I’m pretty sure they’ve spent every cent, considering how much they have in fact produced.
The part that boggles me to this day, is that they spend the money on making a litany of insanely high quality assets and features, with seemingly no plan for how they’ll fit together.
And then they proceed to spend even more money, and time, on trying to fit it all together into something that functions like a complete system.
And that’s before you discuss their obsession with “realism”. What there is to play, is marred with balancing issues. Better ships are just… Better. Because they insist on weapons and ships functioning “logically” within the game universe, rather than in whatever way is the most fun.
Fighters beat bigger ships because equipping the same weapons, a fighter can hit every shot it takes at a slow moving giant. Meanwhile the travel-time of weapons make the fighter completely unkillable for the big ship, because the fighter can land shots from a range where its own speed allows it to dodge literally everything the big ship might send its way.
They’ve been buffing the shields and ammo counts on bigger ships, but all that does is make the fight last longer.
The project is real, but it’s a mismanaged catastrophe.
Two of their biggest mistakes were: one, essentially hiding the fact that the single player game Squadron 42 has taken the lions share of the development focus for the last 6+ years. This makes it appear like they just don’t know what they’re doing at all with star citizen and that’s why they’re slow (they still don’t 100% know what they’re doing).
Second, they made their sound design guy who was just interested in being a pilot and eventually learned how, to be their lead ship performance/gameplay director/developer (not sure exactly on the title name.) that has lead to the ships just not flying how people want or expect them to. That and Chris Roberts wants “WWII, star wars, type dogfights” when people want Newtonian physics, excess speed, fighting.
A special third I suppose: they need money to continue, I get that, but there is a special place in hell for their marketing team.
The project is real, but it’s a mismanaged catastrophe.
It’s basically what happens when you have a project with overly understanding financiers, an overly ambitious creative head, and absolutely no concern whatsoever for avoiding scope creep.
Kind of amazing really. I can imagine in centuries past an architect becoming the personal favourite of a king so he just keeps making the palace he’s tasked to build more and more extravagant since the king keeps giving him more money endlessly.
The money is going to salaries, so it’s basically just extended development. They’re all working and doing something. It’s basically just instead of releasing a game 6 years ago that was barebones and okay they’re making the sequel and won’t release the final game until they’re well done.
I’m confident it will release eventually, maybe another 5-8 years. As long as the devs don’t die of old age.
I’ve spent about $125 on this game, and I would definitely get pissed if I bought in for all the promises they made.
However, I bought just to have a really pretty “Fly around in space while exploring my spaceship and listening to music” experience. It’s a vibe game. If they took out all the combat and lofty goals and just focused on making a really dope spaceship sim (with all the ship management, repairs, etc that they’ve promised) I would probably lose my life to it.
Right there with you. Spent about 45$ on an Aurora, got a free Mustang, and did a CCU into a nomad. I’m not upset with the money I spent on the game. Gotten way more out of it just vibing in universe, flying over each new planet at they add it.
I doubt it’ll ever launch though. Those who have invested thousands of dollars into it are bound to be salty when the towel is thrown in.
I have a really old account from man years ago (probably payed $50ish for it). I want the same experience - just mostly vibing around in a ship.
Sometime during covid I had time on my hands so I installed it, logged back in. Tried to get into my ship and a glitched basically got me stuck in the door of the ship. Also couldn’t die. Just stuck there . Restarted the game and tried again. Got stuck in the same spot.
Closed the game and uninstalled. I’ll check back in a few more years lol.
I got the game for free in 2015 as part of a choose-your-own-bundle promo for the AMD R9 270X. Haven't paid a cent for it and I still sorta feel ripped off.
Anybody who has ever been unfortunate enough to have to apply for any of these healthcare or food stipend programs would know that it’s not as easy as the government makes it seem. In fact, the amount of bureaucracy, means testing, and highly restrictive income limitations means that most people don’t qualify period and people who do qualify have to spend an inordinate amount of time waiting to hear back from the government to know if they have been accepted or not, all the while hoping and praying they don’t get sick and can manage their money long enough to continue feeding themselves.
Case in point, my fiance is out of work right now and actively seeking work. She applied for both MediCAL and SNAP and was denied for MediCAL because she had earned too much already that year to qualify and the SNAP benefits totaled out to $20/month in food stamps, based on historical income, which is insufficient even for the most frugal of individuals to make work. This is for someone currently earning $0/month and being almost entirely supported by me.
After a certain point, it becomes a massive drain on your time and resources that could be spent looking for a job, so you stop bothering with the system altogether because who wants to spend hours doing paperwork and submitting claims just to get enough spare change to buy a bulk bag of rice to feed yourself a struggle meal?
I don’t want to hear shit about “handouts” from anybody. My fiance paid her taxes faithfully for years without ever having to rely on the program, so where are her benefits? She has undoubtedly paid more into the system than she will ever extract.
Honestly it has some cool shit going on. Its a real shame they’ve attached themselves to this business model of exclusivity. It seems it also effects the development of the game heavily.
At least Molyneux has put out some good games. Yeah, they don’t have all the earth shattering features he’s promised, but there’s some good titles in his portfolio. I’m not convinced Star Citizen is a good game.
Those games had a publisher telling him no to features and needing to finish existing stuff and not have scope creep to begin with. I said unchained peter for a reason :p
That’s fair. As far as I know the same was true for Chris Roberts. Well, it wasn’t so much that he had a publisher that would edit him as it was that he was fired and Microsoft came in and cobbled together what was there into an actual game (Freelancer).
I’d be interested to know how I can pay my electricity bill with my free healthcare. Also I need to go to the supermarket today; how do I convert free healthcare into a trolleyful of food?
Civilised countries like the UK and other European countries. Technically it’s not free because it’s paid for by taxation, but it’s free at the point of use: if I go and see a doctor, I don’t get billed, but I do pay 9% National Insurance tax.
I’m not concerned about some young videogamer getting free healthcare. I’m more concerned with the DOGE GOBLIN getting BILLIONS in government contracts to build rockets that blow up spectacularly, wasting a billion dollars with every explosion, just so he can quip “Just a scratch.”
That’s a billion dollar scratch that could have made a huge difference in thousands of lives.
I’m not worried about American citizens getting health care, I’m worried about Foreign Sociopathic Oligarchs getting BILLIONS in government contracts, paid for by taxes on the working class, while calling those same workers/taxpayers “parasites.”
That’s a billion dollar scratch that could have made a huge difference in thousands of lives.
Okay, sure. But consider that they didn’t earn those billions of dollars by sucking up to the right assortment of Wall Street financiers, rich family members, and ego-driven Presidential nominees.
This is absurd, considering Mike Johnson doesn’t work for a living. None of these government officials do anything worthwhile but still get paid for it.
Pays well too. The price of their morality for a lifetime of pay and free healthcare. Because let’s face it, these idiots get FEHB healthcare for life for being in congress because they made it so. They get a salary AFTER they served too, after Min 5 years, but they get 80% of their salary as part of a pension. Insane nonsense if you stay for 20 years compared to what we get.
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Aktywne