Mirificus posted:

peter gabriel posted:

So I thought I'd load up the game and make a fun video.
I cannot, the game will not let me:
Play it
Have any fun

They have designed the little bit of fun there was to be had right out of the game.
So, you now walk like a loving zombie on Prozac now, the tool tips (they have added a lot of these) tell you to press shift to run, so I do and I do.
The thing is, what they have done is so transparent with this my eyes rolled 365 degrees in my head and moonwalked away like an Xbox 360.
They have put in more and more 'poo poo zones' - These first started appearing years ago when the table I used to run on and jump off suddenly auto forced you to walk on it, and no where else but on that one table. This 'fixed' the issue of people jumping through the ceiling.
They now have these anti fun zones on all air locks, so you can no longer run at the doors. You are not able to move with freedom any more in multiple places and it's jarring as gently caress, as well as a SLAP IN THE FACE - it reeks of on rails console games made by EA and hand holding BULL$HIT like what evil publishers put in games.
So that sucks the fun out of that.
Then we move on to being outside. We all know that Star Citizen does not simulate anything at all but when you are outside now you get a tool tip telling you to 'monitor your oxygen levels at all times and press B to take some medicine or some bullshit' - So now you have limited time outside. I pressed B and nothing happened.
This essentially means open world dicking around is dead, you now have a fun tax slapped on that.
Then we have this new loving god awful lovely wank arse UI and how you 'interact with bullshit' - OK, so press F4 to go into 3rd person view, this is my preferred view as it really is the best way to see your commandos ultra 4K butt textures.
Now, want to OPEN A loving DOOR? Well space cadet, prepare to use your wits and training because doors no longer just open, oh no, this is the future after all. You now zombie your rear end up to the door and press F, while pressing F a very hit and miss UI pops up and your wobble your mouse at 5fps over the door handle, so now while doing this click the loving thing, go on click, click like the arsehole you are.
If this has all gone well the IMMERSION ANIMATION will open the door, and now you get to press F4 again to go back to the view you were in - every time.
This is lovely enough with doors but you want to fly a Mustang? Good luck with that, instead of being immersed in the greatest gaming experience of the century you are a twat kneeling down, pressing F, wobbling your mouse and clicking wildly at the ether hoping something, anything happens. If your man hole cover of destiny ever deigns to flop open you pop out of your preferred view, into a god awful view and all hell breaks loose until you mash F4, then guess what? PRESS F YOU BITCH AND CLICK THE loving IMMERSION LADDER - Are you having fun yet? WELL GUESS WHAT? View change out of no where. Press F4 again while totally doing the loving can can upside down and DO IT ALL AGAIN TO SIT IN A loving CHAIR.
They have killed this game dead, this is literally zero fun now.

OK, so I get in my commandos chair and IT GETS WORSE.
So now you do the press F bullshit and your chariot turns on eventually. Now then, after the usual 'Landing Gear Succsfl' welcome message you USED TO be able to hit space bar and zoom up.
Not any more motherfucker
Now you have to (while sat in the chair) press F and wobble your mouse around until you find a START CHARIOT button. This appears to do nothing.
This is as far as I got - Fuuuuuck this. The cockpit is all sort of interactive now with much F pressing going on, the UI too small to read and literally useless.
I never did take off because...

THEY HAVE NOW PUT A FUN TAX ON FLYING
So if you sit in your crap ship on the lovely grey concrete environment for too long you despawn after a warning of 'You are stationary in an active landing pad for too long you arse' warning.
So that was me, done with that poo poo, I got teleported back inside Port Olsisissrarar for loitering, my crime level went up as well, although I doubt that does anything.

I cannot express how poo poo this is now, it's not funny, it's not fun, it's shear joyless crap and you can literally see where they have designed the fun right the gently caress out of it. "People seem to be having fun running in this area and jumping around - I think if we disabled running and jumping that would solve it, also people are playing around on the landing pads, we should really take steps to KNOCK THAT OFF"

That along with 7 minutes loading screens, 12 FPS, chat still full of 'weapons not working' and other shite. It's crap, if anyone is on the fence about buying this just to see how bad it is, don't - Instead get off the fence and stare at it for an hour, it's more fun.

A fraud and a thief posted:

“This may be a foreign concept to gamers as the majority of games are about winning and losing,” he said, “but Star Citizen isn’t a normal game. It’s a First Person Universe that allows you to live a virtual life in a compelling futuristic setting. You win by having fun, and fun is different things to different people.”

