Star Citizen Megathread v. procedurally-generated deadlines - Games

if you worried about cheat engine and need to get EAC for sorting that then you have bigger things to worry and EAC will not solve it ... but some people just like theirs bombastic marketing and presentation full of slides ;)

How about you don't avoid the question? :v: [QUOTE=Dwarden;52772578]which if the rumor is true, seem to not be happening with SC and that makes me to worry (as i said before)[/QUOTE] Which rumour is this and where did you hear about it? :dog:

[quote]but some people just like theirs bombastic marketing and presentation full of slides ;)[/quote] this is the nicest way I've seen someone say 'selling jpgs of space ships', thanks

is the game fun yet

[QUOTE=Squeegy Mackoy;52776088]is the game fun yet[/QUOTE] If you're asking if you should buy in wait til 3.0 drops in the next few weeks. It's fun as it is but 3.0 is supposed to be bringing the first passes of the base gameplay mechanics so it will be a better reflection of what the game is supposed to be.

[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;52775782]How about you don't avoid the question? :v: Which rumour is this and where did you hear about it? :dog:[/QUOTE] i though i posted that before including url ... guess the edit timed out was some forums, some reddits based off evocati leaks, hence i marked it >rumor< anyway i explained repeatedly why i think >something< is subpar and that there're better >alternatives< to pick from amid different >priorities< before that pick feel free to prove me wrong (so i can learn something new from that mistake)

[QUOTE=Dwarden;52777121]some reddits based off evocati leaks[/QUOTE] Are you talking about the one run by a moron who deletes his thread OPs or the subreddit run by Derek Smart's minions that reposts everything the other leaks sub reposts from 4chan's /vg/ threads? Because in both cases their sources are subject to pollution from disinformation and trolling. But anyway, I don't know what you expect me to do to prove you wrong when you're floating hazy unformed rumours. Like, seriously, [I]what are you even saying here?[/I] [QUOTE=Dwarden;52772578]anyway my point about the anticheat was simple, if you have the money (which should be case of the StarCitizen) you put the money in the engine, server architecture, netcode and secure clients as much as doable then you deploy the best anticheat on the client (because some forms of cheats can still exist even in 'near-perfect' scenario of secure game) which if the rumor is true, seem to not be happening with SC and that makes me to worry (as i said before)[/QUOTE] Are you claiming that the rumours state that CIG hasn't been hardening the engine, server architecture, netcode, and client, or is it that the rumours are that CIG is deploying EAC, which is not "the best" anticheat, or.... what? I don't even know what you're trying to say is or is not supposedly happening. I can't do anything to disprove a vague rumour I can't even identify clearly. Explain what you think CIG isn't doing.

[QUOTE=dai;52776062]this is the nicest way I've seen someone say 'selling jpgs of space ships', thanks[/QUOTE] I mean, citcon last year was literally death by powerpoint

[QUOTE=capgun;52777284]I mean, citcon last year was literally death by powerpoint[/QUOTE] They've learned, though. [del]Citcon[/del]Gamescom was 4 slides this year. [t]https://i.imgur.com/ZxJhTlA.png[/t] And this was the least useful slide and it still contained all the info available about the prototype for the face-tracking camera. [editline]w[/editline] whee brain typos of course I know Citizencon is two weeks away

[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;52777329]They've learned, though. Citcon was 4 slides this year. [t]https://i.imgur.com/ZxJhTlA.png[/t] And this was the least useful slide and it still contained all the info available about the prototype for the face-tracking camera.[/QUOTE] that was uh... gamescom. Citcon this year is on October 27th. Guess we'll see in two weeks.

@elixwhitetail ... calm down i explained my opinion and clearly said >if x rumor true then i get for y worried< sigh ... wait and see no point to lose more time trying

