Star Citizen
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CIG has now removed orbital mechanics from Star Citizen, saying they may be implemented "at a later date." A 24-player-per-server hard limit has now been confirmed, as well.
Fuck's sake, I played MUDs on a dialup connection like twenty years ago and they allowed more than 24 players.
Edit: Christ, now that I think about it, Wing Commander Prophecy was hacked to allow multiplayer, and that was a frankensteined piece of shit on an engine held together with prayers, toothpicks and chewing gum.
Fuck's sake, I played MUDs on a dialup connection like twenty years ago and they allowed more than 24 players.
Edit: Christ, now that I think about it, Wing Commander Prophecy was hacked to allow multiplayer, and that was a frankensteined piece of shit on an engine held together with prayers, toothpicks and chewing gum.
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Indeed. These are things that Chris Roberts touts as revolutionary when they've actually been around for decades.
If Chris Roberts was selling tacos, he would have a picture of the most delicious taco you've ever seen, and he'd be allowing people to buy in on the concept of making one. If asked why he doesn't just make the tacos the regular way, using already made ingredients, he'll explain that they're working to make the best taco anyone has ever eaten, ever. You see, other people just make flour tortillas by hand. What RTI, or Roberts Taco Industries, wants to do is go all the way back and create the atoms that form each individual ingredient that makes up the best taco ever, a process using their customized FRY engine. Now, currently, they're working on stabilizing the molecules to create the water necessary to begin the Flour Absorption Process 1.0™, but they feel really good about just finishing the manufacture of sodium crystals, which will eventually be made into a specialized mixture using chlorine which, while dangerous, will create a revolutionary seasoning worth every cent of your investment.
In the meantime, please pre-order all of your favorite toppings, like tomato, or swuzzberries. Sure, the latter doesn't actually exist, but with our patent pending technology, it will exist. I guarantee it*.
*Guarantee subject to void without notice
Taco Consumer - Coming August of 2014
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Oh, sure there is! Don't be so hasty! I mean, yeah, they promised 3.0 to look like this:
And instead it looks like this:
But that's no reason to give up! *cough*sending us money*cough*
In all seriousness, the game isn't ever going to be what they've promised. The problem is that what they promised was a AAA immersive space and combat sim that got them $150,000,000+ in Kickstarter donations, and what they've delivered so far isn't worth $9.95 in the bargain bin. Chris Roberts is a grand dreamer, but a horrible project manager, and right now this all looks more like a scam rather than a game in development, because after 5 years the alpha is barely playable, and is so restricted to little modules here and there that there is no actual game experience.
As I've said before, I play Elite: Dangerous. It was started as a Kickstarter in 2012. By 2014, the game was released. Sure, it's being improved upon constantly, but there is a game there, and it is playable, immersive, and complete in the sense that if you travel to a star system, there will be a star system there when you arrive. Planets orbit. Ships land. Economies happen. Achievements work, and more is on the way. For all of Roberts posturing about hand crafted systems, thanks to Horizons, the ED expansion, I can land on orbiting planets and moons, scour for minerals and mine them. For 1/75th the budget of Star Citizen's funding, Elite: Dangerous can already do 75% of what Roberts promised more than 5 years ago.
People should have cottoned on to this by now. Star Citizen is the delicious carrot that's always an inch outside of your grasp. Just a little more money, just a little more time, and you'll have it.
Too bad the carrot's just a picture of a delicious carrot, because the Carotene 0.3™ project is still in alpha testing.
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Indeed. What gets me is that the game isn't already being built around VR. It was going to be a promised core component of the game! Then it was not so promised. Now it's a long-shot at best.
My gut tells me that they're either hitting the limitations of the CryEngine, or they simply lack the necessary skills to make it do what Roberts is touting. I'm going with the latter, because the CryEngine is damned flexible. I sincerely hope people get the best game they can from Star Citizen, but without a publisher to keep Chris Roberts in line, he's just going to pie-in-the-sky his way into bankruptcy, if he hasn't already.
There are 50-100 player Alpha multiplayers today that are being made on a fraction of that budget, series updates once a month, handling constant gameplay at a competitive level to AAA games by people that are producing aspects of it in their own time while working on actual studio games.
How can this thing be sucking in more idiots money than Axanar and still not have anything close to that. You have to be sitting on your hands and staring out a window about 60% of the working day so far to accomplish so little.
How can this thing be sucking in more idiots money than Axanar and still not have anything close to that. You have to be sitting on your hands and staring out a window about 60% of the working day so far to accomplish so little.
If you have a boss who constantly changes his mind about everything and is more interested in shiny pictures than actually producing code and content then this is what happened with Star Citizen (including pissing away money by buying unnecessary equipment and hiring friends and family to positions they are not capable of handling).
Roberts is a visionary but he lacks the discipline to reign himself in and produce what's realistic in a given timeframe.
Elite Dangerous is the best counter example.. while it may not look as awesome shiny as Star Citizen they kickstarted their game very successfully and then worked on completing the core of the game in a reasonable time. The finished product was awesome (played it for a while until my pro control stick/thruster combo crapped out and i couldn't find a suitable replacement) and they expanded on it with a major DLC once the game was up and running and they made some money off it.
