![[H]ard|Forum](/styles/hardforum/xenforo/logo_dark.png){kind=logo}
Star Citizen Gives Backers Their First Taste Of A Fuller Game
- Thread starter Megalith
- Start date
Dregan73
Limp Gawd
- Joined
- Mar 10, 2007
- Messages
- 236
well i just tried the new build, maybe im missing something, but i cant see where all this money went to, there is a hanger with a ship u cant fly, then u can load up some city area and walk around and pretty much do nothing, the arena commander is still there with 2 basic maps to fly around in, and i guess the fps part is locked behind a mode called star marine which i didn't have access to, maybe i didn't donate enough money or something, also the walking and running around was clunky and kinda gave me a headache, the trailer sure looks nice however, makes it look all exciting and everything, i guess they are keeping that part to themselves
I have heard of them. I also know there is a different between a private and a public company. You are trying to treat RSI as if they are some type of massive publicly traded company instead of a small private company that they are.
In the private sector nepotism is fine and legal. There are no issues with how a person decides to run their own company. If your previous company required you do that, that was just them. Not everywhere does that. Can nepotism cause people to feel that you are being unfair in your hiring and promoting, sure. But if you own a company you can hire or fire as you see fit.
Um, you were in 1.3 that's not 2.0 which is out now. Or if you did try 2.0 you really didn't try all that much.
In Alpha 2.0 you have three selections after launch (not including configuration menus).
Universe, EA and Hangar.
Universe gives two options:
Arc Corp (which is indeed a no-fly area where you walk around, and is used for testing FPS stuff, as well as the in-game purchase areas).
Port Olistar, Crusader (which is a HUGE multi faceted area for space flight & combat, exploration, quantum drive etc). This area is simply put huge and there is a lot of stuff to do and explore here.
EA: is the old Alpha 1.3 stuff. You have the ability to free flight, race, fly against humans or AI. EA is also called Arena Commander which is the space sim in the game universe. Yep, its currently limited to two maps.
Hangar: just that, walk thru your hangar. 21 hangar ready ships with variants bringing that number to around 30 or so(you can walk in them, sit in them ect), with 14 of them available to fly (there are various variants within that number bringing the total up to around 24 flyable ships).
Dregan73
Limp Gawd
- Joined
- Mar 10, 2007
- Messages
- 236
yea it was 2.0, the second huge part you where talking about i didn't stay long because it ran at 15 fps, figured it was a bug since everything else ran fine
Dregan73
Limp Gawd
- Joined
- Mar 10, 2007
- Messages
- 236
ill try the Crusader area again maybe i can figure out why it was running so poorly
As long it complies with labor laws. But if there's a conflict of interest especially between spouses, there are legal implications. If one finds out that they were laid off because the wife didn't like them, they can have legal standing to sue and most likely will win because it's favoritism and falls under hostile work environment. Oh and the labor boards are the ones that gives themselves HUGE leeway to determine if a hostile work environment did exist due to nepotism.
At publically traded companies, the investors push the nepotism card. Most smaller businesses revel in it. Trust me, I work at a place where the owner's son, son-in-law, and both daughters have or had executive level positions based purely on who they were.
That aside, Sandi was one of the first people working on the game. The original group was like 7 people, Chris, Sandi, Ben, Dave, and a few engineers. That's about it. It's ballooned over time to what it is now so her position, initially, was required. Also, she's not HR, she's marketing and that's what she's schooled to do and has done in the past. She's not bad at it either, or else the game wouldn't be where it is now.
I think she has power over maybe 5 or 6 people. I don't even think she outranks Ben. The rest of the drivel you're spewing is straight up proven lies or propaganda. I'm not trying to defend them, and I shouldn't have to, but you also shouldn't care who the hell they married or how they got their initial crew. You also should expect a bit of time to be added since they even admitted a degree of feature creep, that's why they cut back on the stretch goals. Right now, it's right about the right size group to accomplish what they need to. The first year, it wasn't even close.
Either way, the new module is promising but I think the larger thing to note is the large system you're in and the potential for the future. The ONLY thing I'm concerned about is the speed of releases for planets. They've got hundreds to make and they're through about 3.