[QUOTE=Dwarden;52777616]@elixwhitetail ... calm down i explained my opinion and clearly said >if x rumor true then i get for y worried< sigh ... wait and see no point to lose more time trying[/QUOTE] I'm not giving you any hassle because you presented something as a rumour. I'm not some kind of fact cop demanding three citations for any claim like some fascist Wikipedia mod. I was curious to know where you got the rumours from, because some places generate total bullshit while other rumour sources may actually be based in fact, but the fact that you posted about a rumour is not a problem. I'm giving you hassle because your explanation was vague and unclear, so I don't even know what rumour you're referring to. Your post is actually unclear. And I am asking for clarification, because I don't understand what it is that you are trying to say. This is not a witch hunt, this is a question of "what are you even talking about, Dwarden?" [QUOTE=Dwarden;52772578]anyway my point about the anticheat was simple, if you have the money (which should be case of the StarCitizen) you put the money in the engine, server architecture, netcode and secure clients as much as doable then you deploy the best anticheat on the client (because some forms of cheats can still exist even in 'near-perfect' scenario of secure game) which if the rumor is true, seem to not be happening with SC and that makes me to worry (as i said before)[/QUOTE] Breaking the parenthetical statements out, you end up with this sentence: [QUOTE]if you have the money, you put the money in the engine, server architecture, netcode and secure clients as much as doable, then you deploy the best anticheat on the client, which if the rumor is true, [B]seem to not be happening with SC[/B] and that makes me to worry[/QUOTE] There is a lot going on in this sentence but the bold parts are what I care about. Please explain what the rumour is. What is CIG supposedly not doing? Are they not spending the money into the engine or netcode? Or are they deploying an anticheat that is not "the best", or... what? I actually want to understand what you're trying to say here. I hope this makes the question clear.

[QUOTE=Grenadiac;52776936]It's fun as it is[/QUOTE]That's what I'm concerned about. I already have a ship, I bought a 325a when it was available. I'm just wondering if its worth re-installing yet (or ever). I'm more than a little dissapointed that such a massively resourced modern take on a space shooter, the very first form of vehicular combat game ever made, does vehicular combat so poorly.

[QUOTE=Squeegy Mackoy;52777855]That's what I'm concerned about. I already have a ship, I bought a 325a when it was available. I'm just wondering if its worth re-installing yet (or ever). I'm more than a little dissapointed that such a massively resourced modern take on a space shooter, the very first form of vehicular combat game ever made, does vehicular combat so poorly.[/QUOTE] I can't rate twice, so I disagree on if it's worth re-installing right now. Maybe wait until 3.0 comes out and is a few patches deep, but be prepared to continue to passively watch the game and hope for the best. Agree on being disappointing that what should be the single most important and basic part of the gameplay is still kinda just mediocre. I know Elite comparisons trigger quite a few people here, and say what you will about the rest of the game, but Elite felt fucking [I]good[/I] to fly around in from its first publicly playable builds.

The new player experience fucking sucks, for fucks sake it puts brand new players in auroras into the arena with top players in superhornets, it's honestly a bigger PR mess than it is a game design mess. But, people aren't used to seeing the stew half cooked, and it can be hard to tell how the stew is doing before it's done. It's really only "done poorly" on first impression, and that depends a lot on your expectations. A lot of players go in and expect what they've seen before which varies from star wars to planes in space or something slower, more like elite dangerous. I think I think they should stick comstab default on again and work very hard to create that perfect first impressions flight model that is comfy for new players to get into and comfy to fight other new players with, this would improve first impressions and the new player experience by leagues. But only make the whole flight model like elite dangerous if you want to create something eternally mediocre that will only get worse as players learn it instead of better. In essence, you take the ED route if you want instant gratification but get stuck with something that's unmemorable and lacks player progression. You take the SC route if you're trying to create a flight model and game with staying power. I could go on (and on) about the problems with SC's flight model, you won't catch me saying its perfect, but the current state of it at a mid to high level of play is leagues ahead of everything else on the market(though, there's some other unreleased with potential). If SC is doing poorly we have a general space combat game crisis on our hands. Most of those titles are either justifiably simplified to match their scope (see house of the dying sun, everspace, both overall solid games) or fail to grasp space combat while lacking significant depth and technical skill (elite dangerous). Meanwhile, SC has several systems and mechanics that contribute to a large amount of depth while maintaining fast pacing, without those things coming from excessive complexity. Consider the addition of combat relevant gforce (ED has gforce but because it's so rarely a concern it might as well not exist), players with gsafe off constantly need to balance their thrust and reorient their ship to keep specific maneuvers going, maneuvers which must simultaneously evade and keep the ship on target. This element doesn't overcomplicate things, as with gsafe on your controls stay simple and your ship just plays it very safe. Even alone, the gforce system is a level of gameplay interest most competing titles don't have, but then you multiply this depth by the need to position your ship to provide a small target to the enemy and take advantage of different thrust strengths on each side of your ship. (something ED has, but it makes those off-directions useless and therefore not even an option, removing any question of "which direction is best to go now" from the players mind). Then the velocity and fire rate of the weapons you use will affect how you should best use those flight tools in a dogfight, and with each new factor you get to multiply the depth even more. Each of these aspects comes from a simple set of rules (having enough real physics helps here) and realizations which the player can confront one at a time. The initial controls screen is complicated but once he has a handle on those basics, each new "tool" whether thats gforce, positioning, thruster strengths, various maneuvers and approaches can be discovered, learned and mastered one at a time, with each new layer affecting previous layers, in any order. This is fundamentally excellent game design, i'm not even entirely convinced it was intentional but some credit is due there in either case. 3.0 is also about to dump relevant shield, power and heat management on our heads, and in general there is a lot of room to grow when systems like missiles stop being overly simplistic. tl;dr: the game doesn't do vehicle combat poorly, but the new player experience sucks donkey dick so you'd never know unless you put the hours in

