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

Sadly, I can believe the continued funding, there are hardcore backers who actually believe a game will be released one day. A game which the dardcore backers believes will let them do whatever they want.

These backers are easy to spot as they call SC the best game ever (when it works!), or talk about how there is just one more major hurdle keeping a flood of new content from being released!

That's not to say some people don't enjoy trying to play the tech demo known as SC, but a tech demo is not a game.
I'd throw some money at it because it's amusing at times. But it's not a game, and it's a long long way to go before it gets there.
Can you visit that building? Can you walk around in it?
Yes, if you're dumb enough to go to Orison. Useless city that takes 10 minutes to get to in real-time (atmo!), 15 minutes to leave (atmo and gravity!), and has... well, nothing. Whale plushies I guess. Can't even sell refined minerals there.

No one sane goes to planets. Buggy, slow, laggy, painful, climb out sucks... Everyone sticks to stations unless you're buying a ship or a part that you HAVE to go to a planet for. Orison is the worst, as crusader is a gas giant and you start at 75k m, and have to climb to 150k m to leave.

Planets are one of the biggest failures of Star Citizen - they're places we avoid unless we have to (mining lyria, mostly, or hadenite on Aberdeen).

There's a more fundamental issue though. There are exactly TWO things you can do outside of events to make money right now:
1. Bounty hunt. Same sequence, same enemies, over and over and over and over again. Profitable, easy, takes a heavy fighter to be really effective, but easy to make a ton of cash.
2. Mining. Risky, buggy (fly out and scanners/lasers don't work), can lose you money instead (every crash = 80k in modules gone, have to buy again, at a planet in the current meta), can be really annoying (bugs = quant explosion = new modules!), and once you've mined, you still have to transport it to a planet to sell - which with 30ks is risky AGAIN. A week worth of work can disappear to a server crash. A 100k profit will disappear with a server crash when you have to buy new modules (right now it's 2x Focus III - 40k each - and either surge or a third focus, and surge only works 5 times before it is consumed). At least mining heads stick around - but a character reset nukes those.

And ... that's it. Cargo is broken, and has been for a year or so (20k profit on a multi-hour trip isn't worth it). Events aren't currently running.

Oh and to replace those modules? Take thee to Microtec - at least it's easy to land, but... yeah. Planet bound. Ugh. I stock up. each time I go. Right now I'm breaking even or so with mining.
 
Oh, and if you’re like be?
You can’t earn money period. Any 30k resets you to some point in time 2+ weeks ago. This is the only money I can have:
 

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I'd throw some money at it because it's amusing at times. But it's not a game, and it's a long long way to go before it gets there.

Yes, if you're dumb enough to go to Orison. Useless city that takes 10 minutes to get to in real-time (atmo!), 15 minutes to leave (atmo and gravity!), and has... well, nothing. Whale plushies I guess. Can't even sell refined minerals there.

No one sane goes to planets. Buggy, slow, laggy, painful, climb out sucks... Everyone sticks to stations unless you're buying a ship or a part that you HAVE to go to a planet for. Orison is the worst, as crusader is a gas giant and you start at 75k m, and have to climb to 150k m to leave.

Planets are one of the biggest failures of Star Citizen - they're places we avoid unless we have to (mining lyria, mostly, or hadenite on Aberdeen).

There's a more fundamental issue though. There are exactly TWO things you can do outside of events to make money right now:
1. Bounty hunt. Same sequence, same enemies, over and over and over and over again. Profitable, easy, takes a heavy fighter to be really effective, but easy to make a ton of cash.
2. Mining. Risky, buggy (fly out and scanners/lasers don't work), can lose you money instead (every crash = 80k in modules gone, have to buy again, at a planet in the current meta), can be really annoying (bugs = quant explosion = new modules!), and once you've mined, you still have to transport it to a planet to sell - which with 30ks is risky AGAIN. A week worth of work can disappear to a server crash. A 100k profit will disappear with a server crash when you have to buy new modules (right now it's 2x Focus III - 40k each - and either surge or a third focus, and surge only works 5 times before it is consumed). At least mining heads stick around - but a character reset nukes those.

