Star Citizen - media blowout, Chris Robert's new game

Pringle said:
So have SC backers just completely ignored SQ42 was supposed to be released 2 years ago, and has completely disappeared from dev updates? Are they at least concerned? Or is this just another 'wait until 3.0' argument?
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This is a problem that stood out for me more than anything else. Everyone acts like CIG is super transparent, and that they have progress to show people. However, they really have very little when you consider the amount of money they've raked in and how much of a "game" there actually is. I hate to defend EA, but Battlefront II started development after 2015 and offers a single player campaign, multiplayer space combat and five multiplayer modes. That's more than Star Citizen has finished at present, with better graphics and a fuck ton more polish. I realize the scope of Star Citizen is supposed to be more like an MMO, but again, you could cite any other MMO's size in five years compared to Star Citizen. Supposedly, Mass Effect Andromeda was finished in 18 months, though I surmise that many of the assets were developed for prototyping over the course of it's total five year development cycle. Again, 100 hours of game content (dull or not), graphics that are superior to StarTanic's and it was done for far less money.

I still maintain that what we are seeing out of StarTanic is largely smoke and mirrors designed to continue the flow of cash into CIG. As I've stated before, I don't think that this was Chris Robert's intention from the start, I just don't think he knows how to deliver on his promises. Granted, I was as hopeful as anyone when the first Kickstarter videos were made, and his track record, to the casual observer seemed solid. I was still always skeptical as his promises seemed quite lofty (even back then) for the technology of the time.
 
I was an original backer for whatever the amount was to get access to SQ42 (I honestly forget, but it was cheap). I have no idea what progress they've made, the only updates I see in e-mail are about the persistent world garbage that I couldn't care less about. I treat this like I treat any other Kickstarter/crowdfunding: don't spend money that I'm not okay with losing and understand that projects fail sometimes. If SQ42 comes out at some point, that's awesome and I'm sure I'll enjoy it. If it doesn't, well I knew the risk going in.

I have to say, I honestly have no idea what people are thinking when they throw major money at concept-art ships for the persistent world. I've never participated in any of the Beta junk and never plan to. I just want a new Wing Commander out of the deal.

Edit: And this post should not be construed as apologizing for their behavior in crappy project management and ever-changing scope. It's completely amateur-hour and shouldn't be an issue with their level of resources. Most projects fail because the people offering them have no idea what they're doing. Chris Roberts does, and it's still a cluster. I'm not sure whether the people who continually pump more money in for stuff that makes the scope-creep even worse or Chris are more responsible for this.
 
Pringle said:
Maybe some of the backers in this thread can clarify the progress that SQ42 has achieved?
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Just to clarify, I did back the game when they announced $45 would get me access to Squadron 42 and Star Citizen. I got a ship with the insurance as part of the deal. As far as I know, there is virtually no progress regarding Squadron 42. Some shared assets with Star Citizen etc. are the only progress that CIG can claim for SQ42.

Paladin21 said:
I was an original backer for whatever the amount was to get access to SQ42 (I honestly forget, but it was cheap). I have no idea what progress they've made, the only updates I see in e-mail are about the persistent world garbage that I couldn't care less about. I treat this like I treat any other Kickstarter/crowdfunding: don't spend money that I'm not okay with losing and understand that projects fail sometimes. If SQ42 comes out at some point, that's awesome and I'm sure I'll enjoy it. If it doesn't, well I knew the risk going in.

I have to say, I honestly have no idea what people are thinking when they throw major money at concept-art ships for the persistent world. I've never participated in any of the Beta junk and never plan to. I just want a new Wing Commander out of the deal.

Edit: And this post should not be construed as apologizing for their behavior in crappy project management and ever-changing scope. It's completely amateur-hour and shouldn't be an issue with their level of resources. Most projects fail because the people offering them have no idea what they're doing. Chris Roberts does, and it's still a cluster. I'm not sure whether the people who continually pump more money in for stuff that makes the scope-creep even worse or Chris are more responsible for this.
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There is no proof that Chris Roberts knows what he's doing. In fact, I think the state of this clusterfuck shows us that he doesn't.
 
