After a decade and an astronomical amount of money spent, this thing is still in pre-alpha. People have left school, got married, have kids, played and forgotten No Man’s Sky, Elite Dangerous, and now Starfield, and there is still no Star Citizen.
It’s time to accept that Star Citizen will NEVER be released, because what Chris Roberts is selling is “dream as a service” which can be anything you want it to be, and one that never has to end for as long as the “game” is still in development.
The moment an actual product is released is the moment the flow of money will stop.
I once saw a comment on a SC update video from a guy who claimed to have backed up SC as a teenager, went to college, entered the industry, was part of a team from start to shipping a video game. twice, and still SC is in pre-alpha. He said that now as a veteran of the industry he realizes that SC is a scam. Like, 99% of the stuff they hyped as their envelope breaking new tech for video games, has already been done by dozens of games at a fraction of the cost.
Yeah, server meshing at the scale they did it has been possible for years. The issue is overlapping it at the planetary and multi system scale for hundreds of thousands of people and all of their inventory objects simultaneously.
They essentially just handed these objects to a master server that has to monitor all of them, instead of having each client server doing it individually. It’s like a backup technology that can respawn all tracked items in the event of a server failure. They’ve basically just added redundancy. I don’t foresee performance being improved when this overlord monitoring server inevitably gets taxed to capacity tracking everyone’s shit.
Dude, it was a random comment on a YT video about 8 months ago. I have zero chance of finding it again. It’s just an anecdote. So, as much as I hate to say it, just…trust me bro.
That’s not entirely true, if they ever went full release there’s still a fuck ton they can charge players for and milk. It’s just their Kickstarter that won’t make money anymore.
That being said you’re correct, they’ve essentially pioneered the concept of “Game Development as a Service” in the same way live service and early access games are doing now regularly.
Personally even if SQ42 launches I don’t think they’ll get the persistent universe up to their original vision for another ten years. They absolutely aren’t going to hit their 100 solar system metric from the 2011/12 era. I’d be surprised if there ends up being more than ten at launch, but it would surprise me even more if the game ever has an official launch at all.
What’s most likely is that this game will remain in early access Alpha forever, allowing it to shield itself from criticism while taking it’s sweet time constructing the game they said would release back in 2016 originally. That will allow them to justify keeping the Kickstarter open forever while also spending most of their time creating and selling new ships in a game that doesn’t even have gameplay loops for most of them. Then they’ll occasionally drop a new star system or loop to keep the hopes of players up.
This new dynamic server meshing technology they just showcased (at the tech demo level of complexity) is their only hope for making the game playable. The performance of the game isn’t due to stress on your rig as much as networking latency because their servers are overloaded. If they can scale it to the planetary, and eventually multi system level, then they might have something worth picking up. I’m not going to pay for it until that game exists, though. Which it probably never will.
The state of Star Citizen is right now is on par with a lot of games on “release.” This is as much an insult to the gaming industry in general as it is a compliment to Star Citizen.
it’s just a straight-up fact that games ARE more complex now than they used to be, you can recreate og DOOM in just a few weeks, but RDR2, a game that had a ready engine, and a lot of assets was already in development while the first RDR wasn’t out yet, that’s 8 years of straight up development
Technically true, you can play the current build of a game that’s been in perpetual development with distractive milestones continually added so as to distract you from the promises made in years past.
It’s so frustrating to see people in this thread posting objectively false statements about SC. Yes, it’s behind schedule and yes it suffers from scope creep. But it’s not a scam and it’s not vaporware. People who give them money know exactly what they are getting into. You can buy a ship now and fly it immediately. You can spend hundreds of hours in the game in it’s current state. Even pointing out that it’s playable gets downvotes.
“Pre-alpha” would be if they hadn’t started coding. It’s alpha. There’s something you can play, it’s just buggy and incomplete and thus not beta. Alpha for this long has enough stigma, you don’t need to exaggerate like that.
It’s almost never worth discussing star citizen with haters, they just love to hate they don’t care about nuance. The hate is the bandwagon and they get to feel smarter than other people for being on the “right side.”
Nothing will change their mind until the game is declared 1.0 complete and then they’ll act like they never hated the game and they just wanted to wait for release.
