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Eeyore_Syndrome, do gaming w Star Citizen Expose Paints a Fairly Bleak Picture: 'There's No Actual Focus on Getting the Game Done'
@Eeyore_Syndrome@sh.itjust.works avatar

October 28 new Elite Dangerous Odyssey patch lets gooo… Fuk Frontier tho for the ARX inflation and gatekeeping new ships behind it tho lol.

Iheartcheese,
@Iheartcheese@lemmy.world avatar

Is this a big patch or something?

Eeyore_Syndrome,
@Eeyore_Syndrome@sh.itjust.works avatar

They re-did reskinned power play, so all powers have all modules. Just at different ranks. And no more rank decay.

New early access exploration ship gate kept behind premium ARX but, after 3 months buyable with in game credits.

Supposedly a completely new game feature coming…

cosmicrookie,
@cosmicrookie@lemmy.world avatar

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/e4b9709d-c516-4124-835c-073261c7b4d5.jpeg

One of them is for rich kids though, who have overpowered gaming rigs, and money to throw away on fictional space ships. Sure Elite Dangerous has the whole galaxy, but when it just repeats itself, it kind of is just as good as one solar system really.

Rookwood,

Flying in E:D is worth the price alone.

MintyAnt,

I get the issues with ED but like… are we really comparing a finished and released game with star citizen?

Eeyore_Syndrome,
@Eeyore_Syndrome@sh.itjust.works avatar

The new SCO Frameshift Drives removed the tedium from Supercruse travel. Finally, boost while in Supercruse.

Also added new maximums to jump ranges vs even the previous community goal/tech broker V1s FSDs. For faster overall jumping as well.

Asafum, do gaming w Star Citizen Expose Paints a Fairly Bleak Picture: 'There's No Actual Focus on Getting the Game Done'

“Earlier this year, Microsoft was given a brief presentation for Squadron 42, CIG’s spin-off campaign of Star Citizen that consists of around 20 different chapters (levels) of various lengths. It’s understood that the plan for Squadron 42 is to get it out of the door as soon as possible, with directors of the company hoping the influx in cash will sustain Star Citizen’s development and help to push Squadron 42 as a multi-game series, which will see the game’s story span over several different episodes. As for when Squadron 42 will launch, I wouldn’t want to guess, but it’s understood that the game has only just made it to its “feature complete” stage, despite the claims last year.”

Nonononononono… Microsoft means gutting the game in every way possible to get it to run on the Xbox toaster edition…

As for the end of that, thankfully they gave a release window today (2026) I hope most of this isn’t true though. What they want to make is seriously impressive

Rookwood,

I want to make something even more impressive though. Where’s my gajillion dollars!?

Asafum,

Make a Kickstarter! Lol people fund just about anything if it looks good enough

MangoPenguin, do gaming w Star Citizen Expose Paints a Fairly Bleak Picture: 'There's No Actual Focus on Getting the Game Done'

It’s been that way basically since it first was available, they make so much money on whales buying the expensive ships that they really don’t seem to care about finishing the game.

They keep adding more and more paid content you can buy, while the game is barely playable with incredibly poor performance, and constant bugs like not being able to finish missions, cargo randomly disappearing, cargo glitching into ships and causing them to explode, etc… And the game is generally just extremely unstable with lots of crashes.

MonkderVierte,

and constant bugs like not being able to finish missions

And since it’s online, you can’t just install a community fix.

grrgyle,

That’s where Derek Smart went wrong, I guess. He actually released his game, not realising that you can just sell the hype vapour on its own. Rookie move.

SARGE, do gaming w Star Citizen Expose Paints a Fairly Bleak Picture: 'There's No Actual Focus on Getting the Game Done'
@SARGE@startrek.website avatar

There’s no need when people shit money all over them.

Why bother finishing if there’s no incentive to do so?

Zahille7, do games w Star Citizen Expose Paints a Fairly Bleak Picture: 'There's No Actual Focus on Getting the Game Done'

Who’d’a thunk?