This is what a capable company and boss can and should do.. if Roberts had someone like this over him we'd be playing Star Citizen already with some major DLCs already released or under way. This way i guess we'll never see a full game and what we may get will perhaps be buggy as hell and in no way be able to match the insane plans Roberts has.
Roberts is a visionary but he lacks the discipline to reign himself in and produce what's realistic in a given timeframe.
Elite Dangerous is the best counter example.. while it may not look as awesome shiny as Star Citizen they kickstarted their game very successfully and then worked on completing the core of the game in a reasonable time. The finished product was awesome (played it for a while until my pro control stick/thruster combo crapped out and i couldn't find a suitable replacement) and they expanded on it with a major DLC once the game was up and running and they made some money off it.
This is what a capable company and boss can and should do.. if Roberts had someone like this over him we'd be playing Star Citizen already with some major DLCs already released or under way. This way i guess we'll never see a full game and what we may get will perhaps be buggy as hell and in no way be able to match the insane plans Roberts has.
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Bingo. People should see it as the money sink it is. After 5 years and the game is still in Alpha, with 90% of it useless and buggy, I'd be demanding my money back.
Yep. Elite: Dangerous, and Star Citizen started out around the same time. I stole this timeline from one of the guys over at ED:
Start of Kickstarter Campaign: 6th November 2012
End of Kickstarter Campaign : 5th January 2013
Alpha 1.0 - Combat and Flight : 12th December 2013
Alpha 2.0 - Multiplayer : 5th Feb 2014
Alpha 3.0 - Docking and Ship Outfitting : 19th March 2014
Alpha 4.0 - Trading and Travel : 15th May 2014
Premium Beta : 30th May 2014
Standard Beta 1: 29th July 2014
Standard Beta 2 : 30th September 2014
Standard Beta 3 : 28th October 2014
Standard Beta 3.9 : 20th November 2014
Elite Dangerous Launch : 16th December 2014
Started in 2012, released by 2014, had about $2,000,000 in funding, and Elite: Dangerous has been out for almost 3 years. What's more, Frontier Developments has continually improved upon it. The game has built a fine community, with players contributing to the growth of the universe. Even I'm in there, now, with a number of star systems I discovered that hadn't been discovered yet, so my name is a part of the game lore, too, along with thousands of others who continue to explore this HUGE universe. What does Star Citizen have after 5 years and $150,000,000? Some shiny tech demos, terribly buggy modules that cause even high end gaming systems to give up the ghost in defeat, and promises. Lots of promises. Oh, and ships, but not ships you can own yet, just ships you can buy. You're essentially buying .jpgs in the hopes they will become ships, and you're using real money to do it.
Meanwhile, I can climb into my Orca, the IMC Arabesque, pick up a few passengers at Al-Haythem Enterprise (a coriolis station orbiting LHS 350 6A, a lovely ringed planet), in the LHS 350 system, and drop them off at Roddenberry Relay (a station in the LHS 391 system) some 22 light years away. Or I can be a pirate, a trader, a combat specialist, a smuggler, or just head out to Colonia, the other human settlement some 25,000 light years outside of the "bubble" (where most of the civilizations are in the game). I went to Colonia once, in a ship that could make 31ly jumps at a time. It took me 4 real days to get there. That's how huge the game universe is. It encompasses the entire galaxy. If I wanted, I could have made a side trip to Sagittarius A*, a supermassive black hole in the center of the galaxy (though I didn't because it scares me).
Why can't Star Citizen start with this and build from there? Why have they spent $150,000,000 on things that may never happen, while the foundation itself is incomplete? Who builds the most luxurious jacuzzi room ever, without building a floor, walls, or plumbing to connect to it first? Apparently, Chris Roberts.
Yep. Sagittarius. A small time paradise. Some cheap little bungalows and a mind warp machine. I needed a break. A stone bed and mind warp seven can do a lot for a suffering man.
This is exactly his problem. He's a creative, not a manager. You leave him in charge of anything that has to actually ship, you will never see it ship. A good leader recognizes his limitations. Roberts does not.
Would a Thrustmaster T-Flight HOTAS not be acceptable to you? (I have one, it's very nice.)
Maybe he should sell to David Braben, then the game will actually get finished!
First serious flightstick i got was a Saitek X52.. nice feel despite the plastic but i bought it cheaply from Ebay and realized why it was cheap.. the stick wasn't very receptive (and even faulty at times) to control input so i chucked it into the trash.
Since i liked the feel i then bought a new X52 but the Pro version which was mostly metal and very sturdy, felt really awesome and the versatility was beyond everything (about a million button combinations that could be programmed).
Unfortunately Saitek was extremely bad with driver support and installing them was a true nightmare and extremely frustrating and didn't work all the time. After a while it started to affect my Windows PC (freezing the system and disabling some functions) and when the stick started to have the same problems as the plastic one i returned it after about a year and Amazon refunded it fully (say what you will about that megalomaniac corporation but their customer service is top).
