Orcs and Ostriches posted:

Just your average citizen.

Mirificus posted:

Mirificus posted:

https://twitter.com/RobertsSpaceInd/status/1170096510454784000

Mirificus posted:

https://twitter.com/GrathTelkin/status/1170121717177602048

Mirificus posted:

https://twitter.com/Stoaker29/status/1170521524064989184
https://twitter.com/Bucketnate/status/1170523831016071168

S1rmunchalot posted:

All true and helps to put things in perspective, but it won't sway those who have an agenda, and believe it or not some do. It's free to post on Reddit, it's relatively cheap to post on these forums.

Anyone reading the hit pieces in the gaming press, or Forbes (which isn't about gaming it's about money) might be forgiven for thinking that there is just a cult versus the world.. but it really isn't that simple. Forbes magazine is aimed at investors, not gamers. If you look at all the examples given you will see they list all the failed crowdfunded projects in their article. Also if you look at most crowdfunded games they are really no threat to the major league developers. Budgets and time taken to develop a game say more about the amount of R&D they are willing to put into a game, when more is spent on marketing than R&D. CIG are heavily into R&D more than any other developer could ever hope to get private investment for.

Chris Roberts is well known in the industry, in the beginning he planned to do exactly what Warhorse Studios - Kingdom Come, planned - I know I followed their crowdfunding more closely than CIG's at first. I seriously wanted that replica sword! Raise money via crowdfunding to prove there was a market to private investors and then have investors come in to do the serious funding. If you're a private investor having such market research done for free is a good thing. But Oh my.. when Chris Roberts said.. OK we go without private investment, we can do it. That changed everything, suddenly a big name developer with a huge scope game to rival all the big developers was bringing in serious 'enough' amounts of money to make it look as though this 'no money men' route might be viable. Who makes profit from this success? Not the money men. The rinky-dink crowdfunded games that were over-hyped and under-delivered - a mile wide and an inch deep are not a great concern because they can be picked up cheap later when they start to lose steam, or they simply fade away because they went the piecemeal release route - don't worry we'll add features later. It will kill them eventually, and it would have killed this project.

The community wanted independence from the money men, we were tired of the paired-down-for-a-Christmas-release-on-Xbox type development so Chris saying 'up yours' with the rest of us was music to our ears. Is it any surprise that those in the industry who influence the gaming press etc are not too keen to see this project succeed? Would you be really surprised to learn that around 2015 - 2016 when it was clear the project was sustainable there was what appeared to be a concerted effort by major players to head-hunt staff from CIG? Convenient Chris was away in London busy with expensive MoCap of AAA list costing actors. That dilution of the team and head-hunting was not unsuccessful. The Forbes piece was not about what it purported to be, to feel sympathy for those duped out of giving money to a scam.. Why would Forbes care about them? It was about making people considering working for CIG think twice. It was about reassuring those who invest in games that this project would eventually fail like all the rest. That was why the Forbes article was less about the amazing success of the financing and sales and much more about personalities, mis-management and rumours of office politics.

Make no bones about it, the nay-sayers will get louder and louder the closer to reality a final release product is.They hear rumours of the scope of the project and it scares them, some are just swept along with the negative feelings and aren't exactly sure why they started to feel that way, they just did so now they look for justifications to make dire predictions. Some people just need it simple and are impatient, but they are a minority, if they weren't how on Earth did we get here?

The outside world has always seen it done a certain way, and that way suited those looking for a profit at our expense, they see the presentations and it scares them because they know they couldn't raise that amount of money, or get the money men to be SO patient to wait for new tools to be developed by those inspired BY US to create better than has even been created before. Ask them if you ever have a chance. They don't push the bounds and spend their off time dreaming up new tools for Chris Roberts, they don't do it for money, they do it for us. Procedural planets came about because one guy saw the communities disappointment when Chris Roberts said no you won't be able to fly to the surface by yourself, and that one thing inspired everyone else to make the tools to create beyond whet even Chris Roberts dreamed of. This is the mistake that Forbes and Kotaku etc make, it's not Chris Roberts making it bigger and better, it's us, and always has been. They just don't get it that the players might have a voice, and that someone might actually listen to them.

Ask them, they will talk about working for other developers and the grind of simply remaking the same things never hearing from players until after the game is released in a cut-down form from what was initially planned, stuck doing the same work for years, compared to the excitement they feel at being so close to the cutting edge, learning how to use game development tools still being made by those who are extremely well respected in the industry - even Chris Roberts is amazed by what they do.