And ... that's it. Cargo is broken, and has been for a year or so (20k profit on a multi-hour trip isn't worth it). Events aren't currently running.

Oh and to replace those modules? Take thee to Microtec - at least it's easy to land, but... yeah. Planet bound. Ugh. I stock up. each time I go. Right now I'm breaking even or so with mining.
As I've noted before: There's a reason why other games just give you a purchase menu when purchasing things, rather then have you exit your vehicle, walk to a vendor, purchase stuff, then carry it back to your ship: BECAUSE IT GETS OLD FAST.

But you see, this is one of the games core selling points. Which highlights the underlying problem: The game design has been fundamentally broken since inception.
 
And again, "Server Meshing" has been solved many, many, many times over. We've only been doing that since the late 90s (look up Ultima Online, the smart and actually capable folks there basically invented it in like 1995). It's not a valid excuse - to me, it shows much more incompetence than anything.
Server Meshing has it's limits; see Eve Online for reference. And given you don't FPS fly in Eve, the load is an order of magnitude less then SC will need to handle. I'm not going to say what SC is trying to do is "technically impossible", just "technically impossible without throwing at least a few hundred million at servers to support what Chris Roberts wants to do."

*Is a SW Engineer.
 
As I've noted before: There's a reason why other games just give you a purchase menu when purchasing things, rather then have you exit your vehicle, walk to a vendor, purchase stuff, then carry it back to your ship: BECAUSE IT GETS OLD FAST.

But you see, this is one of the games core selling points. Which highlights the underlying problem: The game design has been fundamentally broken since inception.
Ja, there is a reason designers have not tried to bring this level of realism in games before, and those that tried largely abandon it. I understand the concept of trying to create what it would be like living in an intergalactic society, but in the end it is just a game and needs to be fun. Doing in games real life stuff down to the nitty gritty machinations that make it happen is not fun.
 
Ja, there is a reason designers have not tried to bring this level of realism in games before, and those that tried largely abandon it. I understand the concept of trying to create what it would be like living in an intergalactic society, but in the end it is just a game and needs to be fun. Doing in games real life stuff down to the nitty gritty machinations that make it happen is not fun.
Yep, and implementing all of this takes development time. And as you add more systems, you have to add the "realism" behind those, leading to more feature creep. And so on.

Again, this is Roberts MO, and I called it out before the kickstarter went live. You can't change Chris Roberts; he can't manage a project, and the scope will continue to expand unendingly until he is removed from it, because *nothing* will ever meet his quest for perfect realism.
 
As I've noted before: There's a reason why other games just give you a purchase menu when purchasing things, rather then have you exit your vehicle, walk to a vendor, purchase stuff, then carry it back to your ship: BECAUSE IT GETS OLD FAST.

But you see, this is one of the games core selling points. Which highlights the underlying problem: The game design has been fundamentally broken since inception.
If it wasn't buggy, if you could trigger auto-land from orbit, etc - it could be doable. we didn't complain about trams/etc in WoW that much because you didn't have to use them that often. You can avoid planets 90% of the time in SC too - but it's when you do have to go, that it turns into a nightmare. Stuck trams, missing floors, etc... So you grab anything you might need.

It's like the once-a-month trip to costco. Stock the heck up!
 
Ja, there is a reason designers have not tried to bring this level of realism in games before, and those that tried largely abandon it. I understand the concept of trying to create what it would be like living in an intergalactic society, but in the end it is just a game and needs to be fun. Doing in games real life stuff down to the nitty gritty machinations that make it happen is not fun.
Yep. And parts of that are ok. Taking your helmet off to eat/drink, and having to stand there while y ou do? Ugh. Fortunately, you die so often it's not super bothersome. Until you forget to put it back on and go out into vacuum.
 
As an aside: can I also just say that the graph that they generate here is really poor from an informational point of view - they obviously must be generating the y-axis based on the maximum and minimum month's funding over the last six months, which is fine for those two values, but it makes all of the other numbers basically unreadable. Why not scale the y-axis to the next highest/lowest $1m instead and then it might make the rest of the numbers a bit more legible? Apologies for this incredibly boring chat.