There is no proof that Chris Roberts knows what he's doing. In fact, I think the state of this clusterfuck shows us that he doesn't.
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I guess I should clarify that most projects I see fail are because a team made a one-off engineering sample and have no idea how to go into mass manufacturing (or have a small software demo and no idea what it takes to make a game they can actually distribute), and they end up crashing and burning. Chris has been through the entire development lifecycle before, and so knows the sorts of things that crop up. I didn't mean to claim that he knows what he's doing in the sense that he's made good decisions and has a clear and achievable plan to deliver (obviously not so much), but that he isn't some garage startup with no practical experience in whatever field their crowdsourced offering is in.

My point was that this project ostensibly has a head who has experience in the field, and actual experience with developing (at least for SQ42) this exact type of product. The fact that they're so stuck on the vanity project that is Star Citizen just makes things worse. I stopped paying attention to the constant e-mails about SC stuff a long while back, so I have no idea what's going on. Last I bothered to look, they were tentatively planning on having the first half (or chunk, anyway) of SQ42 out by the end of this year. Until I see an actual release announcement, I'll assume that they continue to be full of crap.
 
I'm no expert but given what I have seen this year SQ42 doesn't seem to be as important to them as getting SC itself being worked on. I confess I'm not really interested in SQ42 so maybe its just me? Most of the discussions seems to be about SC and SQ42 is mentioned rather vaguely at times.
 
Dan_D said:
Just to clarify, I did back the game when they announced $45 would get me access to Squadron 42 and Star Citizen. I got a ship with the insurance as part of the deal. As far as I know, there is virtually no progress regarding Squadron 42. Some shared assets with Star Citizen etc. are the only progress that CIG can claim for SQ42.
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They did do mo-cap work with some folks (Liam Cunningham, Gillian Anderson, etc.) so I'm not sure where all that is.
 
Chris Roberts had his first real issue with this scope creep and not producing with Strike Commander. That game took forever to come out with multiple delays. I think Origin finally forced a release. Freelancer of course was the same.
 
They're done with the mo-cap and even reshoots for the actor performance capture part of SQ42. They're still getting all of the ship components and systems in the game so that is likely what is delaying the release at this point. If they released it before the real cooling, shield, armor, etc. systems are in the game and tweaked then you'd have a VERY different play experience in SQ42 vs. the SC PU. It'd be like playing BF3 singleplayer and then getting BF4 when you went to the on-line mode. Yah, it's been delayed and grown in scope, just like most of the other KS games. I'm playing other things for now.
 
I have to say that I at least couldn't give a crap less if there's significant play experience differences between SQ42 and the PW junk. I just want it to be fun. There's plenty of games that have different mechanics in the multiplayer and single player campaigns to better support the goals of each mode. I don't see why this one should be any different.
 
Skott said:
I'm no expert but given what I have seen this year SQ42 doesn't seem to be as important to them as getting SC itself being worked on. I confess I'm not really interested in SQ42 so maybe its just me? Most of the discussions seems to be about SC and SQ42 is mentioned rather vaguely at times.
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Squadron 42 was the first promise Chris Roberts made in the initial Kickstarter Campaign with Star Citizen being listed as something that would be built off the work done for SQ42 and to expand on it. The fact that SQ42 isn't done, is a red flag. It would have been the easiest goal to accomplish. Wing Commander type games, such as SQ42 are actually fairly easy to make given that space is the easiest landscape to build.

relapse808 said:
Chris Roberts had his first real issue with this scope creep and not producing with Strike Commander. That game took forever to come out with multiple delays. I think Origin finally forced a release. Freelancer of course was the same.
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As I understand it, this was always his problem. He wasn't the boss at Origin and had people that held him accountable.

