[Megathread] Star Citizen

[Gorsameth]

I think speaking of server meshing like its a small task and predominant in many other games already is a usual armchair dev mistake.

"Everyone" has the perfect way to deliver yet no one can provide actual examples of it being done. At least in the way CIG needs. EVE uses time dilatation to achieve it's numbers while not being a game heavy on physics or fast twitch gameplay, both NMS and Elite are solo games which connect to a central server and resort to P2P to connect toguether players like Destiny and other "mmo light" aproaches.

Planetside 2 does it in a constricted arena and yet has to reduce visible players after X ammount and range of sight is very low.

Dual Universe, Starbase, SpaceEngniers have their own solutions with their own limitations in terms of scalability and performance.

Star Citize universal scale means thousands of km of not only view distance but actual physycs, more entities to simulate and way more complex calculation than most games.
That's a Capital ship firing a railrun projectile across a planet that can be seen until the planet starts curving.

So they are trying to solve a problem that is incredibly difficult.
Trying to create a datastore system that can expand horizontally, keeps ACID (atomicity, consistency, isolation, durability), and does it quickly. The quick part is the real kicker. They have to be quick in order to support twitch reactions in a game with pvp capabilities.

It's quite a challenging task and why there's so little (none) alternatives to Star Citizen and why many people keep supporting the game.

In fact, it's exactly why this project is so special, gamers enabling a company to tackle technical challenges instead of resorting to scale down the game complexity/graphical/scale for the sake of profit margin constrains.

Right, no one has done it before and CiG has failed to do it for the last decade.

Glad we agree that CiG has (and still is) taking and burning hundreds of millions of dollars with a pre-alpha that doesn't work to show for it because the required underlying tech does not exist and may not exist for another decade.

Some people would call selling consumers on the idea of a game that cannot exist and continuing to take money to run a 600 person studio twiddling their thumbs fraud but we know you don't think like that.

I would applaud CiG if they hired only a small team of technical experts to develop the server meshing required for Star Citizen to exist and spend their money solely on solving that problem and when (if) they solve it hire a big studio to build a game around it but that is entirely NOT what they are doing.

[XDurionX]

I think speaking of server meshing like its a small task and predominant in many other games already is a usual armchair dev mistake.

"Everyone" has the perfect way to deliver yet no one can provide actual examples of it being done. At least in the way CIG needs. EVE uses time dilatation to achieve it's numbers while not being a game heavy on physics or fast twitch gameplay, both NMS and Elite are solo games which connect to a central server and resort to P2P to connect toguether players like Destiny and other "mmo light" aproaches.

Planetside 2 does it in a constricted arena and yet has to reduce visible players after X ammount and range of sight is very low.

Dual Universe, Starbase, SpaceEngniers have their own solutions with their own limitations in terms of scalability and performance.

Star Citize universal scale means thousands of km of not only view distance but actual physycs, more entities to simulate and way more complex calculation than most games.

That's a Capital ship firing a railrun projectile across a planet that can be seen until the planet starts curving.

So they are trying to solve a problem that is incredibly difficult.
Trying to create a datastore system that can expand horizontally, keeps ACID (atomicity, consistency, isolation, durability), and does it quickly. The quick part is the real kicker. They have to be quick in order to support twitch reactions in a game with pvp capabilities.

It's quite a challenging task and why there's so little (none) alternatives to Star Citizen and why many people keep supporting the game.

In fact, it's exactly why this project is so special, gamers enabling a company to tackle technical challenges instead of resorting to scale down the game complexity/graphical/scale for the sake of profit margin constrains.

I love how the ship is vibrating all the time because of the buggy "physycs".

[Otaka]

Right, no one has done it before and CiG has failed to do it for the last decade.

Glad we agree that CiG has (and still is) taking and burning hundreds of millions of dollars with a pre-alpha that doesn't work to show for it because the required underlying tech does not exist and may not exist for another decade.

Some people would call selling consumers on the idea of a game that cannot exist and continuing to take money to run a 600 person studio twiddling their thumbs fraud but we know you don't think like that.