It's not the game you can play today that matters, it's how those tools allow us to indulge our wildest dreams of the future that matters. Think of what CIG are aiming for: If you can do it in any other game, you can do it better and in more varied locations on a grander scale in Star Citizen, with a far better backdrop. It's no wonder it concerns those outside. Think about it, are you going to spend $40 - $60 on a new game of Trials Gold Edition 15, or do you spend $45 on a game that gives you a whole universe to go and race a motorbike in, and live a whole life in the game when you are not in the saddle? You might not think that way, but trust me if you're thinking of investing in making a new Trials Gold Edition 15 - you just might think twice after seeing the Tumbril offerings and where you can go with them.

It's a good thing that those outside get loud, don't be worried about it. Don't let it drain your enthusiasm. Everyone has their up and down periods that is what makes us a community, we gripe at each other then lift each other to dream again and we inspire those who create. The louder the vested interest outsiders squeal, the more we win. The growth of the project has been incredibly steady despite all these attempts to dissuade people from supporting or joining the project. Once we have a demonstrable product, they'll have to think again about how they fund games, or treat gamers because we will have proven we could afford the money and the time to DO BETTER! Don't let petty internal squabbling, or temporary impatience get you down.. We did this. We ARE going to do this.

S1rmunchalot posted:

Chris has a habit of talking about things from his perspective, he talks about plans he has as though they were fixed when they are not. A lot of the things people rightly state are 'Written in stone' were written before certain changes happened, but he's not interested in going back and rehashing every single detail. He probably will once Squadron 42 Chapter One is 'completed'.

For example when the project launched Chris had no idea there would be such a thing as procedural planets. When he included the stretch goal of 100 star systems he was talking about hand-built 'invisible walled' single player levels just like you get in other games.. not whole planets with moons etc. Procedural planetary tech came after that stretch goal was included. It's not relevant now because using those procedural tools creating 100 star systems has become easy compared to creating 100 unique landing zones for players to visit. Just because they haven't shown us yet, or perhaps haven't gotten round to making those empty planets and moons doesn't mean that they couldn't make them quickly when they decide to. That was the point of spending time making tools, they can create quickly when needed. They could make thousands of planets with nothing on them just the way other games have but what would be the point of that? It doesn't fit into Chris' vision of a living breathing universe.

Chris doesn't really factor into what he says that others don't have his insider knowledge, he knows where things are right now, he knows what is planned and what he thinks they can achieve - he talks about tools as though they have already made the game to play, but we can't play the tools. We have to wait until someone uses them to make something we can play with. Others listening just shake their heads and say.. 'What on Earth is he talking about?' He's over-hyping or he is dreaming. He isn't, he just knows more than we do about what his team are doing, and they are not creating a game to play tomorrow, they are creating tools to build games for tomorrow.

Squadron 42 takes place in the same universe as Star Citizen, they can create as many chapters of the Vanduul War as they like. How many World War 2 movies have you watched? Each 'chapter' gets quicker and easier to make because the assets and tools have already been made. He keeps telling you he is building a living breathing universe and people assume he is only talking about the persistent universe, but he isn't, he's talking about everything that takes place in that universe - including the Vanduul War.

Erin sometimes does this too, he talks from his frame of reference. You can see a perfect example of this in the last Pillar Talk when he says that there is lots of stuff "lots of locations on the planets". You, me and anyone else watching are left to wonder.. what is he talking about? What 'stuff''? Which planets? Where are these 'lot's of locations'? He's probably referring to things not yet revealed in Squadron 42, but we can't know that for certain can we?

I had a conversation with Erin Roberts back in 2015 (it was a follow on conversation from one we had at CitizenCon in 2015) and I talked about his plans for our characters in Squadron 42. It started with a question, "Will we get military pay when we are in the UEE Navy? Answer yes. Will we be able to take that pay with us into the Star Citizen persistent universe? Answer: Probably, it hasn't been decided yet. Chris had already talked about how the Star Citizen universe starts after the events of the Vanduul War and all episodes of Squadron 42. The PU is what our Squadron 42 character retires to after leaving the UEE Navy. He talked about a military log that would get filled in as you progress in Squadron 42 and it goes with you (if you choose) to the PU. Erin mentioned there would be things that you will pick up in Squadron 42 that become your personal possessions which can be taken into the PU.