Bonesince1997, do games w Star Citizen Expose Paints a Fairly Bleak Picture: 'There's No Actual Focus on Getting the Game Done'

SCAM

slaacaa,

You’re just jelous of my 5k kimited edition spaceship (will be ready next year)

Rottcodd, do games w Star Citizen Expose Paints a Fairly Bleak Picture: 'There's No Actual Focus on Getting the Game Done'

Do people just not know who and what Chris Roberts is?

This is what he’s done throughout his career - the only thing that’s notable about Star Citizen really is the scale of it and thus the opportunities he has to find ever more things to obsessively tinker with.

It’s entirely possible that if Microsoft hadn’t bought out Digital Anvil and given him the boot, this wouldn’t even be Star Citizen - it would be Freelancer, coming into its 25th year of delays.

p03locke,
@p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Chris Roberts is still rich, and could probably retire right now without worrying about anything. He could tank the company, and he wouldn’t care.

Blackmist,

When has any really rich person ever gone “you know what? I actually have enough now…”?

manmachine,
@manmachine@lemmy.world avatar

MySpace guy comes to mind.

Krauerking,

How could you forget about your first and only friend Tom?

theneverfox,
@theneverfox@pawb.social avatar

Wozniak is probably the most famous example. He recognized the corrupting nature of money, decided he had enough, and stopped to live in comfort and occasionally work towards causes he finds important

Lots of people have done the same… But if they’re rich and still chasing after money? They’ll never stop

Blackmist,

I guess Notch as well. Sold Minecraft for an obscene amount of money and got into indefensible right wing views instead.

yamanii,
@yamanii@lemmy.world avatar

I heard he got better after leaving twitter for years and coming back.

damnedfurry,

That’s the majority of them, but ragebait articles aren’t written about them, so you have no idea who they are.

Don’t be so easily manipulated by media.

morrowind,
@morrowind@lemmy.ml avatar

I don’t, what else has he procrastinated on?

lime,
@lime@feddit.nu avatar

the wing commander series was famous for inflated development costs, freelancer was repeatedly delayed and eventually released like five years after it’s announcement, and since then… he’s been working on star citizen

setsneedtofeed,
@setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world avatar

Keep in mind Freelancer was released after Microsoft acquired Roberts’ company, kicked him out of a leadership role, and drastically slashed the scope.

Star Citizen is what happens when there is nobody above Roberts to say no, and now after years plenty of people under him with an interest in keeping the development churning.

supercriticalcheese,

Probably the same needs to happen here but I don’t see how it could happen in this occasion.

Shadywack,
@Shadywack@lemmy.world avatar

I mean, some people called this back in fucking 2012, but the dreamers bought into his vision. He’s always been real great about vision and lofty ambitions, but shit on execution. He sells dreams, but doesn’t know how to finish anything. Every project he was attached to that executed on deliverables, was due to control being outside of his purview and accountability enforced.

jewbacca117, do games w Star Citizen Expose Paints a Fairly Bleak Picture: 'There's No Actual Focus on Getting the Game Done'

Damn. I had really hoped my grandchildren would get to play Star Citizen in their lives.

deegeese, do games w Star Citizen Expose Paints a Fairly Bleak Picture: 'There's No Actual Focus on Getting the Game Done'

If they finished it they’d have to find a new revenue stream.

shadowedcross, do games w Star Citizen Expose Paints a Fairly Bleak Picture: 'There's No Actual Focus on Getting the Game Done'
@shadowedcross@sh.itjust.works avatar

Yeah, Star Citizen is the world’s most expensive tech demo, that is the picture book definition of scope creep. It’ll just keep getting more and more complicated, but never get to any kind of a “complete game” state.

slaacaa, (edited )

I work as project manager, just spent the entire week fighting a client on a new project’s scope, because he wanted more things done by the team than what was agreed in the proposal.

Anytime I read about this game, I have to do breathing excercises in a corner to calm my anxiety.