I would applaud CiG if they hired only a small team of technical experts to develop the server meshing required for Star Citizen to exist and spend their money solely on solving that problem and when (if) they solve it hire a big studio to build a game around it but that is entirely NOT what they are doing.

How can someone write so much fail in a single reply?

Did you not know that no tech will ever exist if noone develops it first? if CiG werent doing it then noone else would... if innovative developers didnt exist then in 10 years we would still be playing CSGO and EA Sports garbage with microtransactions for pixel cards and NFT's. Noone wants that...

"a game that cannot exist" no game can exist... until a studio decides to make it.

What makes you think you know what CiG is even doing? you think they dont have a small team of technical experts? where do you get that information from? because the rest of us know they do have a team working on it... a team that isnt getting bigger because you cant just add more people into technical stuff like that and expect it to be developed faster.
The only things they hire more people for are development of the overall gameplay like new ships, planets and other things every game has done since the dawn of time. Which is good... so we can get more highly detailed ships and locations ingame quicker.

You just proved his point about armchair-devs. And also being even dumber than expected... "if something doesnt exist then it can never exist" *facepalm*

[Odeezee]

Was fishing ever a selling point for a futuristic sci-fi spaceship game? Has it even been discussed by CIG? I see fans discussing, but nothing in search is popping up from CIG. Why would it make sense within the game currently, are they planning on having a cooking system where you can grow your own crops and herbs and catch fish and gut it and cook it? On top of everything else that they are struggling to get working? Is it gonna be space fishing, or boring terrestrial fishing?

they have discussed it in the context of farming, which will be a profession in the future. it will also be a part of the economy through Quantum as people will need to supply the fish either through player fisheries or buying then from npcs and shipping them to where they are needed. it will effectively be a gathering resource where you gather it in bulk and not get individual ones, because if they add that type of fishing, it would be more for recreation than commerce. there are also space whales that will be coming in once they get AI navmesh and pathing, as well as AI behaviors done, but atm we will only be able to gather resources that grow on the skin of the whales, no word yet on if we will be able to kill them.

And, you'll have many SC fans here disagreeing that Star Citizen is a MMO because "CIG don't call it a MMO" since they removed that descriptor some years back.

haha, it is an MMO, they changed it to universe simulator because it's more than just an MMO, but for the sake of relatability you can just call it an MMO. people who say that SC is not an MMO are arguing in bad faith, because they know full well that that is the way it is being designed, just because it has a player cap of 50 to 60 currently, doesn't mean that is where it will always be. people forget that we went from a server cap of 1 to what we have now.

I mean, we're nearly a decade in and they're still struggling with a lot of foundational elements and you're talking about a major addition to the game that would impact other systems in a huge way. Something that won't be cheap to design and implement and get working with everything else without a ton of bugs.

they can literally reuse systems they already have and just tweak them, like they did with docking to get refueling or missiles to get bombs, to get underwater content. they just extend the planet tech to include underwater content, add derelicts, passive and predatory sea life (once that pipeline has matured), weather, cave systems, and figure out if space ships can go underwater, or if they need to make ship mods or unique underwater craft. for swimming, they can tweak the eva system and add swimming animations/diving animations, etc.

Should they add another 2-3 years (minimum) onto the development timeline for fishing and underwater exploration or something?

huh? you are aware that they are automating a lot of the content generation as we speak, right? so that when they paint planets, not only will they be adding topography, weather, temperature, humidity, etc, they will also add the content people can engage in there as well. the main things they will need to have as bespoke would be hero locations like cities. and how do you know how long it would take them to create underwater content and fishing? what exactly is your frame of reference?