Tony Zurovec in his CitizenCon presentation talked about limited access to certain types of databases and equipment for scanning that would be limited by the UEE, or would be illegal. During Squadron 42 you are helping the advocacy chase criminals, it is likely you may acquire some criminal equipment etc. NPC's in the PU will refer to your military log and because of that they may give you things, or do things they wouldn't for non-ex-military. If you haven't completed all of Squadron 42 they will only refer to those parts that are in your log. One thing that Erin mentioned surprised me, he said that NPC's in the PU may be linked to NPC's you meet in Squadron 42 and so your choices will affect how those NPC's deal with you in the PU. He was very vague and evasive when I tried to get more details.

You might remember that Chris mentions USO clubs in the keynote address and mission play-through in the 2018 CitizenCon presentation with Todd Papy when he shows the entrance to the Chairman's Club lounge in TEASA Spaceport. You cannot join the military or Advocacy in Star Citizen. You can accept work from them but you cannot join them. You will see posters around in the Alpha PU that say "Service Guarantees Citizenship". This was what Erin mentioned, there are civilians and citizens in the PU. Citizens have rights and access to things civilians don't, for example citizens can vote in elections, civilians can't. You can earn citizenship in the PU over time if you have a good rep with the Empire, but you can never earn the status of ex-military in the PU. Once you start Squadron 42 you have joined the military, even if you never play a mission - you signed up.

When asked about the F8C Lightning Chris did his usual of talking in vague terms about 'badges' you earn in Squadron 42. If you didn't know about the difference between being ex-military or a citizen then this has no frame of reference for you. What the hell is a 'badge' for? What has Squadron 42 got to do with it? He's fumbling a question to avoid the P2W for the high rollers accusation isn't he? No. He isn't. In his mind if you complete Squadron 42 you WILL get an F8C Lightning in the PU because he knows how connected the Star Citizen and Squadron 42 experience are planned to be, in his mind the player will do both.

During your time in Squadron 42 you will progress in the military, you will have training on the use of certain equipment that is reserved for military personnel only this is because as ex-military in the PU you can be called back to service by the UEE Navy at any time and so are expected to keep up with the latest military spec hardware and procedures - there is no 'official end' to the Vanduul War. Civilians and non-ex-military do not have access to mil-spec hardware and training (and certain restricted areas within the PU). This is why you can only get the F8 Lightning one of two ways, either you are a very high ranking elite member of society (Chairman's Club) or you are ex-military who has been trained on the F8 Lightning military variant. As a civilian non-ex-military it is not legal for you to buy or operate that ship in the PU unless you have special dispensation from the Emperor - a badge.

One thing that doesn't get talked about specifically but is only vaguely referred to by Chris is that when you play Squadron 42 there will be choices you have to make, moral choices for example. Also when he was asked "Will we be able to co-op play missions in Squadron 42?" Chris answered "No, but you might be able to play the missions co-op in the simulator". This is relevant because during missions you will have choices to make and if you have more than one player - who is making the choices? This makes sense to me only because of my conversation with Erin when he told me that you cannot go back and try other choices for your character, once they are made they are part of your characters history and personality. If you want to make different choices for your Squadron 42 character you have to start Squadron 42 all over again with a new character. You are not paying for a AAA game in the standard sense, you are paying for the right to create a characters history in the Vanduul War timeline, a character which you then have a choice to abandon or take into the PU.

Original Systems games are currently accessed via the main menu when you load the game, but it wasn't always that way. They used to be a simpod in our hangar. Chris has mentioned that there will be simpods and Arena Commander in Squadron 42 as Original Systems don't just make games, they make military training simulators. When you complete a mission in Squadron 42 it will become available in Arena Commander but any performance in Arena Commander is only a simulation, it will not affect your characters history timeline - so we see that co-op is fine in the Squadron 42 simpod replays because it makes no difference to your PU characters history.

Now it makes sense when Chris is talking about creating your own unique NPC's for the Star Citizen Universe, you choose whether to take your Squadron 42 character(s) into the PU, or start with completely new characters as civilians with little to no history in the PU who have to earn their citizenship and have no carry-overs from Squadron 42.

