[Megathread] Star Citizen

[Gorsameth]

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/s...spread/6542373



If this is not actually feature complete, what else is there not feature complete yet in SQ42? How many more times does CIG have to lie for people to realize the abuse?

wait, after 10+ years they haven't even finished skeleton rigging on the models yet? this doesn't even need Jesus(tm) tech to function. Why hasn't this been done for years and years?

(I again say, Sq42 does not exist!)

[Jastall]

wait, after 10+ years they haven't even finished skeleton rigging on the models yet? this doesn't even need Jesus(tm) tech to function. Why hasn't this been done for years and years?

(I again say, Sq42 does not exist!)

The trailer was very likely a vertical slice and the actual game isn't even close to functional yet (somehow), and likely won't be released until near the end of the decade, if it is released at all of course.

[Gorsameth]

The trailer was very likely a vertical slice and the actual game isn't even close to functional yet (somehow), and likely won't be released until near the end of the decade, if it is released at all of course.

calling it a vertical slice seems overly charitable. Most likely it was just an entirely custom created video which in no way, shape or form actually exists in the 'game'.

[kenn9530]

Freelancer managed to have million times more NPC's doing their thing, 20 years ago, than SC has. They didn't require you to come to sudden dead stop either to scan you or whatever. Also, have you thought that "no loadscreen" is maybe not worth sacrificing every resource that could go to actually making content? Animation between system jumps, and quick loadscreen on planetary entry/exit in Freelancer seemed to work pretty well. It came with systems, NPCs and content in return for that, as opposed to SC that tries magic tricks at the cost of everything else.

Freelancer did not have the thousands of NPCs that star citizen currently has, it didnt even have actual planets, it had a few ships flying around and thats it so you dont need to talk complete BS now, Star Citizen currently at this moment has a ton of content far more than freelancer ever had, you are proving you dont even know anything at all about star citizen if you are talking complete nonsense.

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wow has had this for almost 20 years now. This isn't somthing special.

No it has not lol the zones are split into servers and the merge to move into an area on a new server is not seemless, it has static servers set to handle the regions, when a character move between servers you lose sight of them until you have moved into that server also.

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I hate to break it to kenn, but if you have to warp anywhere, that is a loading screen, just an interactive one. Most games with doors do this to hide a loading screen. Elite Dangerous does this same thing when jumping from system to system.

In Star Citizen you are not stuck in your seat you can do whatever you want on your ship, so not a loading screen, in ED all you can do is control your ship, in SC you can start somewhere get on a ship and travel to other star systems and you will never once encounter a loading screen. A loading screen is something that completely locks you out of doing something else with your character.

Traveling through a wormhole you still need to control your ship.

[Orange Joe]

Freelancer did not have the thousands of NPCs that star citizen currently has, it didnt even have actual planets, it had a few ships flying around and thats it so you dont need to talk complete BS now, Star Citizen currently at this moment has a ton of content far more than freelancer ever had, you are proving you dont even know anything at all about star citizen if you are talking complete nonsense.

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No it has not lol the zones are split into servers and the merge to move into an area on a new server is not seemless, it has static servers set to handle the regions, when a character move between servers you lose sight of them until you have moved into that server also.

Lets go back to what you said.

A server tech that allows players to seamlessly travel wherever they want with no loading screens which is currently being tested atm,

You can travel the whole of Kalimdor or the whole of eastern kingdom with 0 loading screens When SC comes out there will be a loading screen between every system. Only reason they don't have one right now is because they only have 1 system.

[Gorsameth]

No it has not lol the zones are split into servers and the merge to move into an area on a new server is not seemless, it has static servers set to handle the regions, when a character move between servers you lose sight of them until you have moved into that server also.

Not since like 2010?

WoW sharding means that you can seamlessly move between servers within an area depending on load (aka how many people are around) and characters can be moved around dynamically to ensure people in the same party are in the same shard.

Now the one thing WoW doesn't do, that I think SC wants to be able to do (but obviously is no where close to doing) is allowing different shards to interact so that a ship in shard A could see and shoot a ship in shard B. But then we're back to magical Christmas land.

[Jastall]

calling it a vertical slice seems overly charitable. Most likely it was just an entirely custom created video which in no way, shape or form actually exists in the 'game'.

Also a possiblity, but I'm willing to be somewhat lenient on the matter.

Besides, surely they did something during those last 10 years. It hasn't gone to cash shop ships and features that don't work.

Right?

[kenn9530]

Not since like 2010?

WoW sharding means that you can seamlessly move between servers within an area depending on load (aka how many people are around) and characters can be moved around dynamically to ensure people in the same party are in the same shard.