From what I've observed, it's not an MMO when it's time to compare it to the stability, features, design process and development of other MMOs

wait? why would you be comparing the stability of SC, a game in pre-alpha development, to released titles, when you know it will change as the game gets closer to release? hell, it's even changed during the pre-alpha, there are few if any CTDs and few, if any 30ks. also, i am pretty sure most AAA MMOs use similar design processes and have similar features to, at least, part of SC's feature set. why be so disingenuous with your arguments? smh.

but it IS an MMO when it comes to describing what it could be in an extremely indeterminate future that is only visible to those that have faith and, one assumes, an existing sunk cost in the game.

haha, so you don't have a cogent argument and instead try to psychoanalyze people you have no idea about, because you want to force a narrative? if you really want to psychoanalyze people, then i suggest that you should for those that stay in a thread for a game that they do not like, for years on end, that actually sounds like a much more apt use of the Sunk Cost Fallacy to me, that emotional investment can be real. also, SC is not an MMO in some obscure esoteric way, it's an MMO because that is what its feature set encompasses. why is this even an argument?

But to be fair in regards to your question, wanting to add terrestrial fishing for the sheer hell of it while the actual space portion of the game is still half an unplayable mess, patches launch with a fraction of planned features and the entire SP game exists only in wishy-washy blogs would be a very Star Citizen move.

you and Edge seem to be shadowboxing some imaginary person who said that the devs will be adding fishing and UW content this year, or soon or something, who said this and why did you both jump to that conclusion? that is very strange.

I mean yeah, but at the same time the whole studio can't just wait for the server meshing team to get that finally working before working on everything else. They gotta stay busy working on other elements of the game while waiting on core tech to be ready.

which makes your previous comment about the devs requiring 2 to 3 years to develop, rather unnecessary, as we literally know what most of the teams are working on, there is no need for all these guessing games, based on severely limited information? just go and read the Roadmap if something reaches committed then know it will be releasing in whatever patch it is listed for.

SC is in a perpetual state of being both an MMO and not an MMO while also being both released and not released, and is apparently able to change its state at will.

what is up with detractors in this thread being so bad faith? SC is not in perpetual states of duality, people like you just cannot argue on the merits and thus try and conflate and compare an MMO in development, with fully released MMOs. it's the oddest and most intellectually dishonest thing i read on the internet these days and it says a lot about the strengths of your arguments that you have to resort to such disingenuity.

exactly, they keep adding and working on random shit because the project can go nowhere until critical tech is developed and implemented.

do you have an example of random shit they just happened to start working on, or is this more conflation and misrepresentation?

In competent design you would expect this to be done first and when (if) its figured out you expand the team and do everything else. CiG in their infinite wisdom now have 600 people twiddling their thumbs waiting for a dozen to deliver the magic bullet that will save them all.

why lie though? the devs have been working on the pre-requisites for Server Meshing, since 2015 at least, it's not easy tech to develop because the amount of data for SC entities is staggering. we saw the sheer amount of information that clients and the servers were dealing with back before 3.0.

also, you claim that other devs "figure out" core tech before moving on to other stuff, what exactly do you think CIG have been doing? the devs have a lot of completed content or almost complete content, that is waiting for core tech dependencies, but they are still making other content, it's just not in the PU yet. and you do realize that devs have different specialties, you can't put an artist on networking or vice-versa. you also forget that the phase of development where devs "figure out" core systems is during pre-alpha, which is precisely where SC is currently. CIG have just taken more time due to growing pains and the sheer scale and scope of the game. and as i said in my previous post, stop taking the current time for SC to progress as the progress of everything, for at least 3 years SC has been secondary to SQ42, so ofc it will have slower development. but once SQ42 is released, SC development should speed up quite considerably, since the majority of the companies devs are working on it as their focus.

about the "magic bullet" tech, it's not magic, it's just the product of a lot of hard working and passionate devs, who want to realize the vision of the games.

[Gorsameth]

How can someone write so much fail in a single reply?

Did you not know that no tech will ever exist if noone develops it first? if CiG werent doing it then noone else would... if innovative developers didnt exist then in 10 years we would still be playing CSGO and EA Sports garbage with microtransactions for pixel cards and NFT's. Noone wants that...

"a game that cannot exist" no game can exist... until a studio decides to make it.

