to oversell decades old technology as cutting edge technology - whether it is CIG "discovering" serialised variables, localised physics grids, RTT, creating subsumption AI, or inventing OOP - is not being transparent. I know enough about programming to recognise these are not even new concepts. I've done enough work in PR to recognise a "sell". For all that they are claiming the cutting edge, they aren't there and their excuses that rely on this seem phoney.

And I don't feel that is the case.

I would prefer them to be honest. I would prefer these videos to give an honest overview of what is happening rather than the PR marketing spiel that we are getting.

And no - I wouldn't call pushing twenty or thirty year old concepts or systems as cutting edge really should be part of a "Making of documentary" either. IMO, CIG are doing so to make people watching the videos excited. "Hey....look at all this new stuff we have invented and will be adding to the game!!!!" and "These shiny new gizmos base don't the new improved cutting edge technology we have absolutely really and truly invented and not just renamed with a cool sounding title is what we are spending your money on"

Do I think the backers who have paid money would be happy with "RTT is a twenty year old technology which we have added to the game. It'll make our life easier"?

I understand its important that these systems be added. But that doesn't change my mind that these videos are being produced not with an eye towards transparency, or even - as you suggest - with a focus on the promised "Making Of" documentary...but with the simple goal of marketing the product and getting players to part with their cash.

Still - public open day tomorrow at gamescom so hopefully we'll see 3.0 and get some actual movement and not a scripted demo.

[masterhorus8]

That isn't the issue I have. Granted, I'd prefer they'd work on the game but as I said above, this would be a relatively minor (or should be) use of a developers time.

The issue I have with them is that their focus - to me anyway - is obviously more towards marketing and upselling the game with an eye towards encouraging people to pay more into the game.

A game that was supposedly fully funded at $30 million. A game whose continued funding has allowed CIG to use the excuse "We are delaying the game because we are expanding it and adding new features" - which to me is yelling "feature creep" and "changing the specs halfway through development". A game whose funding model is such that CIG and CR have said that they don't need investors.

Transparency - to me - would be CIG being upfront and honest about the development, its issues, where they are and what they are doing. Using these videos to oversell decades old technology as cutting edge technology - whether it is CIG "discovering" serialised variables, localised physics grids, RTT, creating subsumption AI, or inventing OOP - is not being transparent. I know enough about programming to recognise these are not even new concepts. I've done enough work in PR to recognise a "sell". For all that they are claiming the cutting edge, they aren't there and their excuses that rely on this seem phoney.

And I don't feel that is the case.

I would prefer them to be honest. I would prefer these videos to give an honest overview of what is happening rather than the PR marketing spiel that we are getting.

And no - I wouldn't call pushing twenty or thirty year old concepts or systems as cutting edge really should be part of a "Making of documentary" either. IMO, CIG are doing so to make people watching the videos excited. "Hey....look at all this new stuff we have invented and will be adding to the game!!!!" and "These shiny new gizmos base don't the new improved cutting edge technology we have absolutely really and truly invented and not just renamed with a cool sounding title is what we are spending your money on"

Do I think the backers who have paid money would be happy with "RTT is a twenty year old technology which we have added to the game. It'll make our life easier"?

I understand its important that these systems be added. But that doesn't change my mind that these videos are being produced not with an eye towards transparency, or even - as you suggest - with a focus on the promised "Making Of" documentary...but with the simple goal of marketing the product and getting players to part with their cash.

Still - public open day tomorrow at gamescom so hopefully we'll see 3.0 and get some actual movement and not a scripted demo.

Are you really still on about the RTT stuff? Here, educate yourself: https://relay.sc/transcript/around-t...dary-viewports
Not once does CIG state that they "invented" RTT. What they do say though is that they made a new SYSTEM for their engine that uses RTT, and dubbed it the RTT SYSTEM, and went on the explain how they'd use RTT for their secondary view stuff.

As for what you expect from them and their transparency...you really don't look at much of what they release, do you? I was even going over it with Edge a page or two back about them switching over to their burndown chart that shows how many bugs they have left and their importance, along with each segment of the 3.0 content that still has bugs/isn't finished.

[KyrtF]

Are you really still on about the RTT stuff?

Amongst other stuff....it is however part of a pattern. They've claimed to have created a lot of "cutting edge" technology - subsumption AI, RTT, Object orientated programming and more...that they use as an excuse for their slow development, but which later turns out to be old technology.

