Chris Roberts calls bullshit on the Star Citizen feature creep police - Polidicks

[quote]Chris Roberts hasn’t really responded to all of the internet angst surrounding sci-fi virtual world Star Citizen. He’s kinda been busy with, you know, making the game. With his latest letter from the chairman, though, he has some pretty strong words for armchair experts and the feature creep police. “There are people out there who are going to tell you that this is all a bad thing,” Roberts writes. “That it’s feature creep and we should make a smaller, less impressive game for the sake of having it out more quickly or in order to meet artificial deadlines. Now I’ll answer those claims in one word: Bullshit!” He goes on to say that Star Citizen matters precisely because of its size and its expanded scope, which he notes was done at the behest of backers who willingly funded all the additional stretch goals. “Is Star Citizen today a bigger goal than I imagined in 2012? Absolutely,” he says. “Is that a bad thing? Absolutely not: it’s the whole damn point.”[/quote] Source: [url]http://massivelyop.com/2015/07/20/roberts-calls-b-s-on-star-citizens-feature-creep-police/[/url] They've already built two of the four gameplay cornerstones of Star Citizen and people are complaining saying it's not feasible? Not to mention the technology they're developing due to the fact that no existing engine was made to do such things. As long as they're within a year of the target dates, I find that reasonable and the people who disagree shouldn't be crowdfunding in the first place. I'd rather wait for the FPS module than get a rushed out version just to appease the impatient fans. By my estimates, they have more than half their funding left, and imagine how much they'll make when Squadron 42 and persistent universe becomes playable. [QUOTE=elixwhitetail;48256083][URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14839-Letter-From-The-Chairman"]The entire Letter from the Chairman is here.[/URL][/QUOTE]

Well you can't blame him for maintaining the image of "shooting for the stars". It's literally the point of all this.

Besides, there's Elite to play in the meantime...

People are just used to games being announced within 2-3 years before release, and only shown a vertical slice at some game convention. [editline]20th July 2015[/editline] [QUOTE=TornadoAP;48256055]Besides, there's Elite to play in the meantime...[/QUOTE] I love Elite, but it feels, well, unfinished.

Oh yea, go big or go home, I say as well. Probably hella risky, but it kinda reminds me of WoW, and how massive it was upon its initial release alone.

I'm still not sure they'll be able to pull this off.

[QUOTE=E1025;48256070]I'm still not sure they'll be able to pull this off.[/QUOTE] Why not? They've already done the hard parts of developing the mechanics and the technology. Content is easy, especially when you're given nearly 100 million dollars.

[URL="https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14839-Letter-From-The-Chairman"]The entire Letter from the Chairman is here.[/URL]

Good for him

[QUOTE=Intoxicated Spy;48256058]People are just used to games being announced within 2-3 years before release, and only shown a vertical slice at some game convention. [editline]20th July 2015[/editline] I love Elite, but it feels, well, unfinished.[/QUOTE] Elite feels unfinished and the FPS module will be paid dlc.

[QUOTE=Svinnik;48256138]Elite feels unfinished and the FPS module will be paid dlc.[/QUOTE] Isn't it going to be a full on expansion?

To me elite dangerous seems like a convenient star citizen-like test [editline]21st July 2015[/editline] like star citizen lite

I really hope SC goes above and beyond, might be a push for other devs to dream a little bigger.

For the life of me I can't understand what creep police means or even what the word creep means in this context. Can someone fill me in?

