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

Ha- I can't read that line with out hearing some whiny little kid voice on a headset mic...

One of the reasons I'm trying to not buy a xbox one... it's just so bad.. Though my new coworkers frequently play games together.. They apparently mute/block a lot of folks to keep that down to a minimum :p
 
Yea, the few online games I play I sometimes end up blocking a bunch of people. But, Mass Effect 3 is a fairly serious multiplayer game, and I have been lucky other than Italian players, but they only talk like idiots until I let them know I understand Italian well... Hopefully this also ends up being a fairly adult game.
 
Yea, the few online games I play I sometimes end up blocking a bunch of people. But, Mass Effect 3 is a fairly serious multiplayer game, and I have been lucky other than Italian players, but they only talk like idiots until I let them know I understand Italian well... Hopefully this also ends up being a fairly adult game.

I have high hopes that it will.
 
$36M letter from the chairman: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13464-Letter-From-The-Chairman-36-Million

At $36 million, you’ve unlocked the first of the backer-voted systems, Tamsa:

Tamsa System – Located near the fringe of Banu space, Tamsa System features a massive central star that has collapsed into a black hole. Only two planets remain in the system, a chthonian world and a gas giant located far from the black hole’s event horizon.

For the $38 million goal, your votes have selected the “fully aquatic planet” option. Here’s the description of the system we’re creating based on your input:

Cano System is home to a G-Type Main Sequence Star that’s almost identical to Earth’s. Of the four planets in the system, only one is inhabited: Carteyna. Located on the edge of habitable zone, Carteyna is a classic waterworld. Fortunately, its planetary axis constantly keeps the northern hemisphere away from the sun, which allowed for the water to freeze into the landmasses used as the initial landing zones in 2587. Multiple attempts have been made to try to convert the thick atmosphere into something breathable, but the process never seemed to stick. In fact, over the years, every time there’s a new technological development in geo-engineering, they test it out here on Carteyna only to yield the same result. Almost fifty years ago, scientists discovered microscopic organisms in the very early phases of life in the depths of the oceans. This caused a massive uproar throughout the UEE at the prospect that they had been attempting to terraform a developing world. Carteyna was immediately placed under the Fair Chance Act. Unfortunately, Humans had been living here for almost over three hundred years and the families that had been here for generations felt that they had earned rights as residents. After years of debate in the political and scientific community, the population was allowed to stay, but only under certain conditions: future terraforming attempts have been outlawed and the Human population has been consolidated to a single arcology to minimize their impact on their environment and the development of whatever species is growing in the deep.

The poll for the next backer chosen system is live and they also reveal what the redesigned cockpit for the Freelancer will look like.
FreelancerMIS-DUR_CockpitView_OptA_Hobbins.png
 
Freelance already has a beautiful cockpit, I would love to see the Hornet view improved a bit.
 
Hopefully along with fixing the Avenger and the Freelancer internally they'll do a similar treatment to the Constellation. Especially on the Avenger they listened to the community wrt fixes...and there have been many good revised layouts of the Constellation.
 
Against my better judgment, I'm thinking about putting down a pledge. I'm not a big pre-orderer, and it's not very clear to me what I'll be getting.

I see there are several pledge options ranging from $30 to $15,000. Seems to me that the devs can't appease both ends of the spectrum; someone's going to get screwed.

Either the game is P2W, meaning that those who fork out hundreds will have a gameplay advantage over those who don't, or these people will be paying for items that can be acquired with reasonable effort in game.

TL;DR: I'm thinking about pledging, but can't make heads or tails of this threadnought or if this game is P2W or not?
 
Against my better judgment, I'm thinking about putting down a pledge. I'm not a big pre-orderer, and it's not very clear to me what I'll be getting.

I see there are several pledge options ranging from $30 to $15,000. Seems to me that the devs can't appease both ends of the spectrum; someone's going to get screwed.

Either the game is P2W, meaning that those who fork out hundreds will have a gameplay advantage over those who don't, or these people will be paying for items that can be acquired with reasonable effort in game.

TL;DR: I'm thinking about pledging, but can't make heads or tails of this threadnought or if this game is P2W or not?

No. Chris Roberts has come out very directly in this that it will not be P2W. View your pledge as paying for getting into alpha/beta and supporting the game with the perk of having an extra ship to start. These people putting down the massive pledges are doing so because they want to make this game a reality and have really come to like watching it unfold. Some of these ships might be a tad more difficult to get in game or take more grinding to afford them but even then you might not want them. . .
 