[QUOTE=Squeegy Mackoy;52777855]That's what I'm concerned about. I already have a ship, I bought a 325a when it was available. I'm just wondering if its worth re-installing yet (or ever). I'm more than a little dissapointed that such a massively resourced modern take on a space shooter, the very first form of vehicular combat game ever made, does vehicular combat so poorly.[/QUOTE] This is what I fear. They're focusing so much on tiny details about the economy and shit like that it feels like they are ignoring the base gameplay. They're bouncing between flight models every major update; I don't know how they're actually getting work done on the singleplayer when the parameters for the entire physics system switch every 6 months. I find actually [I]flying[/I] ships in Star Citizen, the main focus of the game, to be terrible dull at best and frustrating at worst. Every action I do in my ship - or on foot - feels like it runs through four layers of abstraction so it ends up feeling like I'm trying to steer the ship with a wet noodle. You ever drive a car with a damaged steering rack? It's like that. Star Marine is an unholy matrimony of ARMA and Counter-strike. It feels slapped together from random elements of different games and none of them fit together properly. Granted, I haven't played it since about a month after it came out. The 'immersion' crowds want to make it even more of a waiting game than Elite (god why). Like sitting there for twenty minutes while your ship is unloaded and loaded. Multicrew will be dead on arrival unless it's as generous as Elite's model. Turrets are going to be DOA regardless, nobody wants to sit in a underpowered B-17 ball turret for three hours waiting for 60 seconds of pirate engagement when they can just dump a bot in it instead. (rant over) I still reinstall it every major update to give it a whirl, but my expectations are petering out.

[QUOTE=Why485;52778274]I can't rate twice, so I disagree on if it's worth re-installing right now. Maybe wait until 3.0 comes out and is a few patches deep, but be prepared to continue to passively watch the game and hope for the best. Agree on being disappointing that what should be the single most important and basic part of the gameplay is still kinda just mediocre. I know Elite comparisons trigger quite a few people here, and say what you will about the rest of the game, but Elite felt fucking [I]good[/I] to fly around in from its first publicly playable builds.[/QUOTE] I agree with your sentiments but I find it weird that I disagree with you on the feel of flying and fighting in ships here vs elite (ESPECIALLY in its early days), given the way you like your ships in your game project, and in prior space games.

