tithin posted:

Has there been much in the way of legal movements? It seems to have fizzled.

lofi posted:

I can't see how CIG are going to get around the 'licensed for one game, made two' thing. SQ42 and SC are pretty blatently different games.

lofi posted:

Does that mean all steam games are the same game? Mostly I'm swayed by the fact Skadden are involved, afaik they don't come out to play if they don't feel pretty confident of a big paycheck.

lofi posted:

And the fans will accept it as just cleverly outwitting the big bad Crytek. Brilliant.

2019: We'd have launched this year, except we had to not make a game because of *~Crytek~*

Quavers posted:

Server meshing: totally fully designed and coming any day now!

Virtual Captain posted:

Thanks for linking this. Also it's all bullshit. Last week Erin said they were planning to start working on "server meshing" this year if they can put a team together. Translation: In year [7] of our MMO we're thinking about maybe laying some server architecture if we can rustle up some promising interns. Translation layer 2: It's not gonna happen but I have to say it is or the whole MMO lie falls apart.

Virtual Captain posted:

If you can listen to Erin say "right now we have a server which basically controls and we have about 50 people in in one area and that's about as high as we can go we can we'll be able to get a bit higher once we do some optimizations but otherwise you get you know you get into problems with latency and a lot sort of later but the but the server's get so slow" and still think you're getting an MMO at the end of this then just

Elderbean posted:

Just lol at the thought of making an MMO and only starting the server side programming 7 years in holy poo poo.

quote:

As Derek and others have continually pointed out, a proper networking architecture to drive what they want would be a monumental task and should have been the very first thing they did.

As it stands, they have a broken down, burned out husk of a moped, and they're trying to hype up that they have all these plans and ideas to give it wings, and a rocket engine, and design a life support system so they can travel to Mars and back on a teaspoon of fuel

That's the trouble with code that hasn't been written yet - it's theoretically perfect. But, the difference between theory and reality is much larger in reality than it is in theory

G0RF posted:

REXILLA RECAP

They spent an hour prepping for an epic sunrise battle around a junkyard at sunrise and the server borked out only minutes after the kickoff.

”I’m stuck here without any ammo in this fight... because the drat game won’t let me equip any!”

G0RF posted:

RANDOM REXSHILLA REPORT

A Rexzilla “fan” has gifted 500 subs to his channel ($5 min each) and given away a $1000 ship. (The best community ever.)

”What tha phuk HOW DID YOU JUST DIE?!”

”Alrigh, we’re all in. GET US TO PORT OLISAR!” Oops.

”Why is the game taking so long to release? I mean it’s already out. You’re looking at the game wrong if you’re waiting on this thing to release. 100%.” (He goes through this set of scripted sound bites and adds that the quarterly releases to come are just “free DLC.” All those mechanics they promised years ago but aren’t here? All those ships? Females? It’s just free dlc that will come out when it comes out...)

(And now for a word from our sponsor...)

Another successful “WHAT THA PHUK IS HAPPENING?!”

Just drive it on in boys...

”...and it’s not working...”

The big finish. Kinda?

I gotta give Rex props. He functions as a DM for this whole thing, imposing rules and gameplay where it doesn’t exist like a pro. While he’s totally on the payroll for CIG, the dude has the whole thing down to a science. He’s great at what he does, truly, even if that is compensation LARPing for a ‘game’ that’s not a game yet.

I can also see why he’s apparently a popular stream sniping target. Given the frustrations he and everyone else endure just to get somewhere they can role play a scenario, the griefing potential is already high. Add to it his conspicuous overnight success, the RedBull ‘butt rock’ persona, and his wall-to-wall shilling, he’s going to have lots of people motivated to take shots and disrupt for s.

kilus aof posted:

The trick is he doesn't play the game. Like for real. The only real game systems he uses is the ship spawn terminal, although sometimes CIG employees spawn ships for him, and quantum travel. He doesn't run missions and he doesn't trade cargo which are the two things you would consider the real game elements. He doesn't challenge another org into a PVP battle or fly around looking for a fight.

What he does instead is sets up live action roleplay events. He gets one group of his org to go off somewhere and be the opposing force. The rest is his dropship force. A setup would be he runs off and gets a crate, not the mission ones because they are more bugged, just some random one in space. That's the bomb and his team goal is to deliver the bomb to some building.

So he travels around the system in quantum travel but not in the pilot seat. Because you can't have a stream of the quantum travel effect for 10 minutes. During the travel time he instead goes to the cargo area and gets his team to sit in the dropship seats or stand in formation and rants about the mission or Star Citizen or military lingo from movies or standard streamer life blog crap. The ship then lands, unopposed near the target building. Everyone piles out and runs off to the mission. The only HUD elements about the mission are the team mates(and that bugs out often) because it's not a real mission and Star Citizen doesn't offer much in the way of custom waypoints or map markers. His teams attacks the other side which puts up a token defense of 3 fighter ship fly back and forth overhead for effect using their weapons as basically fireworks. Then the person with the bomb runs into a building and they win. Nothing pops up onto the screen because none of this is real, Rexzilla just tells everyone they have won.

And that's how he streams the game. Which is quite genius, he doesn't interact with anything you would consider a game mechanic. He side steps the entire game. So other streamers do crate delivery missions which bug out all the time or run cargo which also bugs out all the time which means their streams are a constant bug fest where nothing works while Rexzilla's little game where there are no rules and the points and goals are complete made up works all the time.

So if you want to be a successful Star Citizen streamer step one is literally not play the game at all. Just make up some Calvinball game and use JPEGs as props.

G0RF posted:

in related news, Rex IS going to CitizenCon this year.(43:19) (Awkward!) Something tells me his airfare and accommodations will be on the house. Something also tells me a lot of the usual streamer attendees will skip this year.

G0RF posted:

• “Bellows”, a former backer turned CIG “player relations” employee, joined Rex’s game, playing with a special character with devil horns.
  
• That employee spawned Hammerheads at Rex’s request for their Op and then ran missions with the ZDF.
  
• Rex went off on a blistering “Most games take 10 years to develop” rant that was 5 minutes long and so obviously part of a CIG talking point punch list it was laughable.
  
• He was crowing that ZDF is the “fastest growing org ever” and then asked Bellows to get him private metrics so he could prove that to the citizenry. Bellows said he’d see what he could do.
  

And that’s just one little part of one stream. It’s not even the funny stuff like spending a half hour to prep a mission only to arrive above the planet out of fuel.

If you’re interested in what CIG’s really up to, then Rex is worth paying attention to. Even if you’re not, his arrival is totally disrupting the SC streamer landscape too, such as it was, and that’s bound to produce a lot more drama and s.

G0RF posted:

Look at this scene until the end.

Isn’t it interesting that ships keep doing these cinematic flybys. They’re not attacking Rex’s ship, they’re just adding sci-fi ambience to the scene he’s filming. There is no other reason for them to be there but to fly into and out of his shots. They’re not random players, they’re unacknowledged participants in the machinima. And it happens all the time in his streams. Ships flying overhead when he’s engaged in ground missions, then turning around and flying back. It’s a nice touch!

G0RF posted:

Rexshilla as “the anointed one” amongst SC streamers is such a great plot twist to this sprawling tale. Because it reinforces many of the big themes of the SC story — fraudulent marketing, the perpetual devaluation of the old for the new, the need to forever compensate for failures of game design with theorycraft and role play.

I love that he’s a DP in real life, because his talent for cinematography and shameless willingness to hardcore shill makes him the streamer hero Chris Roberts always wanted. Rexshilla and a compliant gang of in-game actors are, when the conditions are ideal and servers aren’t choking, conjuring up a participatory fiction of the incredible possibilities of Star Citizen and Chris is absolutely giddy to see it in action. Rexshilla reinforces Chris’s fictive vision of what Star Citizen is AND he’s 100% “go go go buy $750 ships NOW you have to PLAY THIS INCREDIBLE SCI-FI GAME NOW!!!!!!”