"This is built on top of some new tech we have called the Render to Texture System. Prior to the Render to Texture System if we wanted to render some user interfaces or screens or visors we'd have to render them directly into the game world, and this happened after all of the rest of the scene had been rendered."

"So, the new system … the idea is we render all of this content into textures first, and then we use that, them textures, in the actual main rendering pass of the scene and composite them in with whatever effects we need like whether we need them to look holographic or like they're on glass or whatever it might be, and it let's them to bed themselves in the game world much better and have a much better lighting and sorting with the rest of the scene"

CIG should congratulate themselves on developing a new system that the rest of the world was using 20 years ago. This "new" system they are using and calling the RTT system is exactly what the existing RTT technology does. They created a new system that renders all the content into textures. Woop de doo.

I'll grant that what they have done is added RTT technology into the game. That's good. That's important. That's a sign of progress.
What they are DOING, however, is claiming to have created a new system which does what the existing RTT technology does and saying they are calling it RTT. One could say they misspoke except this isn't the first time they have made such claims or "misspoken"

Once is an accident...twice is coincidence. Thrice?

As for what you expect from them and their transparency...you really don't look at much of what they release, do you? I was even going over it with Edge a page or two back about them switching over to their burndown chart that shows how many bugs they have left and their importance, along with each segment of the 3.0 content that still has bugs/isn't finished.

So what? The issue is trust. The schedules would be fine - if we can trust them. The burndown would be fine - if we could trust them.

Unfortunately, the same people telling us we should trust them are the same people who - for example - got up on a stage and told us 3.0 was going to be out before Christmas 2016. Then we get updates stating that CIG hadn't even looked at 3.0 until months later. Is there any reason I ...or anyone else...should trust CR and CIG when they give us information? This isn't a case of simply being over optimistic...they lied. There is no way CR could have reasonably not known CIG hadn't even started developing 3.0 at that time and no way he could have expected 3.0 to be ready. So either they lied when they gave us the dates, or they lied about when they started work on 3.0.

That isn't being transparent at all.

So - no. We can't trust them. That burndown chart is little more than a PR exercise, a marketing stunt. Transparency requires trust...and how often have CIG been caught out? How often have they NOT been caught out?

They've shown us demos which turned out to be scripted. Claimed old tech as new innovations. Given us dates which were obviously false. Am I supposed to trust them?

That might not mean much to you, but to me it sets up a pattern showing CIG is being less than honest with us despite the pledge for transparency.

Does that really bother me? Not really. I ain't invested in the game. I'll buy it if its good. But I still don't like it. It wouldn't be so bad as I can see it for what it is - standard marketing ploys - except CIG are making a big deal out of being transparent. They aren't. Of course, the question then is if they can't be trusted about this, what else are they lying to us about? Or hiding from us?

You may trust CIG to tell you the truth. I don't.
I think they are doing their best to develop the game....but these constant delays and the extremely slow progress is getting beyond a joke. Even for a AAA game, CIG **SHOULD** have something more to show than they have after years of development. Can I trust the reasons and excuses they keep giving? No. Because they have shown they are not trustworthy.
I also think that pretty much everything they show us and tell us can fall into the category of "marketing" and is carefully designed and produced not to provide us with info, but to part us from our money.

I'm hoping Gamescom will prove me wrong...that they'll have something more to show than yet another crafted demo and an overhyped ship sale. 3.0 needs to deliver. And we need to see S42. And sadly, I am not expecting either.

[masterhorus8]

Amongst other stuff....it is however part of a pattern. They've claimed to have created a lot of "cutting edge" technology - subsumption AI, RTT, Object orientated programming and more...that they use as an excuse for their slow development, but which later turns out to be old technology.

"This is built on top of some new tech we have called the Render to Texture System. Prior to the Render to Texture System if we wanted to render some user interfaces or screens or visors we'd have to render them directly into the game world, and this happened after all of the rest of the scene had been rendered."

"So, the new system … the idea is we render all of this content into textures first, and then we use that, them textures, in the actual main rendering pass of the scene and composite them in with whatever effects we need like whether we need them to look holographic or like they're on glass or whatever it might be, and it let's them to bed themselves in the game world much better and have a much better lighting and sorting with the rest of the scene"

CIG should congratulate themselves on developing a new system that the rest of the world was using 20 years ago. This "new" system they are using and calling the RTT system is exactly what the existing RTT technology does. They created a new system that renders all the content into textures. Woop de doo.

