Star Citizen Megathread v. procedurally-generated deadlines - Games

w/o doubt the SC is way more open in lot of things happening in terms of development than most of 'space' games (even ED) ED usually just reveal what's soon to come, has no clear future medium - long term roadmap SC has short and medium term detailed public roadmap (very) and we sort of know long and distant term goals (partly on the KS/funding goals and dev blogs here and there) now to defend NMS (strange that thing) and similar indies we need to realize that the team was drastically smaller than SC team(s) the marketing wasn't high priority (until Sony took over lol) but let skip NMS mess compare with Hellion, Rogue Space, Evochron, Pulsar: Lost Colony, Astroneer etc. which are usually 1-2 man shows or very small teams they try to be open with what they do, often giving glimpses to future but mostly not medium or distant term it's probably something one must learn with huge project (e.g. like our Arma 3) that you need setup way more clear and detailed roadmap (but i seen exceptions e.g. Shallow Space developer has very detailed plans on scale you wold expect for way bigger project) e.g. 2015-2016 (one of our first complete roadmaps for public) [url]https://arma3.com/assets/img/post/images/a3_apex_roadmap.png[/url] e.g. 2016-2017 (our past to future roadmap for public) [url]https://arma3.com/assets/img/post/images/a3_post_launch_development_roadmap.png[/url] to our surprise it was met with quite positive feedback from users as they 'approximately' knew what and when to expect

The thing with games like E:D, Evochron and Space Rogue is that they're pretty much confined to your ship. You can't hop out and walk around on foot, board ships in a simulationist 1st person shooter environment and then jump back into your ship seamlessly without doing some significant programming to make sure everything works together as intended. In other words, what Star Citizen is doing is unprecedented and massive in scale, so yeah it's going to take a minute before it's exactly what they promised. Also keep in mind that in its current state, Star Citizen is in [B]pre-[/B][I]alpha,[/I] and runs pretty well as it is. There are games released by huge companies like EA and Ubisoft that were rushed out the door to meet deadlines and to avoid having reactions like yours come from shareholders who don't understand the concept of releasing a properly functioning product, as long as they make the sales they were promised when they made their investment. Star Citizen was funded by gamers who suffer from this on a regular basis, which is one reason CIG went the crowdfunding route instead of hitching onto EA or Ubisoft or Activision, who would probably have rushed this game out in a broken, buggy state a year ago and shrugged in confusion when people wondered what the fuck happened. In a world full of garbage Early Access titles and mid-beta full releases, CIG is doing a pretty good job of getting their shit done. Yes, deadlines are pushed, but by the time their promised functions get released, people are enjoying it and ready for more, which is more than I can say for Assassin's Creed or Call of Duty.

[QUOTE=Alsojames;52112878]Also keep in mind that in its current state, Star Citizen is in [B]pre-[/B][I]alpha,[/I][/QUOTE] no, it's just alpha

[QUOTE=the_killer24;52113009]no, it's just alpha[/QUOTE] My point remains. I've seen betas and even full versions of games that work far worse than this.

[QUOTE=the_killer24;52113009]no, it's just alpha[/QUOTE] In standard software nomenclature, alpha is a feature complete release with some of the content missing and high amount of bugs expected. Is Star Citizen feature complete?

[t]http://i.imgur.com/xeoJROz.png[/t]

[QUOTE=millan;52113173]In standard software nomenclature, alpha is a feature complete release with some of the content missing and high amount of bugs expected. Is Star Citizen feature complete?[/QUOTE] [quote=Wikipedia] Alpha software may not contain all of the features that are planned for the final version. The alpha phase usually [B]ends [/B]with a feature freeze, indicating that no more features will be added to the software. At this time, the software is said to be feature complete. [/quote] [url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle#Alpha[/url]

[QUOTE=millan;52113173]In standard software nomenclature, alpha is a feature complete release with some of the content missing and high amount of bugs expected.[/QUOTE] I know a lot of shitty practices have turned beta into "2 weeks before launch demo to build hype!!!" but 'feature-complete with public tests to hunt down kinks that need ironing' has always been [i]beta[/i] and I have no idea why you'd argue otherwise

idk about you but can this game support lots of players interacting at this level of complexity? In several years we've heard nothing really. For example, this other ambitious game in early development spends a lot of time explaining how they're figuring out netcode and performance issues right from the very beginning: [url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeZtqoydXpc[/url] Which is good for confidence because with Star Citizen we're all kinda backing blind on the issue of this game actually being playable and not feature creeped into oblivion. kinda the elephant in the room at the moment. They're not being very open or transparent about this side of things, which makes me uneasy considering they're willing to show almost everything else.