What makes you think you know what CiG is even doing? you think they dont have a small team of technical experts? where do you get that information from? because the rest of us know they do have a team working on it... a team that isnt getting bigger because you cant just add more people into technical stuff like that and expect it to be developed faster.
The only things they hire more people for are development of the overall gameplay like new ships, planets and other things every game has done since the dawn of time. Which is good... so we can get more highly detailed ships and locations ingame quicker.

You just proved his point about armchair-devs. And also being even dumber than expected... "if something doesnt exist then it can never exist" *facepalm*

I would applaud CiG if they hired only a small team of technical experts to develop the server meshing required for Star Citizen to exist and spend their money solely on solving that problem and when (if) they solve it hire a big studio to build a game around it but that is entirely NOT what they are doing.

Let me highlight a bit since you seem to have problems with basic English. Please try again.

[Tertullian72]

Wing Commander sucks. TIE Fighter rules.

[Jastall]

How can someone write so much fail in a single reply?

Did you not know that no tech will ever exist if noone develops it first? if CiG werent doing it then noone else would... if innovative developers didnt exist then in 10 years we would still be playing CSGO and EA Sports garbage with microtransactions for pixel cards and NFT's. Noone wants that...

"a game that cannot exist" no game can exist... until a studio decides to make it.

What makes you think you know what CiG is even doing? you think they dont have a small team of technical experts? where do you get that information from? because the rest of us know they do have a team working on it... a team that isnt getting bigger because you cant just add more people into technical stuff like that and expect it to be developed faster.
The only things they hire more people for are development of the overall gameplay like new ships, planets and other things every game has done since the dawn of time. Which is good... so we can get more highly detailed ships and locations ingame quicker.

You just proved his point about armchair-devs. And also being even dumber than expected... "if something doesnt exist then it can never exist" *facepalm*

Then you develop said supertech before you start the dev process, or at least towards the beginning of it. So that you're not stuck in the situation where the materials to build the house are lying around uselessly because the foundation isn't even close to done. Or maybe they've been hard at work on it since 2014 yet still have no solution in sight, which is the more worrying option since it means they might still take 10 more years to make this thing at least.

[Revamp Man]

Guys listen I’ve got this new game it only needs like $5m dollars to fund it and it can be out in 6 years

Ok guys I know it’s been 6 years and we got 100x more funding than we originally asked for and we have nothing beyond an alpha available but let me tell you about the new store items and some fun new stuff I want to add

Ok guys I know it’s been 10 years now and I am once again asking for funding because I have some more stuff I want to add even though the stuff you bought years ago still isn’t working

[Edge-]

they have discussed it in the context of farming, which will be a profession in the future.

How many dozens of games are they gonna build in SC?

Because if they want this shit all in "before launch", I think the joking prediction of 2038 for the launch window are actually a bit too aggressive.

I would have never guessed that the folks that initially backed a spaceship sim would be dying to get into a futuristic tractor to plow the dirt and spray pesticides.

[Kyanion]

How can someone write so much fail in a single reply?
You just proved his point about armchair-devs. And also being even dumber than expected...

Not sure that is the hill I'd want to die on defending devs who have taken over 9 years and have a buggy alpha with a server unable to hand more than 50 people but hey you do you.

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I would have never guessed that the folks that initially backed a spaceship sim would be dying to get into a futuristic tractor to plow the dirt and spray pesticides.

I guess they are banking on SC being a VRMMO when they develop that tech in 2038+?

[Easo]

well it will have fully traversable procedural planets for starters. also, haven't you ever wanted to just explore the planets in ME? or have more control over how you traverse the maps and planets? how about cool features like SQ42's Spoil-tech where npcs react to where you are looking and give you lore that way, as opposed to through a menu? or seeing 24-hour daily lives of npcs, that are not just standing around waiting for you to interact with them? or having more interactivity with the gameworld than any game to date, with animations to go with them all? and even if none of this unexhaustive list appeals to you, how about all of these features in the same cohesive package?

Jesus christ wall of text...

A lot of "will be". Your cutting edge SQ42 doesn't even exist in touchable format, graphically it already is behind current gen (I specifically mentioned it looking dated).
So when I will have this wonder tech?