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It is a pretty terrible chart and doesn't really show all of the sources.
Makes it look like just income from players but does that include subscriptions and anything else. And where do grants an subsidies land.
 
Ja, there is a reason designers have not tried to bring this level of realism in games before, and those that tried largely abandon it. I understand the concept of trying to create what it would be like living in an intergalactic society, but in the end it is just a game and needs to be fun. Doing in games real life stuff down to the nitty gritty machinations that make it happen is not fun.
Yep, more realism does not necessarily equal more fun. And SC is a game so surely fun is the objective (from a player point of view)?
 
While nobody ever assumes 100% realism is the objective, there are many players myself included who see the value of SC's design elements to increase immersion at the cost of expediency. There are more than enough games out there that cut out immersive stuff that is "unnecessary" to their core vision and part of the reason I backed SC is that they are in an unencumbered place that they can build for immersion. A simple example is the fully animated, mocapped method of entering any sort of seat, door, or duty station. There are thousands of games where "press E, magically teleport into the cockpit" is good enough but, I have fond memories of those very few that do it SC's way (the original Planetside comes to mind here, alas PS2 was chasing those F2P item mall trends and went with big publisher insta-port style ) and think it adds a lot to the immersive enjoyment on its own and sets up future depth for the game

Another example is about scope and scale - there will be many who will lament that it takes a considerable time in order to travel across SC's galaxy, even using the fastest methods from jump point to jump point It could take hours to move from one side of the system to the other and some may favor a "why don't they jsut have insta wormhole hyperspace for everything?" but that precludes immersive design. If you want the game world to feel expansive and that traveling it is a major event, you can't have people tapping a portal in every zone and popping up across the universe as they see fit. Likewise, this is also necessary if you're going to build in game systems from "Starliners" where players will pay for a seat on a craft that is going where they wish and experience other game systems onboard , to a real time economic and supply chain process where it takes time for goods to cross shipping lanes to get from raw materials to refinement to assembly to final item manufacture, to developing missions for all of the above from taking a role as a flight attendant on a Genesis Starliner who is also looking to find out a spy on the ship selling corporate secrets to a Xi'an contact before the vessel docks, contracts for fighter escorts for that starliner through dangerous territory, or the opportunity for pirates to try and hijack the vessel and steal the top secret intel so they can sell it to the highest bidder etc - the list is endless. Star Citizen doesn't have to be all things to all people, but there are more than enough slimmed down or shallow experiences that put simple mechanics above immersive ones, so I'd much rather SC use its time and scope to provide something that cannot or will not be found elsewhere thanks to inflexible corporate focus group'd demands or limited finance of indie projects; this was part of the original motivation for the project after all.
 
While nobody ever assumes 100% realism is the objective, there are many players myself included who see the value of SC's design elements to increase immersion at the cost of expediency. There are more than enough games out there that cut out immersive stuff that is "unnecessary" to their core vision and part of the reason I backed SC is that they are in an unencumbered place that they can build for immersion. A simple example is the fully animated, mocapped method of entering any sort of seat, door, or duty station. There are thousands of games where "press E, magically teleport into the cockpit" is good enough but, I have fond memories of those very few that do it SC's way (the original Planetside comes to mind here, alas PS2 was chasing those F2P item mall trends and went with big publisher insta-port style ) and think it adds a lot to the immersive enjoyment on its own and sets up future depth for the game