i'm very skeptical about Dual Universe, because of it's build and do anything approach (dead on arrival for me) while the netcode and engine optimizing info was interesting (they did several in past) it's logical approach (mostly) for way how one shall be scaling MMO in seamless single world

[QUOTE=NoDachshund;52113289]idk about you but can this game support lots of players interacting at this level of complexity? In several years we've heard nothing really. For example, this other ambitious game in early development spends a lot of time explaining how they're figuring out netcode and performance issues right from the very beginning: [url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeZtqoydXpc[/url] Which is good for confidence because with Star Citizen we're all kinda backing blind on the issue of this game actually being playable and not feature creeped into oblivion. kinda the elephant in the room at the moment. They're not being very open or transparent about this side of things, which makes me uneasy considering they're willing to show almost everything else.[/QUOTE] See that's the thing about the thing called research - Nobody said physical multiplayer planets were possible - so far it seems cig got that locked in good. Everybody assumed pin point warping in celestial distances wthout loading screens were, as a cold hard fact, impossible. Jump out of your ship in quantum drive, see what happens. Everybody assumed Star Marine was dead. Yeah it was, but we've got it now. It's called patience and DEVELOPEMENT. Read up on half-life 2. They scrapped the entire game for gods sake. Networking is hard. Goddamn hard. Look at PlanetSide 2. They did fix it in the end, so it is possible. And that's years AFTER they thought it was good enough for release. We have THOUSANDS of testers in PRE-ALPHA testing this shit on EVERY SINGLE RC. So i'm betting my goddamn fucking botttom Euro that this game is going to prove to YOU, that it CAN. Just not the time to show you yet. Is it gonna have hardships? Yes. Will the Alpha releases probably not work at all and be fuel for naysayers until it's fixed? Yeah. Will there be features missing from the full game? All games ever did that, it's nothing new. Do I believe in them? So far, I have no reason save Chris falling for a brigde troll. So fuck yeah, I believe.

Planetside 2 netcode is mess , it's clearly originating from p2p architecture ... @mendozaman i don't consider Star Citizen to be that special (Space Engine does exist, same goes about Infinity Battlescape, Outerra ) so huge visibility distances w/o loading screens isn't that new

[QUOTE=Dwarden;52113331]Planetside 2 netcode is mess , it's clearly originating from p2p architecture ...[/QUOTE] Which gives me confidence that CIG can make it work by rebuilding the entire thing into a custom network engine, which they are. It's just gonna take time, and I'm absolutely sure summer is veeeeery optimistic for a stable 3.0. Just gonna stash my Sidewinder and play other games. Not saying there's bashing here, criticism helps prevent cults and that's why I don't post on reddit. Of course things go wrong. I just don't see it happenning with the team CIG's got right now. [QUOTE=Dwarden;52113331]@mendozaman i don't consider Star Citizen to be that special (Space Engine does exist, same goes about Infinity Battlescape, Outerra ) so huge visibility distances w/o loading screens isn't that new[/QUOTE] True, but doing it on cryengine is in my eyes, fucking nuts and completely new.

CIG is definitely way more open with their development road map than say, Hellion, as an example. Glad they're out there making a game though, we need more spaced themed games, even if it's basically just Rust in space. It definitely has its own charm to it though, especially if you have 100 people sharing a single star system at one time. The downside though is a solar system is so fuck-huge that you'd likely rarely stumble across another player by accident just drifting through space. The idea of a persistent MMO with instanced planets makes lots of sense to me, because when are you going to have people in space, directly interacting with a planet surface? Aside from digital transactions for trading or communication, there really isn't a point. One thing I do definitely like from Hellion is the Newtonian based physics system, but I don't think it's something that would translate well to Star Citizen, at least from a performance and gameplay standpoint. It would be nice to have for orbiting stations and things, sure, but on the scale that Star Citizen is, I don't think its feasible at this point in time. It's obvious that SC, even in its current alpha stage, is way more polished than Hellion is. Hellion has some massive issues regarding player desync, and people will just pop out of existence and end up somewhere else entirely. Not really that surprising, but even after 2 years of devoted time and energy, you'd think it would be better than it currently is. It also doesn't help that all travel time is very much real time. Sure, I get that they're going for the realism thing, but sitting around doing nothing for an hour [I]or more[/I] is painful. The FTL warp effect is eye melting and absolutely hideous looking, plus there's plenty of game breaking bugs that will just crash the game for no apparent reason. The concept of base building is something I adore in games like this, but it's such a tedious thing to do in Hellion, mostly because of the Newtonian physics model I mentioned earlier, which causes immense rubberbanding and performance drops. Attempting to connect your ship with a station is also Kerbal Space Program levels of frustrating, unless you know exactly what to do and when to do it. Still, they're 2 years into development with 23 people, so there's plenty of room for improvement. With enough feedback, I'm sure a lot of my complaints would be addressed. After trying it via family sharing on steam, I likely won't preorder this until there's some real gameplay that's available. You won't see me shitposting on other forums or threads I wouldn't otherwise visit, just to complain about the dev cycle lasting longer than expected, and whining about how other peoples preorder money doesn't seem to do anything for improving development or the game itself.

