Mirificus posted:

Scruffpuff posted:

The primary issue holding Star Citizen back, in my mind, is not related to technology per se.

You can write a 900-page blog about how it's impossible or extraordinarily difficult. (Note to self: somebody might have already written one, I have to look into that.)

We can watch their horrific development practices and constant missteps all day and show that each one, by itself, stops Star Citizen from coming out, much less considering all the mistakes in aggregate.

But none of that matters. The primary issue that keeps Star Citizen from releasing is that their monetization scheme runs in 100% opposition to releasing a game, or even fixing what they have.

Many things need to be gutted to the core and either reworked or rebuilt from the ground up, but that can't happen because it must be 3.0, then 3.1, etc. The backers must continue to see numbers go up, and iterations of the current build continuing apace, or the funding is threatened.

The entire flight model needs reworking, before the finalized pretty models are put in, but that can't happen, because the finished models are what they're selling - not the game.

They're selling finalized game assets and the illusion of progress, and that decision doomed the game. Any course correction at this point threatens to sink the incoming funds, and then it's truly over.

That is the true E.L.E. - the point of no return they reached at some point in the last couple years when they had the chance to go back and do it right, and chose instead to forge ahead with a broken system. Now that the funding and the development efforts are fully opposed, it's only a matter of time before they collide.

quote:

To the extent that this project happens to currently boast the 4th largest game dev budget in history. And five years and $112M later, they haven’t delivered anything that resembles the game promised. And we’re keeping track. As of this writing, going by the pledge promises, not even 10% of the project has been delivered to backers. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, with the crowd-funding drying up, and with a monthly burn rate rumored to be in the region of $3m (!) per month, they’re now focusing on more ways of making money; rather than building the core game play elements of the game. This time, in the form of in-game items shoe-horned into an instanced tech demo (aka PU) that is as persistent as a hobo with Alzheimer. A “game” which, btw they can’t even get more than 12 (!) clients into any instance, without severe problems, and the server coughing up moth balls.

In fact, less than two weeks ago, Chris himself confirmed – again – that the networking layer needed to be redone. Transcript of that segment. And that he can’t find qualified networking and physics engineers to hire for the project. That’s the start of his pattern of making excuses for failures. And he’s done that all before; it’s no secret.

Dusty Lens posted:

But what if your boss is asking you to perpetuate a scam.

SCtrumpHaters posted:

I'm not saying Chris is a good guy here I'm not insane but putting this all on him is disingenuous when theres hundreds of people milking this hard pretending to be competant who are way more culpable than him.

Canine Blues Arooo posted:

I know fake posting and all, but for the reddit folks who really believe this...

When you are in a director-level role in software development, it is 100% your responsibility to have a strategy to evaluate and hire people who can do the job. It is also your job to replace people who can't do the job, or are unwilling to do the job. If you can't find people to do the job, then you hosed up in the planning phase by biting off more than you can chew.

There is no such thing as someone 'failing' a director. It is the director's job to resolve those problems with training, supplemental staff, or replacement. If they are unable or unwilling to do so, then it is the director who is bad at their job and blame for a failure falls on them, not the individual engineers.

Mangoose posted:

So these ship prices.

I can see two things happening. Either the ships will be easy to get in-game and thus not warrant a price tag like $800. Lots of backers will be pissed off because some guy got the ship THEY bought for a shitload of money during Citizencon '17 after a few months of semi-casual play. Others will still be happy, because it was never about the ships. It was about backing the dream.

The other case would be that it'll take a stupid amount of time to get a reasonable ship in-game without paying real money for it. That would make it really hard for them to attract new players unless they have a loving amazing gameplay loop and tons of stuff to do for the players flying around in the 'verse in the equivalent of a Datsun Cherry.

As far as I understand it, there won't be a real money cash shop after release, or whatever they consider "release". Of course, this means that, since Crobbers has gone on record saying that the game isn't going to have a conventional release, they'll be selling ships until the end of time. But if they actually stop selling ships, how the gently caress are they going to balance time vs money spent, and how are they going to defend it to the whales who are in for 10k+?