Another example is about scope and scale - there will be many who will lament that it takes a considerable time in order to travel across SC's galaxy, even using the fastest methods from jump point to jump point It could take hours to move from one side of the system to the other and some may favor a "why don't they jsut have insta wormhole hyperspace for everything?" but that precludes immersive design. If you want the game world to feel expansive and that traveling it is a major event, you can't have people tapping a portal in every zone and popping up across the universe as they see fit. Likewise, this is also necessary if you're going to build in game systems from "Starliners" where players will pay for a seat on a craft that is going where they wish and experience other game systems onboard , to a real time economic and supply chain process where it takes time for goods to cross shipping lanes to get from raw materials to refinement to assembly to final item manufacture, to developing missions for all of the above from taking a role as a flight attendant on a Genesis Starliner who is also looking to find out a spy on the ship selling corporate secrets to a Xi'an contact before the vessel docks, contracts for fighter escorts for that starliner through dangerous territory, or the opportunity for pirates to try and hijack the vessel and steal the top secret intel so they can sell it to the highest bidder etc - the list is endless. Star Citizen doesn't have to be all things to all people, but there are more than enough slimmed down or shallow experiences that put simple mechanics above immersive ones, so I'd much rather SC use its time and scope to provide something that cannot or will not be found elsewhere thanks to inflexible corporate focus group'd demands or limited finance of indie projects; this was part of the original motivation for the project after all.
I have ZERO issue with the second part. I used to play eve quad boxing - running a whole fleet from one side of the verse to the other was a 2-3 hour job at times, if not much much more, and that was back when auto-pilot dropped you 20km from a gate. So you had to do it manually. TOTALLY good with that. Plan on owning a starliner once it gets close to release. TOTALLY on board.

The first part - I don't object, but they need to disable the ~broken~ ones - especially hte ones that don't currently set your starting position for the animation before beginning it. Why? Because you will clip through the ship, fly off into space (or be permanently stuck), or worse, clip through the BOTTOM of the ship, the ground, get caught "trespassing" as you fall to the core of the planet, get a free crime stat, die, and appear in klesher - just because you were trying to leave your damned prospector. Either fix it (that shouldn't be hard - gladius/arrow/etc have it set properly), or disable it for now (or let me climb the ladder manually!) for things like the prospector / origin ships / etc. With death coming, this is a PROBLEM. I literally don't mind my guy fighting to get out of the seat of the random Aurora MR I got (seriously, I didn't buy it - it just appeared in my list). He's fat. It's hard. I do mind launching into SPACE because I am trying to drop off a load of quant from my prospector. I'm tempted to get a mole to just avoid the damned animation!
 
Unless I'm reading it wrong we'll keep items? That'd be nice to not need to run all over and get the armor / weapons / tools again.
 
Unless I'm reading it wrong we'll keep items? That'd be nice to not need to run all over and get the armor / weapons / tools again.
Umm no its a full wipe database needs it. Please read the whole post from cig.

They said specifically it would fix many issues that players are having
 
This is kind of hilarious, but, it's really to be expected. It's absolutely not Brilliant by any definition of the word.

Gonna uninstall and maybe try it again in another year. Maybe it'll be slightly better next summer.
So you moan when there's bugs but also moan when they trying to fix it.
 
Yup a server wipe coming.

Brilliant news
Eh.
Umm no its a full wipe database needs it. Please read the whole post from cig.

They said specifically it would fix many issues that players are having
Eh.
This is kind of hilarious, but, it's really to be expected. It's absolutely not Brilliant by any definition of the word.

Gonna uninstall and maybe try it again in another year. Maybe it'll be slightly better next summer.
Eh.
So you moan when there's bugs but also moan when they trying to fix it.
First you claim it’s a game. Then you claim this is normal. Either we’re alpha testers or it’s a game. Can’t be both.
Uhhh point where I did any moaning? I said it's expected and funny, cos, it is. None of that is a "moan". I'm just gonna uninstall now cos I gave it a run for a few weeks again, and, I have better games to play.
Eh. Yes and no. I get testing- I do- but we should be past this level of testing by now. It’s been 9 years. Why play and test if it’s meaningless? Heisenburgs principle; this is not a valid test if we know it doesn’t matter. By being a test it is fundamentally invalid. Economy? Who cares, we’re fucking around. Griefing ? Meh, not a real game.

It’s fun, but this illustrates a major issue: people treat it like a game. It isn’t. It’s a prototype or a test bed. Nothing more. Chris Robert’s and co need to start either wrapping this shit up, or admit that they don’t know what they’re doing.
 
It’s fun, but this illustrates a major issue: people treat it like a game. It isn’t. It’s a prototype or a test bed. Nothing more. Chris Robert’s and co need to start either wrapping this shit up, or admit that they don’t know what they’re doing.
I actually think they're changing a significant database schema - which, this far into the dev cycle is... insane.
Some of the excuses for doing it - such as needing to see how the economy grows organically - certainly don't make much sense. They should be able to model that out extremely well (again, assuming it's actually design [or math] complete, which, it sounds like it's not even close).
Like I said, I have better games - actual games, ones that work - to play. I'll come back in about a year and see what, if any, progress CIG makes.
 