SplashJackson,

I just hope when it finally releases it has just as many tits as Duke Nukem Forever

limitedduck, do games w Star Citizen Expose Paints a Fairly Bleak Picture: 'There's No Actual Focus on Getting the Game Done'

Today was day one of Citizencon and CIG revealed a lot of stuff that shows they’re still working to give players the game they want. Most of it was actually tech to answer the scalability problem for everyone wondering how they’re going to get to 100 star systems when they still only have 1

fartsparkles,

Next it’ll be 1000 star systems while we’re still waiting on Squadron 42.

arudesalad,

Fun fact: If you take the year, add two, you’ll get the current planned release date for sq42

This isn’t dependent on the current year

limitedduck,

Personally, I don’t think they should be aiming for 100 anymore, even if it was promised. That number was for the original pitch and was arbitrarily high since it was for a much shallower and easier to create game

fartsparkles,

I’d gladly take a single functioning system rather than wait another 12 years of my life for this Kickstarter project to deliver.

jagermo,

The original pitch also had dedicated servers and those are gone, sadly.

limitedduck,

How are they gone? The current servers are hosted by CIG, there’s no p2p or player hosted servers. How would that even work for an MMO?

lime,
@lime@feddit.nu avatar

dedicated servers == player-hosted servers, usually

limitedduck,

I would say private server is more what you’re referring to, also CIG’s wording, but maybe agree to disagree. A quick search says that they haven’t cancelled that feature, but it’ll appropriately be the very last thing they work on

lime,
@lime@feddit.nu avatar

the common understanding of “dedicated server” is a server binary you can download and run yourself. a “private server” is usually still hosted on the company’s hardware.

limitedduck,

I can understand you have different criteria for dedicated servers, but private servers are certainly not generally characterized by still being on 1st party hardware. You need only look at private servers for Minecraft, WoW, and the like

lime,
@lime@feddit.nu avatar

minecraft server binaries are a prime example of a “dedicated server”. tf2 is another. the alternative is a “listen server”, where one player acts as server. note that the term’s use in gaming has very little to do with the concept of a dedicated server in general use, aka a machine dedicated to running a service. in multiplayer games a dedicated server is just the name for a binary that contains no client.

anyway, the important distinction is whether the means for the game to continue existing is in the hands of the players or the company.

limitedduck,

I understand, what confused me was your claim about the common understanding of the term when there are very much two valid and ubiquitous contexts.

lime,
@lime@feddit.nu avatar

honestly i think it’s an age range thing.

arudesalad,

Today they announced that it was cut down to 5 and they will slowly work their way back up to 100 after launch (whenever that is)

limitedduck,

It was a good decision. It was also smart of them to review the initial 100 planet goal to add some much needed context

alcoholicorn, do games w Star Citizen Expose Paints a Fairly Bleak Picture: 'There's No Actual Focus on Getting the Game Done'

Because Crysis looked good, Chris Roberts mandated that Star Citizen would use Cryengine 3.

To make astronomically large spaces fit in the game engine from 2009, they made everything infinitesimally small.

So now due to the inaccuracy inherent in floating point calculations, instead of invisibly nudging things a few millimeters in the wrong direction, teleports people hundreds of feet out of their ships into space if they bump into a physics object, ladder, elevator, etc.

This is what happens when an ideas guy with no technical knowledge is making technical decisions.

sp3tr4l, (edited )

Jesus fucking christ, that was their fundamental approach?!

… Did they ever come anywhere close to a dynamic server model, with dynamically sized in game zones being handled by dynamically changing server clusters, dependant on player count in an area?

I remember making some comments in a thread in the main SC forums about it almost a decade ago that were basically to the effect of: that’s almost certainly impossible to pull off with enough fidelity / low lag to actually work in a real time, absurdly open world shooter game, but if they could pull it off it would basically be the greatest achievement in game networking history.

perslue,

After 10 years they increased the per server population from 50 to 100, but don’t worry server messing soon TM.

So no.

limitedduck,

Meshing tests have gone up to 2000 and the shards that were left on overnight were 300-500. The current evocati build of 4.0 has meshing enabled, just limited to 100 for now

billiam0202,

To make astronomically large spaces fit in the game engine from 2009, they made everything infinitesimally small.

In fairness, when Star Citizen first went in to development CE3 was a modern engine.

Cris_Color,
@Cris_Color@lemmy.world avatar

Wow… I’m pretty crap at making decisions, but like… not that crap 😅

That’s like an impressively bad choice

G0ldenSp00n,
@G0ldenSp00n@lemmy.jacaranda.club avatar

This is not even true, they rewrote the engine to support native 64-bit precision to let them fit large spaces, they didn’t just make everything small. They basically employ all the people that used to make Cryengine since Crytek went out of business, so the engine they are building is actually pretty good.

