Star Citizen, Roberts Space Industries - Chris Roberts' life support and retirement fund [2012-]

[Davros]

So according to the roadmap they are producing another 20 ships for sale
fantastic

 

[Jupiter]

For example the Carrack is from 2014. Many of those are not new.
Often ships fit into specific rolls. --> diverse gameplay

RSI Orion and MISC Prospector = mining
Reclaimer = salvaging
Carrack and RSI Constellation Aquila variant = exploration
MISC Hull C and RSI Constellation Taurus variant = transporting
ANVIL Crusible = rapairing
Banu Merchantman = trading
Retailiator Harbringer variant = drob ship
DRAKE Red variant = medic ship
DRAKE Blu variant = local police

etc.

______

CitizenCon PC specs

CPU Intel i7-5820K 3.3GHz Stock - $389
GPU ASUS ROG GTX 1080 Strix - $710
Memory 64GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4 (speed unspecified) - ~$230~$400
Motherboard ASUS X99-A (model unspecified) No specific model
Case Corsair Vengeance C70 - $101
Total w/o PSU, SSD, etc. - ~$1700 +/- $300 for board & RAM

Source: System Specs for Demo PCs at CitizenCon (& Optimization Explanation): http://www.gamersnexus.net/news/2637-system-specs-for-demo-pcs-at-citizencon-2016

Beside the 64GB RAM this is a standard PC system. No 1300€ CPU/GPU. And they are still optimazing/no AMD and NVIDIA drivers.

 

[cheapchips]

It's still a £700 GPU. I guess that'll be mainstream performance by the time they release. ;-)

 

[Deleted member 13524]

It's still a £700 GPU. I guess that'll be mainstream performance by the time they release. ;-)

Nah.
After everything crashes and burns sometime in 2020, everything will be dormant until 2027, which is when Zynga will buy the leftovers for a couple thousand dollars and release the several "modules" in Free-2-Play form for smartphones.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Beside the 64GB RAM this is a standard PC system. No 1300€ CPU/GPU. And they are still optimazing/no AMD and NVIDIA drivers.

I wonder how well this runs without 64Gb and an SSD, because that solves a lot of realtime problems.

 

[tabs]

I gather you replied to the wrong thread and you're talking about Star Citizen?

Well that's the thing, isn't it? To be really good, the game had to actually come out. Which it didn't and IMO it will likely never do.

I had faith in the concept and the team. The concept changed completely from endless feature creeping, and the team just unashamedly lies about release dates, quarter after quarter, year after year.

I would be utterly stupid not to have a change of heart.

I guess I just don't see the problem with a game of such magnitude getting delayed. One of my favourite developers, Blizzard, continue to delay and delay until they have something of extremely high quality. I honestly wish more companies would do the same. Blizz have the advantage here though, they don't have hordes of gamers watching everything they do from prototyping stage onwards. They don't have to constantly give dates to everyone then fail to meet them as they work on making their baby just right.

 

[eastmen]

Th

They said in the forums during CitizenCon that larger ships do not need as much people. I don't thing you would need more than 2/3 players in a Starfarer.

Ben said in a forum post before I was banned that it now was a 7 player ship. They said you could use AI but I doubt it will be any good considering they are now using the AI sucking as part of the reason they are delaying the game even more

 

[Jupiter]

CIG uploaded the gameplay with a much better video quality and 60fps

I wonder how well this runs without 64Gb and an SSD, because that solves a lot of realtime problems.

16GB of fast RAM should be enough. But yes, a SSD will help alot with texture loading.

 

[Lefungus]

CIG could have easily built a typical small singleplayer campaign with 5 hours of content. But I prefer a larger and much better game in the end. Instead of a tiny game we will get 28 chapters which equals more than 60 missions.

They could have released the 5 hours version for backers and extend it to 28 chapters later on
Just release missions chunk per chunk like most kickstarter projects do.
Instead we have to wait for the "when it's done" version, like Duke Nukem Forever

I guess I just don't see the problem with a game of such magnitude getting delayed. One of my favourite developers, Blizzard, continue to delay and delay until they have something of extremely high quality. I honestly wish more companies would do the same. Blizz have the advantage here though, they don't have hordes of gamers watching everything they do from prototyping stage onwards. They don't have to constantly give dates to everyone then fail to meet them as they work on making their baby just right.