Dregan73
Limp Gawd
- Joined
- Mar 10, 2007
- Messages
- 236
no its not that, that whole area is bugged for me it never goes above 25 fps, the very first room you spawn in looking at a wall 25fps, its only the crusader area though, everything else was in excess of 120 fps+
Dregan73
Limp Gawd
- Joined
- Mar 10, 2007
- Messages
- 236
nevermind im sorry the rest of the areas seemed to be hard locked at 60fps
Huh... can't say I've run into that.
Dregan73
Limp Gawd
- Joined
- Mar 10, 2007
- Messages
- 236
its alpha so it is what is, i cant play it anymore dthough im starting to get a migraine from the low fps
No laws have been broken, no ethics violated. What exactly are you complaining about, that they didn't broadcast it for all to know? So fucking what? Plenty of people knew about it; it just wasn't talked about because who the fuck cares? Not making a big deal of it is not the same as concealing it, despite your delusions to the contrary. People were hired to do certain jobs and by most metrics have done pretty fucking awesome at them. Stop making such a big deal out of other people's personal lives, ffs.
Also, no response to the absolute trashing of your "Squadron 42 was not part of the kickstarter" nonsense? After just one piece of readily-available evidence? Let me guess: you saw someone else make that claim and decided to use it as your own without ever bothering to see if it was true? That would be adorably predictable.
That is a concern, and I really think they shouldn't have promised so much. Expand later, sure, but 100 systems at launch seems somewhat over-ambitious. That said, most of the development time thus far has been dedicated to the engineering side; I'm sure they'll refocus on content creation appropriately as they progress.
That you have seen... we don't know how much is done that we haven't seen yet.
Please quote the part where I said laws were broken. I'm complaining about the ethical issues behind it which none of you seem to have a problem with which is grounded in labor laws especially concerning hostile work environment. I know, it goes through one ear and out the other for you guys.
For example, when I first started reading about the whole thing a couple months ago, I saw this which I don't even know who the guy was or have played any of his games.
http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1snh7pg
If a labor board investigation found that the wife did attack their employees in this matter, it wouldn't go well for RSI. That's all I'm saying here.
I have no ethical qualms about it. I guess it's the difference between being okay with premarital sex versus the you're-going-to-burn-in-hell-for-eternity-because-jesus-and-shit mentality. Personally I think the latter in both cases is batshit crazy and terrifyingly out of touch with reality, but whatever.
Okay, cool. If that condition is ever met, we can revisit the topic, but until then it seems kind of silly to keep condemning the game, company, and employees for a potential outcome that may never come to be. I mean, the universe could spontaneously implode at any second, wiping all of us from existence, but should we spend all our time arguing over who might be to blame for a theoretical future occurrence or just get back to doing more meaningful things?
I trust we can now move on. The future is suddenly bright and full of possibility.
Taldren
Gawd
- Joined
- Nov 28, 2006
- Messages
- 521
RSI wanted X for Y in Z time frame ... but had stretch goals of features people on the boards requested in addition to some of CR ideas.
Soon it was X + X1 + X2 + Xn for Y + Y1 + Y2 + Yn ... yet people kept thinking that this would all be done in Z instead of Z + Z1 + Z2 + Zn.
It is such a small minority that didn't want all the additional stuff that they are insignificant. That is why they get their refunds if they so want them.
Hate to break it to them, but Alpha 2.0 has elements of every promise made that they thought would never work.
AAA games take 5 to 7 years, SC has only been in development for 3. Sure they could have delivered on a watered down version of the original intent in the time frame, but only an ultra minority would have wanted it that way. Rest of us are tired of rushed episodic games that are a patch work of different ideas that make one inconsistent and buggy mess when its done (cough, Elite Dangerous).
Also keep in mind that different places have different labor laws. I have seen it mentioned a few times about firing somebody because you don't like them not being allowed. That is in some states. If you are in an at will state your employment is fully up to the choice of your employer and you can be fired for any reason or for no reason at all as long as there is no illegal reason. So you can't be fired because of race or gender but you can be fired because your boss wants to give the job to a friend. And they can flat out tell you that or can just say that your position no longer exist. A supervisor could fire somebody they know is looking into other jobs to replace them since they don't like their job and that is fine.
Ethical? Not really, but unethical and illegal aren't the same thing. It isn't ethical for any company to make a profit as they could lower cost to be nice to their customers. Doesn't make it illegal to make a profit.
