******Official Star Citizen / Squadron 42 Thread******

[Raumarik]

There are quite a few devs in Austin, but they aren't all sitting around twiddling their thumbs waiting to start working on your new project.

Chances of ramping up from nothing to a full AAA development team, in one location, in the timescale of a single project, is zero. Not happening. Sure when you first open your studio you'll snap up the people that were unemployed or looking for a move already (but bear in mind these probably aren't the best people), but after that.....experienced devs that fit the myriad roles you need to fill just don't come on the market very often....and they may well have zero interest in working for a studio with no track record of shipping anything.

Opening in multiple cities/countries and outsourcing some development is one of the things they have done right.

1. FPS module was money down the drain.
2. Website spent several years in a mess, it's marginally better now but is still confusing to new players with Spectrum (forums) looking different, having different layout etc. Look at any other games company or in fact any other company - their products have far greater familiarity and are far easier to navigate. Behaviour are a professional company, they have won several awards for their work in recent years - but you've still got to ask why the CIG pages are a confused mess - that's CIG's fault and hiring Behaviour to manage and produce that site is not cheap.

Also Austin had a wealth of devs around the time CIG opened, other companies were in trouble. Foundry 42 was a great idea but Santa Monica in particular was more of a need to be close to home, rather than best for business IMHO and resulted in many veteran devs leaving the company which resulted in a change of direction and a lot of remaking of existing assets, tools and methods. Some of those will clearly be for the best, but the rest is just additional wasted money.

 

[wolfie138]

Tell me about it. The times i've lurked in SC related discords or even spectrum itself where people are giving guidence on which ship they should buy right now or save up for... Like its supposed to be that way. My mind is blown the way they are almost cult like. Kudos to the sales team of spectrum

the gamer crowd is fickle though; no matter how hard core people are during development ~ and at this stage, i have to think a fair percentage of it will be due to bull-headed stubbornness of refusing to accept their hard-earned pennies might be circling down a drain ~ if the first release, or even the betas, suck ass then people will move off to the Next Big Thing. People will become a bit more wary about buying more vapour ships and once that happens the cash flow will sharply decline. if CIG haven't sorted out a bit better money management (and if they haven't been able to manage $288m....) then it's the end of the game as a downward spiral will ensue. all that will remain will be class action lawsuits no doubt, and possibly some very intense auditing of their books. i keep hoping it will work out, but hope is losing to realism now.

 

[wolfie138]

by the time they finish this game you will be able to play it on mobile on max settings

i remember multiple extensive "building a new puter for SC" threads on the forums; i wonder how many of those people are going to build machines again if the game ever comes out or if once bitten, twice shy.

 

[Tombstone]

by the time they finish this game you will be able to play it on the computer of your actual real-life spaceship

Fixed.

 

[humbug]

Some Vanduul Swarm, haven't done it for years, it was fun

1440P when its done encoding

 

[bigmike20vt]

has the vandal swarm part changed much in the last couple of years/?
(that is literally how long it is since i installed it - i gave up on it because i felt it was far easier to control with KB/M or an xbox pad than it was with my HOTAS))

 

[Panos]

I agree with most of whats written in that article, its gone on for too long, i have no doubt they are burning through far more money than they should and i agree a lot of that is probably down to Chris.

But that article is more than just a bit hyperbole, it reads more like an East Enders script than impartial journalism.

Is not hyperbolic unfortunately. Chris Roberts has a pretty good record grabbing money and spending them on different things. Like got Microsoft money for Freelancer and used it to make Wing Commander film.
A history of eg Freelancer is a great example of where this is heading. Already he says that "the game is playable"....... And the fanatics believe so atm.

Also "Alpha" stage is when you freeze features been added and you start fixing issues and mechanics. How much time SC is on Alpha stage now? 5?

And lets put in perspective. Crusader Kings 2 came out in 2012, EU4 in 2013, Elder Scrolls Online in 2014 and even Elite Dangerous!
Games now deemed "ancient".

 

[MissChief]

Is not hyperbolic unfortunately. Chris Roberts has a pretty good record grabbing money and spending them on different things. Like got Microsoft money for Freelancer and used it to make Wing Commander film.
A history of eg Freelancer is a great example of where this is heading. Already he says that "the game is playable"....... And the fanatics believe so atm.

Also "Alpha" stage is when you freeze features been added and you start fixing issues and mechanics. How much time SC is on Alpha stage now? 5?

And lets put in perspective. Crusader Kings 2 came out in 2012, EU4 in 2013, Elder Scrolls Online in 2014 and even Elite Dangerous!
Games now deemed "ancient".

Unless they launch with nearly all the features they've said they'll have and all the ships they've sold they'll be on an express train to lawyerville.

 

[wolfie138]

they've dug themselves a pit w/ all those new ships and what they short-sightedly saw as a cash cow will not only bite them on the arse but potentially rip it completely off and swallow it.

 

[Panos]

Unless they launch with nearly all the features they've said they'll have and all the ships they've sold they'll be on an express train to lawyerville.

“Star Citizen is a playable game,” Roberts insists. “It has more functionality and content than a lot of finished games.” He adds that 40,000 people played the game together online over a recent week and that criticism of Cloud Imperium’s development work is fueled by online trolls.

From the original article.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattpe...nbut-may-never-be-ready-to-play/#2c5918cf5ac9

It feels like politicians lying in front of you for the complete opposite that is happening.

 

[humbug]

Have guys played it recently?

As i said i agree with a lot of whats in the article but there is also a lot of work accessible in it right now, if you want to compare it to the nearest thing, Elite Dangerous, which i also have, is a game played inside your ships cockpit through its MFDs, you open up an MFD screen, you pick up a mission in that screen, you move to a new location via a series of disguised load screens and complete that mission at the other end in your MFD screen, on the way you may encounter a pirate and have to fight, or you might go and do some mining, all in the confines of your ships cockpit. The near details of your surroundings, everywhere you go what you see outside your flying cockpit looks like something from 2004.