This is completely different
* Blizzard talk about their in-pre-production games only close before the release date
* You don't premptively give money to Blizzard a few years before
* Blizzard have proven they can produce and deliver over and over
And even then, some of their games get canned, like Warcraft Adventures or Titan.
This is what people fear, that the game you put money in is dropped, remember Godus ?
It would hurt the whole crowdfunding movement

 

[eastmen]

I guess I just don't see the problem with a game of such magnitude getting delayed. One of my favourite developers, Blizzard, continue to delay and delay until they have something of extremely high quality. I honestly wish more companies would do the same. Blizz have the advantage here though, they don't have hordes of gamers watching everything they do from prototyping stage onwards. They don't have to constantly give dates to everyone then fail to meet them as they work on making their baby just right.

They asked for money based on a different pitch and time table. Its just spiraling further and further out of control

 

[Deleted member 13524]

I guess I just don't see the problem with a game of such magnitude getting delayed. One of my favourite developers, Blizzard, continue to delay and delay until they have something of extremely high quality. I honestly wish more companies would do the same. Blizz have the advantage here though, they don't have hordes of gamers watching everything they do from prototyping stage onwards. They don't have to constantly give dates to everyone then fail to meet them as they work on making their baby just right.

Lefungus and eastmen already answered most of my thoughts.
They've created a huge investment bubble from crowdsourcing that is bound to blow up sooner or later. They know that, yet they keep trying to make that bubble even bigger with each new/revised ship they put out for sale.

And when people stop giving them $300 for virtual-super-spaceship XYZ, they will sell XYZ version b (that changes a squared window for a triangular one) for $100, effectively devaluing XYZ. And when people stop buying XYZb for $100, they'll come up with XZZ (equivalent to XYZ) for $50.
It'll go on and on for years until they're desperate for money and start giving out juggernaughts for $5. It costs them nothing, so they can do it.

 

[tabs]

Well I suppose I'm safe in the knowledge that if/when the game releases I can buy it on the apparent strength of the experience. I'm almost always happier to wait for a better product. It's not like we're stuck for games to play in this day and age.

I don't see the appeal with constantly repeating the same tired vitriol about how they choose to fund it and the fact that it has missed deadlines. We've heard / read it all 10,000 times already. It's a funding model that so far seems to be working well for them and they'd be absolute fools not to pursue it.

"Hey, you know that income source where we put in a relatively small amount of man hours to fund the large number of man hours our other stuff needs?"
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, let's stop doing that."

Don't get me wrong, I have no idea how 'evil' the company is and how much they want to steal your money and run, perhaps shipping some broken product after another 10 years of bleeding their sheep dry or perhaps even not releasing one at all. I just think a wait and see attitude is healthy.

Isn't what they're doing extremely interesting to the games industry? Surely there is more to talk about than repeating the same statement over and again.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

I don't know if this was posted before:
http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2016/09/23/inside-the-troubled-development-of-star-citizen




On what happened to Star Marine (which according to Chris Roberts would be ready within 5 weeks... back in August 2015):
http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2016/09/29/what-happened-to-star-marine-star-citizens-missing-module

However, as Illfonic continued to polish the Star Marine module, CIG started to ask for changes. “Once different people started to see it, they'd have an idea, and then once Chris liked the idea it just had to happen,” my source recalls. “Every couple of weeks they wanted to add something or they wanted to change something and that would erase several months’ work. We tried to hit every delivery and they kept changing it.

The Gold Horizon map was essentially remade multiple times. Over more than a year of development, new demands and development practices from CIG meant it was constantly being iterated upon and never quite finished. One time it was because when Illfonic first started making Star Marine, CIG's workflow called for extremely detailed environments. Anyone who has made environments before will know this is a huge resource hog,” a source explained. “You're not going to get a good frame rate. The assets need to be cheap to run to get more effects and lighting in.”
(...)
The worst example of wasted effort was discovered towards the end of Illfonic’s time on Star Marine: CIG found that the entire map was built to the wrong scale.
CIG builds all its ship and station interiors to an established scale so that each asset can become part of an environment kit. For this to work, a source explained, “you need to have the same slottable pieces for all different types of art styles. All standard doors, for example, whether they be for a moon base or a Mars base, have to share the same dimensions. If you’re building a new environment and new art assets to go with it then you create them as standard, modular pieces so other environments in the same style can be built quickly without needing bespoke assets.”