This is all assuming that they somehow manage to create a playable product that would appeal to anyone enough to make them purchase and play it.

SCtrumpHaters posted:

If I hire a dude to perform a code function and he is not able to perform a code function and lies/confounds over it for months on end its on the employee just as much if not more than the director.

Sorry, you don't get absolved of all moral responsibility because you are an employee.

SCtrumpHaters posted:

I don't even fuckin know whats real anymore honestly.

SCtrumpHaters posted:

If I hire a dude to perform a code function and he is not able to perform a code function and lies/confounds over it for months on end its on the employee just as much if not more than the director.

Sorry, you don't get absolved of all moral responsibility because you are an employee.

VictorianQueerLit posted:

I'm not defending Derek, I'm the first one to make fun of him, but I've talked about this in the past and I think what he said was accurate at the time.

Now I will channel Derek

This is all rambling speculation though about what went on behind the scenes. I've formed my opinion by passively watching this shitshow for a few years now and am taking into account things like CIGs own marketing, their tweets, their ATVs and interviews. Also things like the leaks and this threads analysis at every decision and action they take.

My theory is this:

Due to CIG constantly promising things and being unable to deliver I think Chris Roberts around December 2015 was certain of a early to mid two year late 2016 release for Squadron 42 which is where the real money is at. Since he has talked in interviews about expecting ridiculously impossible numbers of sales for it to the tune of a quarter billion dollars it's reasonable to make that the focus of your company if you are a big enough lunatic to think it's going to be that profitable.

Leading up to that was a nonstop barrage of videos about motion capture for Squadron 42 and the actors. Slides about the amazing script. Leaks about all the work going into it and how much work there was actually to do on Squadron 42. All Chris ever wanted to talk about was Squadron 42. Answer the call.

So in early 2016 we did get a few new patches to the PU. These patches started getting less and less substantial from 2.1. Eventually they were slight modifications anyone that has ever modded a game would instantly recognize. Adjusting values of things.

Then the maintenance mode thing comes up here in March. Not necessarily whatever the official terminology for a "maintenance mode" on a piece of software would be but that the PU was only being worked on to keep up appearances. All focus and resources were going to Squadron 42 but the PU is what cultists have paid for.

As 2016 started progressing you started having longer and longer time for even more and more insignificant patches. After about 6-7 months the maintenance mode and reduced consideration for the PU was proven to be exactly correct since it started taking multiple months to get slight tweaks to flight speed or camera movement. 2.5 in August was virtually identical to 2.0 from December of the previous year. I'm sure cultists would point at the hilarious patch notes or compile huge lists of how adjusting the ammunition in a gun or the top speed of something totally disproves my point but if you aren't a crazy idiot arguing for a belief you can see the actual changes from 2.0 -> 2.5 which were the definition of treading water or "maintenance mode."

Meanwhile you still saw Mark Hamill and Squadron 42 actors tweeting about their still ongoing motion capture up until July of that year.

Gamescom comes around and you have an obvious and proven fake scripted demo in cryeditor.exe to make even more money. Money flows in. Citcon rolls around and in addition to another obvious and proven fake scripted demo in cryeditor.exe you have Squadron 42's appearance cancelled for unexplained reasons. The Leaks had been progressively mentioning a reduced scope in Squadron 42 which was to try and get out "The Prelude." A smaller and cut up version of Squadron 42s content to try and sell it.

After that the holiday sale rolls around and CIG manages to poo poo out Star Marine.

Once 2017 hit Squadron 42 isn't being talked about much anymore. Work probably progressed on it or The Prelude until early this year and at some point the idea had to have been abandoned. I tend to think that all the leaks about how ridiculous the animation data was were correct. Especially when you consider the slides putting this at 10x the speaking roles of actual studio releases of animated films. Chris Roberts had wanted to make a movie and had generated 90% footage and 10% gameplay with most of his budget and the footage was largely worthless due to the work required to turn tens of millions of dollars of motion capture data into anything resembling a game with a narrative that he could sell for $60.