Uh oh looks like you are not following the hive mind of the sub! It’s sad but funny how little people know about SC but still insist they know its a scam when all they know is what they read from hit piece articles. I can’t wait for sc 4.0 server meshing is such a game changer
Why is it so hard for people to imagine that there are players who like the game as it is and see value in buying ships? After 10 years of development, people have a pretty good idea of what they are getting into.
It’s not a game. It’s a demo that’s been given more money than any other game in the history of kickstarters, and it’s been going on for over ten effing years.
Does it look cool? Absolutely. Am I totally 100% behind the idea for the game? Absolutely! Can you play the game right now in a way that all of your progress isn’t erased? No. But you can BUY progress that will.
So that’s what people do. They buy things to make progress in a universe that’s possibly never going to be officially launched. In August they reported making over $600,000,000 to date. For a game that’s never launched, or set a launch date, or put together a serious road map.
They showed off Squadron 42 earlier this year. They’re definitely spending money on stuff since it had a ton of A-List actors in the game. Graphics look amazing, everything looks so detailed… The game engine however was struggling. During the gameplay footage it constantly looked like the frame rate dropped to 15fps. They claim the game is “Feature Complete” (whatever that means in their definition…) and now is in the polishing stage. I honestly don’t think their CryEngine based Engine will run well even on the latest and best hardware when (if) it finally releases unless they make massive changes to the engine…
I only spent 45. I’m not unhappy about that purchase. But I pretty much understood what they are trying to deliver is going to take a very very long time. So I guess I’m not mad about it because I wasn’t expecting to actually buy a completed game for that 45. It’s not the first time I’ve jumped on an early access game so I was fully expecting to wait and the things I’ve seen look so awesome I’m perfectly happy waiting till it’s done. But shit I am going to get squadron 42 plus the base game so IDK I’m happy with that.
I’m not confused at all, timelines are forever moving goalposts, and each major “milestone” is really just a tech demo addition with no cohesive product. You can walk around spaceships, get auto generated quests, or get in some pvp where the person who bought the best ship wins.
The underlying promises have been continually missed with constant deflection that amounts to “hey look at this shiny thing we just did”.
I’m sure it is, but they lost me almost a decade ago when I paid for “alpha access” made dozens of bug reports, put a hundred hours into a broken game, signed up at least ten other people, and then lost alpha access because I wasn’t enough of an influencer.
All I wanted to do was play a buggy fucking game and give them free (professional) QA and they instead decided to restrict access to a bunch of extra exclusive PTU alpha influencers. That’s the second I decided to not give them any more money or free labor.
How did you lose alpha access? I paid 45 bucks several years ago haven’t reported a single bug and have played on and off for years and I still have access.
After Arena Commander was released, while they were testing early stages of flyable ships, they implemented a tiered release process where a small group of hand picked players were given access to release candidate builds before these were pushed to “alpha subscribers.” In practice, this was supposed to help reduce server loads for testing purposes, but in practice it meant we would go months at a time between playable updates, while a select few stared to control outsized influence on the development meta. At times it meant that the game was actually completely broken and unplayable in the public universe for extended periods, while the special test group would go on about how “trust us, it’s not ready yet,” even though the newer build were clearly more stable.
Also, in those early days, it was already obnoxious enough going back and forth with forum power users over shit like accurate G force simulations, control scheme preferences and weapons balancing, and then suddenly most of us were completely cut out of that conversation.
To me, this was a departure for what I signed up for, which was to be an alpha tester. In my mind, the generous sums of money I spent on ships and weapons was supposed to buy me two things - access to real time development of a revolutionary gaming concept, and perhaps a small amount of influence on that development (even if that just meant reporting bugs focused on things I cared about). When they implemented the tiered release system, both of those things were negated. All of use who were not selected for the real alpha test were excluded from the meta, and the real access to the development process, and were instead walled off behind an increasingly tall “community management” fence.
Bug reports from random players aren’t that useful. The bottleneck is fixing the bugs not finding them. For any bug you report to a games studio, there is a good chance they already know.
The confusion comes because most people are jaded by the dev cycle, which has been incredibly expensive while delivering almost nothing of substance for years. On top of that, many have defended the dev team with a lot of fervor despite this, so I think people take it less seriously when people praise the game.
I’m personally skeptical, but I’ll definitely give it a better look if it gets released.
It seems a lot of people haven’t played it. It’s quite playable and has less bugs than the average new AAA game.
