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Does anyone know if this game is any good yet? It's been in development long enough. Their homepage really doesn't manage to make it very clear just what it's got working so far though...
It seems like the greatest scam ever pulled off as far as crowdfunding goes. A lot of people who have supported (and still are) this invested enough money and time that at this point that they can't go back. Sunk-cost fallacy at its finest. It's baffling that they keep doubling down with new "space ships" and milestones to distract people from the reality that it's never going to be fully released. Why sell a one-off game when you keep milking people with tidbits of false hopes and dreams?
Ketara wrote: Does anyone know if this game is any good yet? It's been in development long enough. Their homepage really doesn't manage to make it very clear just what it's got working so far though...
It has the most important thing working: the money-separation machine.
No idea how that works, but I expect alcohol and mind control in equal measures. Presumably its fueled by burning the ethics of Chris Roberts and his staff.
Ketara wrote: Does anyone know if this game is any good yet? It's been in development long enough. Their homepage really doesn't manage to make it very clear just what it's got working so far though...
There's an alpha that's available to play around with, and regularly has things added. E-mails go out weekly describing work that's being done on the two games (Star Citizen and Squadron 42 are the online sandbox and single-player storyline respectively of the release). Voice work has been done, and we know that there are a lot of things finished that have not been shown to the general public.
In short, it seems that Chris Roberts really does expect to release it at some point. The question, though, is when. The game was suffering from feature creep back when I last paid attention to it. Adding to that, the game is so overdue after being hyped so much that it will almost certainly be a let down when released.
Part of me is really curious about dipping a toe into it; it seems to contain all the sort of stuff that Elite doesn't. I love the idea of being able to walk around my ship or a space station. But having said that, the more I look into it, the more I am also put-off. It's been in development forever and even though regular updates do still come out, more and more features that were promised years ago slip ever ever further back on the roadmap. It's still riddled with bugs, even given its alpha status. Also, it's rife with ganking and platform ramming. That sort of stuff doesn't appeal to me at all - I only play Elite in Solo mode purely for that reason so if Star Citizen doesn't have an equivalent mode, then it isn't for me.
I backed it on kickstarter at one of the lower tiers, $20-40. Haven't paid much attention to it since. I've been tempted to throw more money in for some of the new ships they've offered since then but I firmly believe in not sending good money in after bad, and I need to see some more major milestones hit before I am willing to do so.
I think the real deciding factor will be whether or not they ever get Squadron 42 released, which I *think* the first part was supposed to release later this year, not sure if thats still on track or not.
Really though, they've raised what $300 million? I don't think they have any excuse or justification *not* to release...
CoALabaer wrote: Wargamers hate two things: the state of the game and change.
chaos0xomega wrote: I backed it on kickstarter at one of the lower tiers, $20-40. Haven't paid much attention to it since. I've been tempted to throw more money in for some of the new ships they've offered since then but I firmly believe in not sending good money in after bad, and I need to see some more major milestones hit before I am willing to do so.
I think the real deciding factor will be whether or not they ever get Squadron 42 released, which I *think* the first part was supposed to release later this year, not sure if thats still on track or not.
Really though, they've raised what $300 million? I don't think they have any excuse or justification *not* to release...
Well, at this point all the arguments I have read and videos watched on Youtube liken it akin to a Ponzi scheme. They promised an awful lot and realised that the amount of work needed to fulfil it exceeds their funding so they release more ship concepts and mission creep to raise more money to fund the stuff they have already promised, which in turn adds more development time that they need to fund and so on. It's a never-ending hamster wheel of needing to sell more ship concepts to fund development for stuff they have already promised and raised funds for. To all of this you add in the whole cult-like fandom that seems to go hand in hand with the project. I have doubts it will ever be released in a 'completed' state. Surely, in order to make money of the back of this, they will need to sell GTAV like numbers of copies? When has a space sim ever even remotely approached those levels of sales? I can't see it existing without subscription based play or ever increasing micro-transactions. Shame really, because I think the concept is great but everything I have seen/read points to severe managerial incompetence and wasting of funds.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2020/06/23 13:05:10
filbert wrote: Part of me is really curious about dipping a toe into it; it seems to contain all the sort of stuff that Elite doesn't. I love the idea of being able to walk around my ship or a space station. But having said that, the more I look into it, the more I am also put-off. It's been in development forever and even though regular updates do still come out, more and more features that were promised years ago slip ever ever further back on the roadmap. It's still riddled with bugs, even given its alpha status. Also, it's rife with ganking and platform ramming. That sort of stuff doesn't appeal to me at all - I only play Elite in Solo mode purely for that reason so if Star Citizen doesn't have an equivalent mode, then it isn't for me.