Mirificus posted:

https://twitter.com/TarkaRoshe/status/1025474958196191239
https://twitter.com/TarkaRoshe/status/1025427562615529473

Scruffpuff posted:

None of this is much of a surprise. Chris is the worst, and he's always been really bad - this was absolutely inevitable. Even his recent moronic statement:

Spiderdrake posted:

In your opinion, Doctor Scruff P. Uff of the Roberts Is Bad Research division, does it feel a little like the kickstarter and earlier materials were less his work?

Or are we just seeing the inevitable consequences of scam artistry? I mean the KS always looked stupid to me, but the last year of Roberts has been extra screaming bear.

Mirificus posted:

https://twitter.com/TarkaRoshe/status/1025474958196191239
https://twitter.com/TarkaRoshe/status/1025427562615529473

Gorf posted:

I was less bothered by the currency cap lift than some. We’ve seen pathological monetization from the start, it’s a defining feature of the project and has earned them $191 million in six years. Viewed as a continuum, the currency cap lift felt like a foregone conclusion, as do (eventually) subscriptions.

The part that bothered me the most had nothing to do with Free to Play rationalizations. Instead, it was the concession that six years in, Roberts still hasn’t really defined the central mechanic of his would be Best drat Space Sim Ever.

The first question asked during Friday’s Q&A was “What’s your current vision for the perfect dogfighting experience in a space game?” It was the question most voted upon by the community, a fact which speaks to present widespread dissatisfactions.

Yet what made it even more incredible to hear was the preface to the question, which saw host Disco Lando stressing to Roberts that their Lead Vehicle Designer John Crewe really wanted to hear the answer to this question, too.

If the internal vision for dogfighting is still so ill-defined six years on that the Lead Vehicle Designer is also eager to hear an answer to this question, it suggests something has gone quite wrong.

After all, even in the 2012 Kickstarter video, Chris Roberts emphasized his excitement about the physics of the Star Citizen he’d hoped to build. Yet here we are in 2018, the senior physics engineer at the company recently departed, the flight model remains in flux, and Roberts answers felt (to me at least) muddled and confusing.

That Roberts has rationalizations for why the game isn’t Pay to Win isn’t surprising to me at all. What’s another promise broken at this point between friends?

What seems far more troubling to me is that, after all this money raised and time spent, Roberts still doesn’t know how he wants his Best drat Space Sim Ever to play. Even his employees are confused, and probably concerned. After all, the onus is on them to implement his vision and make all these gorgeous high dollar spaceships a thrill to fly. How can they do that if they still don’t know what it is?

G0RF posted:

It’s been interesting to take in Relay and Astropub’s shows today. Neither panels were much concerned about all F2P drama fallout from the Chairman’s letter or RTV appearance, and given that both sets of panels were filled with spaceship hoarders and pro-tier theorycrafters, they’d already settled on their enlightened rationalizations.

It’s taken as a given that the 9 to 1 NPC to Player “reality of the situation” (a favorite phrase of AstroPub), along with the interventions of CIG employed economy tuners, will prevent this from happening. Those saying otherwise are being disengenous, are trolling, don’t understand game development, etc.

Theorycrafting optimists are forever borrowing from the current reserve of as-yet-unbroken future promises. People still instinctively answer so very many questions with “Chris said...” (insert some pullquote from the last six years of game claims), as if anything that follows it should not be discounted immediately out of mortality concerns.

No one on either panel picked up on a real shocker of the episode. Nor did Chris or Lando. In fact, it was only thanks to Lando’s obliviousness that we got a glimpse of it in the first place. It was a glimpse into the still Troubled Development of Star Citizen in 2018.

(I made an effortpost about it on Reddit that I won’t link but will post here. I will probably have use for it down the road.)


“The reality is” that there is nothing at all normal about any of this, lurkers. Imagine if six years into development on a crowdfunded Mario game, Miyamoto still hadn’t decided how Mario should jump. Imagine that his own employees were adding their voices to those of backers, all seeking clarity from Miyamoto on a televised fan show, “What is your current vision for how Mario will jump?”

That’s what just happened yesterday.

Beet Wagon posted:

wasn't "you'll be able to effect the economy" a selling point at one point? Like I remember some stupid flowery text about how you'll be able to tank the price of something if you bring to much to a station or whatever

e: ah yes how could I forget, it's literally from the kickstarter

iospace posted:

Ok, time to impersonate G0RF for a bit.

The thing is, a lot of MMOs like to crow about "player driven economy". Only a small handful have a true one, and the most obvious example is Eve Online. The other day a massive battle erupted, with both sides losing a bunch of titans. Each of those titans have to be made, from scratch. There's no shipyard run by an NPC where you can go "Give me a titan!"