Does it make a difference that you have more than one game package? Yes because in the days before the package split, when Chris answered those questions you automatically had the right to create a Squadron 42 character with each game package that you pledged for. After the package split the situation changed, you no longer had an automatic Squadron 42 character choice but you still had multiple PU character slots. When did you buy your multiple game packages? Do they include Squadron 42? It matters. Chris is primarily concerned with Squadron 42 right now, he's not going to get into the nuances of Squadron 42/Star Citizen character developments and options yet. Remembering that will make it easier to figure out what he is talking about.

S1rmunchalot - August 22nd at 3:31 am posted:

If you want a full picture the problem is that it is so complicated it doesn't lend itself to a few lines in a post.. but OK. If you really are interested.

It is Chris Roberts stated intent that players should not be able to tell the difference between NPC and real player behaviour. Obviously this would be unlikely to extend to 'face to face' communication. Even the non-verbal variety, let alone the bursting into song variety.

Tony Zurovec has gone into long and detailed descriptions of how he plans to make Chris Roberts ideas come to life, and they are beyond anything anyone has ever attempted before. It's interesting that you mention a 3 body problem, because that is indeed somewhat akin to how TZ has described what he intends. It breaks down to 3 layers.

1. The Game-master AI with human input. This will be responsible for the overall flow in the Persistent Universe, but has the facility to enable random events such as space weather, pandemics, crop failures, mine-able ore discovery or depletion, alien behaviours, politics - The list of top level influencing behaviour is endless, but allowing human intervention as well as this AI randomness removes that level of obvious algorithm contrivance.

2. NPC/Player monitoring and spawning. The idea that NPC's will turn up, and only then resources and other such space-filling encounter enabling assets would be placed around them might be the norm in other systems that simulate populations, but actually it's the other way around - Chris has stated this clearly when he says that he does not intend 'The Sims' type of NPC's. The population of NPC's will spawn and behave according to the local conditions defined by the over-arching AI. This is done by setting behaviours. Each NPC will have it's desires, goals, daily routine, home, possessions, relationships and even backstories and allegiances based upon experiential narrative etc.- AND these will be dynamic. NPC's personalities will change according to local conditions and their experiences. NPC's can become addicted. This seems beyond comprehension that potentially millions of NPC's would need to be created at such a level of detail, but they wouldn't, they are approaching it in much the same way as spawning any 3D asset in the game, there are 'LOD's'. If you have no interaction with an NPC, it only exists as a virtual NPC, if you see the NPC avatar you will simply see an NPC going about it's business. Only when a player interacts does the system give that NPC more and more detail and depth. NPC's will grow old and die, but you won't see it unless you have a relationship with them.

3. Lower level fluctuations in local conditions, may be long term or temporary. This is where players will have their main effect, but also the local conditions respond to the overall condition of the persistent universe. TZ has talked about areas once affluent (in the lifetime of the player) becoming ghetto's, and it actually affecting the architecture, style of dress and artwork the player is seeing - Rust, grime, graffiti - more armour being worn etc. As areas decline crime increases, populations decrease, drug use increases, police activity increases and all the knock on's from that. But there is the corollary.. it may be that a barren or run down area gets a sudden influx of wealth and population due to a discovery of resources by players and their ability to martial those resources to feed into the economy.

There is no magic spawning of assets from nowhere, or magic bag of holding as Chris calls it. Whether it happens in front of your eyes, or in the virtual AI simulation each item in the game will take basic raw material to produce and someone whose job it is to create that thing, to transport it to where it is to be sold, and then to transport it to the player or NPC. There will be manufacturing, there will be consumables and even NPC's will be consumers. There will be retail, there will be customisation of existing assets. If demand goes down there will be job losses, economic migration, there will local economy collapse and gradually those service sectors will also diminish. There will be boom and bust in Star Citizen.

If you want your ship a different colour, you don't get to go to a cutscene garage and choose from a menu to drive out seconds later. You go to an actual place in the game world a physical structure with NPC's in it, and the NPC has to order the paint for you. If he doesn't have it in stock you have to wait for it to be delivered. Each and any of these events, and more, will draw in NPC's with specific roles - bring paint from planet X, they are not on-demand spawning they already exist in the virtualised PU, they are simply prioritised or re-tasked. If your ship is unavailable to you while being repaired, upgraded or customised you will have choices, stay in a local hotel, rent another ship from the ship rental place, or take a passenger service vessel. You will have to find and eat food. Each of these choices will have a cascade effect like a grain of sand on a sand dune. It may be just one or two or it could move a whole landscape if enough players or NPC's are motivated to do what you wanted to do. Tony Zurovec has even talked about 'fashions' coming and going.