Against my better judgment, I'm thinking about putting down a pledge. I'm not a big pre-orderer, and it's not very clear to me what I'll be getting.

I see there are several pledge options ranging from $30 to $15,000. Seems to me that the devs can't appease both ends of the spectrum; someone's going to get screwed.

Either the game is P2W, meaning that those who fork out hundreds will have a gameplay advantage over those who don't, or these people will be paying for items that can be acquired with reasonable effort in game.

TL;DR: I'm thinking about pledging, but can't make heads or tails of this threadnought or if this game is P2W or not?

If you're not pledging to support the idea but to get an advantage, then I think you'll be disappointed by spending money right now.

If you're pledging because there's a good chance you're going to try it when it comes out, then I think you're going to save a few bucks right now rather than later and you'll be happy about it when it's all said and done. Things are a ways off so don't expect a lot right now but it's cheaper now than it will likely be in the future.

If you think P2W means any purchase for real money = an advantage then this game is P2W. If you think P2W = a tactical and power advantage for real money then this is probably not P2W.

There's still a lot still to be worked out. If you don't trust the guys making the game then it might be frustrating trying to follow everything as there's a ton of information and it's a complicated project. I don't think this game is pay to win at all.

Just some friendly advice from someone following closely and very into it.
 
If you think P2W means any purchase for real money = an advantage then this game is P2W. If you think P2W = a tactical and power advantage for real money then this is probably not P2W.

I like the idea of supporting the development. I think I had the latter in mind for "P2W". You're right, there's a TON of information out there (too much) and it's hard to process. :eek:
 
I like the idea of supporting the development. I think I had the latter in mind for "P2W". You're right, there's a TON of information out there (too much) and it's hard to process. :eek:

Don't feel bad, it's a lot to keep up with. I can't imagine trying to come up to speed after the fact. I've been following it since September last year.

There's a lot of good people in this thread that will try to answer questions. Quite a few of us care (maybe too much :p) about the project.
 
Quite a few of us care (maybe too much :p) about the project.

And our wallets probably agree with the too much statement :p

Sadly I have fallen off keeping up with developments for the last month and a half. Too busy with other games/projects, holidays etc. Have we had a date released yet for DFM?
 
And our wallets probably agree with the too much statement :p

Sadly I have fallen off keeping up with developments for the last month and a half. Too busy with other games/projects, holidays etc. Have we had a date released yet for DFM?

Best rumors are March/April from what I've seen recently but I haven't caught up on all my threads/chats since getting back in town over the holidays. /grain of salt
 
I think the best analogy to this is if this game were Gran Turismo. Pledges unlock cars for you at the start of the game. Is that pay to win? At the start maybe, but it isn't hard to earn money and unlock those cars for yourself in the game. After a reasonable period of time you will have just as good a chance of winning a race as the person who unlocked the Bugatti Veyron at launch by pledging $1000.
 
The main difference being that owning or unlocking a ship does not guarantee you will "win" anything. Like it's been said already, everyone will be able to just grind and earn any ship in the game so the mere fact of owning ships is no accomplishment in itself. The main draw, for me at least, is that the game is skill based so someone with a less capable ship on paper can still run circles around a person in a "better" ship specs wise if they are a better pilot. There's a reason the lead designer coined the phrase "Don't suck".

People have this MMO mindset to the game which is completely wrong. This is not WoW or EVE, this is Quake in space with 6 degrees of freedom played in a sandbox universe that is only 30% exposed to the players. The rest of that sandbox is out there for us to explore, claim and fight over.
 
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The main difference being that owning or unlocking a ship does not guarantee you will "win" anything. Like it's been said already, everyone will be able to just grind and earn any ship in the game so the mere fact of owning ships is no accomplishment in itself. The main draw, for me at least, is that the game is skill based so someone with a less capable ship on paper can still run circles around a person in a "better" ship specs wise if they are a better pilot.

This.

Its kinda like the AWP vs the Scout in Counter Strike. Yes the AWP was technically a better weapons (1 shot 1 kill) but I used to destroy AWP'ers with the Scout just to piss them off.

Man, those were the days. Destroying AWP'ers with the Dual Elites was pretty funny too.
 
Well, I pledged yesterday, but was so swamped I didn't even get a chance to install the hangar module!
 
The main draw, for me at least, is that the game is skill based so someone with a less capable ship on paper can still run circles around a person in a "better" ship specs wise if they are a better pilot. There's a reason the lead designer coined the phrase "Don't suck".