[QUOTE=dai;52779279]I agree with your sentiments but I find it weird that I disagree with you on the feel of flying and fighting in ships here vs elite (ESPECIALLY in its early days), given the way you like your ships in your game project, and in prior space games.[/QUOTE] It's not so much the mechanics themselves of Star Citizen that sucks, it's the feeling and aesthetic consequences of it all that sucks. If that makes any sense. I know that sounds really subjective, and it is on a lot of levels, but Star Citizen doesn't [I]feel[/I] good to fly. Good mechanics and good feel are not mutually exclusive as the way the Elite comparison is often interpreted implies. That said, I do think some mechanical changes would be required to really go all the way. I doubt it'll ever happen though because Pandora's box has already been opened when it comes to speeds, distances, and stuff like that. I don't really disagree with Matt on a purely mechanical level. There is technically depth to the game. The problem is that it's deep in an ARMA II way. Yeah, there's a lot going on and it's a very powerful package, but it all feels and moves like crap. Again talking about Elite, which I know people [I]hate[/I], but Elite has an incredible level of smoothness, polish, and responsiveness to the way the ships move. It's had it since the very beginning, and it comes from anything related to flight coming together to be greater than the sum of its parts. The UI is very informative about everything that's happening on your ship and to your ship. The sound design is a benchmark setting level of communication on how your ship is moving. The way the camera moves in reaction to your own movement, G-Forces, and outside forces, gives the player subtle visual cues without looking weird and distracting. The way the guns fire is very responsive, with great visual and aural feedback. Your targeting markers, radar, and crosshairs are all clear and easily read. Everything is intuitive, smooth, and there's never a moment where something awful and jarring happens that completely takes you out of the experience, which is something that happens [B]a lot[/B] to me while playing Star Citizen. There is subtle, but remarkable sense of continuity between every single action you take in it. I actually had half-written a huge essay of a post in response to Matt's post, but decided against posting it because it was getting way too long winded and it was starting to sound like it was written by a pretentious twat who majored in ~game design~. The above is a very short and distilled version of it.

I agree with a lot of that but maybe not in the exact way you intended. SC is missing a lot of polish and often feels janky, while the controls are (sometimes buggy, but) too tight to compare to the arma 2 input delay, the visual feedback and camera jerkiness is certainly arma 2 esque. It isnt deep in an arma way if we draw a distinction between complexity and depth, though. Arma has complexity out the wazoo and mainly takes its depth from element resting on top of eachother. SC has that initial complexity, but past tht it's simple concepts that don't just "rest on top of eacother" they interact and become more than the sum of their parts, to use a phrase you did, or multiply, to use the phrase i did. I don't want to understate the importance of those "feel" elements. You can make a game with fantastic gameplay but if those barriers exist most people won't notice. There's tons of issues like instances of your weapon tracers appearing to glitch and hit your own ship is jarring and worse, bugs that make your inputs unrecognized. The UI, cockpits and HUD continue to be in a state of flux and are missing a lot of vital info. ED has always been visually impressive, that extends to general feel and atmosphere. Looking at ED for those examples is a very good idea, but I would argue those aspects are the only strong points of ED nd its a good idea to pick and choose which aspects are worth grabbing very carefully. ED is a surface level game, what you see at the start is what you're stuck with, it isn't even deep in the arma way. These aspects that should be fixable without a different game design, that category seems to be a more basic "get your shit together cig". Mainly i would like to clarify that distinction between those things that few would dispute need to be improved and things that are often debated over, like flight model. Even though the obvious improvements are often not in dispute and should in theory be more of a community pressure point on CIG, the loudest discussions instead tend to blame gameplay because those topics are divisive enough to keep an argument going over and spread, despite their relative irrelevence to these points.

[QUOTE=Why485;52779499] It's had it since the very beginning, and it comes from anything related to flight coming together to be greater than the sum of its parts. [/QUOTE] This is probably my biggest gripe with Star Citizen development. Elite dangerous from the very beginning had a solid flight model, star citizen still does not, despite how long it has been in development. It feels like its in a bit of a mess and it feels like there is still a long way to go. In regards to development overall, It feels like star citizen does too many things at once, but not having a stable core.

I've posted before about how I actually really like the flight model in a weird way, it feels very fun to tame the more schizophrenic small ships and run literal circles around enemies and weave through asteroids decoupled at stupid speeds however it doesn't match the 'jets in space' appearance of most ships at all; with this flight model, the ships should look like weird little bulbous drones, bristling with powerful manoeuvring thrusters anyway elite is a great model for ship feedback and solid feel but the actual gameplay that comes from the flight model is incredibly shallow, pvp is absolutely abysmal I hope SC can somehow make the ships feel less retarded *without* taking away the more interesting stuff it has

Although let's be honest, when it comes to elite's model. I imagine it isn't really hard to make a flight model like that, considering how extremely simple shallow it is. I personally quite enjoy SC's flight model as it is, but i am certainly looking forwards to any improvements which they will make. I can return to the current PU time and time again to just dogfight AI without it getting stale, because there is something really fun, and really engaging with the current flight model and how it in general works. I honestly don't get where everyone's complaints come from, especially when comparing it to elite's flight mechanic of all things. I'd take even half of what is in SC's PU at this point, than anything like Elite's flight mechanics.