All this would be amazing enough but is gets more complex due to the interactions and structures that might not be expected.. read on.

S1rmunchalot - August 23rd at 1:58 am posted:

Thank you.. this made me laugh out loud! YES! They are!

The why is a lot more complicated than it would appear on the surface though.

If you watch this weeks ISC you will hear a guy say "As far as scale goes I don't think anyone else in the industry is really 'catching' on what Star Citizen is trying to do" This isn't some fan on Reddit or Youtube this is someone who works inside the industry, and CIG. I wonder if he meant to say 'matching', either way it's notable because it is very rare for developers to talk about the work of other game development companies.

When I visited their UK office in March 2016, it became instantly clear that they were miles further ahead than anyone thought at that time. Some of the things we saw weren't revealed until CitizenCon in Novemeber 2017 and we knew even during that visit in early 2016 that they were hiding things from us because as we went around they either turned off their screens or they switched to the RSI chat/forum. They didn't show us anything alien. At that time Foundry 42 DE hadn't fully opened and they had much less staff than they do now. Right now, aside from the cryptic Squadron 42 reveals and trailers all they give us is snippets about some features and the small mini PU. This is nowhere near what they had the potential to do. They have more than double the staff than they had when I saw the work they were doing. I understand that when people at CitizenCon 2017 see the things on screen they might think.. Oh that was made last month.. No - more like over 2 years before, I know I saw it.

I have been lucky enough to talk to some of them in person in social settings, one thing is clear, they are all very experienced in the industry and yet they really emphasise it when they say.. there has never been anything like this before.. it is way beyond what any other development has been in the past. When you realise this it makes sense why the gaming press, money men and others try to bring it down. If it IS what they say, then no private funded development could ever touch it - match it's scope, and it's no wonder those outside find that scary. They spread rumours and FUD to try and dissuade people from supporting the project, they accuse us and CIG of over-hype or fanboy-ism, they try to cause dissent and division in the community too. It's cheap to get access to these forums and Reddit. Even other companies employees can do it.

One thing I will tell you.. when you play a single player campaign normally what you have are cinematics (Whether in engine on rails or pre-recorded) followed by perhaps a wander around a small space like inside an aircraft or space ship - then you get in cockpit and do missions. One of first that broke this tradition was Mass Effect, you went planetside and there were things you could do within small areas but it was still mission based timeline.

Squadron 42 is set in the same universe as the PU, the things you can do in the PU you will be able to do a lot of them in Squadron 42 - you will have 'time off' between missions. It is not a case of - do this quick and move on to the next mission. The ship you are on has it's own timeline and you are along for the ride, it is actually moving through the star systems. There will be things that you can do while you are aboard ship, and while you are planetside the universe will be going on around you. You don't have to go and do the non-mission stuff, but if you don't you won't get the full experience. It is absolutely nothing like a AAA standard campaign game. There will be a massive amount of stuff that can go into the PU once Squadron 42 has been revealed.

You will hear a rumour (among other FUD) that has been going around for years both on Reddit and in these forums that Squadron 42 takes place in only the Odin system. They keep repeating this despite the facts, the Squadron 42 trailer reveal takes place at the site of the Vanduul attack on Vega II - Aremis. There are NO non-player interactive cut-scenes in Squadron 42. Admiral Bishop's speech takes place in the UEE Senate in New York. Every time the senior staff come on camera they say the same thing time and time again, Squadron 42 HAS TO BE THE PRIORITY. So why were they making player traversible 3D in engine maps of Terra Prime back in 2015 or earlier? Why did the TNGS Redeemer get it's first in engine reveal during a player walk-through of a level on Ruin Station in the Pyro system? If you're just aboard ship going nowhere except into your cockpit? CIG do drop hints every now and again.. in the recent Squadron 42 update email they said that they had been working on new tech space-weather which would affect "some of the asteroid belts that the player will encounter during the game". There is NO asteroid belt in the Odin system. Gainey has a debris field of destroyed space stations in a planetary ring system and there is The Coil. The Vega system DOES have an asteroid belt. CIG don't confuse planetary rings with asteroid belts.