People have this MMO mindset to the game which is completely wrong. This is not WoW or EVE, this is Quake in space with 6 degrees of freedom played in a sandbox universe that is only 30% exposed to the players. The rest of that sandbox is out there for us to explore, claim and fight over.

I like this aspect too, and am really interested to see how much "twitch" factor there will be. In something like Eve, it's mainly about build out and tactics, only slightly about quick hands.
 
Best rumors are March/April from what I've seen recently but I haven't caught up on all my threads/chats since getting back in town over the holidays. /grain of salt

Wow that is a pretty far push back on the release date from originally saying it would be out end of 2013. . . What happened?
 
Wow that is a pretty far push back on the release date from originally saying it would be out end of 2013. . . What happened?

What do you think happened.
A developer figured out a way to get access to virtually unlimited funds with no oversite while having a rabid fanbase urging him to make the game of his dreams.

He put out a message about this but the gist is that *poof* we've become too high profile to release a pre pre alpha dog fighting module so I changed my mind. There was some other mumbo jumbo about the backend and avoiding redundant work yada yada.
Oh, and this decision was roundly applauded over at the Star Citizen forums. Detractors were rounded up and executed as usual.

I say this as a fan who desires this game like no other I've ever wanted in my life but...
 
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Wow that is a pretty far push back on the release date from originally saying it would be out end of 2013. . . What happened?

there was a letter from CR explaining it all. basically they were going to do a mockup in a primitive build of the game engine or something for the DFM to basically give backers an idea of what to expect, then rewrite the entire thing when they get the actual game engine polished enough to do so. but with so much funding, he decided it was stupid to basically program it twice in two different engines, so theyre just going ahead with development in the actual game engine now. this is gonna take more time now, but will save a lot of development time down the road.
 
What do you think happened.
A developer figured out a way to get access to virtually unlimited funds with no oversite while having a rabid fanbase urging him to make the game of his dreams.

He put out a message about this but the gist is that *poof* we've become too high profile to release a pre pre alpha dog fighting module so I changed my mind.

I say this as a fan who desires this game like no other I've ever wanted in my life but...

cant satisfy everyone. id rather wait 3 months for the DFM than another 6 months for the finished game. and if they had released the pre pre alpha as they had planned with this many backers and this much money invested, people would have gone apeshit at the low quality of the game. CR explained all this in detail, if you disagree that's fine i guess but so far everything he has said has made perfect sense.
 
cant satisfy everyone. id rather wait 3 months for the DFM than another 6 months for the finished game. and if they had released the pre pre alpha as they had planned with this many backers and this much money invested, people would have gone apeshit at the low quality of the game. CR explained all this in detail, if you disagree that's fine i guess but so far everything he has said has made perfect sense.

Ok that was one thing that had me concerned for a minute was that if the DFM is already being pushed back then what about the actual game. . . Sounds like it is still on schedule though. I am guessing though that this means the other modules have been moved back as well?
 
cant satisfy everyone. id rather wait 3 months for the DFM than another 6 months for the finished game. and if they had released the pre pre alpha as they had planned with this many backers and this much money invested, people would have gone apeshit at the low quality of the game. CR explained all this in detail, if you disagree that's fine i guess but so far everything he has said has made perfect sense.

It has not made perfect sense.
If anything it is troubling that they could make a promise, while collecting pledges based on that promise, to release DFM by the end of the year when they have total knowledge of the state of the development of the game and not forsee that backend network code might be an issue. You can buy that muck if you want to but he told the real reason. The game is high profile now and he doesn't want to release a pre pre alpha and hurt his, oops, I mean Star Citizens image.
 
Wow that is a pretty far push back on the release date from originally saying it would be out end of 2013. . . What happened?

CR decided not to use the stock cryengine back end/netcoding. so they have to remake every thing which ,i think, in the long run will be better
 
What do you think happened.
A developer figured out a way to get access to virtually unlimited funds with no oversite while having a rabid fanbase urging him to make the game of his dreams.

He put out a message about this but the gist is that *poof* we've become too high profile to release a pre pre alpha dog fighting module so I changed my mind. There was some other mumbo jumbo about the backend and avoiding redundant work yada yada.
Oh, and this decision was roundly applauded over at the Star Citizen forums. Detractors were rounded up and executed as usual.

I say this as a fan who desires this game like no other I've ever wanted in my life but...

I thought what he essentially said was that the game wasn't progressing as originally planned purely because they didn't expect such a massive influx of money so incredibly quickly, so they didn't really need to release something that was going to mean extra work down the line just to try to raise more funds.