[MrAnderson]

I would applaud CiG if they hired only a small team of technical experts to develop the server meshing required for Star Citizen to exist and spend their money solely on solving that problem and when (if) they solve it hire a big studio to build a game around it but that is entirely NOT what they are doing.

Let me highlight a bit since you seem to have problems with basic English. Please try again.

At first glance your line can make sense but if you put more thought into it you'll easily notice how flawed it would be from a crowdfunded perspective (you can't start building the network for a massive game when you don't even know you'll be able to fund it in the first place) and from a development perspective (It's like asking a team to build a bridge without knowing how wide and how much load it will need to be able to sustain).

The way they are doing it is exactly the best way to do in their particular situation and how it's usually it's done, you start small and then access performance/issues, iterate optimize and scale up along the years.

Since Star Citizen deals with lot's of physics and entities it's complexity and strain on servers dwarfs traditional mmo's that simplify their gameplay to the max. Everything is physicalised and has collision checks: Players, npc, ship, weapon, missile, laser. This isn't WoW where players are just a point and a facing and spell checks are done by LOS and Range and the server stress burden is alleviated with heavy instancing. Star Citizen uses no instancing, everyone is playing in the same simulated game world, or universe. So the 50 players engaging in more complex activities will generate way more server load than a traditional 1k/2k traditional mmo where things are simplified for the sake or achieving high numbers. Which is one of the main reasons of why the MMORPG genre as been stagnant for so long.

To better understand how harder Star Citizen serverload can be compared with most MMO's I suggest taking a look at how Mining works there:



You'll notice there's quite a lot more going on in a "simple" activity like mining.

Extrapolate for every other activity. Dogfighting, FPS, Trading and so on.

[kenn9530]

Right, no one has done it before and CiG has failed to do it for the last decade.

Glad we agree that CiG has (and still is) taking and burning hundreds of millions of dollars with a pre-alpha that doesn't work to show for it because the required underlying tech does not exist and may not exist for another decade.

Some people would call selling consumers on the idea of a game that cannot exist and continuing to take money to run a 600 person studio twiddling their thumbs fraud but we know you don't think like that.

I would applaud CiG if they hired only a small team of technical experts to develop the server meshing required for Star Citizen to exist and spend their money solely on solving that problem and when (if) they solve it hire a big studio to build a game around it but that is entirely NOT what they are doing.

You do enjoy talking complete BS all the time, there is a game to play and there is plenty to do and its better than many games fully released, SC can only improve and get even better.

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Jesus christ wall of text...

A lot of "will be". Your cutting edge SQ42 doesn't even exist in touchable format, graphically it already is behind current gen (I specifically mentioned it looking dated).
So when I will have this wonder tech?

The graphics will be as good as what the current alpha is or better, they are nowhere near outdated and they are always improved upon so they are not behind the current gen.

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Then you develop said supertech before you start the dev process, or at least towards the beginning of it. So that you're not stuck in the situation where the materials to build the house are lying around uselessly because the foundation isn't even close to done. Or maybe they've been hard at work on it since 2014 yet still have no solution in sight, which is the more worrying option since it means they might still take 10 more years to make this thing at least.

It takes a long time to develop tech never been done before so its impossible to develop tech they didnt even know they needed for the game, the origional game was not going to be an MMO, it was going to be run of your own computer and work like elite dangerous multiplayer gameplay so all the extra networking capabilities were not required, the community wanted an MMO so they expanded on the game.

[Kyanion]

You do enjoy talking complete BS all the time, there is a game to play and there is plenty to do and its better than many games fully released, SC can only improve and get even better.

There you go tossing out the 'complete BS' line again. Is there plenty to do? Maybe for you. Better than many games fully released? Lol ok.
SC can only improve and get even better you say, are you sure? Is it possible they don't get better and instead fail to add new things, feature creep themselves even more and continue to take even more time to get 'fully released'. I dunno what they've put out that instills this blind faith you, Odeezee and Anderson seem to have but their track record shows they are going to take even more time, YEARS to get this stuff out. And by the time it does come out? What year will it be and what will newer tech look like?