Now the one thing WoW doesn't do, that I think SC wants to be able to do (but obviously is no where close to doing) is allowing different shards to interact so that a ship in shard A could see and shoot a ship in shard B. But then we're back to magical Christmas land.

SC has already shown the tech for multiple servers interacting with each other working in the last Citcon, may not quite be ready for use in the PU but the actual tech has already been shown as functional and doing what its supposed to, showing servers that are not being used at all to automatically shut down and multiple servers all working together.

There is still plenty of loading in WoW, it may be fast but there is loading when you move across zones that have server splits and usually there isnt much more than 50 players in a shard because WoW struggles to deal with large groups of players spamming spells over and over, they have smoothed the loading out but its still there.

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Lets go back to what you said.




You can travel the whole of Kalimdor or the whole of eastern kingdom with 0 loading screens When SC comes out there will be a loading screen between every system. Only reason they don't have one right now is because they only have 1 system.

There is tons of loading in WoW, thats the way its designed, flying around some empty zones with minimal loading is nowhere near what SC is doing.

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Of course there has always been server meshing, however, the tradeoff is that most games using it have a very simplistic or non existent physics engine. Building a game is based on trade offs and you cannot go with an everything and a kitchen sink approach, because that would literally bring your game to a halt, as we see in SC. Starfield isn't even a MMO yet there is no such thing as realistic space physics, as you can't space walk and the only gravity is on planets or in a ship. And the reason you have to have a dock on your ship is because that is used as a mini loading screen as you move between ships. And elite dangerous also takes a similar approach. The idea was nice as a proof of concept but obviously the execution has been lacking and it doesn't look like it will ever achieve the fidelity Chris wants.

What are you on about, you can space walk, if you space walk close to a planet in gravity your char will fall, far away from planets there isn't going to be gravity, there is no loading screens at all you can smoothly board your ship, the physics in SC is fairly realistic as possible but not to a degree to make it not enjoyable as you don't have to do much yourself to engage with it.

You are showing here you know nothing about SC if you claim you cant space walk, claim it has no content and all that other jazz.

[Ausr]

SC has already shown the tech for multiple servers interacting with each other working in the last Citcon, may not quite be ready for use in the PU but the actual tech has already been shown as functional and doing what its supposed to, showing servers that are not being used at all to automatically shut down and multiple servers all working together.

There is still plenty of loading in WoW, it may be fast but there is loading when you move across zones that have server splits and usually there isnt much more than 50 players in a shard because WoW struggles to deal with large groups of players spamming spells over and over, they have smoothed the loading out but its still there.

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There is tons of loading in WoW, thats the way its designed, flying around some empty zones with minimal loading is nowhere near what SC is doing.

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What are you on about, you can space walk, if you space walk close to a planet in gravity your char will fall, far away from planets there isn't going to be gravity, there is no loading screens at all you can smoothly board your ship, the physics in SC is fairly realistic as possible but not to a degree to make it not enjoyable as you don't have to do much yourself to engage with it.

You are showing here you know nothing about SC if you claim you cant space walk, claim it has no content and all that other jazz.

Can literally tell you don't play WoW to make those statements.

[Orange Joe]

SC has already shown the tech for multiple servers interacting with each other working in the last Citcon, may not quite be ready for use in the PU but the actual tech has already been shown as functional and doing what its supposed to, showing servers that are not being used at all to automatically shut down and multiple servers all working together.

There is still plenty of loading in WoW, it may be fast but there is loading when you move across zones that have server splits and usually there isnt much more than 50 players in a shard because WoW struggles to deal with large groups of players spamming spells over and over, they have smoothed the loading out but its still there.

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There is tons of loading in WoW, thats the way its designed, flying around some empty zones with minimal loading is nowhere near what SC is doing.

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What are you on about, you can space walk, if you space walk close to a planet in gravity your char will fall, far away from planets there isn't going to be gravity, there is no loading screens at all you can smoothly board your ship, the physics in SC is fairly realistic as possible but not to a degree to make it not enjoyable as you don't have to do much yourself to engage with it.

You are showing here you know nothing about SC if you claim you cant space walk, claim it has no content and all that other jazz.

Ain't even gonna bother. Everyone can clearly see how wrong you are in this post.


the only thing I'm going to ask is for a image of the loading screen you get for going from Elwynn Forest to Westfall.