The funny thing about SC's live PU as a good example of combat is that the PU hitboxes are completely desynced from the models and pips, against a gladiator moving top speed at 600m range you'll need to aim an extra 3-4 ship lengths ahead of the pip, and this is completely unintentional and extremely hard to compensate for against anyone who knows how to turn. I do well in arena commander and still struggle hitting AI in the PU sometimes, i'm already evasive in AC and i essentially become untouchable in the PU. If i run up against a similar pilot in the PU we will often never be able to kill eachother, even after we run out of fuel. This isn't a problem in arena commander, so any one testing combat against AI in the PU and feeling confused might want to try pirate swarm instead.

As much as I'll shit on Elite for not having much actually there to play and what is there tends to be a shallow grind, I cannot say that what's there is shittily-built. I'm not a [I]fan[/I] of the "aerodynamic flight in space" simplistic flight model but it feels coherent for what it's trying to do. The sound design is amazing and arguably the single best feature. And I haven't run it lately but it's well-optimized and can run on a toaster of a PC. There are aspects of Elite that are very solid and were clearly key focuses called out by the devs as priority. Problem is, adding anything under the header of "fun things to do" as most people understand it was not a priority in Elite's development, although there's an entire rant about forumdads ruining everything waiting down that discussion path. The way SC's development is being handled is, as everyone's heard me describe it a million times, building a broad base all at the same time, rather than Elite's method of building narrow but tall and then working on building the next narrow pillar beside the first. The drawback is that actual visible progress looks very slow for quite a while, because priority is on building out most of the needed things before pushing to the end state, rather than making the path to the end state as short as possible and worrying about adding everything else on the next lap or the laps after that. It's not inaccurate to say that this is attempting to do many things at once rather than worrying about doing one thing perfectly before starting the next, but once the money fountain started and Chris realized he didn't have to limit himself, that was always the goal of SC: doing it all. There are arguments to be had over the merits of this approach, never mind discussing CIG's fuckups along the way, but nailing the flight model isn't something that needs to be prioritized immediately. It does, however, need to be prioritized before SQ42 can come out, and CIG has promised enlightenment on the SQ42 roadmap in the holiday livestream, so, we'll see what they have to say then.

I haven't ever played elite but I guess I should before diving into this

just q, what flight-model of ED vs SC is used for this compare, the assisted or unassisted ?

[QUOTE=Dwarden;52780524]just q, what flight-model of ED vs SC is used for this compare, the assisted or unassisted ?[/QUOTE] Honestly it doesn't really matter unassisted or not. What I was talking about applies to both. [editline]14th October 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=Squeegy Mackoy;52780486]I haven't ever played elite but I guess I should before diving into this[/QUOTE] I think it's it's definitely worth trying if you're interested in space sims or Star Citizen. Aside from it being a decent game in its own right, it's good to have perspective and points of comparison between games. It has a fantastic honeymoon period but once you get over those first 10-30 hours (which isn't an insignificant amount of time if you ask me), you've pretty much done it all. That said, I last played the game years ago so I have no idea what state it's in now.

[QUOTE=Squeegy Mackoy;52780486]I haven't ever played elite but I guess I should before diving into this[/QUOTE] You're not really missing out on anything. It is an incredible shallow game with practically no content unless you like repeating the exact same thing a million times with no variety, visually or gameplay wise. They even made exploring new systems boring, exploring [B]systems[/B]. The game is also balanced around a very tiny, very loud, and very elitistic part of the community which fight tooth and nail to make the game as needlessly grindy, time wasty and bland as possible.

I personally love the way SC's flight works. Granted, that may be because I fly a Super Hornet, which doesn't change vectors very quickly, so flight actually feels more or less believable, if not realistic. I've seen what ships like the Herald can do, and that's a bit... much. Elite may have tighter combat flight mechanics, but that's because it deliberately and artificially limits what you can do, whereas Star Citizen allows for greater freedom of movement in a dogfight.

At least elite dangerous works with vr, and I liked that part of it. If SC gets vr again, I'm not sure how easy it'd be to switch out of.