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Jesus christ wall of text...

A lot of "will be". Your cutting edge SQ42 doesn't even exist in touchable format, graphically it already is behind current gen (I specifically mentioned it looking dated).
So when I will have this wonder tech?

I didn't even read that term paper he turned in but wow the paragraph you quoted. They are 9+ years in and talking about what it 'will have' as if it is all going to happen. Blows my mind.

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The graphics will be as good as what the current alpha is or better, they are nowhere near outdated and they are always improved upon so they are not behind the current gen.

How do you know they will be better? Because they assured you? Because you paid for better so you damn well better get better? Nowhere near outdated? Ummm hate to break it to you....

Always being improved upon so it can never release. I mean their plan is fucking brilliant because people keep tossing money at it I suppose. But always being improved upon, why? Shouldn't they you know, get a complete game done first? Nahhhhh

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It takes a long time to develop tech never been done before so its impossible to develop tech they didnt even know they needed for the game

Well we know for them it has taken at least 9 years and they are no where fucking close to being done. So yay for the most bloated game of all time?

[Gorsameth]

At first glance your line can make sense but if you put more thought into it you'll easily notice how flawed it would be from a crowdfunded perspective (you can't start building the network for a massive game when you don't even know you'll be able to fund it in the first place) and from a development perspective (It's like asking a team to build a bridge without knowing how wide and how much load it will need to be able to sustain).

The way they are doing it is exactly the best way to do in their particular situation and how it's usually it's done, you start small and then access performance/issues, iterate optimize and scale up along the years.

Since Star Citizen deals with lot's of physics and entities it's complexity and strain on servers dwarfs traditional mmo's that simplify their gameplay to the max. Everything is physicalised and has collision checks: Players, npc, ship, weapon, missile, laser. This isn't WoW where players are just a point and a facing and spell checks are done by LOS and Range and the server stress burden is alleviated with heavy instancing. Star Citizen uses no instancing, everyone is playing in the same simulated game world, or universe. So the 50 players engaging in more complex activities will generate way more server load than a traditional 1k/2k traditional mmo where things are simplified for the sake or achieving high numbers. Which is one of the main reasons of why the MMORPG genre as been stagnant for so long.

To better understand how harder Star Citizen serverload can be compared with most MMO's I suggest taking a look at how Mining works there:

You'll notice there's quite a lot more going on in a "simple" activity like mining.

Extrapolate for every other activity. Dogfighting, FPS, Trading and so on.

I consider the fact that CiG still hasn't managed to get their servers above 50 after god knows how long working on server meshing a good indictment of why everyone else simplifies and tries to reduce server burden.

Just because no one else has made a house out of snow in the Sahara doesn't mean that you should be applauded for trying to do it with other peoples money. And sure, someday in the future mankind may be able to build a snow house in the desert heat and keep it standing, but it won't happen anytime soon. And neither will CiG's Server Meshing.

[Kyanion]

Just because no one else has made a house out of snow in the Sahara doesn't mean that you should be applauded for trying to do it with other peoples money. And sure, someday in the future mankind may be able to build a snow house in the desert heat and keep it standing, but it won't happen anytime soon. And neither will CiG's Server Meshing.

Thanks for the smile, that comment made my day.

It really does highlight an issue with what these fans of SC expect despite waiting 9+ years for some of this miracle tech to show up. Like one day they'll wise up.... right?

[MrAnderson]

I consider the fact that CiG still hasn't managed to get their servers above 50 after god knows how long working on server meshing a good indictment of why everyone else simplifies and tries to reduce server burden.

Just because no one else has made a house out of snow in the Sahara doesn't mean that you should be applauded for trying to do it with other peoples money. And sure, someday in the future mankind may be able to build a snow house in the desert heat and keep it standing, but it won't happen anytime soon. And neither will CiG's Server Meshing.

I'd understand how one could think that when one doesn't know the intrinsics of game development or how the project of Star Citizen is going.