[kenn9530]

Ain't even gonna bother. Everyone can clearly see how wrong you are in this post.


the only thing I'm going to ask is for a image of the loading screen you get for going from Elwynn Forest to Westfall.

there doesnt always have to be an actual loading screen for you to load into another server everytime they have smoothed the process down over the years, facts are WoW does have a ton of loading screens and sharding is you loading into another server it happens all the time flying around zones, there is non of that is star citizen. You can physically see the change when it happens in WoW and stuff starting to load in like mobs and such.

Blizz have spent around 30 years on developing their server infrastructure and it still has many problems.

[Orange Joe]

there doesnt always have to be an actual loading screen for you to load into another server everytime they have smoothed the process down over the years, facts are WoW does have a ton of loading screens and sharding is you loading into another server it happens all the time flying around zones, there is non of that is star citizen. You can physically see the change when it happens in WoW and stuff starting to load in like mobs and such.

Blizz have spent around 30 years on developing their server infrastructure and it still has many problems.

kinda like when I see npcs pop in in star citizen? Or when ships just appear at a certain range? or asteroids from a asteroid belt?

Do you not know the difference between rendering and loading screens?

[Azadina]

Freelancer did not have the thousands of NPCs that star citizen currently has, it didnt even have actual planets, it had a few ships flying around and thats it so you dont need to talk complete BS now, Star Citizen currently at this moment has a ton of content far more than freelancer ever had, you are proving you dont even know anything at all about star citizen if you are talking complete nonsense.

Yeah, I'm sorry Kenny, but I'm not even going to count the NPCs standing on benches or other such locations in cities in SC. They have zero, read: zero purpose whatsoever. In bunkers? Sure, there's some there IF they happen to work. And it seemed to be a very big IF on 3.20 and 21. There are barely any NPC ships flying around outside of missions. Freelancer had plenty anywhere you went. "few" you say, you clearly never played it. It also had more planets and bases than SC has. Along with near 50 systems. SC will never have more than 2, you're free to prove me wrong on that. I'm even being generous on assuming Pyro will actually release some day.

Freelancer also came with single player storyline, however cut it ended up being, along many other things. Still, more than could be said for SC.

Blizz have spent around 30 years on developing their server infrastructure and it still has many problems.

Compared to SC, the blizz servers are as close to perfect as humanly possible to make. They also didn't forsake developing game content for all of those years while working on the servers. Could there be a reason why one is successful, and one is more of a failure even when compared to it's now 20 year old predecessor game?

[banmebaby]

Obsly can't ever really say how legit these are but...


https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Reviews/...VW82946134.htm

Current Employee, more than 8 years



Pros



Amazing people work here, but not the most driven/ talented people, so the shine of that wears off quick.

Great work / life balance because “work” here is not what would be considered working anywhere else

Solid health and dental benefits

A great benefit of CIG USED TO BE the hope of working on a cool emerging IP, while learning skills/ tools to strongly develop your future career, but that has been far from the case for years.



Cons



BEFORE YOU READ: Some of this review may seem like it written by someone with an axe to grind. I can assure you, it is not. What it is, however, is very honest and truthful. And it is written with a lot of knowledge of how things are working at CIG at many levels. It is written so that young people who may receive a job offer from CIG can make an educated choice on whether or not this REALLY sounds like the right place for them, and to spread awareness of the practices that rein at CIG today.



Senior Leadership

Completely incompetent and rudderless leadership from the top down. Chris Roberts is a nice man, who has no business running a studio anywhere, yet he fancies himself as the next coming of Walt Disney or George Lucas. His “visionary” leadership seems to mean not having any self-awareness of what he is good at or bad at, and surrounding himself with fail-sons and old cronies who act as Yes-Men to his extremely unpragmatic and sometimes wild leadership. He meddles in / wants control over every little part of marketing, art direction, asset creation, game design, etc. etc. The term “Failing Upwards” has been perfected at CIG from the Director level, all the way down to Middle Management; most of them would likely never even merit a mere interview at another studio, at any level. Obvious financial waste is everywhere, from spending on space doors, to massively inflating the budget of every component of the Disneyland-esque studio in Manchester, to having artists redo every asset in the game for the 10th time or more, all while paying less than industry standard and completely cutting bonuses. SOOOOOO MUCH time and money is annually wasted by pulling people from their actual work to create BS material to edit together a YouTube video to sell the public on the idea that we are more complete that we really are in every way. Keeping the money rolling in at any cost is clearly more important than finishing SC or SQ42.