[QUOTE=MendozaMan;52113326]So i'm betting my goddamn fucking botttom Euro that this game is going to prove to YOU, that it CAN. Just not the time to show you yet. Is it gonna have hardships? Yes. Will the Alpha releases probably not work at all and be fuel for naysayers until it's fixed? Yeah. Will there be features missing from the full game? All games ever did that, it's nothing new. Do I believe in them? So far, I have no reason save Chris falling for a brigde troll. So fuck yeah, I believe.[/quote] Combining evangelism and software development leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Most of your points are pretty much untrue. I've seen multiplayer planets, pin point warping in other games already. Star Marine is mediocre at best and the network is abysmal for what they're trying to accomplish. I'm confident that they'll make things good in the end, but I don't share your blind optimism lol. They're literally turning netcode issues into the elephant in the room. And the longer they ignore this problem while dazzling backers with other flashy features the more suspicious I'm going to get. Dazzle me with videos showing the progress they're making in creating even remotely complex network scenes. Why don't they show anything like this? Probably because they can't yet. [video=youtube;QeZtqoydXpc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeZtqoydXpc[/video] Is it because they've not even begun settling on a realistic approach to dealing with these issues and we might still be years away from having more than a sq42 single player game and a glorified lobby shooter? Who knows, with 3.0+ and the planned netcode improvements we might even reach the zaney heights of having thirty people on a single server with most of the players getting good playable performance. We can dream though right?

@mendozaman well CryEngine 5.x is actually way closer to those featureset than you may think ... overally i think it would be logical if RSI borrows as much code from CE5.x (as Lumberyard is still 3.8.x) ofc speaking those portions of engine they don't have already

IIRC, CIG has stated that multiplayer will be instanced for the general vicinity (whatever that vicinity is has yet to be determined, I think). It's not like they're going to have a WoW-like universe where people can run into each other just by flying around. Things like stations and maybe even planets will be persistent, but when you're just floating around in space, it's more like rolling the dice when you jump: if you're jumping to a sector of space where other players are, you may or may not end up in their instance and interact. At least that's how I think it's going to work. PvP battles will probably be centered around groups of pirates jumping into mining zones to steal cargo or engaging escort targets while the security team is on a mission.

Good to see you guys are still having pointless arguments about this game. I just gave up caring years ago. Either they make a game or they don't, it doesn't really matter to me. I bought my Aurora long enough ago that the money I paid doesn't really bother me anymore.

Is there a word on when they will stop selling ships? is it supposed to go right up to release or just to beta?

[QUOTE=Raidyr;52114195]Is there a word on when they will stop selling ships? is it supposed to go right up to release or just to beta?[/QUOTE] I find it hard to believe they will stop doing ship sales, both concept sales and general stores. Its a hard drug to wean yourself off. But I'm sure they'll scale them back at the point of soft-release. Maybe doing the odd yearly ~flashy~ sale for new ships or races or some other bullshit to keep the servers up.

They'll probably have a final big sale when Star Citizen proper (that is, the persistant world MMO) is about to be released, ending maybe a week or even a day before, as a "last chance to buy the stuff you really want before you have to earn it in game" kind of deal.