Ethical? Not really, but unethical and illegal aren't the same thing. It isn't ethical for any company to make a profit as they could lower cost to be nice to their customers. Doesn't make it illegal to make a profit.
Rev Lemmon
Limp Gawd
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2006
- Messages
- 268
This whole thing seems to be nothing more then a duke nukem forever reboot.
Actually there are two sets of laws. The state level and federal level. Because kickstarters are possibly getting regulated by the FTC, they most likely will fall with the federal level. Hostile workplace environment managed by the EEOC both federal or state typically. However even on the state level, a lot of those EEOC equivalent are very liberal and open minded to complaints about possible violations in the workplace. I had an issue in Idaho, a very red and conservative state, where an employer discriminated against me and the EEOC-equivalent in Idaho state did look into my case. What they found was that they did intentionally create a hostile workplace environment against me when the employer realized that my hearing-impairment could cause issues for their bottom line.
At-will and just-cause are just political words that means nothing. One gives them a bit more flexibility of terminating employees but as I said, all state level EEOC's are very happy to look into these cases.
Look up the laws on fiduciary duty.
Care to unpack that at all? What aspects in particular are you referring to?
Your meaning is eluding me. Could you be more specific?
Taldren
Gawd
- Joined
- Nov 28, 2006
- Messages
- 521
Except we are actually playing something and have real evidence there was an actual work being done. So no, nothing like duke nukem forever.
Star Citizen Milestones (ships listed when flyable):
2013-08-30 - Hangar Module Patch 1: early versions of Discount (Selfland), Business (Aeroview), and Deluxe (R+Y) hangars, Voyager Direct Store (VDS)
2014-06-04 - AC 0.8.0: Arena Commander (Vanduul Swarm, Battle Royale, Squad Battle), F7A, 300i, Aurora
2014-08-08 - Multiplayer expanded to all backers (with a pass), Capture the Core
2014-09-12 - AC 0.9.0: Co-op Vanduul Swarm, racing, leaderboards, friend codes, private matches, hangar overhaul, VFG (asteroid) hangar added, fixed weapons added, M50, 350r
2014-10-30 - AC 0.9.2: ESP, lag PIP, map size increase
2014-11-14 - AC 0.9.2.1: 315p
2014-12-19 - AC 1.0.0: all Mustangs, Auroras, and Hornets. Cutlass Black, Avenger, lobbies, friends list, ER/IR/CS signatures (Missile Commander, first version)
2015-03-15 - SC alpha 1.1.0: Multiplayer Free Flight, landing, REC, hardpoint changes, Gladius
2015-04-11 - SC alpha 1.1.1: Gladiator, start of Missile Commander (CS version)
2015-05-07 - SC alpha 1.1.2: Flight Tutorial
2015-05-22 - Massive asset leak
2015-07-24 - SC alpha 1.1.5: Double number of players in a match (although it's extremely laggy with more than 10), group queuing finally works, boost reduced, major TTK increase (hp, weapons, shields), Scythe, Merlin
2015-08-06 - SC alpha 1.1.6: Glaive
2015-08-28 - SC alpha 1.2.0: Social Module, first Stanton/ArcCorp/Area18 version, chat, 6 Personal Armor sets
2015-10-23 - SC alpha 1.3.0: Dev stream merge, TTK increase, weapon velocity increase, flight twitchiness decrease, Alpha Pass requirement removed, slight expansion of Area18.
2015-12-11 - SC alpha 2.0.0: First version of Persistent Universe, Stanton System around Crusader with multiple stations, missions, random encounters, NPC ships, multicrew ships, new flight modes (QD, Cruise) + jerk, first iteration of FPS combat, Constellation Andromeda, Retaliator, Avenger variants
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9e2Me-cuIbQ
Duke Nukem Milestones:
1996: We are going to make a game using Quake II.
1998: We are going to make a game using Unreal.
2006: Take-Two Conflict
2009: 3D Realms Conflict
2010: Everyone is fired.
2011: Gearbox releases a turd.
Publicly playable code: Never
Regardless of ownership, you cannot simply give handouts to your relatives from the company stores. It is a legally separate entity and all management has a fiduciary duty to the company and the shareholders.