[QUOTE=FingerSpazem;48256344]For the life of me I can't understand what creep police means or even what the word creep means in this context. Can someone fill me in?[/QUOTE] Taken from Reddit [quote]An example for you - how a simple NPC taxi service idea blew out of proportion into the latest concept sale... "Ok, so we've identified a potential gap to close: if a player's ship is destroyed or otherwise inaccessible and they need to get from one place or another, we need some way for them to do that, so let's make a public transit system so that players can ride along in passenger transport ships." "Oh, so we're going to need to design some passenger transport ships then, okay we'll get on that. We might as well throw it up as an option for the backer-decided ship polls; if it does well then we can make it player-flyable." "Well the ship got voted in, so now we are working on it. We are going to have to fully flesh it out for flight now rather than it just being an NPC ship, so it will take some time. We'll call it the Genesis Starliner. It will be used to move people around!" "Who would have thought that carrying passengers around from point A to point B would be boring? Looks like we need to design some stuff to make this gameplay actually fun. How about a bartender mini-game? Yeah, that totally belongs in a space sim. Build it! That won't be enough though, let's also throw in a mechanic where you have to repeatedly replace spare parts that look like servers. We're in this mini-game thing deep enough already, why not go whole hog right?" "You know, what if there are people who don't want to do that mini-game stuff? Maybe we should make some variants of the Starliner for other purposes, I mean it isn't like we have tons of other features we already need to be working on. Let's get thinking on those variants! Clearly we need a military variant of this ship because reasons. What else could we sell people?" "How about a 'Luxury' one? I mean like more 'Luxury'. Better get to work on that too..."[/quote]

[QUOTE=FingerSpazem;48256344]For the life of me I can't understand what creep police means or even what the word creep means in this context. Can someone fill me in?[/QUOTE] Feature creep is when developers keep on adding new features that weren't part of the original design. It often leads to things like taking away development time from necessary features as well as bloating and over-complicating the end product.

[QUOTE=Jacen;48256447]Feature creep is when developers keep on adding new features that weren't part of the original design. It often leads to things like taking away development time from necessary features as well as bloating and over-complicating the end product.[/QUOTE] the great thing about the recent derek smart garbage is the feature creep he outlined, aka "star citizen isn't going to be made as it was originally proposed on kickstarter", isn't valid criticism because everything being added is entirely laid out and being paid for. If new stuff [i]wasn't[/i] being added after all the additional donations I'm sure that'd be a much more legitimate concern for all involved

Half of me hopes this gets developed in full as a fuck-you to developers that are too afraid to dream big/can't fathom that pushing limits is always feasible and is required. Then the other half thinks this has potential for massive disaster given how even projects slightly smaller have failed so easily.

-ah nevermind-

I think Star Citizen is more confused than something with feature creep. It's meant to be a Space MMOFPS with single player components. Trying to get those to gel together in a natural way is the biggest challenge and I'm not confident it will be possible to make each part with the depth that a single-genre game would have. then again I haven't really paid much attention.

[QUOTE=Lonestriper;48256769]I think Star Citizen is more confused than something with feature creep. It's meant to be a Space MMOFPS with single player components. Trying to get those to gel together in a natural way is the biggest challenge and I'm not confident it will be possible to make each part with the depth that a single-genre game would have. then again I haven't really paid much attention.[/QUOTE] Squadron 42 is basically the tutorial with a huge campaign behind it. The persistent universe is just dropping you into the world and letting you do whatever similar to EVE and Ultima Online.

What worries me is not development time, they're actually working faster than I expected, but the sheer scope of it all deserves some skepticism. I can't really see the whole MMO thing working out too well. IF it works as advertised then this will be a really fucking big deal, but it probably won't.

To be honest, I kind of lost interest in Star Citizen after the whole "buy in game ships with real money for the price of a car IRL" It'll be insanely awesome if they pull it off, but yeah. Shit's probably not going to be finished over the next year or two. I really think Early Access and crowdfunding are just extremely turbulent for development though, mostly because consumers are used to buying a product and having it exactly when they buy it, or at a date that's been specified. The simple fact that game development takes more than a few months to a year is funnily enough a shock to most people and makes them upset and scared. However, when all most people know about the games industry is just marketing by publishers and games announced a few months to a year before release, it's expected I guess.

I'm not a backer, so I might have a different perspective... But here's what I'm thinking. Why don't we all stop arguing about things we know nothing about, and just wait and see what happens?