My suggestion is to wait for the retail release and read the reviews then. I don't see much value in mucking about in a feature-incomplete alpha.
(I backed the Kickstarter and played a bit a year or so ago. Waiting for a more complete version before I both digging my flightstick out of the closet again.)
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/06/23 13:10:59
They did promise too much which I imagine has hampered their production. Then again for a AAA game 7 years is not an unheard of amount of time to work on a project like this. I mean that's the amount of time Rockstar worked on RDR2.
That being said they should really just release the flight sim they had promised and, once they get it up and running, work on adding more features later in development.
Commodus Leitdorf Paints all of the Things!! The Breaking of the Averholme: An AoS Adventure
"We have clearly reached the point where only rampant and unchecked stabbing can save us." -Black Mage
Well in that regards this is basically "a tale of two games" - Elite: Dangerous took the "release a barebones game and and expanded features later approach". Its been out for roughly the same period of time but I doubt its pulled even a fraction of what Star Citizen has in sales - but on the flip side its playable (though I don't know that its fun)
CoALabaer wrote: Wargamers hate two things: the state of the game and change.
A very long time ago, I purchased the Mustang starter. And then a little while later, I grabbed another ship (the small cargo hauler that rotates 90 degrees in flight). I've played with the alpha in the past. But I think the last time I logged in was when they added my small cargo ship as a hanger model.
I expect that there will eventually be a release. There was a leak quite a while back that revealed that there are a *lot* of assets that they have been working on that players won't see until release (because they're ships that aren't for the civilian market). And iirc they've done voice work for Squadron 42. But the game has suffered horribly from feature creep (something that I started to wonder about when they promised to add the fps shooter stuff), and I've no idea when it will come out. And it's been in the public eye for long enough now that it's entirely possible that the public will be disappointed with it even if it's a pretty good game.
My own suggestion is to be very cautious about buying in right now, and keep in mind that you have no idea when (or if) you'll see a return on your investment.
I think personally, I'm going to give No Man's Sky a shot and see if that scratches the itch that Elite doesn't quite reach and wait if/when Star Citizen ever releases and see what it is like then.
I thought the fps stuff was always part of the game scope? IIRC the original scope included getting out of the cockpit to engage in combat on foot, etc. Even though its a space sim, they promised a large number of fully featured planets of pretty significant size from the get-go with points of interest to explore and content to engage with, it would be pretty boring if you spent that entire time just walking around unarmed and not doing anything other than hitting a button at prompts in order to view/talk/engage with something.
CoALabaer wrote: Wargamers hate two things: the state of the game and change.
From what I understand Star Citizens is using the cryengine. It’s a good engine but very poorly fitted for space games and online game. The biggest issue the game is continuously facing is getting it to run well. The cryengine works great for an FPS but not so much for other things. It seems they’ve been trying to jury rigg most off what the engine can do to get it to work, which has led to more and more slowdowns in development. That and many poor design choices, management issues and various controversies. There’ll probably eventually be a released star citizen but it’s not going to be what people backed or paid for.
Edit: scrap that. Apparently they swapped engines back in 2016. That’s 4 years ago. I think that means they’d have to reset a lot of the work put into the previous engine. They are currently using the Lumberyard engine developed by amazon. Lumberyard is based on the cryengine though so who knows.
Edit 2: reading about it I’m getting some serious Duke Nuke’em forever vibes...
This message was edited 5 times. Last update was at 2020/06/24 06:54:53
His pattern of returning alive after being declared dead occurred often enough during Cain's career that the Munitorum made a special ruling that Ciaphas Cain is to never be considered dead, despite evidence to the contrary.
I think the problem is that the demand for space exploration sims has become rather extreme - the community wants planets, space stations, walking spaceships, fleets, 1 on 1 fights, trade, empire building etc...
All thrown on top of highly detailed 3D environments.
I figure its just so much content that delivering on it is very challenging within the budgets that these games have and the timeframes. Hence why we see so many fail at launch and taking years to add the content or even going pure early access. It's simply a market segment that doesn't have the biggest budgets, but certainly has some of the biggest demands.