After that i just couldn't return to the cheap plastic Hotas systems and i didn't want to shell out the 300+ Euro it would cost to go next level and get another pro Hotas system so i shelved Elite Dangerous
Frontier had been working on the game engine two years before the Kickstarter. When it was launched. it was a complete mess and almost unplayable.
There is no economy. It's your standard market you see in every game.
And that's basically all you can do. It's pretty dulll and the SRV handles like it's on an ice rink.
The problem is when Elite promise a feature, it's usually release broken or buggy.
Listen Elite has the same problem as SC. It's a big game that the game developers can barely manage. Right now they can get away with it because is a simpler game.
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Elite has a game they kickstarter funded for $2,000,000. Two years later, they released it. Over the past few years, they've released expansions. The newest expansion is coming out somewhere around September or October. Also, there is an economy. Government changes, factions change, economy changes, based on what happens. The universe operates in real-time. Community goals are established. Territories expand, civil wars break out, and the costs of commodities go up or down based on which faction is winning. So, you know, it is like SC, except it exists, you can play it, and it is improved upon as they go. Oh, also, it cost 1/75th the budget of SC to make.
Does Elite: Dangerous have bugs? Oh yes, but that's what happens when you release a game to the public. Every game has bugs, and no, not every feature released by Frontier Developments, the people who make Elite: Dangerous, is broken or buggy. The thing is, they back up their promises with actual substance. Out of the thousands of promises from Chris Roberts, how many have come to fruition, and how many get pushed back further and further, until they disappear entirely, or are reneged upon at a later date? So call their releases buggy if it makes you feel better, but it doesn't address the fact that Star Citizen doesn't even have a game they can release after 5 years of development, and $150,000,000, because it's still in alpha and pre-alpha stage, with no release date in sight.
As for the SRV, when was the last time you drove one? I can climb mountains, ridges, take it down into valleys, and if I get stuck, use the onboard propulsion system to extricate it. I use it to mine, explore planets, hack security computers at ground bases. It's a pretty agile little guy, if you learn how to use it right. Plus, each planet has different gravity. Did you know that? Yes, each planet has different gravity. Some have earth normal, others have less than one would have on the moon, while others have almost Jupiter-like gravity, and are hard to navigate as I bring my ship down through the atmosphere on a glide path to land and check out the alien ruins I discovered from my ship as I was orbiting said planet.
I mean, it doesn't compare to Star Citizen's planet expl-, oh, that's right, Star Citizen doesn't have planetary exploration. They're still handcrafting those 100, er, dozen, um, 5-10 planets, or maybe small moons now, for exploration, and even though they decried procgen years ago, looks like they'll be following Frontier Development's plan to procgen their planets with POIs instead of handcrafting them all.
In Elite: Dangerous, I can be a smuggler, a pirate, a trader, a mercenary, an explorer, a miner, a fighter pilot, bounty hunter, and up my rep as a member of the Federation, the Empire, the Alliance, one of the many small factions that fight for dominance, or maybe when the Thargoids arrive they'll let me join up with them, because that's coming soon, and I'll actually see that happen in the near future.
Where's Star Citizen's release? Not the new stuff, the foundation of the game where the universe is persistent and the game loop is connected. Oh, that's right, it doesn't exist. You can buy a lovely .jpg of your ship, though. I'm sure you'll get it eventually.
In the meantime, I'll go power up my Saud Kruger Orca, the Arabesque, which exists, and head on out to Millerport, in Quince. Which exists.
In short, your argument is invalid.
o7
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Edited because I kept thinking of things that Elite Dangerous has right now that Star Citizen does not, which is everything, because Star Citizen has jpgs, and a few disjointed, incomplete modules that are buggy all to hell, and that's it.
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I hear @Coloratura is a Frontier Developments plant
I'm not saying I have proof that David Braben is paying him out of pocket, but I'm also not saying that he's not
I'm not saying I have proof that David Braben is paying him out of pocket, but I'm also not saying that he's not
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That sounds like concrete proof to me!
Seriously, though, I couldn't help it. Star Citizen sounds like a pretty awesome concept, but right now that's all it is. Elite: Dangerous is a real game that has been published, and improved upon over the 3 years it has been released, with more improvements on the way; improvements that will likely happen because the track record of FDev is verifiable.
Star Citizen, on the other hand, is under the control of Chris Roberts, who is a wonderful dreamer, but an atrocious project manager. I used to play Freelancer in my early 20s, and I loved that game. Of course, what we got of it was half-baked because the publisher finally got fed up and forced everything together to be released because it had gone years over time and millions of dollars over budget.
This time there's no publisher outside of Cloud Imperium Games, Roberts own company. In fact, if you read the story on Freelancer, things begin to look oddly familiar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancer_(video_game)#Development
Freelancer Wiki Article said:
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Braben doesn't pay me enough to shill like that, that's for sure. 
I will totes shill for Rodina, though.
I will totes shill for Rodina, though.
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