I'll grant that what they have done is added RTT technology into the game. That's good. That's important. That's a sign of progress.
What they are DOING, however, is claiming to have created a new system which does what the existing RTT technology does and saying they are calling it RTT. One could say they misspoke except this isn't the first time they have made such claims or "misspoken"

Once is an accident...twice is coincidence. Thrice?

They aren't claiming to have invented it. They're literally saying that they added RTT to their engine, eg part of the new SYSTEM, named Render to Texture System. If you read the transcript or watched the video, they explain what the SYSTEM is that uses the RTT as part of the SYSTEM.

sys·tem
/ˈsistəm/
noun
1.
a set of connected things or parts forming a complex whole, in particular.
2.
a set of principles or procedures according to which something is done; an organized scheme or method.

As for the dates, no, it's not the same people. Last year, it was Chris. We've already been over that he should NOT be listened to regarding dates. The other dates have been ESTIMATES (I know it's a big word, but you can handle it) by the team (admittedly absolutely shit estimates). But hey, guess what. We can see the dates. We can see the delays. Because they are telling us. They are showing us. We see the features they're adding. We see how they're going about adding them. We see what bugs they fix (some of them). As for the Burndown chart, that thing is actually used in places. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burn_down_chart

Otherwise, if you have this much trust issues, then why bother even reading anything that CIG posts? You'll either call it lies or use it as confirmation bias. You ask for information, are given information, then promptly toss said information to the side because it doesn't agree with what you want.

As for Gamescom, they have parts of 3.0 available for play (the parts that don't have blockers. So far I've seen planetary entry/re-entry). Will see more during the video(s) in the following days.

Dammit..I'm starting to turn into Odeezee with his caps...

[Odeezee]

wow talk about straight up idiocy; the subscribers pay for ALL community based videos and updates with a separate subscription from the pledges and the devs provide the updates as agreed upon. you literally have NOTHING to complain about, you don't even have a valid argument against it /sigh. smh.

anyway, back to the topic of this thread; prepare your eyes from the Daymar demo they are letting show goers play at Gamescom 2017!

[Majestic12]

One thing I don't get is why CIG don't let us play what they're showing offline. Examples: Official PU(you can with a workaround, but nothing official), Homestead and now this local 3.0 build. I get that it's handcrafted and made specifically for events, but why are they never released so we can try them too?

This year will by the trend just be another offline demo that we never get to try. It will be full of "flashy" stuff that we'll never see again(such as the sandworm). I feel like we deserve to play them. It's not like releasing them takes a lot of resources.

[quras]

I don't really keep up with this game but how close is it to actually being a released game and not some crowd funded "someday release - just keep sending us your money" game?

[Edge-]

One thing I don't get is why CIG don't let us play what they're showing offline. Examples: Official PU(you can with a workaround, but nothing official), Homestead and now this local 3.0 build. I get that it's handcrafted and made specifically for events, but why are they never released so we can try them too?

This year will by the trend just be another offline demo that we never get to try. It will be full of "flashy" stuff that we'll never see again(such as the sandworm). I feel like we deserve to play them. It's not like releasing them takes a lot of resources.

Because those are super restricted builds that are often tailored specifically for those shows. They don't want to release that out in the wild where they won't have control over it because it lets players do all kinds of shit they don't want.

Often times, the seams holding those demos together are super obvious the second you go "out of bounds" for what they want you to do.

[quras]

Honestly. More of the "someday release - just keep sending us your money" game.

Even backers are starting to get pissed and are getting refunds.

It looks like an interesting game but that was the gist I was hearing online as well. Thought I'd ask here about it.

There are some very interesting articles out there as well about this game and how things have progressed. It's got some age on the article but it was interesting if you are kinda new to the game itself.

http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2016/09/23/i...f-star-citizen

[masterhorus8]

It looks like an interesting game but that was the gist I was hearing online as well. Thought I'd ask here about it.

There are some very interesting articles out there as well about this game and how things have progressed. It's got some age on the article but it was interesting if you are kinda new to the game itself.

http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2016/09/23/i...f-star-citizen

A lot of articles (dare I say "most"?) are click-baity garbage pieces that failed to do any amount of research whatsoever. But that one is one of the more well researched ones (a bit surprising, considering the site that it's on).