okay thanks for the explanation. the bigger question i have is: are all these systems fun? seems like it impedes fun but if the end objective is a metaverse i assume fun is not a design criteria
Star Citizen, Roberts Space Industries - Chris Roberts' life support and retirement fund [2012-]
- Thread starter green.pixel
- Start date
Some more, some less.
What CIG should do is that you can meet other players in your group faster. After all, they all have to meet in one place from the system. Sometimes it takes a while to get everyone together. In that time I could have played 1 or 2 rounds of BF2042. CIG should allow players to join frinds next to each other no matter where they were in the game before.
What also bothers me is that you can't always start at the point where you left off in the game. If I'm dismantling a wreck or a large astroid and I'm not done but have to end the game I take off with the spaceship again in the last landing zone (with the farmed materials) where I was. I want to continue where I left off. CIG want's to change that in the future even if some people won't like it because then characters could suddenly spawn next to you.
The game could also use more exciting missions. More like a single-player game like Cyberpunk 2077 has. Currently there are missions like go there and do xy. No big narratives. Sometimes there are event missions, which are a good change.
At the moment, many things simply take too much time. But if you continue where you left off, it's worth playing for a shorter periods. Currently, it's hardly worth starting if you want to do more complex missions and play for less than an hour. The typical game round with friends lasts 3 hours.
In Star Citizen I also get to know a lot of new ones too.
What CIG should do is that you can meet other players in your group faster. After all, they all have to meet in one place from the system. Sometimes it takes a while to get everyone together. In that time I could have played 1 or 2 rounds of BF2042. CIG should allow players to join frinds next to each other no matter where they were in the game before.
What also bothers me is that you can't always start at the point where you left off in the game. If I'm dismantling a wreck or a large astroid and I'm not done but have to end the game I take off with the spaceship again in the last landing zone (with the farmed materials) where I was. I want to continue where I left off. CIG want's to change that in the future even if some people won't like it because then characters could suddenly spawn next to you.
The game could also use more exciting missions. More like a single-player game like Cyberpunk 2077 has. Currently there are missions like go there and do xy. No big narratives. Sometimes there are event missions, which are a good change.
At the moment, many things simply take too much time. But if you continue where you left off, it's worth playing for a shorter periods. Currently, it's hardly worth starting if you want to do more complex missions and play for less than an hour. The typical game round with friends lasts 3 hours.
Star Citizen is the game where I play with the same people the longest. I have known some of them in the game for years while it is no longer the case with almost all other online games I play. The Battlefield groups no longer exist.
In Star Citizen I also get to know a lot of new ones too.
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I think it's perfectly ok to have games that are more involved and aren't designed to easily just spend 30 minutes doing something. I have a bunch of games I have to do a quick 20 minute run or some dungeon.
Baldurs Gate for example isn't something I can pick up for less than an hour.
Baldurs Gate for example isn't something I can pick up for less than an hour.
That is why I find the whole thing infuriating...From an employment perspective, no. From a creative perspective and in terms of what launched this game, yes. They've failed to make a working game after more hours and monies than any dev gets. With less money and less time, other studios knock out better (working) games. Chris Roberts launched this game on his reputation. That reputation likely lies in tatters.
But if all you care about is money, great. Here's to all the Kickstarters that took people's cash and wasted it and delivered nothing.¯\_(ツ)_/¯
(Note that's not saying Star Citizen is nothing. But the principle here, suggesting it's okay to take people's money and not deliver what they paid for, applies to a lot of KS games and that same "okay, they didn't release the game they said they would but they got paid lots and had some time with hookers and blow so it's been good business" can justify every vapourware endeavour)
Edit: $676 million and 10 years. If this is all you can make with that much resource, you are a failed game developer.
Perhaps we'll reach a point where everything is catered to whales, that can't spend their wealth even if they lived half a millennium...
I bet they can support every excessive wet dream.
The problem is the rest of the people that unfortunately get caught in...
I have one question.
Assuming that funds keep coming in and that CIG continues to not bother with release dates.
Is there a line that, once crossed, the game will be considered a scam/vaporware?
Or is it that the ambition of the project excuses everything.
You can add our own mortality in the mix. /s
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It seems that every other project in this world, that gets some kind of funding, has a deadline.