Agent_Karyo,
@Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world avatar

I am engine developer, but even to this day you can clearly see Cryengine 3.x issue in star citizen.

They simulate zero-g areas as a Cryengine underwater map. You routinely see stuff floating as if in water even on planets with gravity.

You can also witness strange bugs that confirm the size issue (that they made everything extremely small in a Frankenstein version of a Cryengine map); one example would be your footmarks suddenly becoming massive.

The completely fucked up physics in sc (e.g. tanks bouncing like beachballs) is also a legacy of Cryengine 3.0.

Fades,

Classic, the person who doesn’t know what they’re talking about is SO sure that they know the truth. So much so they’re out here correcting people and handing out false info.

so the engine they are building is actually pretty good

Keep living in a false reality pal. I’m sure you k or so much more than the engine dev who replied to you.

How much $$ have you wasted on star citizen lmao

nailbar,

This is what happens when an ideas guy with no technical knowledge is making technical decisions.

If you’re talking about Chris, he’s a coder too, and wrote some of the entiry container system for the game.

I’m not sure where you’re getting your info about them scaling everything down and that being the cause for wonky physics, though.

brucethemoose, do games w Star Citizen Expose Paints a Fairly Bleak Picture: 'There's No Actual Focus on Getting the Game Done'

It’s still around?

I remember when Star Citizen first popped up, and it makes me feel old.

Seditious_Delicious, do games w Star Citizen Expose Paints a Fairly Bleak Picture: 'There's No Actual Focus on Getting the Game Done'
@Seditious_Delicious@lemmy.world avatar

OK. Never played SC so honest question here; What is wrong if the game is technically not complete? I mean the way I thought is that this means that it keeps evolving and expanding so new content and features become available as the game development progresses. What am I missing? Is this a similar situation to the Eve Online BitterVets?

sp3tr4l,

They consistently make promises for things that will exist in the future, which then takes them years beyond their expected timeframe to achieve, or just never do them because some other past promise or promise they will make later makes an original promise either totally unworkable or wildly different.

So, so many missed deadlines, which uh, actually were just aspirational.

And… this is a game that sells you ships, gear, for hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of real world dollars.

Some crazy promise will be made and oh, turns out that means we have to rework something like half the game’s systems to support that, but also they’re adding new content constantly that is always in some limbo state between following the old system’s paradigms and attempting to follow the new system’s paradigm.

What you end up with is a constant state of everything being a bit broken, and a lot of stuff being completely broken.

Its less like a released game getting DLCs and more like an alpha test that just never ends.

Which, again, costs hundreds or thousands of dollars.

dustyData,

SC is a scam. They sell ships for real money that only half work. The game is riddled with bugs, quests don’t complete. Users state is regularly wiped so there’s no point on progressing in it and instead of finishing the game they ask players for much more money to work on tiny niche technical problems that sound super important on presentations but don’t move the needle even a little bit towards a finished game. At best, it is video game history most expensive physics toy. In reality, when you scrutinize their finances executives have pocketed most of the money raised and devs have been paid poor wages and overworked to a constantly moving target. They have never finished a single roadmap item, but they have announced to fanfare at least 5 different development roadmaps that are the very definition of scope creep. Lots of announcements but never a release. Any competent studio would’ve delivered at least three completed games in the same timeframe for that amount of money. They’re an online asset store that sometimes let’s you fiddle with the digital models, not a video game.

dormedas,

It was kickstarted a decade ago with release dates which they’ve never kept thanks to a constant modification of what a release looks like - namely splitting the MMO-like Star Citizen out from the single-player blockbuster Squadron 42 - as well as scope bloat. A lot of people originally kickstarted the game (mostly for what we now call Squadron 42 + some multiplayer thing) but now a decade on, the MMO-like Star Citizen is seemingly the priority project and most of the people who are currently funding the game are primarily interested in that.

After hundreds of millions of dollars of funding, it seems clear that Squadron 42 in particular is in development hell as it still can’t seem to make it to market. Star Citizen, while playable, teeters back and forth from basically unplayable to playable and all “progress” is subject to wipes.