Giving them a job and stealing money are two different things. The argument that "we" are debating is weather or not there is a legal or ethical problem with a husband or wife running a company and hiring their spouse or sibling or any other family member to work at said company. That is a common issue that you hear, there should be a lawsuit against them or they should be forced to give back all the money or they should burn in hell all because a husband hired his wife and that is legally, morally and ethically wrong for a husband and wife to work together. People are pissed that they didn't know until just recently that his wife was involved with the company in any way. Or I guess a different way to put it is that one of the people working on the game was his wife and was his wife before the game started being created. They feel cheated and lied to and think that it should have been posted on the front page of the kickstarter page that he was going to be working with his wife and brother on this project.
IF there was any wrong doing with him taking money from the company and giving it to his wife that is completely different. Although at the same time nobody here is a shareholder. You do NOT own a share of the company due to having supported the kickstarter. So slightly different for a CEO / president to have to be responsible to the share holders of a publicly traded company and the owner of a privately owned company having to be responsible to people who preordered a game. As long as something gets produced they are doing something with the money and running a business. If you agree on how he spends the money hiring talent or anything like that really doesn't matter. You have no say in who Blizzard uses for in game cut scenes just because you might have preordered some new game. You don't have any say over what region the new Assassin's Creed game is in just because you preordered the last game. You are simply buying a product from a company, not buying a share of the company. As long as they are not doing anything illegal, there is nothing of concern here.
Listening to some people, it's like SC has somehow been in development for less time with each day that passes. And when quoting other AAA developments, bear in mind they weren't operating at full capacity that whole time either.
Alpha 2.0 is hardly the mic drop that it might/should have been. Its entertainment value mostly comes from YouTubers making fun of the bugs.
You're assuming the finished SC won't be an inconsistent, buggy mess. Go play some alpha 2.0 and then consider that Roberts still thinks - or at least claims - that S42 (built on a lot of the same systems) will be done within the next 12 months.
Alpha 2.0 is hardly the mic drop that it might/should have been. Its entertainment value mostly comes from YouTubers making fun of the bugs.
You're assuming the finished SC won't be an inconsistent, buggy mess. Go play some alpha 2.0 and then consider that Roberts still thinks - or at least claims - that S42 (built on a lot of the same systems) will be done within the next 12 months.
FearTheCow
Supreme [H]ardness
- Joined
- May 2, 2006
- Messages
- 6,678
Now compare that to Chris Roberts promising the game would be finished and released last month. Don't you also find it kind of disturbing that quite a bit of what you listed is balancing changes even though the game is not nearly complete and ways for CR to make more money?
Going off what CR promised, and what has been delivered so far, this game is still years away from any kind of actual non-alpha release. Even if it does actually get released, read through the kickstarter, he made some pretty loft goals, the big one being a universe to explore rendered at 100x the fidelity of any AAA game, that everything in the game is going to be very detailed.
@Kaitian: Could you please stop channeling Derek Smart
I referenced him once. The rest were from other sites like Escapist. One thing I learned for sure was that there are extreme fanboys that will ardently defend SC no matter what their faults are.
Cmdrmonkey
Gawd
- Joined
- Jul 19, 2004
- Messages
- 1,011
lol at anyone dumb enough to throw money at this obvious ponzi scheme.
Star Citzen was started in 2012. Self-imposed deadlines (plural) by company have not been met.
So tell me something - at 3-3.5 year mark, should a project with around $100 million in funding still be in a frigging alpha 2? There is some guy on here who said this is "how numbers work", ignoring that his ignorant snarky reply, if they are nearly out of money, how much longer and more money would they need to reach say beta 3 after so many years?
This isn't a big studio that can afford to run this project forever. It took 3-3.5 years to get SECOND alpha out. One that doesn't even wow the original backers. This project is toast.
I would imagine if this project was run by bethsada, they would have fired the project managers long ago for incompetence and either brought in someone else or cancelled the whole thing.
There is no way a gaming studio would allow $100 million to be spent on a project over 3 - 3.5 years and still not be close to a final beta. You have to be really ignorant if you think producing alpha 2.0 after this long means they made progress.
There is no way a gaming studio would allow $100 million to be spent on a project over 3 - 3.5 years and still not be close to a final beta. You have to be really ignorant if you think producing alpha 2.0 after this long means they made progress.