People will keep yelling that Chris messed it up, that a lot of the early work was just dumped for no good reason. They have no evidence for this, and it seems highly unlikely. What did happen was that they went hell bent for leather creating flat landing zones such as Terra Prime and Goss, then those landing zones had to be fitted to the new tech spherical grid planets... but that is not a reason to dump all the work. If it was the case of a huge embarrassment to CIG - WHY is the Terra Prime huge wall mural featured so often in their videos and even in their published books? Couldn't they paint over it? Couldn't they have chosen a different sunset over Hurston picture for the Chairman's Club Handbook? Why when they finally got a conference room on the top floor of Foundry 42 UK did they have the Super Dreadnought Class Retribution etched into the glass door and subsequently feature that many times in CIG videos? Really? They would do that if they had just dumped it? They could have put a Javelin or a Bengal there?

I've seen some leaks too.. people have no idea just how massive the Squadron 42 experience is going to be.


Yeah... CIG are holding out on us. Just like any other game development house holds out on us eh?

Scruffpuff posted:

Space Court isn't entirely boring. My favorite part was when the cult theorycrafted whether or not the judge would compromise her work ethic because her dad something something space, therefore she'd see the incredible things CIG was trying to do. The arrogance was staggering - the fact that they equate Chris Roberts's brain-fart with some kind of monumental advancement in our understanding and appreciation of space exploration - and that their failed-model viewer is so incredible that a US judge would literally sacrifice her job to defend it.

ComposerGuy posted:

Chris has exactly the kind of charisma that works on the kinds of people that are super invested in SC.

By which I mean he has slightly more than the cultists, but since they have none themselves it LOOKS like he possesses infinite amounts to them.

Bluegobln posted:

In short I trust CIG and Chris Roberts. I feel like if I had the money and the experience to do so, I could have been in his exact shoes, he thinks like I do and I see him talking passionately about Star Citizen and its clear we share a dream. Star Citizen and Squadron 42 will be released, probably as awesome as we hope, and despite the current uptrend of sci-fi and space games it will still probably change a lot of things in the gaming industry (and I think it already has started to).

S1rmunchalot posted:

The information is out there, the problem is that it is spread over years and has never been collated into one place so that backers who hear something dismiss it because it doesn't seem relevant to anything they have heard. I understand that it can be hard wading through all the FUD spreading and negativity. Let's take one or two examples.

Aboard the UEE Stanton in the vertical slice we have Liam Cunningham at the height of his fame in Game of Thrones, the Onion Knight delivering lines about his son. Someone was paid to write those lines, someone was paid to lip-sync mocap those lines and a decision was made that it was important enough to have a AAA character of his calibre deliver those lines.. yet most people just think it's fluff and filler. He could have talked about the guy he had just talked to in the hologram and the situation facing Shubin Interstellar Mining Corp colony Archon Station.. but instead he chats about his son to you a relative stranger. Why would anyone think that is not a significant thing?

In the early days of development they weren't worried about giving out spoilers for Squadron 42 because in their minds Squadron 42 was all there was, there was no notion of it being a completely separate universe. Chris talked about the game as a 'drop in, drop out campaign. You did missions and in-between missions you went shopping, trading, exploring in the places where your character was visiting during the war. There was no whole planets, it was planned as a standard hand-built level design game with invisible walls and loading screens hidden by 'on rails' in engine cinematics. You can see it in the old videos of anything before the pupil to planet video. That sharing of Squadron 42 development progress ended when Eric left and Erin took over as head of global development. Suddenly all the information about places being created for the game dried up. They stopped talking about Terra, Vega, Magnus, Goss and Pyro. The backers who decided they just weren't happy went around telling everyone all that work was wasted, CIG just dumped it. Yet never give a really satisfactory answer as to why anyone would do such a thing. Instead they yell 'source!' at any who challenge that idea that Chris Roberts was mismanaging and being wantonly wasteful, rather than respecting the communities wish to have the best game universe ever. It wasn't Chris Roberts who demanded feature creep, it was the community throwing money at him that made the decision. Imagine if we had given $250 Million and he came back to us with a game set on a few player maps around 10km square each? If we'd found out that we could have had whole planets to land ourselves and explore, build on, we would have roasted him alive if he'd said 'NO!'