The plan is still to stop all ship sales except for entry game packages when the game enters beta. That's a while from now, however, unless they make surprise announcements with 3.0/3.1. You'll buy in and that'll be the only 'help' you get. Keep in mind that, unless Roberts is totally lying about everything, the game should not be a grind, and most ships should be reasonably easy to obtain in-game. Anyone who throws down their paycheck on spaceship JPEGs and thinks they're skipping some huge grind that's going to victimize newbies in their pleb sleds is going to have a rude awakening later. I could see [I]concept[/I] sales of ships still occurring past beta, because if a ship takes six months to make, few people will be buying for P2W purposes because the delayed gratification window is huge. They'd have plenty of time to mitigate threats to balance caused by an unusually huge purchase volume of a given concept before the ship is introduced to the actual game. The point of concept sales is to fund the actual creation of the ship, and anyone who didn't want to pay could just wait until it goes live and earn one for themselves. It could be abused, but I could also see it being used as a reasonable way of keeping the game free of mandatory subscriptions with minimal impact.

how OK i am with concept sales depends highly on how the ingame economy pans out. If it takes time for factories to get up to speed and crank out new ships i would have a bit of an issue with concept sales bypassing the existing economy somewhat. The main reason i can grit my teeth through selling ships is that it only sets the initial state for the universe. Also, i still see tons of people arguing that their ships will still be worth whatever they paid now for to other people once the game releases. Those people are still insane. Eve titans are worth hundreds despite taking thousand player groups to build them, if they think their fucking hornet is going to be worth that much they're loony.

[QUOTE=Mattk50;52115003]how OK i am with concept sales depends highly on how the ingame economy pans out. If it takes time for factories to get up to speed and crank out new ships i would have a bit of an issue with concept sales bypassing the existing economy somewhat. The main reason i can grit my teeth through selling ships is that it only sets the initial state for the universe.[/QUOTE] Like a year ago I pitched a scenario in which post-launch concept sales could be powerful motivating factors on the in-game economy by specifically making them tie into the game. To recap, the idea would be that a concept sale is a limited window, like it is now, and after that sale window closes, the ship does not come up for another sale. It's a single consignment of concept ships. Let's say that it takes six months to push the ship from concept sale to flight-ready, as a nice round average number. So Drake announces a new concept, and CIG holds a two-weekends-long concept sale. In-game, planets/etc. with industrial production hubs associated with Drake ships/components begin experiencing intense demand for raw materials. Miners and haulers are now in greater demand, which promotes piracy to prey on them, which promotes bounty hunting and defense/escort gameplay, and the knock-on effects continue down the line with increased demand to ships/components to replace everything blown up in the fighting and so on. Drake continues demanding huge globs of resources until it reaches some critical mass of raw materials near the point when the ship is nearing the end of development and is nearing flight-ready. A copy of the ship is then delivered to each concept owner and the universe is seeded with the new Drake Fuccaneer for sale in shops. Any miners or haulers who participated in the global effort to supply Drake with raw materials to power its new supply line should be enrichened well beyond the point of being able to afford one, unless they only did like half an hour of ore hauling towards it. Maybe there could even be a way of receiving a ship for free if you put X amount of effort into helping Drake to make it happen. I think CIG should introduce every post-launch new ship this way, whether or not they offer any cash pledge option, but if this was how they did concept sales, I think people would be okay with it unless they were egregious and allowed some Idris-tier capship to be up for pledge after the game is already economy-live. On the topic of CIG's networking, they've been working on something for quite a while and haven't been ready to show us. I expect there will be a discussion/reveal like the Dual Universe guys, but CIG's not ready for it yet. CIG is still a gold-level sponsor of [URL="https://github.com/networkprotocol/libyojimbo"][I]libyojimbo[/I], a new open-source library/protocol for writing efficient game servers[/URL] and we don't know exactly what libyojimbo means to StarNetwork 1.0 yet.

I thought CIG said it was about a month playtime for a medium sized ship. And that is just the hull, it's probably another month for all the upgrades, tweaks and replacements. That's longer than a World of Tanks peasant grind. And heck look at all the times Wargaming said they will stop selling tanks, or a certain type of tank for various reasons - only to sneak in another sale in a year or two later? Like that brokenly OP E25 tank for £80. I'll be surprised if CIG pull similar shit. Don't get me wrong, I want ship progression to be slow, and I want lower 'tier' ships to be viable and useful enough not to force constant new ship progression, unlike in Elite. [editline]17th April 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=elixwhitetail;52115266]On the topic of CIG's networking, they've been working on something for quite a while and haven't been ready to show us. I expect there will be a discussion/reveal like the Dual Universe guys, but CIG's not ready for it yet. CIG is still a gold-level sponsor of [URL="https://github.com/networkprotocol/libyojimbo"][I]libyojimbo[/I], a new open-source library/protocol for writing efficient game servers[/URL] and we don't know exactly what libyojimbo means to StarNetwork 1.0 yet.[/QUOTE] sure but I've been waiting every year to see something like that, and every year we see nothing. I'm sure they're working on it, but after all these years they've really got nothing but important, but not ground breaking optimizations in the pipeline? Is this game still several years away from being playable? That is my concern, and I think more backers are going to get disillusioned this year if things don't improve, or improvements are not shown in at least tech videos.