The objective is not to "go above 50 players at all cost", if so all they had to do was to scale back their game to more manageable entities like every other mmorpg. But that's not what they're settling for, never was in the first place. This project was all about pushing tech to make the best space game possible.

You know, some were once sceptical about Ultima Online viability, as they were about Everquest and they were about Diablo, WoW, ESO and so on.

Just like some said that the CryEngine wouldn't be able to sustain large enough maps for a space game, or it wouldn't be able to render full sized planets, or function without some kind of instancing.

We get it, from the outside all you see is a game that's been in development for 10 years without conclusion in sight. But that is basically neglecting or ignoring the huge progress and content delivered and playable right now AND that several other projects go through the same issues in their development.
I've named them here before, from established studios to crowdfunded ones.

Maybe you wouldn't feel so much discomfort with gamers backing a company that is making an ambitious game that could provide something different and push the genre forward if you weren't so invested in being team right or team wrong.

We've got plenty of years of "traditional development" to play from, some are satisfied some aren't. I'm happy that I can back a company who is trying to push things forward, being able to play as they develop is just the cherry on top.

Because if you think about it, If not CIG making Star Citizen, what else is there to look up for?

[Edge-]

You know, some were once sceptical about Ultima Online viability, as they were about Everquest and they were about Diablo, WoW, ESO and so on.

That's...not accurate in the context of this discussion/thread. Ultima and EQ, yes, but for vastly different reasons mostly revolving around consumers hardware and acceptance of a new form of online game like this. When EQ1 launched it was viewed as insanely risky because the game required a discrete graphics card. Diablo, WoW, and ESO similarly never faced the kinds of technical challenges facing CIG's aspirations for SC. Diablo was an amazing game and super great, but wasn't pioneering new tech that the industry largely viewed to be too complicated and expensive to pursue at the moment. WoW never had such questions coming from Blizzard, and while success was expected what surprised people was how big it got. For ESO, literally none of these questions existed, it wasn't doing anything super technically ambitious in the slightest and simply had a poor launch that required a year of work before the relaunch. The only questions for ESO was if there was space in the market for another MMO at the time given that it was reaching saturation and saw the launch of both ESO and WS in the same period (the latter of which did not perform well nor survive).

[Kyanion]

I'd understand how one could think that when one doesn't know the intrinsics of game development or how the project of Star Citizen is going.

Yes so what is your background in game design? Or are you just parroting what CIG tells you. Know what I know about the project? 9+ years and no released game. A fucking marvel in the gaming industry.

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The objective is not to "go above 50 players at all cost", if so all they had to do was to scale back their game to more manageable entities like every other mmorpg. But that's not what they're settling for, never was in the first place. This project was all about pushing tech to make the best space game possible.

Sure they were just selling ships that require multiple people to be in them just for the laughs. Well they laugh all the way to the bank as people buy them I suppose.

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You know, some were once sceptical about Ultima Online viability, as they were about Everquest and they were about Diablo, WoW, ESO and so on.

Except none of those games were crowdfunded so who cares what risks they took on.

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We get it, from the outside all you see is a game that's been in development for 10 years without conclusion in sight.

BECAUSE THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT THE GAME IS! No conclusion in sight. It has been in development that long and isn't even remotely close to being a launched game. Jesus.

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When EQ1 launched it was viewed as insanely risky because the game required a discrete graphics card.

And then not much longer later the Luclin expansion required an upgraded video card for a nice chunk of players. That was rough but damn it was worth it.

[Easo]

The graphics will be as good as what the current alpha is or better, they are nowhere near outdated and they are always improved upon so they are not behind the current gen.

Again "will be". You have no proof of that and we can clearly see by the last gameplay videos from SQ42 that it is not next gen anymore, can be seen especially clearly on faces.
Forever improving graphics is an oxymoron, those things almost never happen + once more basic game design - you have to lock in features at some point.

I didn't even read that term paper he turned in but wow the paragraph you quoted. They are 9+ years in and talking about what it 'will have' as if it is all going to happen. Blows my mind.

This thread in a nutshell, basically. I first started reading it like 4-5 years ago...