Of interest is how Elite Dangerous took a different direction and only need a few single millions to raise which they did. They adding pay-to-play modules to add new features to the game, including FPS in the coming few years.
These guys had a tinier budget than star citizen and delivered as promised. I would love to hear what they're privately saying about the Star Citizen project
These guys had a tinier budget than star citizen and delivered as promised. I would love to hear what they're privately saying about the Star Citizen project
Taldren
Gawd
- Joined
- Nov 28, 2006
- Messages
- 521
It's not a mic drop ffs, its the first integration pass of the FPS and Space Sim code. Having played in many closed internal alphas and Betas of other MMOs ... this is far more stable than most. Hell, in WAR Alpha the servers went down every 10 minutes for one crash or another and you had less to do then you can right now in this Alpha release.
First of all they JUST celebrated the 3 year anniversary (Not 3.5 years) of the KICKSTARTER fund raiser. They didn't even have a company then, so development didn't start instantly either. The game has only been in development for 2 years and they most certainly could have provided the initial version of the game in the time frame ... but the vast majority of the backers wanted the FPS aspect of the game added and most certainly did not want happened with ED. (More on that later)
So development halted for nearly 6 months while they upgraded cryengine to 64-bit and refactored the entire game for seamless Space Sim/FPS transitions. Something people like yourself said was impossible ... yet here it is in its first integration pass.
As for Elite Dangerous ... since the tendency is to completely forget the facts of the past ...
1. Completely aborted half of what was promised by killing off the single player mode.
2. Flat out lied in their advertisement of what the game was going to be ...
https://youtu.be/DZeO-4F45WM
CreepyUncleGoogle
Supreme [H]ardness
- Joined
- Mar 10, 2013
- Messages
- 6,871
This whole thing is like a daytime soap opera for gamer boys and developers. The drama and the "Yes it is!" "Oh no it isn't!" arguing is some of the best popcorn reading.
Less time?
*cough*
I've seen people claiming it's been in full-steam development for three, four, even five years. Ermagerd, it's been 5 years and $100m and they've got almost nothing to show for it except illegally/unethically hiring family members and running out of money!
Each of those claims/assertions/implications is patently false and easily disproved, much like the "Squadron 42 wasn't even part of the Kickstarter" claim. It's amazing how poorly this crap stands up to even the barest modicum of scrutiny. How biased do people have to be to actually succumb to such disinformation?
ED is an entirely different scenario. Their scope is only a fraction of the size of Star Citizen. Where Frontier did things better was trying not to do absolutely everything at once. So they can take a more controlled approach to everything.
That said, they're far from the finish line themselves. I had more fun with the buggy, grieving crash happy Star Citizen alpha on the weekend than I have had in a year of slowly hauling fish from one port to another in ED.
I'm holding out hope RSI tightens up and finishes Star Citizen. And Frontier adds some actual game into their game at some point. As someone said earlier, the funnest part of ED shouldn't be landing your ship at a station.
Missing their own deadlines repeatedly, while raising money through phantom ships is enough of a wakeup call for most. If you're convinced SC will go final as promised, not the kickstarter promises but the full promises by CT, then by all means, buy the largest ship you can afford to help them out.
Don't be the last ones left holding your dicks when there is a press release saying they can no longer finish the game. Alpha 2.0 after so long heh Nope, perfectly normal. And perfectly normal for senior people in the company to suddenly get up and walk away from the project.
Don't be the last ones left holding your dicks when there is a press release saying they can no longer finish the game. Alpha 2.0 after so long heh Nope, perfectly normal. And perfectly normal for senior people in the company to suddenly get up and walk away from the project.
The goal tending for this dumpster fire is hilarious on here. Total double standards and all it took was for CT to tickle your balls a little with JPEGS.
Star Citizen proves one thing. Without EA, Activision, etc we wouldn't have shit for games. Hate them all you want, but we need them.
Chris Roberts is a creative type and this thing will never be ready. You need publishers to tell them to stop fucking with it and get it released.
HELLLLOOOO Duke Nukem Forever.
Star Citizen proves one thing. Without EA, Activision, etc we wouldn't have shit for games. Hate them all you want, but we need them.
Chris Roberts is a creative type and this thing will never be ready. You need publishers to tell them to stop fucking with it and get it released.
HELLLLOOOO Duke Nukem Forever.