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

OTOH if you look at any of the parts individually then none are near the top of their class
Can you name a game that has ever come close to the amount of detail and interactivity in their ships?
 
Yes I can, battlecruiser 3000ad
Based on your obsessive nostalgic rose-tinted glasses or actual facts?

edit: I don't remember 3kAD actually having the touted features actually functioning but apparently it was part of the features.
 
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Sure it's more complex than SC but look at the key layout in Star Citizen. You need well over a hundred keys. Compare that to an 12-key console-oriented game.

Targeting space ships and cspace ship omponents alone has 24 functions which can be used.


__

Or a scene like this which is something you barerly see in games:

Here are flying space ships many massive windows while in other you get in other celebrated games loading screens when entering a buildings with much lower speed.
 
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The annual progress is decent. As long as that's the case, I'm satisfied. In some other games, however, very little happens.
Sure, I guess nothing to something, is progress.
Especially if compared with an actual game, I would guess that the progress of SC is huge.
I mean, an actual game can add one feature a year tops, and perhaps a new location or two at a more frequent pace.
But man, SC adds so many things every three months.
Like grenade throwing, or AI that sometimes moves, a prison system, weather effects and how about that player jump v2 huh?
At that rate, they might even have a game at some point. Not in a timely manner, of course, after all it is SC we are talking about, but some day it will be so much more than a glorified screenshot production machine.

The best thing about SC though, is the way it gets funded.
People give money, and expect so little!
I love it!
It is a dream! You can't have deadlines on dreams!
 
It's almost like there are people in this thread that have never played the game commenting about whether the game is a game or not.

There's more game in this Alpha/BETA than in most finished games. :p

Where it does lack compared to released games is the level of polish, bugs, and unfinished systems. But there's already more finished game systems than in most released games.

Regards,
SB
 
But is it a fully cohesive gameplay experience? Or does it feel like a Frankenstein game where aspects of it are there but it doesn't flow well together?
 
But is it a fully cohesive gameplay experience? Or does it feel like a Frankenstein game where aspects of it are there but it doesn't flow well together?

In it's current state it's about as cohesive as just about any open world survival game on the market. Meaning that while there are quests, it's an "undirected" experience. So, if someone doesn't like the type of game where you create your own experiences and stories then this isn't currently the game for them...just like almost all open world survival games.

It's not so much a Frankenstein as it is an unfinished machine. The machine can still perform many of it's intended tasks, many fully, some partially with some yet to be implemented. And like an unfinished machine it will often break although that becomes less frequent as more work is put into it.

When Star Citizen is "finished" (in the Warframe, still in BETA despite a retail release and being a full game but not finished, sense) the core gameplay loop is likely to be similar if not exactly the same as it is now.

I can see where people looking for a directed experience are disappointed. That's what SQ42 is for, and this is where Roberts Space Industries has failed the most.

But, that still doesn't mean that the current incarnation of Star Citizen doesn't have a ton of gameplay or working systems or provides a compelling and enjoyable experience for those people that really enjoy the open world "create your own" story type of games.

But it IS still a BETA, so things do still break, some things do still need polish, and there's still things yet to be implemented. But none of this is new to people who like these sorts of game experiences. As most of these sorts of games are still in early access and even the ones that have been released to retail can quite often be massively buggy (Conan Exiles was pretty trash WRT to bugs and partially working systems at launch as was The Forest).

Personally, this is what would be ideal
  • Squadron 42 gets finished. Who knows if this will ever happen.
  • Star Citizen never gets finished in the sense that Warframe will never be finished.
This way people that want their directed experience (like me) get a simulation set in space with a dramatic and hopefully satisfying story. OTOH - the people that enjoy open world game experiences can have an ever evolving and expanding universe to play in.

Regards,
SB
 
Sure, I guess nothing to something, is progress.
Especially if compared with an actual game, I would guess that the progress of SC is huge.
I mean, an actual game can add one feature a year tops, and perhaps a new location or two at a more frequent pace.
But man, SC adds so many things every three months.
Like grenade throwing, or AI that sometimes moves, a prison system, weather effects and how about that player jump v2 huh?
At that rate, they might even have a game at some point. Not in a timely manner, of course, after all it is SC we are talking about, but some day it will be so much more than a glorified screenshot production machine.

The best thing about SC though, is the way it gets funded.
People give money, and expect so little!
I love it!
It is a dream! You can't have deadlines on dreams!

It's a more when you are checking the patch 3.10 list.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link//17711-Star-Citizen-Alpha-3100

The game already has more features than most released games. Sometimes there are more new features per patch than there are new features in a whole sequel game.


When it comes to ground fighting in the PU I'm beginning to think that they should get off the fast time to kill. If the whole world is playing in one universe you won't get around a 200 ms lag. So the game has to go more in the direction of The Division with shields and slow time to kill.


Why would I do that ?

These are the games that you usually get on the PC. Console ports. This one, on the other hand, is designed for the PC.
 
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The game already has far more features than most games. Sometimes there are more new features per patch than there are new features in a whole sequel game.
It can have all the features in the world, but a single-player game can really benefit from a story/mission/plot for me at least.
 