TroubleMagnet said:
They're done with the mo-cap and even reshoots for the actor performance capture part of SQ42. They're still getting all of the ship components and systems in the game so that is likely what is delaying the release at this point. If they released it before the real cooling, shield, armor, etc. systems are in the game and tweaked then you'd have a VERY different play experience in SQ42 vs. the SC PU. It'd be like playing BF3 singleplayer and then getting BF4 when you went to the on-line mode. Yah, it's been delayed and grown in scope, just like most of the other KS games. I'm playing other things for now.
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This is a poor excuse. The reality is, that Squadron 42 and Star Citizen should share the same assets. Squadron 42 simply wouldn't need nearly as many of them as Star Citizen would. One's a mission based space combat simulator and the other is effectively an MMO with multiple game types and environments in it. SQ42 should have been a breeze to build. In fact, carrier based, space mission based games have been built and released AFTER Star Citizen's development started. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare was often lambasted for being a radical departure from the series. Complaints generally centered around the multiplayer and it's change in tone. In my opinion, the game only didn't work because it was a science fiction shooter, and not what CoD fans are used to. However, everyone I know that played it gave the single player high marks for almost everything save for the ending, which was contrived and certainly forced. Aside from that, it brought excellent mechanics, graphics, and game play to the genre of science ficiton shooters. The flight mechanics of the space craft were ultimately quite "arcade" like, but the game was built, released after Squadron 42's announcement. It's the same basic concept, and might even be somewhat broader than the concept for SQ42 was. That is, if the latter were to follow the formula that made Wing Commander games so great.

Even if SQ42 will be a movie experience with some missions in between scenes like the last Wing Commander games were, it should STILL be finished by now or damn close. Effectively, Wing Commander games became low budget movies with a game added on to handle the mission parts of it. Star Wars Battlefront (2015) has multiplayer shooter mechanics, worlds, assets, etc. that are far ahead of anything I've seen for SQ42 or StarTanic. In fact, that's two Battlefront games in the time it's taken to do SQ42, or rather not do it. Battlefront II takes things a step further by giving us actual, decent space combat plus a single player campaign and a multiplayer experience. That's the full service experience of what Squadron 42 should or could have been by now. Say what you want about EA, but it shows us the difference between having focus, purpose and having none of those things. And of course, EA gets a much deserved bad reputation for releasing unfinished shit, but Battlefront 2015 was one of the most polished games I've ever seen on release in recent years, even if the content was a bit light to start. The evolution of the Battlefront II alpha to the beta shows that it's on track to be fairly well polished as well.

I think the real problem here, isn't so much that Chris Roberts had ill-intent, or that they don't want to get this game done. I think the real issue is that he's got such a huge ego, he can't recognize and accept his own limitations. He doesn't know that he's got no clue how to get this done and hasn't surrounded himself with people who know enough to help him get shit done. Even if work on StarTanic is being done in earnest, it's not guided by an experienced hand. Chris Roberts may have a creative vision, and it sounds good when you watch the videos of him selling everyone on this game. However, he has no idea how to achieve this vision. Frankly, I don't think it's all technically possible for financial reasons or technical reasons. I think the feature creep has reached a point where delivering on those stretch goals is it's own problem. It's not a trivial issue either. I think some of these goals just aren't feasible right now.

Paladin21 said:
I have to say that I at least couldn't give a crap less if there's significant play experience differences between SQ42 and the PW junk. I just want it to be fun. There's plenty of games that have different mechanics in the multiplayer and single player campaigns to better support the goals of each mode. I don't see why this one should be any different.
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I was going to touch on this in the section above as both of you touched on this point. Asset wise, the game's single and multiplayer assets should be identical. Many, if not most or even all AAA games with a multiplayer and single player mode, share assets between modes. Let's use some existing, or actual games close to being finished as an example. In Mass Effedct 3, the M76 Revenant assault rifle is the same in both the multiplayer and the single player game modes. Geth troops, etc. all share models across both modes. In Star Wars Battlefront II, a T-65B X-Wing is the same, whether it's sitting on the ground or up in space. It's a physical object that's cloned and repurposed as necessary to appear in multiple places in the game. There may be high poly and low poly assets for different distances and uses, but ultimately, an X-Wing by any other name is still an X-Wing. Battlefield games are the same way. An M4 carbine is the same no matter where it appears. Sure variants may exist in the game, but ultimately its the same asset or a modification of an existing asset.