I actually think they're changing a significant database schema - which, this far into the dev cycle is... insane.
Oh yeah. You ain’t figured that shit out by now?
You’re not doing waterfall, and you’re not agile. You’re a bloody mess.
Some of the excuses for doing it - such as needing to see how the economy grows organically -
Bullshit for sure. It’s clearly a test bed; the economy is a joke.
certainly don't make much sense. They should be able to model that out extremely well (again, assuming it's actually design [or math] complete, which, it sounds like it's not even close).
Nope. It ain’t. And they apparently don’t have an economist as part of their team. Failboat. This shit ain’t hard to model.
Like I said, I have better games - actual games, ones that work - to play. I'll come back in about a year and see what, if any, progress CIG makes.
I’ll keep fiddling, but this has relegated it back to meh status.

They’re not ready. They don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t have the right people on their team, and to put it simply, they lack effective leadership.
 
I actually think they're changing a significant database schema - which, this far into the dev cycle is... insane.
Some of the excuses for doing it - such as needing to see how the economy grows organically - certainly don't make much sense. They should be able to model that out extremely well (again, assuming it's actually design [or math] complete, which, it sounds like it's not even close).
Like I said, I have better games - actual games, ones that work - to play. I'll come back in about a year and see what, if any, progress CIG makes.
How do you know it's insane?

For instance how do you know games likes New world never changed there database schema midway or close to release of there game?
 
I backed this mess back when it was announced, super excited.

Right now, I have more faith on No Man Sky implementing good space dogfighting and it's basically Star Citizen, than actually getting a playable game for my money.

I'd much rather play NMS, too.
 
I backed this mess back when it was announced, super excited.

Right now, I have more faith on No Man Sky implementing good space dogfighting and it's basically Star Citizen, than actually getting a playable game for my money.

I'd much rather play NMS, too.
I tried the new nms and got bored after about 10h of gameplay.
 
How do you know it's insane?

For instance how do you know games likes New world never changed there database schema midway or close to release of there game?
Because stuff like that as development troubles would have leaked and become known - just like the internal issues around things like DNF/No Mans Sky/etc became known. People talk.
 
Because stuff like that as development troubles would have leaked and become known - just like the internal issues around things like DNF/No Mans Sky/etc became known. People talk.
No leaks on cp77 but look how that turned out?

Incidentally look at red dead 2.horror stories about that game development actually and yet that turned out to be a masterpiece...

My point is you have no clue what is going on day to day month to month etc in 99 percent of games that are in development..
 
So will there be a wipe? I haven't followed the game but a recent video on YT was recommended to me, it was a guy who bought the 890 just last week and did a walkthrough etc, said he grinded an entire year for it. Now he's going to lose it soon, having just bought it? 😳
I watched a few other videos after and this game is hella impressive, at least stylistically and graphically and the physics and UI...
 
No leaks on cp77 but look how that turned out?

Incidentally look at red dead 2.horror stories about that game development actually and yet that turned out to be a masterpiece...

My point is you have no clue what is going on day to day month to month etc in 99 percent of games that are in development..
It’s CDPR; we all knew the release would be garbage. It takes time to mature for anything of theirs
 
It’s CDPR; we all knew the release would be garbage. It takes time to mature for anything of theirs
witcher games were far from being trash at launch....

CP77 was sooo bad that it bloody they had to pull it off sale on consoles LOL.

And now they have basically hired a third party company to fix the game....

Again LOL!!

Whats my point? My point is, basically almost every PC game has tething issues that you and i never ever hear about. just "rumours" etc and yet most games come out way buggier than SC alpha at times for a "finished" game.

Look at the state of BF2042. comical and already loads saying the game will be trash at launch .

You guys all of a sudden bash CIG as the worse ever company and worse ever project yet many others have gone through cig's pain if not worse and you never bat a eye lid.
 