I believe with the fragmented development of the separate modules going on at different development houses, only the Dogfighting Module has been delayed rather than everything...i think.
 
It has not made perfect sense.
If anything it is troubling that they could make a promise, while collecting pledges based on that promise, to release DFM by the end of the year when they have total knowledge of the state of the development of the game and not forsee that backend network code might be an issue. You can buy that muck if you want to but he told the real reason. The game is high profile now and he doesn't want to release a pre pre alpha and hurt his, oops, I mean Star Citizens image.

you just said youre upset that he doesnt want to release a crappy product and disappoint everyone and generate ill will toward this product. i fail to see the problem.
 
To my detractors I say this.
The pitch for Freelancer was essentially the same pitch as for this game.
Freelancer development started in 1997.
Microsoft showed CR the door in 2000.
Game didn't ship till 2003 with a lot of stuff promised missing.
There is no Microsoft this time.

Now, if you understand what your dealing with, you can save yourself a lot of disappointment and I will wait for this game and play the hell out of it when it finally comes out but...
 
you just said youre upset that he doesnt want to release a crappy product and disappoint everyone and generate ill will toward this product. i fail to see the problem.

If you fail to see a problem with promising a DFM by the end of the year which I assure you was intended to boost pledges and then failing to deliver it then your at best naïve.

And I never said I was upset. I am troubled. This is a pattern with this guy.
 
congrats, what did you get? don't forget to post your ships in the [H]ard star citizen's group thread.

I got the most basic package that let me into the alpha and the beta. Aurora MR+

BTW, it seems like there's a lot of talk about EVE. I'm a big EVE player, any others here?
 
I got the most basic package that let me into the alpha and the beta. Aurora MR+

BTW, it seems like there's a lot of talk about EVE. I'm a big EVE player, any others here?

Shhhhh !! better keep that on the dl ;)

i have played on and off for a few years. but i haven't had much interest since i first heard about SC.
 
TL;DR: I'm thinking about pledging, but can't make heads or tails of this threadnought or if this game is P2W or not?

It's P2W the same way EVE Online is P2W. Whether you consider that P2W is really up to you. You will be able to dump RL cash into buying in-game currency which you can then use to buy ships, modules, ammo, and whatever else you may need. You still need some rudimentary skill to do the arcade like flying and shooting, but those with RL cash will have the economic advantage over those who don't have RL cash. Personally I am OK with that because it mirrors the real world. You will get a bunch of people replying to my post who will point out that the purchase of in-game currency is capped per account per day/month/whatever. That cap is completely meaningless since there are approximately 927591 ways to get around it.

Buying into this game now is imho pointless, and I have several hundred bucks into it myself, though luckily I sold my Starfarer with LTI for $400 so I made some cash after paypal fees.

Ships are undoubtedly going to be cheaper once the game comes out, even though God (Chris Roberts) himself has said that ships will never be as cheap as they are now again. Meanwhile, back in reality, the odds of large groups of gamers spending hundreds and thousands of dollars on ships are rather slim. There's a post somewhere suggesting ships are sold at 1/3 of what they will cost at launch. $750 for a transport ship in a space game ...., let that sink in and then decide for yourself whether you think that's likely. In addition you will have tons of people who have bought in already who will feel let down by the hype and you'll be able to pick up their LTI ships for pennies on the dollar they spend.

Unless you want to pay the guy who asked for 20 mil, is almost double overfunded, and is now "just making the game better overall" with the money with additional funds on an ideological basis, you are better off keeping your money till the game is actually out.
 
The main draw, for me at least, is that the game is skill based so someone with a less capable ship on paper can still run circles around a person in a "better" ship specs wise if they are a better pilot. There's a reason the lead designer coined the phrase "Don't suck".

There's the notion that EVE is skill based too, and in a 1:1 fight there's probably some truth to that. However, in 99.999-repeating, of course-% of the fights that occur the party who brings more people wins. SC, like any other game that allows for uneven numbers during an encounter, is a game of participation and those entities who have the most participation will win.

People have this MMO mindset to the game which is completely wrong. This is not WoW or EVE, this is Quake in space with 6 degrees of freedom played in a sandbox universe that is only 30% exposed to the players. The rest of that sandbox is out there for us to explore, claim and fight over.

It's there for very few of us to explore. Once a system is found that's the end of exploration for all other players for that system. If someone joins the game 2 weeks after launch they won't get to find new systems at all.
 
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