The difference between Star Citizen and World of Tanks is that as a straight up PVP arcade shooter, you're expected to upgrade to survive in World of Tanks. In Star Citizen, your Hornet is still a Hornet and will continue to function as it always did, the only thing is in a few real game years it may be rendered obsolete by a new production model Hornet. However, it's not going to be like a PVP shooter where you will absolutely [I]not[/I] win in a 1 on 1 fight because of the difference in tier level; skill still matters. In other words, the goal of Star Citizen is not to eventually buy a personal capital ship to fly around. It could be [I]your[/I] goal, but you'd have to keep logistics in mind. That's a lot of crewmen you'd need to hire. [editline]17th April 2017[/editline] Also, they released Star Marine pretty recently. That's a big deal. So is planetary exploration, and that's the next major thing.

[QUOTE=Alsojames;52115692]The difference between Star Citizen and World of Tanks is that as a straight up PVP arcade shooter, you're expected to upgrade to survive in World of Tanks. In Star Citizen, your Hornet is still a Hornet and will continue to function as it always did, the only thing is in a few real game years it may be rendered obsolete by a new production model Hornet. However, it's not going to be like a PVP shooter where you will absolutely [I]not[/I] win in a 1 on 1 fight because of the difference in tier level; skill still matters. In other words, the goal of Star Citizen is not to eventually buy a personal capital ship to fly around. It could be [I]your[/I] goal, but you'd have to keep logistics in mind. That's a lot of crewmen you'd need to hire. [editline]17th April 2017[/editline] Also, they released Star Marine pretty recently. That's a big deal. So is planetary exploration, and that's the next major thing.[/QUOTE] Sure but some (more expensive) ships out perform others at every level. No one likes being fodder for other npcs and players, especially in a game with perma-death. I never understood this argument that people parade around that in a 1v1 situation, the best pilot in a the game in an aurora is placed against the worst pilot in a super-hornet. This type of situation will never really happen, because its an incredibly extreme example. The majority of the time, it will be an average player competing against another average player, be it in combat, trade, racing or what ever. Yes skill matters, but so does ships and items. Its naïve to argue otherwise. Open world games like this need ships and items to matter to make them compelling enough to give a sense of progression and reward. At least on the flipside, each ship so far in SC seems to have character and is interesting enough individually - unlike that snorefest that is Elite.

[QUOTE=NoDachshund;52115721]At least on the flipside, each ship so far in SC seems to have character and is interesting enough individually - unlike that snorefest that is Elite.[/QUOTE] I miss my Clipper.

[QUOTE=NoDachshund;52115721]each ship so far in SC seems to have character and is interesting enough individually - unlike that snorefest that is Elite.[/QUOTE]Ew no. By and large SC ships have as much character as a middle manager who's favourite food is sandwiches. With 200 million I should be playing inside a John Berkey painting.

[QUOTE=NoDachshund;52115721]Sure but some (more expensive) ships out perform others at every level. [/QUOTE] This is a common argument on the SC forums as well, mostly in regard to the Hornet. If you plan on being a fighter, you need to look at your role: would you rather be slow, but tough and powerful (Hornet), super fast and agile but comparatively weak (M50, Mustang), rely on stealth to confuse your opponents but be utterly screwed if discovered (Ghost, Saber, although they're also pretty agile and strong)? Pick the right ship for your role. If you'd rather not buy in, start in your Aurora and do little jobs until you can buy your way into the more powerful roles using in-game money. I won't say the ships are perfectly balanced against each other, because they're not, and arguably they're not meant to be. A good pilot in a Saber will be able to ninja his way around a Super Hornet, but if that Super Hornet or one of his friends has an advanced radar package, he could pick up that Saber, and its primary advantage is lost. Likewise, a Super Hornet is supposed to be a space superiority fighter, so don't expect to face it down in a straight up slugfest.