It’s currently got 4 planets, each with 3 or more moons, and many stations that can be visited. 6+ game loops and around 30 flyable ships.
Yeah people spend way too much real money on it, but 90% of the fly read ships are purchasable in the game. At least give the damn game a shot before you shit on it. The community is super nice and willing to help new comers.
Edit: Not sure why everyone is so upset. This is my experience and every argument I’ve seen against sc is about bugs or spending real money on ships. Let people enjoy the games they want without getting so mad cause someone likes a game you don’t.
I mean what game has been around with active development for 15 years? Most games development stop at 5sh. I paid $45 8 months ago with no reason to spend more.
While 15 years is stupid, at least it’s a fun game. So I’ll continue to enjoy it while not spending anymore money on it.
Give me your secrets, lol. I want to love SC desperately but I find prohibitively frustrating every time I die in an elevator for no reason, or my ship explodes randomly, or I’m unable to get up out of the bed, or my character phases into the planet, etc etc etc. Functions on ships just don’t work sometimes for me.
I had those, but it’s rare for me. When I first started I phased into a corsair and decided to do a character reset and have had very little issues since. That and I’ve heard newer hardware helps as well.
Everyone gets too upset about it. Personally I payed $45 for it, and I feel like I got more than $45 worth of game out of it even if I feel like it’s a total mess. I don’t think it’s a $500m, 15 year game, I guess, but to me it was a $45 game so it doesn’t bother me.
It’s a mess, but people are playing the new COD and that’s a mess too. Maybe it’s because I’ve only been playing for 8 months, but I find it super enjoyable.
I am not proud to say I was an original backer, but luckily only for like 25 bucks.
It became clear after a year or two it was vaporware. even if a product ever comes out it’ll not be what I backed originally, which was Privateer TNG. So I stopped following the game, never played any of the tech demo’s and just shake my head warily when I see news articles like this. Bernie Madoff is in jail for basically the same thing. How can people still support this travesty.
Calling it vaporware is a bit silly they have over 500 employees and have tech nobody else has you can play right now. If you have an original package you can sell it on the gray market for much more than you paid for it. I understand it has had troubled development but you don’t know what you are talking about.
What does the number of employees have to do with not having a finished product while also being the highest funded game in history? By this logic I am sure since FTX had 650 employees they must be all above board, if that was all some ponzi scheme they why the staff?
EXCUSE me? I was an original backer, I know EXACTLY what I backed. If you like what Star Citizen is doing then enjoy yourself. But do not tell me what was promised to me and what is being delivered now has ANY bearing on each other. Beacuse it does not.
Are you aware they had a backer vote on the direction of the game? It was on if they were going to have stretch goals after the original KS pitch. 94% of the votes went to changing the game into something bigger (more features added). I understand it sucks for people that wanted the smaller more realistic game but they lost the vote. And again you can sell your ship for more than you paid, sometimes way way more. Should they have ignored the vote that was that overwhelming?
I don’t think it’s possible to play the current game single player (offline) meaningfully. But there are very regular free fly events, I think you barely just missed one. I’m not sure I’d really describe it as worth it regardless for most people right now, it’s still very alpha and has a very steep learning curve to actually work out how to progress on your own. But it is a beautiful thing to explore still.
The singleplayer experience, called Squadron 42, is not yet available. Online only for the public alpha test.
As to whether or not it’s worth it, you can be the judge. They have multiple free-fly events each year (although the most recent one just passed I think) where you can download the game and play for a whole week for free to see if it’s for you. I would wait for the next one to come up and try it then, if you are curious about it.
Generally, I try to steer people away from it even though I’m a fan of the game myself because it’s just so rough around the edges and the initial mystique and wonder of exploring a vast solar system quickly wears off and gets replaced by tedium and lost progress due to bugs and glitches, so it doesn’t make for the most enjoyable experience. YMMV.
I’d say just wait for SQ42 to come out, however long that may take. Possibly within the next few years if we’re being optimistic.
I honestly feel like they should just release Squadron 42 now and then do Star Citizen. Let us have the ships and combat in an Ace Combat style game just in case Star Citizen never release.
That’s the plan. They started with star citizen being the focus and then 2 years ago they pulled most of the staff to finish SQ42. Now that they’re in the “polishing phase” for sq42 they have started pulling people back to work on star citizen. Next year is going to be big for star citizen, very very important core tech being implemented and a deluge of content should come with the reallocation of workers to star citizen.