It is not up to anyone to prove a negative.. it is up to them to prove that development on all those assets didn't continue. They can't do that since CIG deciding not to share information is not the same as there being no information. Wouldn't we have a valid argument to put to Chris Roberts if we said to him.. 'If all those places weren't necessary to the Squadron 42 storyline then why was it such a priority to create those places when there was much less money and a lot less developers on the team?' Why did they build a whole city with underground railway system - Terra Prime - if Squadron 42 has to be the priority and Terra doesn't feature in Squadron 42? Why go to the extreme of building a full city to feature as a massive wall mural in one of their offices? Because it might be ready to drop into the Alpha PU 'one day'? How long has that wall mural been there?

Context is everything, if you have made up your mind about something you tend to dismiss any information that doesn't fit your view. This happens a lot in the community. Information is ignored, questioned and dismissed, people pay attention to those who show no real intent to do anything other than express an opinion without offering any evidence while they demand evidence from those who counter their opinions. I gave up doing that because it is not up to me to spoon feed the lazy and opinionated.. time will tell who is more informed. One thing I recommend is to follow @grafton and read his post history. You might be surprised at some of the things that pop up in the quotes he cites. He does whole block quotes which on the face of it are to inform a discussion he is interested in adding to, but as an aside there is other information that neither he nor any reader points out and says.. "Oh that is interesting I never knew Chris said that" Fairly recently he made a post where he was quoting Chris Roberts (I've looked I can't find it yet) talking about Terra and Earth being featured in Squadron 42. He quotes another developer talking about the difference between citizens and civilians and how citizenship is gained. Chris doesn't repeat himself, if he knows the information is out there (even if it is years old) he will not worry if people don't go find it. Just because someone bought a game package back in 2012 or 2014 doesn't mean that they have taken any time to inform themselves about the plans and lore for the game. Chris likes to surprise people, even the lazy or forgetful.

Just recently Todd Papy talked about the solar systems being developed for the Alpha PU (Stanton), the Squadron 42 PU, and the wider PU to come - he takes some time to explain the differences, he's very specific about it. He makes it very clear these are different priority sets. Solar systems for a Squadron 42 PU. When I post and point this out others try to reason it away with nonsense arguments again ignoring other information, such as the Squadron 42 trailer features the attack on Vega. Admiral Bishops speech takes place in the UEE Senate in New York. There are posters and a hologram of Imperator Costigan in both Levski and Lorville habs referring to an election and graffiti telling how corrupt they think he is, or just that he's an rear end in a top hat. no-one asks.. why are there posters of Imperator Costigan in the Lorville habs?

All you need to do to piece the information together is ask yourself, why? If they are always short of time money and staff, why include that information, why do the level designers put up postcards of places that feature in the game universe? They can't find anything else to decorate the place? Why do they make a video of a new tropical paradise party planet in the universe when all they want to do is show off a ship becoming flyable? When people lose the negativity and 'get your eye in' you realise the developers are dropping hints all over the place. Todd Papy does it a lot while junior staff are always terrified of blurting something out they ask Jared.. 'Are we allowed to talk about that yet?' completely forgetting that Jared can edit video if he needs to and the Twitch live stream is always on a delay.

There are those who insisted that Squadron 42 only takes place in the Odin system, even still, completely ignoring the fact that we already had CIG lore posts of the Super Dreadnought Retribution being involved in the battle of Oberon in 2946 - afact not mentioned in the current star map information. The conference room they use for SC Live streams of F42UK staff is called Retribution and the Retribution Super Dreadnought is etched into the glass door of that conference room. A partially built Retribution was shown in engine screencaps at the UEE shipyard at MacArthur in the Kilian system. Why would they do that if it is still a distant dream to get it into the game? Why did they build such a massive game asset so early on in development (the latest it could have been built was 2015)... again less staff and less money at the time. https://starcitizen.tools/Retribution

We don't generally put pictures on the wall of vague dreams, the pictures we hang are mostly of the places and people we already know, the things that inspire us. The things that they see, and we don't, or something to remind us of what we experienced yesterday and may have forgotten. The truth Is out there, you just need to look.

Scruffpuff posted:

Sure, other games are actually coming out and have everything Star Citizen claimed it was going to have, but you don't understand: Star Citizen will be bigger, better, and more fidelitious than every other game past, present, and future when it comes out. Sure, the other games are fine, but Star Citizen will be more. As evidence of this claim I submit the following:

Dementropy posted:

chaosapiant posted:

According to Death Smessenger there, Elite was in production for 30+ years. What. The. gently caress?