Star Citizen (and Elite, to be fair), sell whole ships. Elite does not have a persistent inventory outside of your ship, so you can't "invest" in certain goods or commodities. I do not expect Star Citizen to have the same. Eve, however, does. Investing, station trading, and building up supply depots is part of the game. Maybe SC will allow offship stockpiling. Who knows, the game isn't out yet (nor will it ever, but for the sake of this post, we're assuming it will release).

Now, let's go into point two of my prior post: PVP. Whenever a ship dies, it needs to, more often than not, be replaced. A titan takes about a month to build, from start to finish, requiring a significant amount of material to build of all types. Some small ships only need the most basic of materials to make. What does this do? It helps the miners profit. The builders then buy the raw materials and crap out ships like there's no tomorrow. Some pvper (or pve'er) buys one of those ships and blows it up, possibly while blowing a miner up. The cycle continues, and depending on supply and demand, ore and mineral prices can rise and fall.

Star Citizen can't have this, to a point. Elite somewhat simulates it. Trading too much of one material to a station will cause the price that you sell it for to drop. I wouldn't be surprised if Star Citizen does this as well, but as far as I know in Elite, there's not necessarily an increase in production of the recipient station's goods.

Also, point three, but not discussed: Pay 2 Win. It is rare, but has happened, that a player has dropped over several thousand dollars in Eve to buy a titan pilot and titan, then blew it up shortly there after. Yes, you can buy characters wholesale in Eve. When skill injectors were introduced, the same point was brought up, and while some do still crow about pay 2 win, it's not as easy in Eve as it is for Star Citizen.

You can buy the blingiest titan this side of Jita, but if you don't know how to pilot it, well kiss it goodbye the moment you move it out of safety. In Star Citizen, the moment someone's Idris gets blown up after undocking it for the first time is the moment they go to the forums and whine until something happens: the gankers get banned, or the gankee gets banned (guess which one is likely to happen). So it's pay 2 win, but not how one would expect. It's preferred treatment at this point, given how CIG views its whales.

Beet Wagon posted:

Ironically, "Lifetime Insurance," the thing that they said over and over again barely even mattered, is the wrench stuck in the gears that makes Star Citizen pay to win. The simple fact that you can pay for something that is impossible for you to lose is what shoots the "But but but EVE has pleeeeeeex" line in the foot.

also, congrats on having thought more about MMO economies in one post than Chris Roberts has in six years.

trucutru posted:

You're totally missing the point. There is no pay to win. You have the option to pay to do. Your ship(s) drastically affect what you can do in the game. If someone wants to blow tons of money to sit in a huge slow capital ship by himself, so be it. He won't be able to do other things such as mining, salvage, rescue ops, etc. Do you "win" by purchasing the ship you want? Or all the ships available?

The Saddest Robot posted:

Ah, so they've just started doing the prep work for Object Container Streaming? They haven't even started on it?

Nyast posted:

The project is in such "open development" that nobody can tell a semi-accurate completion progress percentage of Squadron 42. Literrally nobody has a clue whether they've developped 25%, 50%, 75% or 90% of the game.

Yeah, that's the state of the most open development game ever.

If you want to trigger a meltdown, just ask them that question.

The Saddest Robot posted:

Ah, so they've just started doing the prep work for Object Container Streaming? They haven't even started on it?

Awesome Fidelity posted:

Bonus spectrum thread

Astroniomix posted:

The biggest difference between EvE's PLEX system and Store Citizer's "litterally USD to UEC" system that I haven't seen people mention is that selling a PLEX only moves money from one player to another, no new ISK enters the market, it actually destroys some because of market taxes. And that's the big thing that prevents EvE's economy from collapsing under a stampede of over-eager whales.

Astroniomix posted:

The biggest difference between EvE's PLEX system and Store Citizer's "litterally USD to UEC" system that I haven't seen people mention is that selling a PLEX only moves money from one player to another, no new ISK enters the market, it actually destroys some because of market taxes. And that's the big thing that prevents EvE's economy from collapsing under a stampede of over-eager whales.

Midnight Voyager posted:

SpaceSDoorGunner posted:

I thought one of the largest isk sinks in Eve is just super rich players quitting the game.

Quavers posted:

From AstroPub's stream chat at the beginning of "UEC drama discussion":

Astroniomix posted:

It is, my point was more about the fact that PLEX does not create new ISK rather than it serving as an ISK sink.

Scruffpuff posted:

Every time I see their offices I have to laugh. Even legitimate companies don't have their logos and a bunch of loving murals of their "IP" all over the loving glass, doors, and walls. CIG is top to bottom astroturfing, but no game.

Quavers posted:

From AstroPub's stream chat at the beginning of "UEC drama discussion":

Jade, 4 days ago... posted:

I never get posts like this. What is “play to win” in an open universe? Chris Roberts said he wanted SC to be a big social game like Second Life.

How do you win Second Life?