In many games that share multiplayer and single player assets such as weapons, the thing that separates those isn't their phyiscal models or textures, but rather the back end data that determines how much damage it has, or what other characteristics define it. This is done to make balancing the weapon something that can be done independently between game modes as the needs of that weapon or desired characteristics may need to be different based on context. In Mass Effect 3's case, there were some weapons which were excellent in certain single player encounters in certain difficulty modes. In Insane Difficulty, the Cerberus Harrier was shit because of it's low capacity. The high damage didn't matter because you couldn't sustain enough fire to effectively use the weapon in combat. The need for greater ammunition reserves would always point you towards another weapon. In the easier modes, it was fine. In multiplayer, it was a different issue as well. It was more feasible to use there, but again it had drawbacks. Play style comes into the equation as well.

In other words, I get that there is a difference between how things behave in Squadron 42 or Star Citizen, but my point is that the physical assets should be identical. If you are actively building something for Star Citizen, it should be counting towards completion of Squadron 42. Yet, Squadron 42 is never talked about. Why do you suppose that is? You can count the motion capture stuff and pre-rendered cut scenes as being the cause of the delay, but I wouldn't buy that either. The timeline not withstanding, Simply put, if that was a problem you could put together enough to get a trailer out there, focus on the completed game play assets and get it released. Also, we are five years into development and something so simple as a squadron based space combat game should have been done by now. The money to get that job done was collected a long time ago.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if we found out that what's been shown publicly, and what can be downloaded now was the entirety of the content developed for Star Citizen at this point. I seriously doubt much exists beyond that content at this point. The trailers we've seen thus far actually don't take that long to produce. Stills and concept art renderings are also relatively quick to make. What counts for content is barely what I'd call alpha content for a game. I think concerns about the future of this game are warranted, and certainly valid at present.
 
Trying to head off a run on the bank type of thing? lol Quite a few people want their money back after years of waiting. Cant say I blame them exactly but at the same time they should have understood what they were getting into. Putting money into these types of game is not for the faint of heart. There are some risks involved.
 
From the latest ATV: Enhanced cockpit experience, eye candy only version




Also Weee (spinning in decoupled mode which lets you maintain momentum along any directional vector while being able to orient the nose of the ship in any other direction)

 
I was a Wing Commander Junkie. I became a backer in 2012. I was enthusiastic thru 2015. In 2016, I got my refund (~$1600USD). I am now all-in for $35USD starter package and I have 5(LOL) AMD Omega's that were packaged with buying a GPU.

Basically, CIG has fallen prey to allowing the visionary AKA Chief Designer AKA Chris Roberts also be the Chief Decision Maker. Clearly he has no idea how to manage a project or a business. Furthermore, CIG seems unable to learn from their mistakes which is infuriating. As a professional technology project manager and former CIO I am flabbergasted by their inability to embrace continuous improvement.

When people ask me about Star Citizen I tell them I love the project and hate how it is being managed.

Now I have no expectations. I follow the project in a cursory fashion.

The only thing CIG has going for it is that the gaming industry in general and MMO's in particular puts out so much vanilla crap that when and if they ever go live there will probably be a market share opportunity.
 
For anyone going to Citizencon in Frankfurt in a few weeks, 10 lucky backers will have their heads scanned to be added as NPCs in the game. :cool:

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I think I want a refund now. The newsletter I just got talks about how Squadron 42 is going to feature varieties of gameplay on foot and vehicles. If I wanted all the shitty random extra stuff like a halfass FPS or whatever, I'd be interested in the Persistent World branch. All I've ever wanted was a new Wing Commander. When did the feature-creep hell of the PW infect the pure space combat of SQ42?
 
Paladin21 said:
I think I want a refund now. The newsletter I just got talks about how Squadron 42 is going to feature varieties of gameplay on foot and vehicles. If I wanted all the shitty random extra stuff like a halfass FPS or whatever, I'd be interested in the Persistent World branch. All I've ever wanted was a new Wing Commander. When did the feature-creep hell of the PW infect the pure space combat of SQ42?
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The FPS has been a core element of SQ42 for a long time now.