From a commission to a woodworker to make a table, to a multibillion dollar company to deliver specialized software.
Perhaps everyone else is an idiot asking for assurances and deadlines when they invest their money.
Subtlesnake
Regular
CIG have set a Q3 release for the Pyro system, and I would hope they can accelerate to 2 systems per year, if they're going to hit the 5-10 systems target for the 1.0 release, in reasonable time.
If they don't make good on releasing more systems (eg. Pyro drops off the radar, we see nothing in 2025) I think we can call the project vaporware, since server meshing was supposed to be the last big thing holding them back.
What you gave here as prerequisite, does not make Star Citizen a game.
The game semi-works as a combat flight-sim, doesn't work as a first/third person shooter, and everything else either does not work, or is not integrated into coherent gameplay loops, / is bugged to irritating - unplayable levels.
Pinocchio might get a few more noses, but the question is, when should he become a real boy?
For CIG, the goalpost is shifting by the minute.
The initial release for Pyro, (after a quick search), was promised for 2020.
In the olden days it used to be a hundred systems.
How many is it now?
I don't need to mention the initial release date promised in the Kickstarter.
CIG is pushing the importance of x or y for ten years now.
None of the milestones that were reached even after all those delays made this a game.
My question has to do with your line in the sand, not what CIG deems important.
Which isn't bad in and of itself.
The devs, (artists, programmers etc.) are doing amazing work, given the absurd scope of the project.
The management on the other hand are selling something they most likely know they will never deliver.
In some ways Star Citizen is released. People are playing it and some are even having fun!
"Released" status is not really applicable to this project.
Subtlesnake
Regular
According to CIG, the blocker for the planned (Quantum) dynamic economy system is server meshing and a multi system PU with thousands of active players. Once prices are set by market forces, we can have a proper cargo hauling system with the possibility for piracy/bounty hunting to be triggered dynamically, leading into larger scale events set by CIG. To me the real promise of Star Citizen is to have one giant player-driven universe where rivalries between factions lead into ongoing conflicts – and that depends on both server meshing and the dynamic economy, neither of which are currently in place.
Once we have a multi system PU, I would expect that the Quantum system will progressively regulate more of the economy and we will start to see more dynamic events. If the system doesn't exist, and it was just made up to scam backers etc, then that won't happen, and we will have another point where we can say the game is vaporware. But I don't have a specific considered date for every feature after which I am giving up on the game if that feature isn't present. If they're not making significant progress I think it will be obvious.
It wasn't created to scam backers. However, it's been operated in a way not dissimilar to a scam with some obscene fund raising strategies like insanely expensive spacecraft that might one day get implemented. Or maybe not. With no limit in funding to focus them, and zero accountability, CIG is operating like so many hopeless indie startups who grab a copy of Unity or UE with a view to creating the greatest game ever and then fart about for a decade. It's not criminal, but it's pretty shameful. Even if after 15 years and a billion dollars the game gets made as imagined and it's a fabulous creation, it'll still be a development fail where so many other developers could have achieved so much more with the same resources. But they'll never have those resources because they wouldn't think to sell people vapours - Insomniac doesn't have a $10,000 Spider-Man pledge to maybe one day add an apartment. Heck, even R* aren't selling people virtual car options ahead of GTA VI's release. They are spending the money they earned from creating ever bigger and better games, which is how it should be.
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I have no way of knowing what the percentage of all those people that gave their money, are "playing the game and are having fun".
If I had to guess, most backers are gone without having gotten their moneys worth, and new ones are filling the gap for this thing to continue to get funding. (if there is one thing that really works is their marketing department)
There is a subjective assessment based on incomplete or non existent data, that insists that this is a game and "some people are having fun".
There should also be an objective assessment, but the rules the developers have imposed on their fanbase (if you choose to adhere to them) make it impossible to measure anything objectively.
It is an alpha, and it should be judged as such, but at the same time, it is a game.
It is too ambitious to compare.
No project is too ambitious to be compared, and no game is a game in an alpha state.
Measured objectively, this thing is an incomplete tech demo.
Yes you can have fun for a bit playing a tech demo.
With some tight gameplay (in the case of SC this is not applicable), you can have months of fun.
I'll pose another question, since I can't find a single SC fan that is willing to answer my previous one.