[QUOTE=woolio1;48256904]I'm not a backer, so I might have a different perspective... But here's what I'm thinking. Why don't we all stop arguing about things we know nothing about, and just wait and see what happens?[/QUOTE] That's honestly what a lot of the backers say. Let the game speak for itself. Anything else is bullshit speculation, especially by people who don't watch the devlogs and read the updates. It's the people who didn't back the game who are the problem generally.

[QUOTE=Rahu X;48256902]To be honest, I kind of lost interest in Star Citizen after the whole "buy in game ships with real money for the price of a car IRL"[/QUOTE] I'll spare you the essay, but in short, it's not actually as P2W as it seems at first. More money gets you a more capable and powerful ship, but it's not strictly a linear power climb. The bigger the ship, the greater the responsibility and running costs. A multicrew ship can be flown solo by a capable pilot, and the game won't stop you from trying to pilot a ship intended to be controlled by 25 individual players by yourself, you're just left to put on your big girl panties and deal with the consequences when you perform suboptimally in a conflict. Alternatively, if you don't want to utterly fail but don't have friends online, you can hire AI NPCs to manage different crew stations, but their cost scales proportionally to how dumb they are--the smarter, the more expensive. Ships also come with, compared to the intended top end for equipment effectiveness/power, crap gear that's easily outclassed with upgrades. The largest and most expensive ship to be offered to players at all, the Javelin destroyer at $2,500 (only 200 units were sold), is sold without equipment, as the in-fiction explanation is that they're military surplus and therefore stripped of their previous milspec fittings -- simply outfitting the Javelin is likely going to cost more than even a small clan can manage for weeks. There's also the fact that ship sales have enabled crowdfunding to reach unprecedented levels, not only for game crowdfunding, but crowdfunding period. Compare this to Elite: Dangerous, where the pledge levels unlocked access to earlier and earlier milestones of the game, but no particular tangible advances in the game itself, and it received considerably less funding (to its detriment, I feel, as it launched when it did as essentially a recreation of the 1984 original on new tech, with the rest of the gameplay to be added later). Elite's offer for increasing your crowdfunding pledge beyond the minimum was mo' money = mo' problems (early alpha being what it is). Star Citizen's offer was, instead, mo' money = mo' ship. However, for the reasons stated above, mo' ship = mo' problems.

I really hate when people just assume that star citizen won't be made, it's got infinite time and a massive studio, gigantic funding and virtually none of it being spent on marketing. Of course, it won't be as big as the studio claims it will be (disclaimer : I am a backer, one of only 5 games I have ever gotten early access for) but it's pretty obvious they have the resources to pull this off. This isn't a dumb, 5 person indie studio that promises a huge amount of content and takes years to release any form of update (STARBOUND) - this might take awhile, but the longer it takes, I am happier. Weekly updates make it sweeter, so at least we can see what they are working on.

I see all this praise for this game, and honestly, the only thing going through my mind every time I read about it is how glad I am I didn't even buy into the hype. I don't care what the devs say, everything I read about it is pointless feature bloat and game modes. It's going to be yet another enormous generic do everything, yet do nothing interesting game. The only interesting part seems to be the game engine.

[QUOTE=Zephyrs;48258343]I see all this praise for this game, and honestly, the only thing going through my mind every time I read about it is how glad I am I didn't even buy into the hype. I don't care what the devs say, everything I read about it is pointless feature bloat and game modes. It's going to be yet another enormous generic do everything, yet do nothing interesting game. The only interesting part seems to be the game engine.[/QUOTE] Sounds like you haven't bother to read into any bit off the game or progress. And saying you don't care for whatever the Devs is quite rude. You dimiss what they say with out any valid reasons. What have the devs done to deserve that?

While I still have great interest in SC, I'm basically not playing other than when a major update comes out (such as FPS). Since I don't want to burn myself out on the gameplay along with keeping me interested with what comes out by playing it minimally. I only recently played the Arena module so I could see the new tutorial segment they put in and have no played since.