That's the bit that isn't available yet, right? Not even in beta.
Yup, it's basically a seperate game.

Star Citizen being MMO makes a lot of things harder for its development.

In SQ42 there should be assets that do not have to fulfill all requirements of SC, so at least those should be faster to make.

Ie.
Can have enemy ship without needing to think what player and NPCs can do within it and so on.
 
In it's current state it's about as cohesive as just about any open world survival game on the market. Meaning that while there are quests, it's an "undirected" experience. So, if someone doesn't like the type of game where you create your own experiences and stories then this isn't currently the game for them...just like almost all open world survival games.

It's not so much a Frankenstein as it is an unfinished machine. The machine can still perform many of it's intended tasks, many fully, some partially with some yet to be implemented. And like an unfinished machine it will often break although that becomes less frequent as more work is put into it.

When Star Citizen is "finished" (in the Warframe, still in BETA despite a retail release and being a full game but not finished, sense) the core gameplay loop is likely to be similar if not exactly the same as it is now.

I can see where people looking for a directed experience are disappointed. That's what SQ42 is for, and this is where Roberts Space Industries has failed the most.

But, that still doesn't mean that the current incarnation of Star Citizen doesn't have a ton of gameplay or working systems or provides a compelling and enjoyable experience for those people that really enjoy the open world "create your own" story type of games.

But it IS still a BETA, so things do still break, some things do still need polish, and there's still things yet to be implemented. But none of this is new to people who like these sorts of game experiences. As most of these sorts of games are still in early access and even the ones that have been released to retail can quite often be massively buggy (Conan Exiles was pretty trash WRT to bugs and partially working systems at launch as was The Forest).

Personally, this is what would be ideal
  • Squadron 42 gets finished. Who knows if this will ever happen.
  • Star Citizen never gets finished in the sense that Warframe will never be finished.
This way people that want their directed experience (like me) get a simulation set in space with a dramatic and hopefully satisfying story. OTOH - the people that enjoy open world game experiences can have an ever evolving and expanding universe to play in.

Regards,
SB
So, I haven't played many open world survival games, just a few, with Conan Exiles being the one I played the most.
And I have played SC only in their free fly events, just to check if there actually is there a game for me to buy.
Are you telling me that you can compare the two, objectively, and somehow find them offering, about the same?
Or are you telling me, that subjectively, what SC offers, is enough for you?
Cause I can kind of get behind the one, not so sure about the other.

And please, do not go around telling people that this game is in beta.
SC fans kill people for less.
It's an alpha, and an alpha it shall remain, until either it's ready (face it, we'll both be dead when that happens), or Roberts gets his retirement fund, and pulls a Houdini only to reappear in a non extradition country. ;)
Besides beta means feature complete, and they don't like the sound of that.
How will they be able to justify Robert's next announcement of individually rendered intergalactic pasta noodles that you can actually throw at the wall, and, if they stick, they are ready!

And one last thing.
I played Warframe for ages. I still do sometimes.
And that game had a strange thing that some people might consider important for a game, from year (not day) one.
Fun engaging gameplay.

Star Citizen, not so much.
The FPS portion of the game, amounts to nothing, since it is not working with all the bugs and that abysmal AI (or lack thereof).
And even the ship flying, is lackluster at best.
Which is impressive considering the same person that makes this, made games that I, while playing them, wrecked countless joysticks.
Even truckers in space (Elite) has better flight mechanics...

Edit.
It just occurred to me, that this thing, somehow became a "survival game" in the middle of development...
I wonder how many times can they move the goalpost until it becomes a life simulator.
It's an unprecedented endeavor!
 
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@Daozang its amazing how 2 people can have entirely different opinions, you have your negative view then there's Jupiter who thinks this is the greatest game ever created where every feature is the best evar, everything is perfectly coded and balanced and he even claimed the features the game didnt have were brilliant....
 
@Daozang its amazing how 2 people can have entirely different opinions, you have your negative view then there's Jupiter who thinks this is the greatest game ever created where every feature is the best evar, everything is perfectly coded and balanced and he even claimed the features the game didnt have were brilliant....
There needs to be some semblance of coherency for some software to be called a game.
And in the case of Star Citizen there are systems and promises but no synergy whatsoever.
And even what is there, besides the graphics, is a hot mess.
A sandbox with no game mechanics that are at least somewhat engaging, is not a game.
You have a minuscule portion of the sand and the box that was promised, but are missing everything else that would make this engaging.

What bothers me, is that in any other case, what these devs have delivered up till now, would be considered a disaster of epic proportions.
Yet, somehow, there is always an incoherent and contradictory argument / excuse from the people that gave their money to fund this game, to the point where they forfeit any demand from the developer to actually deliver anything resembling a playable game in a timely fashion.
And that, to me at least, sounds insane.
I cannot think of another case where delivering the absolute minimum (with even that being mediocre at best) and missing every deadline for the rest would be considered acceptable.
Nor a case where anyone, ever, got a carte blanche from the people funding a project, to deliver the goods at their leisure and convenience.
Unless we are talking about a fund, investing in a hundred startups hoping to at least make some profit from five of them.
 
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