Suppose Star Citizen is released on Steam as an early access tittle, a title that can be reviewed by the players. (now, not ten years ago, were the answer should be even more obvious)
How do you think it would go?
I'll quote my post here.
According to the developers, SC has been one system away from being a game for the last six years or so.
Now it's server messing, before that it was something else...
Server messing won't work by itself, it will only create new needs for other systems that are required for this disjointed mess to actually make sense as a game.
My question has nothing to do with specific features.
CIG is selling features.
I usually buy games.
I am asking if there is a point were you think they should deliver a game, or if they have "carte blanche" and you wouldn't mind if they never delivered one.
ps, for both of you
I hope I don't come off as aggressive, it's just that the whole thing really baffles me.
More than half a billion dollars for this sounds preposterous.
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Most other developers always bring out the same type of games and nothing new and unprecedented. I haven't seen anything like Star Citizen from other developers.
Even update games without much new stuff take 5+ years. Many development studios release almost the same game multiple times. Maybe add a few things here and there but basically it's the same. In Star Citizen, they could not build directly on previous games. They started from scratch. There is not much left of CryEngine.
I also don't think that other developers would have achieved much more with the money. Especially not if you start from scratch.
Generic non-innovative copy paste game Spiderman 2 from Inscomnac cost 315 Million USD. Miles Morales cost above 150 million USD.
A $300 Million ‘Spider-Man 2’ Budget, Sony’s Future And AAA Unsustainability
The cost of Spider-Man 2's development raises larger questions not just about Sony, but the wider industry pumping out expensive AAA games.
www.forbes.com
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 Had a Total Budget of $315 Million
Leaked Insomniac documents also reveal projected budgets of $305 million and $385 million for Marvel's Wolverine and Marvel's Spider-Man 3 respectively.
CIG has done much with the money. And for Spiderman Inscomniac copied a lot from the previous Spiderman games. When I look at the budget of Spiderman and see what they achieved it's a development fail. Most other developers could have done much more with that money
You have to draw a good line here. When I watch a film, I also have to plan 2 hours. That's true. But in Star Citizen, some actions like jumping from planet to planet take too much time when you're not doing anything useful. They need to build in meaningful activities while traveling.
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Subtlesnake
Regular
I am talking about a game generated through player interactions feeding through a dynamic economy. So you have people mining resources, people hauling resources, pirates and people providing protection from pirates etc. and those resources being invested into ships and bases involved in ongoing conflicts. Each profession should have a core gameplay loop that is interesting and varied, and feeds into the economy as a whole, so there is some sense that you are accomplishing something. The basic skeleton of these professions is in place and CIG have been working to improve their gameplay loop in the ongoing updates. But they still aren't linked into a properly working economy, so everything is static and boring.
Once the economy is in place, professions are polished, the A.I is better and there more interesting locations to visit in first person, I think it will resemble more of a finished product. But I don't think there is some magic point where after a feature is polished or a new system is added, suddenly a game will pop out of thin air. What you're asking feels a little like the question of when do individual grains of rice become a pile. We've added three grains. Is it a pile yet? I think rather that – assuming everything goes as planned – as new systems and content are added and existing systems are polished, SC will become progressively more fun and engaging to play until at some point CIG will decide to stick a 1.0 monicker on it. It won't be "complete" at that point, since like an MMO CIG will likely to continue to add new content, until it is no longer financially viable.
Every single developer is asking this question before releasing their game.
Do you think that the rest of the games are not the sum of their combined features?
At some point, there were enough grains of rice, to call them a pile, they compiled that pile, and released it to the world...
You just described a game.
Assuming that, that game you just described is the game CIG is making, (I'm not really certain that is the case, they move the goalpost every two years or so).
Is there a point were you think they should deliver that game, or do they have "carte blanche" and you wouldn't mind if they never deliver.
It's a simple question...
Subtlesnake
Regular
Yes, they should deliver the game they are making. As in, they should have a release with the features I described and if they don't I would consider that a "failure".
It is not for us to decide, it is for the people who continue buy ships and other stuff in Star Citizen that decides.
Anyone who has spent any money on Star Citizen in the last five years knew what they bought.
I agree that the Star Citizen marketing department is brilliant!
or they are hostages to the sunk cost fallacy
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