Dhs92,

Just some context: from 2017 until last year they had the majority of the development staff working on SQ42, which they declared feature complete last year and now we have a planned release of 2026. Most of the development staff has been moved back to Star Citizen which is finally seeing a lot of tech come online that was promised years ago. Definitely has a ton of scope creep, and it’ll probably never have an official release, but it’s definitely a cool tech demo that you can play.

Fades,

12+ years

hundreds of milllions of dollars invested

65+ million dollars in stretch goal funding

All that and you get:

a cool tech demo that you can play (when it’s not broken or wiped)

hahahahahahahahahahaha

BirdyBoogleBop,

The game is exactly the same as it was the first time I played it except now the lift always shows up.

dragonfucker,

Game keeps wiping players inventories including the in-game money used to buy ships. You can’t progress in the game, they just wipe you.

Allero,

Long story short, they severely fail to deliver on their promises and also mismanaged their development incentives so that they are not financially interested to ever release, or even make the game fully playable.

krimson,
@krimson@lemmy.world avatar

Instead of focussing on getting the core of the game finished and THEN expanding it they do it the other way around.

For example the mining loop now is broken again, people bought mining ships and vehicles with $$ and they are completely unusable. Not to mention all the bugs and instability. I hope they succeed but right now things are not pointing to something enjoyable within the foreseeable future at all.

Cagi, (edited )

Don’t listen anyone here, positive or negative. Try the next free fly and see for yourself. Too many feelings for an honest answer.

But here’s my 2 cents anyway, ha ha: I enjoy it, they are pushing out regular massive updates that make it more and more fun every quarter. They grew a studio from 8 people to over 1000, which takes years to do, so complaints that they have taken 10 years of full scale development are incorrect. Some people don’t like the idea it may never be the full game they set out to make, which is fair, it’s possibly the most ambitious game to date. But it’s being made in good faith, reports of a scam are about as reliable as moon landing conspiracy theories for many of the same reasons. In the meantime, what they do have is already a lot of fun. You only need to spend $50 to get in, people spending more are doing so voluntarily and generally without regrets. They have more players and revenue every year than the year before, this wouldn’t happen if it wasn’t already a fun game for many.

Gameplay is like a second life in space. It’s very spaceship centric, but there’s lots to do besides pilot. It’s slow paced, the design does prefer immersion over convenience a lot of the time.

If you like big, slow (with moments of high intensity), immersive, cinematic games, or if you like sci fi it’s definitely worth a try. Lone wolf play is doable, but taking a role on a crew is more fun (at least for me).

Adderbox76, do games w Star Citizen Expose Paints a Fairly Bleak Picture: 'There's No Actual Focus on Getting the Game Done'

Well no shit. He figured out that as long as you never “release” a finished game, you’re not going to be blamed for “bugs” while still collecting money on in-game purchases.

There’s a reason he made sure that the in-game store was perfected and ready to go long before the game was anywhere near completed. It’s been the plan ever since he and his team realized that the ultimate scope was likely out of their reach.

scrubbles,
!deleted6348 avatar

If massive universe sums like that were technically feasible all of the other studios would have done it. They were overly ambitious and didn’t understand the limits

Scolding7300,

In terms of immersion I think they’ve done a great job. Played during a free weekend. But they need to aim for a gameplay loop, polish, and release. Not this feature creep mentality

Maalus,

I mean Elite Dangerous is right there, finished, playable and fun.

CptEnder,

And is a mathematical model 1:1 scale of our galaxy.

Squizzy,

…that sounda awful, surely there is journey skipping?

mipadaitu,

Nope, it’s real time travel with no FTL. The reason it’s “finished” is that it takes hundreds of real life years to get anywhere, so they have plenty of time to populate the world’s before the first players arrive.

Squizzy,

Genius

swab148,
@swab148@lemm.ee avatar

No Man’s Sky too

Maalus,

Yeaaah, but they pulled the exact same thing Star Citizen did initially. They overpromised and underdelivered heavily. It took them years to get where it is now.

Player2,

And it first released a decade ago already (in a couple months)

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