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14697-Star-Marine-FPS-Update
 
I guess I missed it because I never read any of their news about anything that isn't actually marked as SQ42. I don't care about the FPS, PW, or any of their other junk. I would have pulled my money two years ago if I had realized that they were butchering the shit out of the game they promised in order to help justify spending development time on crap for the PW module by claiming it needed to be in SQ42 as well. I guess it's a good thing I've never messed with the Alpha stuff and never agreed to any ToS changes...
 
Can't say I'm at all shocked by this.

They probably will have some brand new ships to announce soon and show off at this event though with early bird pricing to get in on reserving yours before anyone else! This will probably create another round of frenzied ship melting and buying which will keep everyone still involved in this shitstorm of a project afloat until early next year at which time they'll say they are now in the home stretch and are targeting early 2019 as a preliminary target for a possible release of an early beta of the game, but just need all of its supporters to log onto Patreon and subscribe @ $40 a month so they can reach this important milestone... but then in 2019, they will need to upgrade to quantum computers for their development staff so that they can design better ships and ...
 
Of course the "most open development ever" company won't show SQ42.

There is NOTHING to show. The basic mechanics of the game are FUBAR'd.
 
Supercharged_Z06 said:
Can't say I'm at all shocked by this.

They probably will have some brand new ships to announce soon and show off at this event though with early bird pricing to get in on reserving yours before anyone else! This will probably create another round of frenzied ship melting and buying which will keep everyone still involved in this shitstorm of a project afloat until early next year at which time they'll say they are now in the home stretch and are targeting early 2019 as a preliminary target for a possible release of an early beta of the game, but just need all of its supporters to log onto Patreon and subscribe @ $40 a month so they can reach this important milestone... but then in 2019, they will need to upgrade to quantum computers for their development staff so that they can design better ships and ...
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Alpha 3.0. A working version this time is what we'll see at the show. Some new in game footage. Also the new game changer ship they been talking about will pop up for sale I'm guessing. Plus possibly some other ship sales on existing known ships. Of course some other updates like their face thingy and etc.,. I am hoping for a Super Hornet sale so I can upgrade my regular hornet. That's all I'm really looking for out of their show at this point.
 
i wonder if i got a 'team' together, made a small map to fly around in a handful of ships against bots, made a small hangar map people could walk around in, and released a bunch of pictures and models, blew lots of smoke and missed countless deadlines, if i could also make a cool $150 mil.
 
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relapse808 said:
As a backer these delays are just getting stupid as fuck. Come on and get something into my hands already!
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Yeah, the whole, "the two [SQ42 and PU] feed on and compliment each other," or whatever CR said just sounds disingenuous...why have we seen virtually nothing about SQ42, then?

I backed for basically the minimum amount possible, so I am not too bothered about the money, but it's still starting to piss me off a bit (mainly the delays and bullshit). Though, like another poster above, I only sort of keep a passing interest in development at this point so it's not a huge issue.
 
MavericK said:
Though, like another poster above, I only sort of keep a passing interest in development at this point so it's not a huge issue.
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At what point does one request a refund, simply on principle alone? The principle that you don't want your money (however much or little it may be) funding a project that continuously blows smoke and claims ambiguity is a 'feature'? I'm interested to know what that tipping point is, or will be, with current and former backers.
 
Pringle said:
At what point does one request a refund, simply on principle alone? The principle that you don't want your money (however much or little it may be) funding a project that continuously blows smoke and claims ambiguity is a 'feature'? I'm interested to know what that tipping point is, or will be, with current and former backers.
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For me, I doubt I will request a refund either way. I have dicked around with the Alpha and had some fun at times, and just to support such an endeavor when, as people have said, nothing anywhere near this has been embraced by big publishers.
 
Pringle said:
At what point does one request a refund, simply on principle alone? The principle that you don't want your money (however much or little it may be) funding a project that continuously blows smoke and claims ambiguity is a 'feature'? I'm interested to know what that tipping point is, or will be, with current and former backers.
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I won't ask for a refund since I never expected much out of my $45 anyways. It was Kickstarter, not a preorder or something like that.
 
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