Windows Star Citizen

Bordering on criminal

 

I lifted a quote on wikipedia about Strike Commander, a Chris Roberts game from the 90s that was beset by development issues:

The Strike Commander project took more than four years and over a million man hours on background development. Very little of that production time turned out to be actually usable in the final product, as at least one and possibly several complete project "reboots" were required to refine the graphical engine to a playable state.

Déjà vu.

 

My org and I don't really play Star Citizen anymore, but I only found out a few days ago that the game is considered a finished product and now receives updates - a bit like ED but far less polished.

Not very impressed, to be honest. The one good thing that came out of it is that I have a nice group of extra friends that are interesting and varied - online discussions offer a range of perspectives.

We'll see how it plays out, but like the article @Gareth Halfacree posted a link to stated, expect years more work.

I would settle for the single-player in the meantime!

 

A user posted a video complaining about a lack of functionality on Star Citizen's internal forum Spectrum in which Chris Roberts made 2 lengthy comments. He does address the "time taken" criticism:

"I sense from your reply to me that it's the time taken and priorities that you're frustrated with, as you feel like we're focusing on the wrong things. I can see that point of view, but you're looking at it from the outside without the full knowledge of exactly what it will take, and the order it needs to be done in to deliver the gameplay that will set Star Citizen above everything else. This is the game I've dreamed of my whole life. Now I am in a position to realize it, I am not willing to compromise it's potential because it is taking longer than I originally envisioned. What I will commit to, and what is an internal priority is to improve the current gameplay and quality of life as we go, as Star Citizen is already fun in many ways, even if more buggy and not as stable as I would like, and just finishing off and polishing the basics will make it play as well or better than most other games.

I can promise you the gameplay I described is not a pipe dream, nor will it take 10 to 20 years to deliver. I described systems we either have working, or are working on; we've even shown early versions of some of this like fire on Inside Star Citizen. I can't promise you exactly what quarter it will come together but once the new Road Map web work is done you'll be able to see the teams progress to achieving what I describe in real time.

Thank you for your support and passion over the years. I hope this extra insight was helpful."

Someone needs to point out that in 24 months or so it will be 10 years! Perhaps he means another 10 years.

 

The fact it’s 2020 now and we are still no closer to release tells you all, its still basically a beta game at best.

if I had spent a lot of money then I would be super pissed by now

reality is I got a AMD gift code off this forum which cost me about £10, I got £10 worth of gaming out of it

if it ever launches I wonder what the min specs will be compared to what it was originally

 

Yes indeed. Advertising a universe in which you (or your avatar) can own wondrous virtual ships has been very intoxicating over the development cycle for some (or many).

Interestingly, I don't think they realised it would be this lucrative at the time. Ben Lesnick, who worked with Chris Roberts for many months on the proposal before the kickstarter launched, recently produced a video series wherein he discussed an old computer game magazine where a military Wing Commander spaceship was being sold by a private company in a 2-page poster. It was a meant as a quirky way to advertise the game itself but Ben, and presumably others working on the proposal, used the concept as a novel way of selling the ships of Star Citizen rather than the game itself. He believes this is why Star Citizen has made 200 million dollars before launch. It appears that it was not preconceived to have such a powerful effect on potential players beforehand. He just thought it was a "neat" way to do it! I personally believe him but others think this was part of the scam and it is all just a lie. I suppose if you were trying to scam 200 million dollars you would need to invest more than 8 years in pulling it off. Banks, governments and corporations do it in much less time.

There was a 'playable' tech demo that Chris Roberts first showed off the game, in engine, on the bridge of a capital ship. That 'game' may be what those computer specs were meant for!

I invite you to read a previous post #7503 regarding Strike Commander - undoubtedly the same thing is happening on a bigger scale.

I've spent a lot of money, although relatively little compared to some. I sold off all 5 of my ships at one point when various dead lines were missed. I then decided to buy back what I'd sold at a very discounted rate. Subsequently, I bought merchandise with store credit as I thought it will be the only way to get something meaningful for my money!