Source: I’m literally obsessed with star citizen/sq42 and know too much about it, send help. (My wallet is ok lol)
Honestly, I don’t see star citizen being “complete” for another 5-6 years lol next year will be awesome though if they can get server meshing implemented so they can try to nail down server performance. Right now it’s atrocious lol
“(On SQ42) …but our plan is to be feature and content complete by the end of 2019, with the first 6 months of 2020 for Alpha … and then Beta.” - Chris Roberts, 2018
Apparently the order of operations is reversed for Chris Roberts in that both “feature complete” and “content complete” come before both “alpha” and “beta”.
There might even be a “delta” and “gamma” - you never know when it comes to this man and the absolute slipperiness he employs with the English language.
… That is how it works? You aren’t in beta until you’re feature and content complete, that’s the final stage for any game. Alpha is mostly content complete, but pretty much always feature complete.
The people who bastardized the usage of those words are the steam early access devs that call a game with 1 feature completed and almost no content an EA beta.
Is it the early access games, or is it just Chris Roberts’ history of being deceptive?
I mean, if SQ42 is truly close to being released, if it requires a last push, shouldn’t all employees continue to work on the project? Usually the final stages of a project require more work, not less.
Why would you suddenly “prioritize porting features from SQ42 to SC” if releasing SQ42 is a goal?
Because those people aren’t currently needed for the things that need to be done in sq42. They didn’t move everyone, it seems like a lot of the people they’ve spoken about moving over are art related and some tech people that aren’t needed for “polishing.”
Star citizen hit a point where they knew that large complicated tech was going to take time to implement and they couldn’t progress with content as the servers can’t handle it until the aforementioned tech is in so I think they made a reasonable decision to pull as many people over to SQ42 while the networking people and the core tech people worked on star citizen. Within the next few months we’re going to see if they can complete that core tech needed for the servers and that will allow for work to continue on as far as content/future systems.
All that said, Chris is absolutely horrendous at giving dates and I’m glad he stopped himself at citizencon this year. I would love to ask him what made him think 2020 was a reasonable estimate for anything lol
I see. Well, I guess I’ll see you in 2 years then when they inevitably pull off another swap and move all resources from SC back onto SQ42, and use that as an excuse, yet again, for why significant progress isn’t happening now, but soon in the near-future.
This has already happened with Tarkov. Tarkov has been copied and cloned, but none of them are nearly as popular. Call of Duty didn’t even really come close, and that’s AAA. The game has already been around for 7 years. You would think someone had the time to make a better extraction shooter by now, but no one has. I honestly wish they would hurry up, because Tarkov is a mess from a netcode and performance perspective, it’s just great in the game design department.
I prefer Tarkov just a bit, but I honestly really liked dmz too. It wasn’t bad at all. Not nearly as deep as Tarkov, but it didn’t need to be. It had actually decent netcode and hit reg compared to the mess that EFT is. It’s kind of a shame that the mode wasn’t more popular, but thats partially due to the playerbase being so divided between multiplayer and warzone already. I’m still hopeful that they can improve it in the future.
I’d rather them just update the MW3 zombies mode, I’m having a great time with it. It’s a really fun combination of DMZ style gameplay with the zombies from CW “Outbreak.” Hopefully they expand the types of missions and put special events into it.
God… Elite has so much potential. Its almost so good, but just stumbles so much. Like… i bought it so I could walk around my ship. Thats like my fantasy and they were promising it, but, alas, they still don’t have it.
That’s why I like what star citizen is doing. Fdev is not only beholden to shareholders that force out unfinished unpolished crap lacking in content, but they have 262828 other games to focus on so they took the lazy way out: get a minimally viable product out and then axe most of what braben talked about elite being in favor of small lore additions and an attempt at FPS stuff but again as lazily as possible.
I loved what elite wanted to be but I hate the greed and laziness. I’ll wait another 10 years for star citizen for it to be the best game ever because I know for a fact no one is ever going to attempt this again, it’s too expensive and no company will ever spend the money if they have a publisher.
These comments sections are almost laughable because we see the dichotomy of gamers “OmG TeN YeAr AlPhA!” but every other game it’s “OMG DELAY IT! ITS NOT FINISHED!”
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