Baron has had some RP “let’s invent some gameplay” sessions, many of the streamers have. Gheesling had a particular knack for hilarious improvs and situations but he was cursed and rejected by the community despite being 100% a lifetime fanboy of Chris Roberts games. (“Don’t give us fake reality TV stars, he’s not one of us!”) But none of them have ever been turboshills of the Carlos Matos variety. None of them ever committed so fully. And now Rexshilla is here, and is unabashedly the hardest core sponsored evangelist in SC history, and rather than express concern or disdain at the disruption, he’s welcomed as the prince who was promised, the one we’ve waited for.

It’s a great plot twist.

Things I also learned from that last stream.

1) CIG’s Roadmap is being modified to add features Rex wants. The twist? They are things like better group coordination, bigger friend lists, and loading screen fixes that the community has asked for forever. Now that Rex wants it, it’s important. Just ponder that one, lurkers.

2) Rex is filming commercials for Star Citizen, including a “Would you like to know more?” nod to the Starship Troopers satirical recruitment film. Expect the irony free version. And Rex is excited about being able run SC ads during the long downtime between missions.

3) Rexshilla’s team, once identifying a location for their next campaign, kills all unidentified ships and players so they won’t interfere with their role play. And that’s entirely okay. (Here’s a tip for the Thread Intern to pass to Chris — just give Rexshilla a tool to wipe out non-flagged players from the server on entry. Maybe a little message to dead players could pop up, “Sorry, you’ve been Rexed! Time to make way for the Role Play!” Make it easier for everybody.)

colonelwest posted:

Rex is a good showman, though I may find him kind of personally repulsive, he’s the perfect sheep dog for Chris’ herd of rubes.

G0RF posted:

https://twitter.com/Rexzilla/status/1075839390801371138
https://twitter.com/listening2day/status/1075855948307034113

Teamwork makes the scheme work!

Bootcha posted:

If there's one thing that's consitent about Star Citizen, it's that it's been giving me all sorts of material for Sunk Cost Galaxy chapters before I fully write them.

And Rexzilla has been handed to me on a plate

colonelwest posted:

I commented that SC is already far beyond ARMA, Planetside and Battlefield, then Rex reflexively agrees with me but then struggles for several minutes to justify why.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/385065991?t=04h34m38s

skeletors_condom posted:

WTFO contemplates Rex's recent success on today's stream:

https://clips.twitch.tv/ObedientDeafDillBrainSlug

He talks a bit about how he is on top of the Star Marine leaderboards and yet he doesn't seem to get the same traction.

https://clips.twitch.tv/ObeseWanderingHedgehogTF2John

What he doesn't mention (although he alludes to this indirectly) is that CIG is not in a position to deliver a product that is supportive of a healthy streaming ecosystem. Rex's recent success not withstanding (and we have to see whether it's all organic), all game modes offered by SC (AC, SM, PU) are simply not fit for day to day streaming. All the big SC streamers see a giant spike in viewers when a new release is out and then thing start to decay when everyone realizes that the g0d patch has not landed.

If CIG knew what they were doing, they would either keep AC/SM stable for developing market/mind share and testing new functionality or they would have never developed AC/SM as standalone modules in the first place. As things stand right now now, AC/SM feel like broken "checklist" releases that add nothing to the overall concept.

SomethingJones posted:

SC/AM

hot balls man no homo posted:

"And that 5 mile wide crater over there? That's where Star Citizen collided with the gaming landscape and killed off any hope of crowdfunding a game ever again."

Elderbean posted:

SC just makes me realize how many gamers are completely full of poo poo when they go on reddit and complain about greedy publishers and devs. They always write long rants comparing their plight of dealing with lovely games to the holocaust. It's always incredibly verbose and emotional.

Then a blatant scam like SC comes along and people eagerly throw money at it. Like for all the drama in gaming circles over lootboxes and DLC gamers don't exercise any self-control when it comes to throwing money at hype.

G0RF posted:

If by “marginally competent” you mean “spectacularly awesome”, I agree.

It’s funny. In earlier interviews Sandi talked about their plans to use e-sports to target the mainstream (and grow to 5 or 10 million backers.) It always begged the question, “But how can you do that when you’re missing so much of the core gameplay needed to attract that? And missing basic systems to support it?”

Now we see what they meant and how they’re working around those very real problems. Brought to you by RedBull in more ways than one. They’ve pushed aside the homegrown SC streamers for a packaged (outsider) Pro. His mandate is to both energize the disengaged backers and convert new prospects to citizenship. His 7 day a week livestream is part high pressure sales pitch of the new narrative (“the game is released and is the greatest sci-fi experience in gaming. 100%.”) and a real-time roleplaying experience that he emcees like a master. He’s dictating the gameplay rules in real time (“alright we’re gonna do another Montana Dave mission!”), he’s creating teams, imposing strict order, he’s got volunteers patrolling the perimeter of their randomly chosen game maps to protect LARPers from outside attacks, and he’s narrating the storylines in real-time with unabashed excitement.

When you’re playing with the Zilla Dropship Forces, the bubble is alive. Star Citizen is “the greatest sci-fi experience in gaming ever! 100%! And if you’re waiting for it to be release, you’re doing it wrong! I’m willing to spend $10000 I’M WILLiNG TO SPEND IT ALL!” You’d never hear that kind of talk from Saurus, Twerk, Baron or Richard — they lack the commitment to Sparklemotion.

Outside of it, conversations are a lot more muted. “Chris prioritized Fidelity, AAA Games prioritize Fun.” Yes, he surely did, he always has, he doesn’t care about Fun and doesn’t want to compete against the big dogs on that front because “Star Citizen isn’t a normal game.” ...and no, it’s not going to get a lot better anytime soon because Squadron 42 is the main focus now.

(SIDE NOTE: You can see the discomfort caused by even these obvious admissions in the case of MoistNoodle, who really doesn’t like it when people talk too honestly about the game state. The dude needs to leave the Asylum and join the Zilla Dropship Forces, stat!, where the fantasy is alive and well and you can and should spend everything you’ve got for it NOW.)

Rexzilla is a small part of that Calder money being put to good use. As was the Redbull doc. What’s really incredible is that these efforts into forcing a new narrative of supremacy are coming even as the core focus is now on Squadron. It’s all such a huge “screw you” to the backer and streamers who got them this far. And lest we forget, Roberts even wanted to squeeze the Old Money to pay for the marketing they’re now directing at the New Money at the annual fan event meant to celebrate “our wonderful community.” (Because that “Levels” doc was surely commissioned to do just that.)

It’s all so ugly and shameless, the intent telegraphed right to the world directly by Our Man at Polygon. Despite claims to the contrary that “nothing is happening”, in fact, something amazing is happening. CIG is finally trying to start crossing the chasm. Only not by normalizing the game for the mainstream; they’re trying to mainstream their macrotransactional deviance. They’ve got a pitchman, they’ve got a reporter, and they’ve got a message they’re going to hype to the max while they not even working on Star Citizen to get you to buy in to Star Citizen.

“Star Citizen isn’t a normal game. The game is out and every quarter we get new DLC for FREE. I’m willing to spend $10000, I’m willing to spend it all. Would you like to know more?”

Dementropy posted:

https://i.imgur.com/kOSiDBc.gifv

A Commando posted:

IF SQ42 part 1 sucks... well everything is screwed and the project will be in real trouble. I don't think SQ42 part 1 will suck. I believe SQ42 part 1 will exceed the low target number of 1 million in sales and that it will be good enough to create more than 1 million new backers for the PU.

So with the $60,000,000 for SQ42 part 1 and another $45,000,000 from new backers this is $105,000,000 in CIG's coffers. At a guess a third ($35,000,000) of that will go to pay outstanding bills/debt, another third will go right back into development and the last third will be considered profit so that investors can begin to see a return on their investment.

This $35,000,000 will be in addition to CIG's concept and regular ships sales which generates roughly $35,000,000 a year. This gives CIG some breathing room and could allow them to bring on more staff as they feel necessary. Ship sales will however be ending before release. This means they will not be an ongoing source of revenue.

Erin Roberts has stated that once work is done on SQ42 part 1 they will roll right into work on SQ42 part 2 and 3. This has some community members annoyed as they feel that the PU should become the priority. The thing is that development of SQ42 part 2 and 3 will take less resources than SQ42 part 1.

This is why SQ42 part 2 is so important.



Some people, understandably, doubt a two year development cycle for single player titles. I don't. Erin Roberts is responsibly as the studio director for almost all of the lego titles. Between 2005 and 2013 he was able to deliver seven lego titles. That's seven games in five years.

Agony Aunt posted:

ITS WORKING! ITS WORKING!!!!

The poor dumb fucks....

big nipples big life posted:

lotta griefing potential with a ship that can tow other ships.

TheAgent posted:

absolutely none of their marketing as been organic and never has been (even the OG kickstarter was a HEAPC3 experiment)

they've paid previous streamers with ships and invites to closed events and private talks, even throwing new machines at them (and according to previous leaks, cash and subs)

they've just had $50m injected into them, and there's a new streamer featured everywhere all over their own internal marketing

he might have started this thing as some outsider looking to crack into SC, but he's now 100% (in my insane, Q fevered opinion) on the payroll

this doesn't mean a minty fresh check every 2 weeks from CIG, but gifted subs, paid for viewers, gifted ships (which cost CIG nothing and can still be turned into bitcoin or cash)


this is 100% coordinated internally by CIG. hell, there's evidence nekehara or something whatever was writing up patch notes from CIG and now he's helping do screenshots and content for rexzilla

TheAgent posted:

CIG did pay bigger streamers before, they just hosted single nights of SC but those guys run upwards of $10,000 a session

cheaper to pay $10,000/m to some guy instead of $10,000 a night (especially since this big guys backtalked SC the entire time)

because those guys are critical of the game and tell people to wait if they expect a polished experience

meanwhile rexzilla is telling people to buy a $750 ship because the wall textures looks really amazing (seriously)

TheAgent posted:

my guess is that they will be slowing everything down even further, including weapon firing rate. bump up the QT/travel speeds to planets but really force players to keep ridiculously low speeds during client to client interaction (like sub 75 meters per second) to make their servers stop imploding and combat actually workable. this would double as a missile fix, as well

that way they can still inject a pretty decent amount of artificial delay in their server side prediction code without it being too noticeable

the best thing is they'll actually increase how fast it says you are going, but in reality your ship won't be anywhere close to hitting 500 m/s, it'll be 1/10 of that or less

this also allows them to "shrink" things even further

although that's what a competent developer would do, so lets see how this plays out

posted:

Last year we had a good half dozen big game mechanics and professions that were on the roadmap. Which I was honestly the most excited for of everything announced. We really need this as it creates an exponential amount of emergent gameplay with every one added.

Then they all got pushed back again and again... and finally with this last roadmap update it looks like we are not getting almost anything this entire year.

I'm really discouraged by this, we have only a tiny handful of "Tier 0" mechanics in game right now, heck they even pushed cargo V2 off the roadmap!

posted:

CIG pretty much out right lied about the LOE for the project. No project manager in their rights mind would have given some of the release schedules/dates CR provided. Even way back in 2014/2015 people called out CIG and especially CR out on it but these people got frowned out by the SC fans with "the CEO of the company knows better than you".

Here we are 5+ years later with not much more than a prototype if that for the PU and no SQ 42.

A Commando posted:

I'm just done with yes this this this 'we're selling you a brand new ship as a cosmetic upgrade plus meta upgrade' that's come on CIG that's bullshit and you know it's bullshit; you need to stop pulling this this EA level bullshit. It's activision EA levels of greediness and I'm tired of it.

It's worse!

quite frankly I'm loving tired of this bullshit

A Commando posted:

CIG likes to do this thing where they build assets with no real mechanics to support it whatsoever. Multi-crew ships with no multi-crew mechanics. Salvage ships with no salvage mechanics. Scanning ships with no scanning mechanics. Data running ships with no data running mechanics. Gas collection and refining ships with no gas collection nor refining mechanics. Live capture bounty hunting ships with no live capture bounty hunting mechanics. Hell, they even made cargo ships before they made cargo mechanics and had to go back and rework ALL of them to fit the finalized cargo metrics.

The idiom "putting the cart before the horse" seems appropriate, but doesn't quite do it justice. More like building the cart for some ideal animal to pull that you've only ever imagined to exist and may in all likelihood not function at all as you imagine it will function.

posted:

Loosing Faith

Just know there is nothing I want more than for this to get done. I personally have supported this game with over $5000 of my hard earned money. That being said, there are some glaring issues that need to be dealt with if that's going to happen.

So you want them to make another jpeg, instead of making another gameplay feature? Like say another star system, or salvaging, or tractor beams, or fixing grav bikes, or NPC crew, or...... Getting my point?

If not I'll lay it out, they aren't going to ever finish if we keep telling them to add more and more ships, but no mechanics. We are doing nothing but adding to their already enormous workload.

I get it, they somehow need the money after saying years ago they had enough to fully develop the game. There's only one person to blame, Chris Roberts. He overspent on voice actors (paying Mark Hamill and a cast of A/B list actors/actresses more than 20 million). He overpaid for motion capture when they could have done it much cheaper, and after seeing their product, much better by doing pure CGI, or at a minimum use a better studio. I've seen the results of their motion capture, lips don't move in sync with the voices, they don't move at all, and some of the movements don't even happen at all.

You can down vote this and say I'm completely full of poo poo, then open your wallet even deeper to this company. Or you can take this as it's intended, an intervention for this community. There needs to be changes or we will never get the game we want.

Sarsapariller posted:

Chris has worked so hard on getting the male model interactions with the world just right, he can't half-rear end it for the women

Daztek posted:

Missile Status: Still hosed

https://clips.twitch.tv/ProtectiveFragileQuailCeilingCat

”A Commando” posted:

CIG will continue to build out features and polish other features and the critics will be less and less able to justify their beliefs.

I say let them eat cake. its not worth arguing. You could waste an hour watching a guy rant about why he hates CIG and how every backer has been fooled and then waste half a day wrighting a reply and sighting evidence to support your case but they wont look aat it. When you use science to destroy a flat earthers model

trucutru posted:

Where is the glitchy pea?

I paid $1,200 for that pea.

Scruffpuff posted:

That was a Tier-0 pea, it was crashing the plate, so we've decided to give you an entirely different meal that you didn't ask for, but you have nothing to complain about because even though you already paid for this replacement meal, it somehow will also make enough money to pay for us to craft and cook the meal you originally ordered. How many meals have you cooked? You don't know anything about meal development.

peter gabriel posted:

I can't believe Chris spunked $200 million on making a shallow, simple game like this.
CI are uber hosed, how the hell, I mean, ha ha. All that cash, gone, and all there is to show for it is:
Star Marine - There are literal free mods out for games that are better and have more content. It's perhaps the worst FPS I've played this decade, dull, shallow, pointless and not a single iota of fun to be had.
The PU - The 'test bed' that then became the game, no flight model, nothing simulated, fetch quests that make the starter zones in WoW look deep, bare bones maps with nothing in them apart from a train that has no clip enabled. I mean,. a loving train
Arena Commando - A broken, extremely basic shooter that no one even loads up any more.
That racing thing - lol

And that's it, a collection of poo poo cobbled together for no good reason other than to put ticks in boxes, to allude to promises kept and to placate the backers. There is no other reason for any of this poo poo other than make money, keep people sedate, make more money.

The only redeeming feature of this whole sad, sorry episode is that the turds on redit are going to get exactly what they deserve, and it'll be slopped into their gaping maws by the people they idolise.

SPERMCUBE.ORG posted:

posted:

The do produce new ships, and this is certainly a huge reason why they keep racking up the stacks. But that's not Ponzi like at all. A Ponzi scheme, or even Ponzi-like scheme would have used this money to pay off old investors, or to take your poor analogy, used the money to produce old ships for early backers. But they don't. They put that money into developing their product.

Again: A ponzi scheme will never have a product. Software development is not a Ponzi scheme no matter how you twist it.

"Star Citizen is not a ponzi scheme, IDIOT." *Proceeds to numerically list all the ways Star Citizen is worse than a ponzi scheme*

AbstractNapper posted:

I am amused.

It's funny how inevitable this whole thing was (still is), which people here kept pointing out along with all the red flags we were spotting, yet these morons kept falling back to the safe space and template answers (that is actually one the first things the TS admits, lol).

Oh, Star Citizen will hit some milestones. Not the ones it sets but the ones of a slow trainwreck.

It's fascinating that it took so much time to get to a point where the end is more visible -- even to most of the idiots who still cling to it. And it's an interesting study about crowd funding, selling dreams, shady/ sleazy marketing, incels and all the rest surrounding factors, sure and it would be a funny post-mortem maybe.

But I'd say the current period, just after the "we'll be playing the BDSSE for a decade" and before the "you assholes robbed us of our money, we want blood", will be the most fun.

Exinos posted:

Vertisce is possibly the stupidest fucker in this entire saga and being such a standout moron in a rogues gallery of idiots is rather impressive.

MilesK posted:

SPERMCUBE.ORG posted:

quote:

https://twitter.com/ColMovers/status/1089490363360952325

What Vanduul?

Operation Pitchfork has been so successful that the Vanduul don't even exist and never will.

Trilobite posted:

Stress is a poison, and so are lies, and his job has him soaking in both 24/7.

And, apparently, they're also corrosive, because it looks like he's about half-deskeletonized at this point.

his nibs posted:

erin is currently blaming devs they haven't hired for the slip in release dates

Hav posted:

Lazy future devs. When they turn up, they're going to get such a rollicking.

Morphix posted:

"You can't have a house with out proper foundations"

Being a House Builder in 5 Easy Cig Steps

step 1: collect money for house
step 2: learn how to build a house
step 3: feel free to experiment
step 4: ask for more money to finish
step 5: Time to print some business cards and get an office
step 6: hire some eggheads to figure out this whole house building business

colonelwest posted:

I've always been more interested in SC as social phenomena than as a game. After watching Sunk Cost Galaxy, I was enthralled by the idea of this bizarre and toxic community spending thousands on spaceship JPEG's for a game that was years behind schedule and became really interested in the sociopolitical implications of that. I think what pushed to me to actively start participating in the thread was seeing the Tweet by Clifford that he had reached over 50K in total spending. I see SC as an interesting microcosm of psudeo-modernism, a space in which a huge number of trends within contemporary Western society intersect and are amplified to a comical extreme.

I've only played SC once, during the last free fly, for about 8-10 hours. It was a terrible experience which I'll probably never repeat. The community and how CI manipulates it is what entertains me. The details of the game only matter to me in the sense of the growing dissonance between the dreams of the backers of a new life in space and the miserable reality of the broken mess CI produces.

Along those lines I'm really looking forward to this year, as CI walks a tightrope of trying to sell poo poo for a stagnate PU to fund Chris' WWII in Space (again) magnum opus SQ42 which no one still throwing money into this dumpster fire is interested in. I can't wait to see the whales and shills twist their brains into knots trying to justify how its all "good for Star Citizen", as the drip feed of disjointed and broken content for the PU slows even more. Some will finally flame out and loose faith like Starloop, but I suspect many will soldier on in the belief that SQ42 will be a massive hit and fund a deluge of content for the PU in 2021 and beyond. All the while, SC will continue to fall hilariously behind the times as new consoles launch next year, and continue to be just a vaporware joke to most gamers.

A Commando posted:

tar Citizen is one big mess, even worse then before.

I'm a backer since may 2013 and i've spend a lot of money into this project because i was waiting for this kind of game for a long time. But my patients is running really low right now and i will tell you why. I've played every build and they all felt like a tech demo. Now it starts to feel as a real game since 3.0 but it's just not fun playing it, it's one big buggy mess and it feels like there are more gamebreaking bugs then ever before. Many builds back i had many performance issue's but atleast i could play the game or do missions. Now i have really good performance but the amount of bugs are 10 times worse then ever before.

Let me recap what happened today. After a long break, i decided to get back and start playing Star Citizen. Everything went well, i started in Port Olisar and traveled to Lorville. I explored Lorville and logged off to eat my dinner. After 1 hour i re-logged in, woke up in Lorville and walked up to the elevator. I pressed the button, the door opened, i pressed the button to go up, door closes and then nothing happened. So, i pressed back to main menu, re-joined, tried again and it worked. I took the metro towards spaceport, spawned my ship and quess what happened, the evelator wasn't working. Exit the game, rejoin again, and tried again. After 6 tries i finally reach my ship, i went down with the elevator, walked to my ship and out of nowhere i died when trying entering the ship. Respawn again and quess what, the elevator wasn't working anymore.

It took me 2 and half hours to leave from Lorville.

So, after 3 hours i was back at Port Olisar and wanted to start mining. So, i started to mine and went back with a full cargo. I went to one of those tradings hub and i couldn't sell my cargo. I tried to re-login many times, traveled to other trading hubs, respawned my ship, nothing was working. So, i though, lets buy some cargo and sell it on a other station, guess what... Same issue.

Then let's do some missions, no missions markers..... No missions appears when i accepted them.

Mobiglass is also opening and closing everytime, it takes sometimes up to 5 to 10 minutes before mobiglass is working. This bug exist FOR MONTHS and still having been fixed. I had a playthrough of 8 hours and i haven't earned any money. I never seen Star Citizen in such a bad shape, it's not fun anymore.

I understand that this is a alpha, but that doesn't mean that we should be put up with the same poo poo all over again? We should expect things to be fixed but many bugs still exist in this game and they are even worse then before. performance is better then before but they are going backwards with everything else. In the past i could do missions, leave stations or earn money but that's not possible in any way right now. 2,5 hours before i could leave Lorville due the bugs, can't do missions, can't sell cargo.

I re-installed the game, i've deleted my USER folder i even turned down the graphics but nothing worked. How can i even test this game if nothing works... Some bugs still exist after months or they even are in a more worse state then before. This is one big mess... i would prefer go back to the bad performance but atleast i could play the game then good performance and i can't do anything. It feels like the gamebreaking bugs are more worse and 10 times more then ever before.

My patience is really running thin right now.

Scruffpuff posted:

Chapter 1: A Modest Proposal
Chapter 2: Windfall
Chapter 3: Motion Capture
Chapter 4: Boisterous Bragging
Chapter 5: Let's Get This Done
Chapter 6: What Are We Doing
Chapter 7: Wait You Promised What?
Chapter 8: The Veterans Retreat
Chapter 9: The Hunt For Employees
Chapter 10: New Blood
Chapter 11: The Road Map
Chapter 12: [REDACTED] Doesn't Work Either
Chapter 13: A New Road Map
Chapter 14: Fire All The [REDACTED]
Chapter 15: Refactoring The Road Map
Chapter 16: Stealing More Money
Chapter 17: The Secret Benefactors
Chapter 18: The Twitch Switch
Chapter 19A: Out Of Cash
Chapter 19B: Take The Money And Run
Chapter 20: Begin The Design Phase

Scruffpuff posted:

I guess the thing that amazes me about this project - and I mean really, truly blows me away when I take a step back and really take it all in - is that it's so, so, so obvious that Chris has literally no ideas at all. Star Citizen is, quite literally, nothing. It has a piece here or there cribbed from EVE, some from Star Wars, some from Star Trek, this piece he saw in a TV show, that piece he saw in a movie. It's gonna have "mining" because other games have mining, but it will have "exploration" because games have those. It will have dogfighting, capital ships, missions, piracy, bounty hunting, etc. because space games have those things.

But at NO POINT during this project, starting in 2011 and continuing to now, has there been a single plan. A single concrete mechanic, or design where they say "OK this is how we're going to implement bounty hunting so it's fun, profitable, entertaining, different", whatever. Not one aspect of this "game" has been designed. Now the primary reason is really obvious and only takes a second: Chris is not a visionary and is too inept to design or conceive of a game.

But even if it had no plan and was competently executed, they could have slipped out the side door of "sandbox" and had such solid mechanics and such a good foundation that emergent gameplay would make up for it. Except instead of that, it's STILL hot poo poo but now Chris can say to no matter what happens "UHH WE UHH PLANNED THAT EMERGENT GAMEPLAY UUHHHHH" and the money will keep rolling in.

Imagine making a game - putting development effort and hundreds of millions of dollars - into a game that nobody in the company at literally any level knows what it is, what's it's for, and what it will do. Nobody. Absolutely loving nobody. So every day they come in, sit down, and come up with something to work on that day. Maybe today it's a new JPEG to sell. Here's our "physics guy" he's gonna work on the "flight model." Again. What will the parameters of the flight model be, more of a sim, more arcadey, maybe a hybrid approach? Nobody knows, he'll just hack away at it until it sort of works. But he can't make it work towards an overall "feel" or goal for the game because there isn't one, and never has been.

Backers please understand this: Chris Roberts is not a game developer. You hosed up and backed an inept moron who can't even figure out which hole to poo poo out of without 3 diagrams and an audiobook. This loving debacle will never coalesce into a playable game - it will just keep growing into a Jenga tower of art assets and plagiarized material that will let you push mugs and boxes around, and that's if you're extremely, extremely lucky.

By all means give another $200 million to a man who started to make a game 7 years ago without an idea and without a plan, and now, in 2018, still has no ideas and no plan. I'm sure the second couple hundred million will be much better spent.

Scruffpuff posted:

Also CIG isn't trying to "win" per se - they're playing for time. Pretty much the entire company, and every studio and every employee there, is doing the exact same thing. They're not a healthy company that makes products and has a healthy cash flow - they're a charity trying to build something they claimed, explicitly or implicitly by relying on Chris Roberts's misunderstood pedigree, that they already knew how to build. "Buying just a little more time" is practically their loving mission statement. Every delay is technically a point in CIG's favor, unless you understand that Chris Roberts is a 100% guarantee of ultimate failure. The only variable is how long it takes him to fail.

posted:

What's the one quality of life improvement you want to see most right now?


Missions.
Being reliable, profitable and enjoyable.
It has been a loving year. And the most basic missions are still riddled with bugs. Same for the trading.. it still doesnt detect your ship half the time.

Beet Wagon posted:

Trip Report

I thought I'd pop in tonight and try the Jump Town thing. I've never been there before. I've never even been to that area except for when I used to get force-respawned in Grim Hex (the bad guy space station) for ramming people off the pads at Olisar. Also, I thought it would be funny to see how measly my take was compared to Sarsa's, since I'm flying a lovely starter ship with 4(?) units of cargo storage.

I vaguely remember a quick way to get there from reddit - jump to Grim Hex and then to Yela, look for spots, etc. I do that, but it's nighttime on the side of Yela I'm on, and I absolutely can't be hosed to go look for this poo poo in the dark, so I alt-tab and watch 15-20 minutes of videogamedunkey videos on youtube while fiddling with the handgun I bought today about the price of a good jpeg. Anyway, at some point it becomes daylight again, and I tab back in to go pick up some sweet sweet drugs. Chat has been hoppin with citizens attempting to retake JumpTown from the bad guys who are doing bad things around it, so I don't have high hopes. My ship is worse than useless in a fight, especially because the last time I jumped to Daymar it clipped me inside the planet and I lost the extra guns I had put on it. Also, I'm bad at dogfighting. Like just the worst, and I have no intention of getting better at this shitass game.

As I'm approaching the gray blob that I think is the way to jumptown based on a half remembered reddit post, I decide to try honking my scanning horn because it's the only thing in the game that looks kinda cool and works pretty reliably. Welp, only about 4 out of my 15 honks works - apparently if you do it in rapid enough succession, the animation doesn't have time to play out or something and the whole thing loving breaks. While I'm breaking the honker though, a weird blue rectangle appears on the planet. I know what this means, this means there's a thing there! Is it Jump Town? Who knows? Also who cares! because there's a ship here! I wheel around to meet my new friend. It's a Scythe, the limited edition Cat alien ship that has a big kitchen knife on it. I... can't remember the last time I saw one of these in-game, which might be a function of the fact that I never play or it might be because if I remember right they turned out to be kinda poo poo.

I fly around my new friend a couple times and then peel off to continue my search for jumptown, but what's this! The sound of lasers! My shields are fine, and I don't see anything shooting past me, so he must be fighting someone else. I mean, I'm going in a straight line, so it'd be impossible for him to not hit me. Nevertheless, the shots continue and at one point I actually do see a couple red laser beams shoot past me. Alright then, game on. I wheel around and my newfound enemy is just hovering in the air, completely motionless, taking poorly aimed potshots at me. Not knowing how to respond to this, I fall back into my old ways and ram the poo poo out of him. The next five or so minutes are basically the lamest dogfight in history - the guy can't hit me if I'm moving even a little bit, and immediately bolts. He sucks at evading, but I he's slightly faster than me so as long as he's running I can't catch him to ram him. I consider the fact that if I were pulling the trigger on my joystick I could have been landing shots on him nonstop for the last couple minutes, but I realize I don't have it in me to play much more tonight and I resolve to ram this dude into oblivion. At one point I'm sure that there's another person shooting at me, because I'm hearing laser blasts while I'm on this guy's tail, but I never see them, and my shields never give any indication that I'm being hit. Every now and then he stops and pivots to try and shoot at me, giving me a perfect opportunity to ram him, although I don't think it's actually doing much. Eventually, either he gets a shot on me or I ram him enough to blow off my engines. I'm not really sure which - there was no indication that I actually took any damage - but the end result is the same: my ship is tumbling to the surface. I eject and land on my feet, and watch my ship bounce up and away, coming to rest on the side of a mountain 900 meters away.

My attacker, apparently not satisfying with running away from a Mustang for five minutes, levels off and begins firing shots at my now motionless craft. It's really hard to overstate what a bad shot this guy is. His ship is decked out with some pretty slow firing lasers, so I stand there for a minute watching the rhythmic "zorp.....zorp.....zorp" and accompanying lightshow. Eventually, I realize that my SPACE MARINE is outfitted with several machineguns, and I resolve to die valiantly under the guns of his spaceship. Standing out in the open, I take aim with my trusty... some kind of smg and light him up from a pretty substantial distance. His shields flare and by the time I empty my ONE magazine (you have to individually purchase extras) I can see the large knife blade wing tumbling to earth. I switch to my trusty... some kind of laser rifle and continue shooting, but he panics and flees. For a moment I think about setting off to find Jumptown on foot, but then I remember that the crater I'm in is the size of Skyrim, a fact which actively discourages using anything other than a ship to travel or explore. So instead I take a moment to consider what I've just witnessed: A lone person in a $300 spaceship attempting to use that purchased power to impose his will on other players in the only way anyone really can in this game before being harassed and chased away by a dipshit with a $35 torpedo and a lovely knockoff smg from Titanfall. I hit ESC and exit the game, not sure there's anything more lonely or sad or emblematic of Star Citizen than what I just witnessed in this whole wide 'Verse.

Sarsapariller posted:

You are so intensely frustrating to have any kind of argument with. You're so dumb it's like shouting into an extremely stupid well.

"You aren't getting the features you want and if you do, they will be extremely reduced to the point of being poo poo"

"Oh yeah remember Star Marine? It came out, like a year and an entire dev studio late!"

"It was complete trash"

"I wouldn't know I didn't really play it."

Beet Wagon posted:

- Boy, doing cargo runs in Star Citizen sure does loving suck

- Yeah well they're boring in Elite, too!

- I guess? Anyway here's why they're way, way better in Elite

- Elite's a finished game, you can't compare them!!!!!!!!!

Sarsapariller posted:

Note that "Release" isn't on the roadmap, isn't discussed, and isn't planned. This game will be in early access for the rest of the company's existence. Note that whenever this question is raised, a lot of posters around here rush to defend the idea of leaving the ship store open even after release. As if the idea of just paying for the game and playing it has become completely alien to a lot of them.

The community's willingness to give CIG a hard pass on the frankly insane ship prices and not hold them to any kind of standard regarding promises, or pay-for-power b.s. pretty much guarantees that this game will continue selling ships for a long, long time.

Scruffpuff posted:

Apparently Instagram posts help games get made. You see, if you talk about something, then someone somewhere else who cannot do a thing will suddenly be able to do that thing. That is how life works. You say "there are angry gamers" and then, while discussing, Chris Roberts is suddenly not an inept piece of poo poo and begins to be able to actually do some things. He learns these things from the Instagram post talking about people that know he is a fraud. If you say bad things about those people, then the universe begins to right itself by making Chris not a fraud.

In fact, in this internet age, this is how everything works. If you say that ice skating is bad and hurts people, then suddenly it becomes bad and people stop skating. If you say your feelings are hurt when people eat broccoli, then the Broccoli Association of America goes bankrupt and the CEO faces charges. You can literally create any reality you want, just by posting on the internet.

colonelwest posted:

FUD never sleeps, it must constantly be fought, both on Reddit and within our own minds.

One day I was bored at work and looked through the account histories of some people posting the ubiquitous astroturfing posts that show up during the day on r/Star Citizen, the ones with pretty screenshots of SC and some dumb caption implying there is amazing gameplay going on that doesn’t in any way exist.

Just on a cursory look, I found at least a dozen accounts that had been doing nothing but making these posts everyday like clockwork for a year or two during the North American workday.

It’s obvious that CI has been manipulating that sub for a long time, trying to keep it a “friendly”public face of the project. We already know they read it pretty religiously, Chris himself has directly mentioned some Reddit threads.

TheAgent posted:

this is it. this is the real loving star citizen lol

[img]https://i.imgur.com/vqPGIj7.png][/img]

Dementropy posted:

https://i.imgur.com/1Z9Rjjt.gifv

Original Twitch clip

Dementropy posted:

https://i.imgur.com/z3zX2A3.gifv

pokie posted:

Amazing. They should just pivot to making a game about graphical glitches - surely there is a new market waiting to happen.

Doctor Spaceman posted:

Bethesda's success is a testimony to the size of the market.

Colostomy Bag posted:

Yes, imagine working for a company where they have 'Derek Smart sensitivity training' seminars.

Nickiepoo posted:

Guy on my company intranet just admitted to being 'Evocati and Concierge', that's like £1000+ right?

Is there a handy collection of 'this poo poo is broken' gifs that I can bust out any time he posts?

The alternate is having to explain to HR why 'Derek Smart' is a trigger word that we're no longer allowed to say in the office.

Jobbo_Fett posted:

IM HITTING ESCAPE BUT ITS NOT DOING ANYTHING!!

Colostomy Bag posted:

Imagine being the presenter.

Jobbo_Fett posted:

But do I show my balls or my hairy knee?

Nickiepoo posted:

Guy on my company intranet just admitted to being 'Evocati and Concierge', that's like £1000+ right?

Pimblor posted:

star citizen is bad c/d

G0RF posted:

That doesn't sound like the Cloud Imperium Games I know. Probably just more fake news from the butthurts!

A Commando posted:

we're never a hundred percent sure what we're pledging for

A Commando posted:

if you don't have enough faith in Chris Roberts and his "vision" so to speak of what they're gonna make and when they tell you that this ship is a tugboat like the SRV as an example; you need to believe that that is his vision of what it tugboat would be. Not what your vision of tugboat would be and that is that I think that is the key

Beet Wagon posted:

his entire thing seemed weirdly removed from the realities of a Star Citizen community. I don't in any way want to overstate our 'contribution' to the Star Citizen community, but not a single person mentioned goons or me in any way during the time I was playing. There were a couple times where Rex even said my name as part of his Tactical Comms Action, and nobody even blinked. Like I said, I'm not famous or anything, but it was a little weird.

trucutru posted:

Not weird at all. The people who play star citizen and the people who spend all day posting about star citizen are not the same ones.

skeletors_condom posted:

updates from WTFO's stream:

One new development was that Twerk seems to have bailed on the Redacted podcast. WTFO was complaining that he couldn't get anyone on tomorrow's Redacted podcast. WTFO didn't elaborate but there seems to be some bad blood between him and Twerk; he said he didn't want to go into details because he was afraid that he would say something that he would regret. I thought WTFO, Twerk and Bored had a thing going ... I guess not.

He was constantly talking about how he wanted ideas for improvement, but he didn't very open to new approaches (although this could be because he gets the same suggestions every day, it's difficult to say).

Seems like the rise of Rex has really hosed up the OG streaming crew, even though their metrics seem pretty "normal" for the current state of the game (i.e. content drought season).

I think WTFO feels chained to SC. He has no other option than to pray and hope that SC eventually explodes and he can capitalize on his position as an OG streamer. That's not a good position to be in.

posted:

Last year we had a good half dozen big game mechanics and professions that were on the roadmap. Which I was honestly the most excited for of everything announced. We really need this as it creates an exponential amount of emergent gameplay with every one added.

Then they all got pushed back again and again... and finally with this last roadmap update it looks like we are not getting almost anything this entire year.

I'm really discouraged by this, we have only a tiny handful of "Tier 0" mechanics in game right now, heck they even pushed cargo V2 off the roadmap!

posted:

CIG pretty much out right lied about the LOE for the project. No project manager in their rights mind would have given some of the release schedules/dates CR provided. Even way back in 2014/2015 people called out CIG and especially CR out on it but these people got frowned out by the SC fans with "the CEO of the company knows better than you".

Here we are 5+ years later with not much more than a prototype if that for the PU and no SQ 42.

GAMETRUTH.com posted:

Star Citizen Becomes Non-Profit Religion – Announces Tithe Packages and Star Aliens

Christ Roberts has announced that CIG and Star Citizen have reorganized into a non-profit, to assist him in purchasing big ticket items with the everlasting donations to his glorious ideas. Throwing away the tired and used veil of creating a game, which years upon years has yet to deliver anything but a barely working alpha, Christ Roberts has concluded that his game is more of a spiritual work than a physical one and the game will therefore launch in the afterlife.

The ships you receive will be based on your good deeds in this world. For instance, if you tithe 10% of your income and give at every donation drive, you will likely get a mid-tier ship in the afterlife like most of your other Star Citizens. Failure to donate, but tithing will grant you a starter ship in the afterlife and for those who give nothing – your Star Citizenship will be revoked and you’ll have to work in the afterlife version of customer support to re-earn your Star Citizenship. Those who work their way to the ultimate truth of Star Citizen, which we won’t spoil but likely has a cameo by Xenu, will get access to the capital ships.

Here in the meat space, CIG will continue to create JPGs of ships you’ll be able to fly in the afterlife, sort of a teaser of what the great divine Christ Roberts has brought to his followers. Much like Scientology, the newly formed “Star Citizenship” program is compatible with most major religions – minimum requirements are “any religion with an afterlife where you can have a beefy gaming rig.” Depending on your beliefs, this could go as far as to being reborn in a real Star Citizen universe or at the very least, having a GTX 2080 Ti to power the real launched edition of the game from your good deeds or power of manifestation.

Having raised $218 million since 2012 for a game that has taken around who knows how long to develop, Christ Roberts figures that it’s time to give people a little something more than a broken alpha – it’s to give them spiritual fulfillment. Each tithe and donation will empower them in the afterlife to reach their true calling – to be the wing commander that they always dreamed of.

In this matrix of spiritual packages, Star Marine or Space Marine or whatever in the world the FPS game that was canceled and barely gets mentioned these days, will be available in the afterlife of the afterlife or what is beyond – assuming you continue to tithe to Christ Roberts in the afterlife. Players will finally get to play Gears of War, but with an entire life and another life’s dedication behind it.

Of course, no religion is without a bad guy. Derek Smart has been identified as the anti-Star Citizen, or the “illegal star alien.” The only sin within the spiritual platform laid out is to interact or converse with the illegal star alien and requires Star Citizens at any given time “build spiritual walls” around his disinformation – like highlighting the 2015 financials and how screwed the development of the game is. Derek Smart, meanwhile, has moved on to greener fields like the Epic Games store fiasco and “real life.”

Major news outlets have thrown their support behind this transition, noting that 10% of a player’s income is likely less than what they’re paying for the latest JPGs and likely healthier. Star Citizens themselves note that the new spiritual fulfillment part of their donations are a real value add. Christ Roberts and his wife can now use the company to tax shelter their big ticket purchases without fear of having to spend the funds on real development or the next big excuse for why nothing has happened, like let’s throw the whole game engine away and start fresh then get sued thing that they’ve been working on.

Here at Game Truth we will continue to probe for the truth in regards to if this is a real religion or just a sham, but so far it passes our litmus test for a real religion. Peace be with you, Star Citizens.

quote:

For me it's the realization that backers will treat this screenshot generator like a LARP background. If that's the bar to completion, the game was finished years ago.

quote:

For me it's as simple as this - they're liars. The Roberts are liars. And now they're playing high stakes with successful entrepeneurs. They'll get hosed, hard, twice, and once again in the morning. 100% guarantee it. No question of that, no shred of doubt in my mind whatsoever. hosed.

SomethingJones posted:

You know what, I'm siding with the RP space sandbox citizens on this one.

If they want a janky space sandbox to group up and charlie alpha bravo tango the gently caress out of then have at it, who am I to judge.

All that other stuff that Chris lied out his arse was coming is in the bin, the backers who paid for it and the streamers who theorycrafted it are in the bin too.

I listened to 16 months of Lave Radio theorycrafting absolute bullshit before Elite Dangerous came out.

SC backers have had 6 years of it, they now have their early access 3.0 sandbox and by jimminy they are going to enjoy it the crazy bastards. Who gives a poo poo if none of it works.

It's not a scam if they got a game.

Amazing Zimmo posted:

https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/1100194558133059585

Looks like the ELE came and went without us noticing

kuddles posted:

The hard part about post-mortems on games that were disasters is that it's very difficult to get someone who isn't anonymous, very low level, or are now unemployed and their resume has them spending years crunching on a game nobody likes so the last thing they want to do is burn more bridges. I feel like in about another decade when studios like Gearbox are either defunct or everyone is retired you'll start getting a lot of insane stuff coming out.

posted:

Will there be prostitutes and strippers in Star Citizen eventually?

”” posted:

they spent the past 7 years imagining, and now they are finally doing, thats why our ATVs are shorter, its not just imagination anymore, ATVs are about actual features that are coming soon, not just dreams years away

Beet Wagon posted:

e

quote:

The change of the engine was a huuuuge step back. Wormhole travel etc. was all done and is now unfinished and in some part even not started.

It doesn't get much more Star Citizen than this imo

Drunk Theory posted:

But Beet. The engine switch took like 3 days. How could they have lost the completely finished and definitely real wormhole travel feature?

G0RF posted:

YOUTUBE: Around The Verse - Space Passport

It’s been nearly two months since Chris Roberts has been on ATV. Longer than two since Sandi has. Chris may be head down over Squadron having flashbacks of the Strike Commander crunch, but it’s probably time to start asking if there’s more going on behind the scenes. If Sandi’s in LA and NOT bothering to shoot ATV, what’s she up to? (Aside from attending Perception screenings)?

ATV is so low-effort already but it says something else if Chris and especially Sandi can’t even be bothered showing up. It feels like they’ve written the community off entirely. Or something.

Oh, and shock of shocks, the downsizing of dreams continues. It’s sounds like 3.3.4+ it may be. Or a very light 3.5. (I hope that flight model rocks, guys.)

Looking at where ArcCorp is and isn’t in the ATV clips, one wonders if Lando has some expectations setting to do tomorrow. Shoot high aim low, man.

Sarsapariller posted:

Q: How will large ships work in the new flight model?
A: They don't behave any different mechanically, only in terms of tuning- they are really slow and sluggish <lol>. Some of the big ones are so slow and lovely that you can't use them in atmosphere! <lol x 2> The example ship in 3.5 is the Reclaimer- if you come into the atmosphere with the Reclaimer, it won't be able to fly and you won't be able to get back to space <lol x3 with a side of loving fries>

Quavers posted:

Q: Ships currently float like balloons in atmosphere, same as in space. Will that change in 3.5?

A: No. [excuses]

Sarsapariller posted:

Q: Are ships still going to "Hover" in atmosphere like they do in space, or is that fixed?
A: It is not fixed, ships will still noclip at all times. <They literally didn't do anything but lower turn/acceleration rates and change control mapping>

* Disco tries to hedge bets- "Obviously this is a first step and we'll keep iterating!"

G0RF posted:

“Whew, Spectrum is going to be a hot mess tonight.”

“I have lower and lower faith in this game every day... 3 years ago, the gameplay was better...”

Quavers posted:

Graphics downgrades

Zazz Razzamatazz posted:

Why are people still giving money to them?

posted:

Scruffpuff posted:

A bug implies the underlying code is designed properly, but there are edge cases where it's acting unexpectedly. This stuff is the opposite - it runs like poo poo and controls improperly because it was designed wrong from the foundation on up, and what they're calling "bugs" are hacks they forgot to make which, once applied, cause it to control in a way more in line with expectation.

"Whoops - we forgot to hack this part of the code so now people can see the bugged foundation underneath."

It's the opposite not only of game development, but of software development, in nearly every possible way.

It's like if you build a house properly out of good pressure-treated lumber and quality components - you can build the entire house without painting it. You're gonna paint it eventually, but the house can stand on its own. A CI!G built house would have rotten lumber, duct tape, and chewing gum for every single component, so you can bet your rear end every square millimeter of that thing will have at least two coats of paint hiding that fact. Then they compare the painted rotten house to the solid unpainted frame next door and crow about how much farther along they are.

TheAgent posted:

my guess is that they will be slowing everything down even further, including weapon firing rate. bump up the QT/travel speeds to planets but really force players to keep ridiculously low speeds during client to client interaction (like sub 75 meters per second) to make their servers stop imploding and combat actually workable. this would double as a missile fix, as well

that way they can still inject a pretty decent amount of artificial delay in their server side prediction code without it being too noticeable

the best thing is they'll actually increase how fast it says you are going, but in reality your ship won't be anywhere close to hitting 500 m/s, it'll be 1/10 of that or less

this also allows them to "shrink" things even further

although that's what a competent developer would do, so lets see how this plays out

at this point I believe they are 100% going to start slashing things in order for SQ42 to even maintain a basic 30fps on the PS5/XBone2

Virtual Captain posted:

quote:

You said earlier we're slowing things down. Talk to me about rotational velocities, why we're slowing down combat in general

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/388672283?t=53m has to be heard to be believed I'm not quoting a post from TheAgent last week.


Never not calling it.

MedicineHut posted:

quote:

If you have rotations and accelerations super high it feels like an FPS shooter [no poo poo] and that is not what we want. We want you to feel that there is some mass... ... it just makes the combat require a little bit more of foresight and a little bit more planning, a little bit more thinking that twitch shooting

Amazing

And just like that, years upon years and thousands upon thousands of posts and katamariis whiteknighting the BDSSE with its turreting, FPS-like, no clip flight model trumpeting it as the most realistic and authentic, are just shat on and unceremoniously thrown down the drain alongside the rotten fish in that tupperware that had been stored in the fridge for 2 weeks.

To top it up, this description (*not in game yet really anyways) is precisely the basics of how Elite´s flight model works. Gimbal, flight model... Can someone ask Maht Daymunn if there is anything else SC can NOT just copy from Elite there? Like, at all? Anyone? Please?

Thoatse posted:

Store Citizer: We want to manage some expectations

Sarsapariller posted:

DEV CORNER:

I think the thing that fascinated me about Star Citizen's dogshit combat and flight is that it's such a solved problem. I mean, here is a game from twenty years ago demonstrating better combat, flight, and cinematic feel than Star Citizen has ever managed.
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9ptkI9WdJY

And it's not like these lessons have been forgotten! House of the Dying Sun was, arguably, the most refined and best dogfight/fleet-command sim I've ever played.
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poIhBCXexsw

Even Elite has managed to get dogfighting and movement down pretty well. It's just not that hard even in an MMO environment!
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsOnRV8leWM

---

So what is it that makes dogfighting in space feel great? Boiling it down, it seems to come out to five things: agility, variety, proximity, terrain, and secondary systems.

* Agility- Players want to feel skilled. Having your ship be nimble and responsive to your controls feels great. Having your ships be uncontrollably jittery feels terrible. If you can't give them absolute positioning due to your netcode or you don't know what kind of control setup they're going to use, your guns need to compensate those last few degrees of aim for them. Agility is also a great system to use when distinguishing your small ships from your big ones, and performance characteristics. What players hate is agility that degrades over time, such as losing thrusters when your ship takes damage, or having a boost mode that eventually "Runs out of fuel."

<how does SC fail at this?> Guns are mouse-aimed, so landing a hit doesn't feel skillful, it feels like point-and-click. Using anything other than a mouse is uncontrollably janky. Ship engagements take place at extreme ranges but the mechanics require pinpoint accuracy for system targeting which is simply not possible. Fighter agility is all over the place. There are too many models and they aren't balanced against one another, only against their dollar value. SC ships degrade insanely fast when damaged- one missile hit is basically enough to end your fight because half of your ship's thrusters will simply stop responding. While "Realistic" this feels like poo poo to try and play.

* Variety- A good game should treat combat as a puzzle to be solved by the player. Fighting X type of ship should require Y type of approach when in ship Z. The more X's you have, the more strategies a player may eventually learn. This leads to a feeling of mastery and confidence and enforces the power fantasy. The key here is that fighting different ships should play differently. If every puzzle can be solved by bringing the biggest gun, or sitting in the rear of the enemy ship, or always focusing down the power plant, you are failing to deliver variety. Note that players are generally okay with a lack of variety when it comes to their controls, preferring instead to have variety in the ship performance- the best thing you can do when giving them multiple playable ships is to keep the controls and HUD largely the same, but introduce some unique mechanics that differentiate your ships. For example a stealth ship vs a bomber vs a command and control ship- all should have the same essential HUD elements, but a unique mechanical aspect that makes playing them compelling and fun.

<how does SC fail at this?> Because SC combat is point-and-click, and SC enemy AI is braindead, there is very little variety in combat. Enemies will fly directly at you and fire until dead. Your best strategy is to bring the most expensive ship you own with the biggest guns it can mount, and click on the enemy. If you try to fight an enemy that costs too much more than you, you will simply fail to penetrate the shields and it will kill you. Meanwhile SC has gone whole-hog on the HUD variety- every single ship has a completely different layout, up to and including vastly reduced radar functionality for half of the combat ships in the game. But they didn't add any differentiating mechanics! The ships all fly and fight exactly the same. With the exception of any ship with turrets- those are, effectively, completely useless to the player.

* Proximity- Real space is huge and empty and combat would probably take place at enormous distances but this is boring. Players want to look out the side of their cockpit and see lasers blasting and capital ships exploding. The closer their proximity to that action, the better. In practice the perfect agility-feel of a ship will keep your combat at 200m or so in terms of scale, but you can pack a lot of ships and things happening into a 1km bubble.

<how does SC fail at this?> Due to the extreme ship speeds and poor acceleration, SC keeps engagement ranges at 1-2km, where enemy ships are not much more than dots. Ideally you want to be much closer than this, but to stay close you have to match speeds, and that is more-or-less guaranteed death.

* Terrain- Part of proximity, really. Without a variety of large objects to dance around, dogfights in space will tend to devolve into turning and DPS checks. A player doesn't feel skilled when he turns faster than the other guy and unloads first. But he feels extremely skilled when he successfully uses an asteroid or space station to break contact or execute an ambush. Always be giving the player opportunities to feel skilled.

<how does SC fail at this?> In general, SC does not have a large or interesting variety of terrain, or they have made it so huge that players cannot realistically dance around it during combat. Again it's mostly the point-and-click problem. You can dodge in and out of things but your enemy can rotate much faster than you can strafe, so you will be clicked-on the second you emerge from cover.

* Secondary Systems- A player can't be shooting his guns all the time. He needs something to occupy his mind in the moments between combat loops. Be it energy management, or scanning, or fleet orders, a good game will provide the player with something to do so that they feel they're gaining an edge in the next engagement.

<how does SC fail at this?> SC has power management, and heat management, and scanning, and probably fleet poo poo, all at once- and none of it does anything. It is literally just a series of knobs to twiddle and none of it has any effect.

--

In short- Star Citizen is almost completely undermined by point-and-click gunplay and an astonishing lack of actual gamefeel variety for the 100+ spaceships that they now claim. Ironically, these are the exact same complaints that people made to them when they first released Arena Commander, the module that was supposed to collect a lot of info on dogfighting and lead to future changes but in reality did not do that in the slightest.

It would actually be pretty straightforward to fix Star Citizen's lack of good gamefeel.
1) Eliminate the mouse-chasing control style. If you want auto-aim as a replacement, that's fine. But the mouse should only ever be a joystick emulator- letting players place their nose (and shots) to the pixel is impossibly overpowered vs every other control style and must be removed.

2) Switch to a single HUD style. This is going to cost some serious dosh because of all the custom 3D display models they've made, but a passable work-around would be to simply turn off all the stupid loving displays and make the HUD in the player's helmet into the default for most activities.

3) Add a variety of mechanics to differentiate ships. Radar ships, stealth ships, missile ships, turret ships, torpedo ships. All of these should be controllable entirely by a single player and each should feel very different to fly and fight against. You already have the models, just stop trying to tie tiny little job loops to entire player positions. Let one player run the drat ships.

4) Spend some time adding terrain to likely combat spots. Create floating debris assets that are small enough that multiple can be in a combat radius between two fighters. Put them around your stations, around your jump waypoints, and around your objects of interest. Fighting in clear space with giant assets lurking 10km away should be the exception, not the rule.

And that's basically it. Funny enough it has almost nothing to do with the flight model or the turn rate of various ships, but you keep tweaking those numbers CIG- you're sure to find exactly the right pitch rate on your Gladius to make the game not suck eventually!

The Titanic posted:

I'm sure every game company says "oh we're just going to do it better than <popular franchise with decades of experience in their field>!" because talk is genuinely cheap. I can say I'm going to make a game bigger and better than anything, but that doesn't mean I actually have the ability to do that.

CR's first weakness besides being a terrible project manager is that he's not a gamer. That alone is going to make his designs that he's not even trying to build himself, be terrible at worst and not fun at best.

Star Citizen is very clearly circling the "not fun" and "terrible" columns simultaneously, trying to straddle both like a bunny man trying to have his alway with his space sex doll. Unless CR hires people who know how to make a game, and people who know how to make a design fun, it's going to be very mired in those categories and adding in more "survival meters" isn't going to suddenly breed fun. Having to eat food every 20 minutes doesn't suddenly make a game fun, etc etc.



This is, however, nothing new or no huge sudden revelation. It's all right here, talked about for years, playable by anybody to experience it.

posted:

No Bamboozles: Will 3.5 release as planned?

tl;dr: Yeah, most of it probably will, just like past releases.

Jobbo_Fett posted:

quote:

My question is- how did the goals go from super realistic (you lose thrusters and it affects your flight performance) all the way to accepting no-clip hovering on planets?

Because, at the end of the day, backers want to be fooled, so they accept such fidelity-breaking things because "The Devs said the thrusters were SUPER-powerful and that's why they hover effortlessly "

Virtual Captain posted:

"I think [Theranos] is probably the... the... most interesting fraud case I've dealt with. Bernie Madoff would be second."

quote:

Star Citizen is very clearly circling the "not fun" and "terrible" columns simultaneously, trying to straddle both like a bunny man trying to have his alway with his space sex doll. Unless CR hires people who know how to make a game, and people who know how to make a design fun, it's going to be very mired in those categories and adding in more "survival meters" isn't going to suddenly breed fun. Having to eat food every 20 minutes doesn't suddenly make a game fun, etc etc.