Yeah this thing is definitely in good hands.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Isn't what they're doing extremely interesting to the games industry?

No, what they're doing is extremely bad for the games industry and crowdsourcing in general.
They're taking money from people and not delivering. How on earth can this ever be considered positive?



I don't get this. I really don't get how showing a mostly-scripted demo to an audience makes so many people forget the fact that they're effectively not delivering anything worthwhile, years after their deadlines have passed.
This Chris Roberts and his team have become a total geniuses of crowd control. They're impressive.

Don't get me wrong, I have no idea how 'evil' the company is and how much they want to steal your money and run, perhaps shipping some broken product after another 10 years of bleeding their sheep dry or perhaps even not releasing one at all. I just think a wait and see attitude is healthy.

They're not wrong, they're simply incompetent and have their heads too far up their asses to realize they're not able to execute what they intend to do.

I don't think Chris Roberts is evil, but he does have a history of incompetence, both in games and movie-making.

 

[tabs]

So do you think that there is a 0% chance that they release something ground-breaking that reviews well and makes a lot of people very happy to play?

 

[Jupiter]

ToTTenTranz: I hope you will leave this thread when Squadron 42 will be released. Otherwise it would be very embarrassing after these posts.

Now they are developing in-house the most. Since a few months CIG is showing every week new stuff in Around the Verse.


Erin Roberts Interview: Edge Blending & Development Timelines: http://www.gamersnexus.net/gg/2639-erin-roberts-interview-citizencon-edge-blending

 

[Deleted member 13524]

So do you think that there is a 0% chance that they release something ground-breaking that reviews well and makes a lot of people very happy to play?

I don't think there's a 0% chance of that happening, but I do think it's well below 50%.

Like I said, it all points out to their stuff being indefinitely delayed again and again, backers gradually ceasing their flow of investment, then they'll starve for money to pay 330 people + outsourced works, eventually start selling the formerly expensive virtual spaceships for cheaper, taking away their former premium value and angering the guys who originally paid more for it.
Eventually lawsuits will follow, which they will probably lose because it's incredibly easy to convince a jury they were consciously deceptive to their investors/backers year after year by promising delivery dates they knew full well they wouldn't respect.
Then CIG files for chapter 11 so that they can somehow sell the game to some publisher in order to pay for the lawsuits. Then said publisher will just milk the name+promise of the game/project by releasing some buggy and disconnected mess that some developer manages to glue together within a year and sell it like that, a la Duke Nukem.


Let's be clear here: this not what I want to happen. It's simply what I think it will happen.

ToTTenTranz: I hope you will leave this thread when Squadron 42 will be released. Otherwise it would be very embarrassing after these posts.

Not nearly as embarrassed you'll be if/when this whole thing crashes and burns after your endless shilling in this thread.
Which scratches borderline corporate spam, in my opinion (and the opinion of others).

 

[Jupiter]

I saw a trailer from Cyberpunk 2077 in 2012 and since then nothing happened again. THE GAME IS LOST. THEY ARE SIMPLY INCOMPETENT. THIS IS DUKE NUKEM FOREVER!! 12 YEARS IN DEVELOPMENT!! THE WORLD IS GOING DOWN!!

Btw. the develeopment of Final Fantasy XV started in 2006. I don't think they are crying this much in the FF15 thread about this.

Honestly, the production by CIG started at the earliest in 2013 and you are whining like a child from the kindergarten. In my point of view, a prototype which was developed by two people in a garage does not count as development time. Otherwise Elite Dangerous would be in development since 2007.

 

[Rodéric]

Pro SC : Look at this game it looks promising and will be amazing ! It's slowing getting there !
Others : It repeatedly misses its deadlines and there's no proof all those modules will make it into a coherent whole, meanwhile they are selling a dream...
Pro SC : I want to believe !

Pretty much faith vs scepticism at this point.

 

[Rodéric]

Btw. the develeopment of Final Fantasy XV started in 2006. I don't think they are crying this much in the FF15 thread about this.

Likely because they haven't funded the game by pre-purchasing it and Squarenix didn't miss all its deadlines and neither lack a long history of making games...