Team Level / Day to Day

Morale is very very low across every team. Most every department from Operations, to Development, to Marketing are all prisoner to the ever-changing whims of CR and his need to micro-manage everything. Production cannot even make a schedule that lasts a single quarter because CR/ directors will blow it up by changing their minds about everything they just asked a team to complete 5 minutes after it is done and approved. Most people in various departments are either people who have not worked at another studio and were plucked off of message boards (not joking) or schools so CIG could save money vs hiring qualified/ competent people. These people have no other experience as to what a functioning studio is meant to operate like and are just glad to be there. Other people there that usually do have some experience are jaded and passionless and stay at CIG because they can get by with doing little to no work while making a decent living, and know that they could not get a job at an actual AAA studio. Talented/ skilled people that are / were there are micromanaged, overridden, and not allowed to perform the way they would be at another AAA game studio, so they leave as soon as they are able to. Have never met any Lead or person in Lower Management who is not constantly talking about how poorly things are run, how bad production functions, how terrible upper management is, and how they have no faith in the project. Employee turnover is high there, but someone being fired is extremely rare, which means people are continuously leaving as soon as they find better opportunity but CIG does not let go of bad employees, unless it is an extreme case.



Career Development

Years ago, there was a decent opportunity to advance and learn quickly (depending on your field), so you could at least move to another studio/ job with competency. As more and more talented/ experienced people have left CIG and been back-filled with inexperienced / unqualified people, I feel the ability to learn there has been greatly stifled. It is definitely not an environment I would recommend for an entry level employee as you learn bad habits across the board that will severely impact you later in your career.



Culture

Generally your coworkers are very nice people and easy to get along with . . . but it is always easy to get along with people when there is no stress or pressure to perform or release a game, so that is not always a positive to me. As previously mentioned, many people there have been plucked from obscurity and brought into CIG and the game industry so CIG can save money. There are also a lot of intense CIG fans who got jobs there as a result of that fandom, vs being capable in their given job. The idea of giving people random opportunities is great, but the downside of that is that there is a cult-like culture amongst many people there where they support and cheer on the decisions made at CIG, and have no intent of leaving, no matter how terribly CIG treats them or under pays them. I know for a fact many of those types of employees have actually written many of the (fake) positive reviews on here for CIG after certain executives were unhappy with the low rating the company had several years ago, and this continues in recent reviews of the past few months.



Advice to Management



There is no fix for this company as it sits now.

Sell the Company, tech, and IP to a real game developer and I would suggest that company fire most everyone from middle management on up.

[Cloverfield]

... the thousands of NPCs that star citizen currently has...

This is false. SC does not have thousands of NPC. And the ones that it has are majorly broken anyways.

In Star Citizen you are not stuck in your seat.

In SC you are stuck to just one broken and incomplete star system, where waiting at the terminals for a ship or the time lost back at hospital spawn after every time the game often breaks takes much longer than loading screens.

Traveling through a wormhole you still need to control your ship.

This is false. After 12+ years of development there are still no wormholes in SC. And if there were they would be loading screens.

[In WOW] there doesnt always have to be an actual loading screen for you to load into another server everytime

So, "There must be a load screen in WOW because I can not see any"

[Caerrona]

Any bets on how much kenn has sunk into this trashpile to suck off the devs this hard?

My guess Is above 5 digits.

Keep on paying, the game might be playable in 2030!

[Elim Garak]

Any bets on how much kenn has sunk into this trashpile to suck off the devs this hard?

My guess Is above 5 digits.

Keep on paying, the game might be playable in 2030!

It's painfully obvious he's on payroll.

[Yriel]

It's painfully obvious he's on payroll.

Would fit well with the glassdoor report one page earlier that said they employ a lot of hardcore fans without much technical expertise and not much work to do, that would give them a lot of time frequenting forums. And they would talk about this awesome tech they are wanting to use without the knowledge to judge if it is viable or how to implement it.
But who knows.

[InfiniteCharger]

What are you on about, you can space walk, if you space walk close to a planet in gravity your char will fall, far away from planets there isn't going to be gravity, there is no loading screens at all you can smoothly board your ship, the physics in SC is fairly realistic as possible but not to a degree to make it not enjoyable as you don't have to do much yourself to engage with it.

You are showing here you know nothing about SC if you claim you cant space walk, claim it has no content and all that other jazz.

Kenn, where did I say you couldn't space walk in SC? Please learn to read before reflexively posting. I said most games DONT have this for a reason and named specific examples.

[Orange Joe]

Any bets on how much kenn has sunk into this trashpile to suck off the devs this hard?

My guess Is above 5 digits.

Keep on paying, the game might be playable in 2030!

I'm almost willing to bet he can't afford it and is just fanboying.

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It's painfully obvious he's on payroll.

I doubt it personally.