I'll pretty much throw down on any poor dev team and game that gets launched.
You also sit here and constantly give us stuff to reply to. It's been awhile since such a fanboy of something so trash has been so vocal, so the engagement provides a good break from the day and a few good laughs, too.

CP2077 took 4 years to release in the state it did. And it was actually a game (much more so than S:C is now, 11 years in). Yes, it had issues, but, I've been able to play it end to end several times now. If you count total time from initiation to the latest patch, that's 5 total years. Half the time CIG has been F'ing around, resetting, and fumbling on almost every large decision they've made.

CIG chose to be public in their fails. Don't hate on me when I just further point out how bad those fails really are. Instead, be mad at the company you constantly White Knight for.
 
witcher games were far from being trash at launch....

CP77 was sooo bad that it bloody they had to pull it off sale on consoles LOL.

And now they have basically hired a third party company to fix the game....

Again LOL!!

Whats my point? My point is, basically almost every PC game has tething issues that you and i never ever hear about. just "rumours" etc and yet most games come out way buggier than SC alpha at times for a "finished" game.

Look at the state of BF2042. comical and already loads saying the game will be trash at launch .

You guys all of a sudden bash CIG as the worse ever company and worse ever project yet many others have gone through cig's pain if not worse and you never bat a eye lid.
CP2077 was by and large only bad on console, not that you'd believe that. On PC it just fell short of its marketed promises.

Witcher games had no where near the scope of CP2077 until witcher 3. The Witcher took place entirely in a single city, the Witcher 2 is basically on a rail, and 3 opened up to a open world game. Can you not see the progression?

lastly, no one is suddenly bashing CIG, the criticism leveled at CIG has been present from the begining because Roberts has a proven track record of failure to complete without oversight or in the case of freelancer sale of the IP and a second company completing the project.

Only the blind cannot see the problems with CIG.
 
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witcher games were far from being trash at launch....

CP77 was sooo bad that it bloody they had to pull it off sale on consoles LOL.

And now they have basically hired a third party company to fix the game....

Again LOL!!

Whats my point? My point is, basically almost every PC game has tething issues that you and i never ever hear about. just "rumours" etc and yet most games come out way buggier than SC alpha at times for a "finished" game.
Very few of those had major game breaking bugs that players hit constantly. Generally it was bugs that were annoying or broke for a handful of people.
Look at the state of BF2042. comical and already loads saying the game will be trash at launch .

You guys all of a sudden bash CIG as the worse ever company and worse ever project yet many others have gone through cig's pain if not worse and you never bat a eye lid.
I don’t think you get it. I played wing commander when it came out. Same with 2. Wing commander 3 / 4 were an annual, if not more often play through. I played prophecy dozens of times. I love what Chris Robert’s creates. I can also admit that brilliant minds need project and product managers, and this looks like a brilliant mind that is missing just that. I’ve watched companies burn because of that. I do not want to watch CIG burn. I pledged at the beginning of the Kickstarter. Ive bought ships since. Ive bought ships in the last MONTH. I’m looking at IAE with a shopping list. I’m extremely well paid and all my hobbies are on hiatus due to covid still. I love what this could be and so much of what they are creating.

And I can still call our poor management or lack of discipline - because ive experienced it, lived it, and my job is fixing it these days. I want him to succeed. But I see what I see, and I hope they correct it.
 
I'll pretty much throw down on any poor dev team and game that gets launched.
You also sit here and constantly give us stuff to reply to. It's been awhile since such a fanboy of something so trash has been so vocal, so the engagement provides a good break from the day and a few good laughs, too.

CP2077 took 4 years to release in the state it did. And it was actually a game (much more so than S:C is now, 11 years in). Yes, it had issues, but, I've been able to play it end to end several times now. If you count total time from initiation to the latest patch, that's 5 total years. Half the time CIG has been F'ing around, resetting, and fumbling on almost every large decision they've made.

CIG chose to be public in their fails. Don't hate on me when I just further point out how bad those fails really are. Instead, be mad at the company you constantly White Knight for.
Your posts are funny too. For instance. Cp77 started development around the same time as sc.. So not 4 years ago lol
 
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