Leaks turned to Squadron 42 being combined with the persistent universe. All outward focus from CIG switches to 3.0 and delivering something that resembles the fake demos they sold last year.

I think they have shifted along this path

- Planning to develop both games simultaneously with 4 studios
(time passes)
- Already past their release date with tens of millions in Squadron 42, complete focus on finish it (Maintenance Mode PU)
(time passes)
- Unable to deal with the hilarious clusterfuck Chris Roberts filmed, scope is reduced and a smaller step will be taken toward Squadron 42, further forgetting the PU (Prelude, A year without patches)
(time passes)
- Development of anything to do with petabytes of mocap footage becomes so expensive that the forgotten PU is now front and center to make money (Fake Demos late 2016)
(a lot of time passes)
- Once the main 2017 sales start getting closer CIG starts producing more fake demos but is now apparently struggling to develop something that actually resembles them. (3.0) Work has obviously just started on it sometime recently but they are running with it 100% and are no longer talking about Squadron 42. Due to almost bankrupting the company on Squadron 42 for years their last resort is a broken tech demo they had largely been ignoring. It's all they have and that leads us to now where they are frantically trying to cram more features into an ancient engine they should have never used in the first place.

It's a shame that we have to speculate so much about what is actually happening at THE WORLD'S MOST OPEN GAME DEVELOPMENT STUDIO. I'm pretty confident about that chain of events and if I was as crazy as Derek i would probably look up all the supporting tweets and information for each step but I don't care enough to spend an eternity digging through endless amounts of bullshit to highlight my points.

Colostomy Bag posted:

And this is the amazing thing. From a technological perspective this dumpster fire cannot be made base on Robert's visions. The in-game economic model...well who knows. We have Roberts on record saying that a Connie will require around 40 hours of gameplay to acquire.

In short, what an absolute farce.

CrazyLoon posted:

CRobblers' inhales charisma off his table in fine white-powdered form. Seriously, I've not seen any of his latest public appearances on any kind of stage where his eyes and face aren't bulging like he just snorted some good coke.

Then, cause he doesn't have the stamina to keep it up in his age, he turns back into super mushmouth in board meetings and such.

Mangoose posted:

Right, but what the hell are they thinking? I mean, it's not even close to my day job or anything, but sitting there in the middle of development, what the gently caress are the guys who are paid to figure this out thinking? Are they just leaving it for when it's time to think about? I mean, someone has to have had a thought along the lines of "all right, so how do we balance this?" already

Dusty Lens posted:

But what if your boss is asking you to perpetuate a scam.

Mne nravitsya posted:

You can't hide your lyin' eyes
And your smile is a thin disguise
I thought by now you'd realize
There ain't no way to hide your lyin' eyes

Colostomy Bag posted:

Your mistake was using the word "thinking".

The whole game is basically like you and your buddys playing Tonka trucks in a sandbox imagining finding China if you could dig deep enough.

Bayonnefrog posted:

I love how you never see him with his wife. They must hate each other.

Drunk Theory posted:

Still no Ben. I'd give it another week or two of shows, but the Agent might be completely right.

Bayonnefrog posted:

I love how you never see him with his wife. They must hate each other.

Canine Blues Arooo posted:

If your employee can't code OpenDoor(), then instead of saying, 'Hey Tom, we *really* need doors to like, you know, open and close and stuff soon and if you could make that work soon, that'd be great', you say, 'Tom. Buddy. We need to move forward with this project and our doors still suck. I don't think this relationship is working out well so we hired someone else to do OpenDoor(). Sorry about this, but you're being let go. Now where is the guy who was building ramps..."

Bayonnefrog posted:

Apologies in advance but I missed this. What happened to him?

Mangoose posted:

Right, but enough about my hobbies

Drunk Theory posted:

Still no Ben. I'd give it another week or two of shows, but the Agent might be completely right.

Bayonnefrog posted: