Star Citizen: $48,000 is only $334/month for 12 years

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Star Citizen: $48,000 is only $334/month for 12 years

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Thoatse: Feb 29, 2016; Lol said the scorpion, lmao

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/IllustriousWelcomeFennecfox-mobile.mp4

# ? Sep 12, 2020 04:53

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# ? Jun 6, 2024 01:24

kilus aof: Mar 24, 2001

A lot of FUD in the comment about the free fly:

https://twitter.com/pcgamer/status/1304495092351279104

https://www.pcgamer.com/star-citize...uffer-pcgamertw

It's almost as if Star Citizen has a terrible reputation.

# ? Sep 12, 2020 05:57

Last King: Sep 29, 2007; In corporate R'lyeh, Cthulhu works you.; Fun Shoe

i checked and was surprised to see some slight ($5) discounts on game packages but they don't even do this for the first real decent ship (cutlass black).

# ? Sep 12, 2020 06:02

Megalobster: Aug 31, 2018

800peepee51doodoo posted:

A bit off topic but gently caress am I getting sick of this premise. "The earth is dying! We must go into space!" No. If the earth dies, all humans die, full loving stop. There's no where we can go in the universe, other than earth, that can support human life. Its so crazy to me that people think it would be easier to travel thousands of light years through the void to terraform uninhabitable planets than it would be to fix the problems here.

Sorry, thread. I think the smokey orange hellscape outside my window is making me a little grumpy.

800peepee51doodoo posted:

Yeah, I'm sure there is more life out there and, just as you say, we will almost certainly never encounter it because space is loving big and there's an unbreakable speed limit. Even if, somehow, we could find another planet that had the same physical properties, liquid water, breathable atmosphere, etc, we still couldn't live there because we depend on an uncountable number of interconnected living systems to survive as a species. Even if we found life on another planet, we would still likely need to import our own native organisms and soils since we almost surely wouldn't be able to get nutrition or grow food in alien environments if we wanted to live there. Like, the problem is that trying to live somewhere else other than earth would require exponentially more effort than anything we would be able to do here to fix our problems. It would be easier to fix the earth after a massive ELE meteor strike than it would be to terraform mars or whatever. It just bugs me that people can more easily imagine terraforming an alien world than reversing climate change.

No offense meant here, but this is exactly the kind of poo poo I hate. This dude is so enamored with spaceship technology that he hasn't put any thought into what to do once we get there. Like, as a scientific endeavor, its really cool. Hopefully we'll be able to do that kind of thing some day. But as a survival strategy, it won't work. He's also doing that thing I mentioned above, where its easier for him to imagine all of the world's governments coming together to build a giant space laser on the moon to send a ship to Alpha Centauri but can't imagine all the world's governments capping CO2 emissions.

Pop sci-fi, especially in video games, is still stuck in at least the 1980ies in term of sci fi concepts, WW2 in space and 80ies cyberpunk, that's pretty much all they can do, and all the fucktarded audience can recognize. This is becoming as cringe as grown adult getting excited for another Star Wars movie.

It's like almost no one in game dev (and to a lesser extent, in the movie/TV industry) has read any sci-fi after loving Gibson.

# ? Sep 12, 2020 08:04

AbstractNapper: Jun 5, 2011; I can help

kilus aof posted:

It's almost as if Star Citizen has a terrible reputation.

On the bright side, Ol' Blobs is back on the job rescuing Store Citizen's reputation.

# ? Sep 12, 2020 08:15

Star: Jul 15, 2005; Guerilla war struggle is a new entertainment.; Fallen Rib

Crobert has answered a backer https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/3/thread/atmospheric-room-system-4-years-later/3368356

quote:

I wouldn't normally do this but I know you've invested a lot of time into Star Citizen, including on the testing and community content creation so I'm going to take your reply to as a sign of frustration and try to add a little more context to help you see a bigger picture.

What were you hoping to get from your Original Post? I was assuming it was -
�I was wondering where we are almost 4 years later, tested a few things and made a video.�

I shared information on where we are, and why you don't see something you thought you should. Part of my motivation for answering is that I commonly see people assume things that aren't true like the room system not being in the game because one aspect of the system doesn't have the behavior that they think it should. I wanted to give you extra context and information so you (and others in this thread) had a better understanding of what is in, what isn't and why it isn't and what is left to do.

If you want to encourage me or other developers to answer questions then it helps to not turn around and question people's professionalism or make sweeping statements. If someone did that to you in your job I am sure it would be irritating. I have a thicker skin than most of the developers at CIG, and realize that not everyone is speaking in their first language or realizes how they phrased things may not have been the best, but in general it is best to approach things with constructive criticism, leaving the ad hominems out. You wouldn't be putting this much time into something if you didn't care, so why put energy into posting something that a developer will dismiss because it feels like an attack? I can tell you that being considerate of someone and treating them with respect will get you much further than than being dismissive. The development team reads these forums and other places like reddit, and the community's feedback really helps, but the feedback that gets actioned on, that gets passed around internally and is discussed is the constructive type, not the overly negative type. Just saying something sucks isn't helpful. Explaining why it sucks for that user, and their ideas to potentially rectify it is helpful.

My biggest disappointment with modern internet discourse is that there's a significant amount of cynicism, especially in forum or reddit debates, and a portion of people assume the worst. If a feature is missing, late or buggy it's because the company or the developer lied and or / is incompetent as opposed to the fact that it just took longer and had more problems than the team thought it would when they originally set out to build it. Developers by their very nature are optimistic. You have to be to build things that haven't ever been built before. Otherwise the sheer weight of what is needed to be done can crush you. But being optimistic or not foreseeing issues isn't the same as lying or deliberately misleading people. Everyone at CIG is incredibly passionate about making Star Citizen the most immersive massively multiplayer first person universe sandbox, and everyone works very hard to deliver that. If we could deliver harder, faster, better we would. We get just as frustrated with the time things take. We practice bottom up task estimation where the team implementing the feature breaks it down and gives their estimates of how long it will take them. Management doesn't dictate timelines, we just set priorities for the teams as there are always a lot more things to do at any one time than we have people to do them. We are constantly reviewing and trying to improve our AGILE development process and how we estimate sprints. As the code, feature and content base grows there is more maintenance and support needed for the existing features and content, which can eat into the time a team has for new feature development, meaning you always have the push and pull of current quality of life in a release versus delivering new features and content. The same push and pull exists in the community as there is a strong desire for polished bug free gameplay now but also new features and content, often from the very same people.

Things like Salvage haven't been pushed back on a whim, but because in terms of priority we felt that it would premature to work on Salvage before the iCache and physical damage system is implemented in the game as this fundamentally changes how we manage state, handle damage and debris. So when presented with a priority call to make on resource allocation we deprioritized Salvage in order to build the infrastructure to really make it sing, as opposed to working on a system we will have to refactor when the iCache and new damage system came on line.

We have also decided we wanted to invest more time into the quality of life, performance and stability in Star Citizen as it is actively played every day by tens of thousands of people; on normal days we have an average of over 30,000 different people playing and at the peak during events this year we've hit 100,000 unique accounts playing in one day which is pretty impressive for a game in an early Alpha state. We are on track to have over one million unique players this year. Star Citizen already has the main gameloops of a space sim; cargo hauling, commodity trading, mercenary, pirate, bounty hunting and mining. Just spending time refining and finishing out these would make Star Citizen with all it's detail and fidelity more engrossing than any "finished" space sim you can play today.

We've shown a preview of the new roadmap format ( https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/17727-Star-Citizen-Squadron-42-Roadmap-Update ) that we are working on. Part of the motivation for changing how we share the tasks we are working on and their progress is so the community can get better visibility into the hard choices that we face everyday on the project and see what exactly every team is working on as opposed to just the few tasks we feel comfortable sharing because we think have a high probability to make that quarter. When we make a priority call and move up or add a task there is always something that needs to be pushed back. The new format which tracks our 58 feature and content teams that work on Star Citizen and Squadron 42, will be able to show what each team is working on and if a new initiative like improving the cargo hauling experience gets added you'll see the tasks that get pushed back on the teams that will work on this new initiative. As a point of data these teams can be anywhere from 4 people to over 20 people and of the 58 teams only 11 are exclusively dedicated to Squadron 42 and 12 for Star Citizen and the rest are shared (things like graphics, engine, actor, vehicle, AI, VFX, sound and so on), although a lot of the priorities for things like actor, vehicle and AI are driven by what Squadron needs.

# ? Sep 12, 2020 09:32

Dooguk: Oct 11, 2016; Pillbug

Early Alpha?

# ? Sep 12, 2020 09:51

Daztek: Jun 2, 2006

quote:

We have also decided we wanted to invest more time into the quality of life, performance and stability in Star Citizen as it is actively played every day by tens of thousands of people; on normal days we have an average of over 30,000 different people playing and at the peak during events this year we've hit 100,000 unique accounts playing in one day which is pretty impressive for a game in an early Alpha state

lol

# ? Sep 12, 2020 10:03

Scruffpuff: Dec 23, 2015; Fidelity. Wait, was I'm working on again?

Pretty cheeky post from an inept motherfucker who's living on stolen funds, attempting to do something he's not remotely qualified to do, and then getting upset that people are questioning him.

Wow, Chris, you have "thicker skin" than other developers, eh? (LOL @ "other developers") Well that will certainly come in handy when people call you out for failing to do things you've been blithely telling the world is easy-peasy for you, and only Rockstar (maybe) can compete.

I can't imagine the balls it takes to engage in this level of fraud, stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from the mentally handicapped, giving nothing in return, and continuing to act like you're the aggrieved party.

# ? Sep 12, 2020 10:39

Sectopod: Aug 24, 2017

That's a lot of words to say "Game dev is hard guys! Please don't criticize us."

# ? Sep 12, 2020 11:28

Bofast: Feb 21, 2011; Grimey Drawer

Jonny Shiloh posted:

Tony used to live in a box, now he writes AI
But his bartenders suck, they suck, so much
But he has these great ideas, wanna see what's next
He writes on his board dreams.txt

Woah, we're halfway there
Woah-oh, standin' on a chair
Take my hand, and we'll pose in a T
Woah-oh, thanks to Tony Z

Deeturbomber posted:

YEP

I might return to give it more of a go later on, but the performance is near-unplayable and I don't know that I can make the ship controls work in a way I understand. Past the novelty of the few things I like, the performance is just bad enough that it saps the enjoyment out of anything else. It reminds me of Osiris: New Dawn, except I can turn Osiris down to potato graphics to make it run better.

Osiris: New Dawn is the game that actually has enourmous jumping sand worms, right?
I hear it's largely dead in Early Access.

# ? Sep 12, 2020 11:45

Sanya Juutilainen: Jun 19, 2019; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

peter gabriel posted:

Someone said that we probably won't move to Mars because if we have the tech to do that we'll probably have the tech to fix Earth a lot easier, and I was like 'yeah that makes sense' and ever since that I've had a real downer on technological progress.

I don't believe that for two reasons:

- Firstly, some people are insane.These are people who climb Mt. Everest for no reason in basically (from today's point of view) thicker sweater. People who dive into the deepest depths of oceans. People with twelve kids who move across country full of indians lusting for your blood for taking their country. And so on.
This thread is full of practical people (judging from the fact that we don't buy into SC these days), but that just makes our views skewed. Somebody will do it.

- Secondly, lots of people are very good at running away from their mistakes (to repeat them). Fix Earth? Nah, man, we got Mars right there. It's way tougher than fixing Earth, you say? Nahhhh, it's an empty planet, what could be so hard about it.
If you've ever met someone who instead of paying back a loan to bank took a loan from loanshark, then instead of filing for bankrupcy or paying it back by consolidating started to steal metals (when they could've made more in a day with digging work), you'll know what I mean.

Sanya Juutilainen fucked around with this message at 12:07 on Sep 12, 2020

# ? Sep 12, 2020 11:56

AbstractNapper: Jun 5, 2011; I can help

Sectopod posted:

That's a lot of words to say "Game dev is hard guys! Please don't criticize us."

We, the Developer, intend to treat you with the same respect we would give a publisher

# ? Sep 12, 2020 12:25

Tindahbawx: Oct 14, 2011

The Titanic posted:

Alpha Centauri is like 4 1/2 light years away.

If we ever got something to travel that long, that fast, we could maybe! Even maybe sub light!

Even at sub-light speeds you'd still get there before Star Citizen is a finished product.

# ? Sep 12, 2020 12:54

zxqv8: Oct 21, 2010; Did somebody call about a Ravager problem?

Tindahbawx posted:

Even at sub-light speeds you'd still get there before Star Citizen is a finished product.

And that's even taking into account the time dilation you'd experience on the trip. I'm not sure what it would amount to but even if it's like a 10:1 thing I think that still gives you a few decades of leeway.

# ? Sep 12, 2020 12:58

Megalobster: Aug 31, 2018

Star posted:

Crobert has answered a backer https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/3/thread/atmospheric-room-system-4-years-later/3368356

There is just so much to unpack here, from the passive agressiveness toward a loving backer, to dreamssalepitch.txt, but I'm gonna focus on the part that really made almost choke while laughing:

Chris "The Thumb" Roberts" posted:

We have also decided we wanted to invest more time into the quality of life, performance and stability in Star Citizen as it is actively played every day by tens of thousands of people; on normal days we have an average of over 30,000 different people playing and at the peak during events this year we've hit 100,000 unique accounts playing in one day which is pretty impressive for a game in an early Alpha state. We are on track to have over one million unique players this year. Star Citizen already has the main gameloops of a space sim; cargo hauling, commodity trading, mercenary, pirate, bounty hunting and mining. Just spending time refining and finishing out these would make Star Citizen with all it's detail and fidelity more engrossing than any "finished" space sim you can play today.

The mad loving lad. Get it straight you loving goon FUDSTERS, SC already has all the main gameloops of a space sim, and we're just a couple of RefactoringRefinement� away from being the BDSSE, and that other british gently caress with his "finished" space sim is just a poser.

I can't help but to think that this reappearance of Crobberts has something to do with with Frontier dabbing on his rear end in a stock exchange annual report.

ronmcd posted:

Thread on frontier forum links to their annual financial results posted on the London Stock Exchange:
https://www.londonstockexchange.com/news-article/FDEV/annual-results/14679378

quote:
With Elite Dangerous we knew there had been significant success in the past, not least because of our own games in that area in previous decades, and also that there were no games like it at the time, and we believed that we possessed the differentiated technical capability to digitally replicate our own Milky Way Galaxy. We verified that there was a significant appetite for such a game with Kickstarter crowdfunding at the end of 2012 and early 2013, and the game itself has now vindicated that decision with continued success in its sixth year of full release (its seventh year since early access). For comparison, other high-profile space exploration games that entered Kickstarter in the early 2010s have still not released at all, speaking to the challenges of the genre and to our teams expertise and ability to deliver compelling product in a timely fashion.

Ooft.

# ? Sep 12, 2020 13:43

jarlywarly: Aug 31, 2018

Sanya Juutilainen posted:

I don't believe that for two reasons:

- Firstly, some people are insane.These are people who climb Mt. Everest for no reason in basically (from today's point of view) thicker sweater. People who dive into the deepest depths of oceans. People with twelve kids who move across country full of indians lusting for your blood for taking their country. And so on.
This thread is full of practical people (judging from the fact that we don't buy into SC these days), but that just makes our views skewed. Somebody will do it.

- Secondly, lots of people are very good at running away from their mistakes (to repeat them). Fix Earth? Nah, man, we got Mars right there. It's way tougher than fixing Earth, you say? Nahhhh, it's an empty planet, what could be so hard about it.
If you've ever met someone who instead of paying back a loan to bank took a loan from loanshark, then instead of filing for bankrupcy or paying it back by consolidating started to steal metals (when they could've made more in a day with digging work), you'll know what I mean.

Moving to and living on Mars in any other capacity than a limited Apollo style scientific study is so many orders of magnitude more complicated and difficult than climbing Everest, colonising America etc was at the times those things were done. Antarctica is much, much more hospitable to humans than Mars and far easier to get to and no-one is trying to move there. You can't even throw numbers at it like other colonisation attempts.

Even if climate change is going to be terminal for a lot of humans the Earth will still be far easier to live on, especially if you have the kind of resources and money it takes to get to Mars.

# ? Sep 12, 2020 13:57

Sanya Juutilainen: Jun 19, 2019; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

jarlywarly posted:

Antarctica is much, much more hospitable to humans than Mars and far easier to get to and no-one is trying to move there.

I'd argue with all points here. Antarctica is actually less hospitable if you solve oxygen making - which we are able to. It's recently about comparatively easy to get to, pricewise (people are paying comparative money to get to orbit as to get to Antarctica - it's just that vessels to orbit are far more limited so far). And people are trying to move there all the time.

IMO it's only matter of price, which - as of late - is dropping fast as heck. The main issue is getting to orbit which we are getting better at - everything else is just testing it enough. If you can get enough stuff to orbit, getting to Mars becomes trivial, especially with people who can pilot the vessel if crap happens during Mars descent; that's currently the only issue because of radio communication with automated navigation.

# ? Sep 12, 2020 14:30

peter gabriel: Nov 8, 2011; Hello Commandos

Star posted:

Crobert has answered a backer https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/3/thread/atmospheric-room-system-4-years-later/3368356

this fuckin guy

# ? Sep 12, 2020 14:33

marumaru: May 20, 2013

maybe I should re-read it but some parts of it sound right. what isn't right is that they're still pretending they're transparent

# ? Sep 12, 2020 14:44

Bootcha: Nov 13, 2012; Truly, the pinnacle of goaltending; Grimey Drawer

CR is loving salty.

# ? Sep 12, 2020 15:51

Popete: Oct 6, 2009; This will make sure you don't suggest to the KDz
That he should grow greens instead of crushing on MCs; Grimey Drawer

"I have extremely thick skin" I shout as I type up a 3000 word essay on why making video games is hard so please don't ask why everything is broken.

# ? Sep 12, 2020 15:56

Popete: Oct 6, 2009; This will make sure you don't suggest to the KDz
That he should grow greens instead of crushing on MCs; Grimey Drawer

I like the excuse that they can't work on salvaging or any of the features people actually want because they are gated behind mystery tech iCache and Server Meshing. But they never address progress on these supposedly foundational core tech issues and if/when they will ever be completed (they wont).

# ? Sep 12, 2020 16:00

HorseBodyInspector: Dec 14, 2018

quote:

We have also decided we wanted to invest more time into the quality of life, performance and stability in Star Citizen as it is actively played every day by tens of thousands of people; on normal days we have an average of over 30,000 different people playing and at the peak during events this year we've hit 100,000 unique accounts playing in one day which is pretty impressive for a game in an early Alpha state. We are on track to have over one million unique players this year. Star Citizen already has the main gameloops of a space sim; cargo hauling, commodity trading, mercenary, pirate, bounty hunting and mining. Just spending time refining and finishing out these would make Star Citizen with all it's detail and fidelity more engrossing than any "finished" space sim you can play today.

I am dumb, so I ask: how these numbers compare to other games?

1M unique users seems low to me ( there are almost 2.8M accounts, seems that active/real users are approximately 1/3 of these accounts? )
And which magical math formula could translate 30 000 day users to average concurrent users?

# ? Sep 12, 2020 16:14

tuo: Jun 17, 2016

But uncle Chris, what about Theatres of War...Chris? What about Theatres of War? You know, the secret present you hid from us so well...what about it?

# ? Sep 12, 2020 16:26

peter gabriel: Nov 8, 2011; Hello Commandos

Popete posted:

"I have extremely thick skin" I shout as I type up a 3000 word essay on why making video games is hard so please don't ask why everything is broken.

he probably does have thick skin, after decades of failed projects, being booted out of companies, making poo poo tier films and getting sued by Kevin Costner I bet star citizen feels like a rip roaring success to him

# ? Sep 12, 2020 16:26

tuo: Jun 17, 2016

Someone ask the salty Chris about Theatres of War please. I want another "it's in the game already" excuse.

# ? Sep 12, 2020 16:27

his nibs: Feb 27, 2016; Welcome to the
Dream Factory; Grimey Drawer

https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/1304803872918077444?s=20

The ELE FINALLY

# ? Sep 12, 2020 16:30

Daztek: Jun 2, 2006

The ELE also needs iCache and Server Meshing

# ? Sep 12, 2020 16:32

peter gabriel: Nov 8, 2011; Hello Commandos

his nibs posted:

https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/1304803872918077444?s=20

The ELE FINALLY

press alt + esc + f9 + right shift to pay respects

# ? Sep 12, 2020 16:36

Cao Ni Ma: May 25, 2010

CROBERTS

https://twitter.com/dril/status/549425182767861760?s=20

# ? Sep 12, 2020 16:36

his nibs: Feb 27, 2016; Welcome to the
Dream Factory; Grimey Drawer

peter gabriel posted:

press alt + esc + f9 + right shift to pay respects

I just did that and I now own an Idris, thanks dancing cat

# ? Sep 12, 2020 16:41

peter gabriel: Nov 8, 2011; Hello Commandos

his nibs posted:

I just did that and I now own an Idris, thanks dancing cat

stay frosty o8

# ? Sep 12, 2020 16:48

happyhippy: Feb 21, 2005; Playing games, watching movies, owning goons. 'sup; Pillbug

his nibs posted:

I just did that and I now own an Idris, thanks dancing cat

Can I mop your decks?

# ? Sep 12, 2020 16:48

Kramjacks: Jul 5, 2007

Has Roberts or anyone else mentioned using RTX in SC? Seems like the kind of thing he would jump on and talk about implementing because it's "real" lighting and not a cheat or baked-in fake lighting, like all those lesser developers use.

# ? Sep 12, 2020 16:49

Mirificus: Oct 29, 2004; Kings need not raise their voices to be heard

quote:

GTX-980TI

My plan was to upgrade when Star Citizen's Squadron 42 was released ... Still regardless it's held its own pretty well so far, but I might have to rethink that plan depending on upcoming games.

# ? Sep 12, 2020 16:59

Aqua_D: Feb 12, 2011; Sometimes, a man just needs to get his Rock off.

Bofast posted:

Osiris: New Dawn is the game that actually has enourmous jumping sand worms, right?
I hear it's largely dead in Early Access.

I think space games might be too big for some folks' britches, as it were.

# ? Sep 12, 2020 17:03

happyhippy: Feb 21, 2005; Playing games, watching movies, owning goons. 'sup; Pillbug

Kramjacks posted:

Has Roberts or anyone else mentioned using RTX in SC? Seems like the kind of thing he would jump on and talk about implementing because it's "real" lighting and not a cheat or baked-in fake lighting, like all those lesser developers use.

Each photon will be an actual object tracked, so that you can for example shine a torch from one planet into it's sky, and eventually those photons will hit other planets star systems away.
This is already completed and just needs adding.
Should be out in 3.12

# ? Sep 12, 2020 17:08

Bootcha: Nov 13, 2012; Truly, the pinnacle of goaltending; Grimey Drawer

HorseBodyInspector posted:

I am dumb, so I ask: how these numbers compare to other games?

1M unique users seems low to me ( there are almost 2.8M accounts, seems that active/real users are approximately 1/3 of these accounts? )
And which magical math formula could translate 30 000 day users to average concurrent users?

If I pick Nov 20th as the day CIG breaks 1 million unique customers/players, it means it would take about 2842046 total, or 58,940 more, accounts to reach that.

Which means the percentage of actual players/customers is 35% of the total accounts.

# ? Sep 12, 2020 17:10

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# ? Jun 6, 2024 01:24

NumptyScrub: Aug 22, 2004; damn it I think the mirrors broken >˙.(

his nibs posted:

https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/1304803872918077444?s=20

The ELE FINALLY

This is actualy ELE Tier 0, please bear in mind that the proper implementation of the ELE is actually on the roadmap for release some time in <year+1>

# ? Sep 12, 2020 17:18

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Star Citizen: $48,000 is only $334/month for 12 years

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