Therefore I have t shirts and mouse mats aplenty. I am not "super pissed" but rather pragmatic. I'm nearly ten years older after all. Since I first backed in 2013 I have completed two degrees and I am now working on a doctorate. It is due to complete in July/September 2024. This is the date I will try to play the finished (ha!) game, but it is very much hope rather than expectation.

 

It's sad, isn't it . The ironic thing is that I really enjoyed playing the Arena Commander a few years ago with my friends. Then they effed up the flight model.

 

Not doubting they made that promise but it seems very unrealistic.

Even the GTX 560 / 660 that followed the 460 fall firmly into the category of "Can't run Crysis at playable framerates".

 

Everyone here wants Star Citizen to succeed in some regards but its a difficult project to follow and back anymore. Anyone not invested should stay away is what I would say to anyone who asked me.

At this point they should focus the single player game to completion and give there player base something at least. The online game if it ever completes is probably another 3-5 years away at the current pace of development

 

The thing is, it's been going on so long that there have been at least two generations of new backers, giving money for JPEGS (as the meme goes). While I'm happy to wait longer for a good game (hopefully), it's a bit bothering that new people are being sucked in.

 

The situation reminds me very much of Tim Schafer and Double Fine but on a much grander scale. When Bobby Kotick came out and said Schafer was an idiot, he talked a big talk but ultimately Activision gave him a lot of money and got no games out of him, everyone defended Schafer. But when it's actually your money that you paid into Kickstarter and the projects started getting abandoned, or re-imagined, or split into multiple chunks to be paid for repeatedly, it made sense what Kotick got so annnoyed about.

So it seems to be going with Roberts and Star Citizen. Freelancer has an infamously troubled development, Star Citizen is what Roberts wanted Freelancer to be but times ten, so the problems are times one hundred. I put my $40 in all those years ago hoping for Squadron 42 to come out and be good. Now it looks like Squadron 42: Part 1 might come out and be ok, some day, maybe. In the mean time there's always Elite: Dangerous and No Man's Sky.

 

A massive 2 week free fly event/expo and nay a comment in this thread. It's a very sad indictment of how much faith people have lost over the near decade of development.

I thought I'd give it a go for free and see how it's come along, it's been a good few years since I last played it... Mostly just to test how it runs on my updated PC.
It certainly looks impressive but man, it's still so buggy and runs like ass, no better than it used to on my old i5 and gtx970.

Lots and lots more content but no more polish. The scale of the 890j is very impressive but I'm not sure how they can add compelling gameplay to a flying luxary hotel.

And much of it feels like a chore, getting in and out of ships, the interaction buttons, the respawn and then on foot hump with multiple elevators and tram rides back to the ship recall consoles, then another hop on an elevator to get to the hangars. And it's like that at the 3 places I visited.

Infact it's one of the reasons I'm not sure if space legs will a actually add anything to elite dangerous.

It's like the Devs for SC put all this effort in trying to make it realistic as possible without asking how much of it would be fun.

Based on what I have seen this weekend, they have years of dev time ahead of them to make it anywhere near properly playable.
Although since they have raked in over 300 million and climbing, I guess that's a moot point!

 

devs arnt bothered longs as the cow still gives milk.

shame alot of gamers are still giving them money

 

Wow it really has been a decade hasn't it. Logging into my account and scrolling through I had totally forgotten about the golden ticket and how long ago that was.



I think the last time I played was when the space station had just launched but you could only dog fight against the Vandul.

It seems the biggest issue is massive feature creep and also as @DeckerdBR mentioned "It's like the Devs for SC put all this effort in trying to make it realistic as possible without asking how much of it would be fun."

The main campaign is just being constantly held hostage by the feature creep and development of the MMO component. I would have much rather proffered to receive the single player campaign as a frozen in time / sandboxed (albeit bug fixes etc) and then development continued on with the MMO component. As its plain to see context switching between developing the two together with constant feature creep just doesnt work.

 

Nope. Only 8 years.
The ticket says 10am Oct 10th. It doesn't mention 2012, when CR announced the game on that year's GDC Online conference.

 

oh thats not so bad then still got two years to go :0