Star Citizen has about a dozen live interactive actors spread across a 3D sandbox that's 45m KM from one end to the other, full of extremely highly detailed, explorable Cities, Space Stations, Planets and Moons and your ship is a fully fleshed out live vehicle, so far up to 160m long, not a cockpit.

 

[humbug]

The ships by themselves in this game are like mini levels, one of the 'Currently' larger ships in game right now. Hammerhead, 140m Long.
The audio crackling is my recording.

The biggest playable ship will be the Bengal, 960m long. seen here with a few others.

 

[FloppyPoppy]

^ Your forgetting retribution, kingship and Pegasus is also larger. iirc The chances of most people getting a chance to fly the first two of them is another story, but they will be playable. CR and CIG have mentioned this many times. Pegasus will likely be more common with a good dozen or so of the largest orgs holding one or two.

 

[humbug]

^ Your forgetting retribution, kingship and Pegasus is also larger. iirc The chances of most people getting a chance to fly the first two of them is another story, but they will be playable. CR and CIG have mentioned this many times. Pegasus will likely be more common with a good dozen or so of the largest orgs holding one or two.

Yeah Vanduul ships, some of them 3KM long.

This is the smaller of the Vanduul ships, about 1KM long the art work of this thing is stunning.

 

[wolfie138]

There's no doubt some of the videos are amazing, but " a dozen live interactive actors spread across a 3D sandbox that's 45m KM from one end to the other, full of extremely highly detailed, explorable Cities, Space Stations, Planets and Moons and your ship is a fully fleshed out live vehicle, so far up to 160m long, not a cockpit." is still a lightyear away from what they're promising. Re Elite, I said years ago that all this "100 billion planets" hype was pointless, you're never ever ever going to see even a tiniest fraction of that, so who cares. i'd have preferred one planet and a moon or so properly realised and detailed for SC; even just that would/should have given people more to play in/with than they could handle in a year or more's gameplay. during that time, they could be prepping/introducing more stations, another moon etc etc ~ that constant influx of new stuff is what keeps a game fresh and alive.

 

[Raumarik]

There's no doubt some of the videos are amazing, but " a dozen live interactive actors spread across a 3D sandbox that's 45m KM from one end to the other, full of extremely highly detailed, explorable Cities, Space Stations, Planets and Moons and your ship is a fully fleshed out live vehicle, so far up to 160m long, not a cockpit." is still a lightyear away from what they're promising. Re Elite, I said years ago that all this "100 billion planets" hype was pointless, you're never ever ever going to see even a tiniest fraction of that, so who cares. i'd have preferred one planet and a moon or so properly realised and detailed for SC; even just that would/should have given people more to play in/with than they could handle in a year or more's gameplay. during that time, they could be prepping/introducing more stations, another moon etc etc ~ that constant influx of new stuff is what keeps a game fresh and alive.

I sort of agree with you, narrow the scope, do it better?

They are going to be releasing a smaller number of systems and expand on that later. Presumably when staff numbers are much lower. I doubt we'll see more than a dozen systems at launch, whenever that is. Ships are their money generation stream so expect those to keep coming, I think they shot themselves in the foot by stopping stretch goals to be honest but they can always restart that when they want.

From my own experiences in game, the larger ships are a lot of fun, going to be massively fun to attack/defend and just operate with friends but my main problem is travel time - they need to sort that out, particularly between planets within the same system.

 

[jonneymendoza]

Do you belive this game is going to die and fail? it seems it may do due to the damaging reports of losing over 300m was it and down to about 19m left in the bank last year.....

im scared

 

[Raumarik]

Chris Roberts perspective he's creating and IP he can monetise later if it takes off, hopefully better than Wing Commander though. It'll come out but bare in mine we're talking about a company with $19million in the bank and the ability to get credit whenever it wants. It's also just sold a small % of the company for tens of millions.

Amusing thing will be whether it takes longer to develop than it runs for post release, I'm not sure if the game will still be running 10 years after release like WoW etc but I do expect us to have to wait until 2022 onwards for multiplayer.

In the meantime I enjoy playing it, although being involved in it as others will probably back me up on can mean it feels like progress is super slow - until you look back at what's happened in the previous 12 months.

 

[bigmike20vt]

This isn't a comment against SC at all, and was something I was very reticent about in the elite beta/alpha period but.... You guys "playing " it now are you not worried about burnout before the game even releases? I would worry about seeing the game with her pants down before even getting to take her to dinner!

 

[jonneymendoza]

Chris Roberts perspective he's creating and IP he can monetise later if it takes off, hopefully better than Wing Commander though. It'll come out but bare in mine we're talking about a company with $19million in the bank and the ability to get credit whenever it wants. It's also just sold a small % of the company for tens of millions.

Amusing thing will be whether it takes longer to develop than it runs for post release, I'm not sure if the game will still be running 10 years after release like WoW etc but I do expect us to have to wait until 2022 onwards for multiplayer.

In the meantime I enjoy playing it, although being involved in it as others will probably back me up on can mean it feels like progress is super slow - until you look back at what's happened in the previous 12 months.

Still there is not much to do in the game and moany ccore gameplay elements are broken . hardly any missions to do nd things feel like placeholders in game.

Wont u get burnout of the game once it may come out?

For all the hate from EA/Activision for rushing out games etc, at least they get a game to the finishing line withing 4 years of development!

In this case i would love if EA bought this game and release it next year with just one star system to begin with and all the core gameplay done