Overread wrote: I think the problem is that the demand for space exploration sims has become rather extreme - the community wants planets, space stations, walking spaceships, fleets, 1 on 1 fights, trade, empire building etc...
SC has promised the moon on a stick and is closing rapidly on half a billion dollars of donations.
It's a tough business model for anyone to compete with, especially as after 8 years, 500 staff, and over $400m out the door SC are still somehow raking it in with nothing more than a pre-alpha jpeg of their promised no guarantees no refunds moon and stick.
I also bought in at $20 when I thought Squadron 42 was about to drop. Like 2017 or something. I haven't bought anything since and haven't played since they introduced something. The FPS? I can't remember.
I've played plenty space sims and enjoy them. I didn't enjoy anything about SC. I'll see if I want to play it on launch
There’s a free fly event going on for the next week or so, I’m downloading it now as I’ve yearned for a decent space sim like this since, well, Elite on my Spectrum. Very dubious about pledging money but I’ll have a play and then probably buy X4...
Why couldn't I have had my current income when 5 Aspect Warrors were £2.99 a blister...
creeping-deth87 wrote: It's never going to come out. The project is grossly mismanaged and has promised too many things to ever realistically deliver.
The project is a scam and has been from the beginning. Even if they do eventually release something, it could never possibly justify the thousands of dollars spent on it or the decade plus (thus far) of development time.
Voss wrote: Er, while I lean towards the scam opinion for SC,
thousands of dollars is pocket change for game development.
If the pacing of fund-raising is just thousands per year, that actually justifies the long development time.
I suspect the amount of money wasted is much higher than that.
Apparently, they've recently reached $300 millions total. That's more than the GDP of some tiny island nations. Only powerhouse franchises like Call of Duty or GTA have a comparable budget and they usually take 5 or 6 years to make a new game. Star Citizen has already been in development for 8 years and from what I've seen it's still nowhere near complete.
I'm sure this started as a genuine project to make a truly awesome game, but it became so ambitious it's just impossible to deliver anything even close to what they've promised. The management refuses to acknowledge that and tries to just throw money at problems. That means they have to keep money flowing in to keep going, so they promise even more awesome features to get more people interested, which means more development to do, etc... It's basically devolved into a weird kind of Ponzi scheme.
Tiennos wrote: Apparently, they've recently reached $300 millions total. That's more than the GDP of some tiny island nations. Only powerhouse franchises like Call of Duty or GTA have a comparable budget and they usually take 5 or 6 years to make a new game. Star Citizen has already been in development for 8 years and from what I've seen it's still nowhere near complete.
They reached $300 million in official donations back in June.
But there was well over $100m on top of that from venture capital investments (for some 10-15% of the company at the time), subscriptions and other sponsorships based on their financial releases.
By now they are going to be somewhere between $450m and half a billion dollars.
Tiennos wrote: Apparently, they've recently reached $300 millions total. That's more than the GDP of some tiny island nations. Only powerhouse franchises like Call of Duty or GTA have a comparable budget and they usually take 5 or 6 years to make a new game. Star Citizen has already been in development for 8 years and from what I've seen it's still nowhere near complete.
They reached $300 million in official donations back in June.
But there was well over $100m on top of that from venture capital investments (for some 10-15% of the company at the time), subscriptions and other sponsorships based on their financial releases.
By now they are going to be somewhere between $450m and half a billion dollars.
To give this a point of comparison, the destiny franchise's development and marketing costs is estimated to be between 120 and 150 million dollars. That's for two games.
I got in on it when they announced Squadron 42, mostly because I dislike MP games which effectively lock out part time players because you cant compete with people playing it 20/24 365 with dedicated jobs. I have a real job and a real life.
I can't even remember which level I got in on, $30 IIRC. I got Minecraft for $10 IIRC. I've played that throughout development. My kid is now using my account.
I've given up on ever seeing a completed Star Citizen game, either Squadron 42 or SC. Either way my PC won't be able to handle it when it's released. I don't think it's possible to deliver what they've promised. I've got Elite Dangerous, No Man's Sky, X3, Flight Sim 2020... I can't see SC pulling it off. I'll be pleasantly surprised if they do bit I'd say no one give them any more money until they do produce something that's a real game.
IF it comes out, it will be the biggest Pay to Win in video game history. No real point if you are not ok with that. Some people are. Takes all types I guess.
