Star Citizen Online - The search for more money

Star Citizen Alpha 2.0 PTU - Exploring the Shipping Hub - YouTube
Aurora Quantum Drive
Cutlass Black interior damage state and EVA
BadNewsBaron FPS Clip
- Jump to 4:18 for start FPS skirmishing, or 5:45 for kill shot

Man this is what I wanted Eve Online to be when it first came out and was heartbroken. Gonna be nuts if they can scale this up to Eve meta.

Furry_sl said:

Just what I want to see in a space game, lots of corridor running and lame fps.

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k

https://gfycat.com/PaltryQuickEeve

Variise_sl said:

k

https://gfycat.com/PaltryQuickEeve

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Youtube version, with more footage:Star Citizen 2.0 PTU - Constellation Andromeda gameplay in mini universe - YouTube

This is probably the result of a crash effort to integrate everything they have working so far, so they have something to show at least. It should placate the Star Citizens for a while, and that's what really counts here. I think they're still a LOOONG ways off from releasing a game, and they've misspent the majority of their 94+ million. but as long as the Star Citizens are happy, they can basically print money. It's a peculiar situation.

InterSlayer_sl said:

Youtube version, with more footage:Star Citizen 2.0 PTU - Constellation Andromeda gameplay in mini universe - YouTube

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That's pretty fucking awesome.

Tuco_sl said:

Where is Variise at and why isn't he gloating about how cool this is?

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Well I'm happy its progressing, so I guess their nefarious scheme is working?


(full disclosure, Have a Freelancer and Catterpillar plus one other ship)

Mist_sl said:

You basically described game development?

I love the logic of the people who think this is all part of some long con. At this rate, CiG is going to build an entire game just to attempt to scam people out of their money!

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Haha, no, this is not how games are generally made. Star Citizen is atypical.

I don't think it's a con, in the sense that I don't think CIG is setting out to bilk investors of their money. Gross financial mismanagement? Yes. Badly executed? Yes. Huge chunk of funds spent on greed and vanity? Absolutely. But I do think Roberts and company intend to put out a game.

Even dismissing good intentions, I don't think it's a con. I mean, you paid god knows how much for your ship, but in return you're given a vision that gives you the warm tingles. You can watch these videos and fantasize about how you'll putter around in your spaceship someday. I imagine you lying awake at night making pew pew laser noises. It let's you live the dream for a while. That's gotta be worth something.

Tuco_sl said:

Where is Variise at and why isn't he gloating about how cool this is?

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I dunno. Because I'm not an asshole? Some other people here tho... make me facepalm every time they write something. It's a wonder they haven't starved to death.

Awanka_sl said:

Haha, no, this is not how games are generally made. Star Citizen is atypical.

I don't think it's a con, in the sense that I don't think CIG is setting out to bilk investors of their money. Gross financial mismanagement? Yes. Badly executed? Yes. Huge chunk of funds spent on greed and vanity? Absolutely. But I do think Roberts and company intend to put out a game.

Even dismissing good intentions, I don't think it's a con. I mean, you paid god knows how much for your ship, but in return you're given a vision that gives you the warm tingles. You can watch these videos and fantasize about how you'll putter around in your spaceship someday. I imagine you lying awake at night making pew pew laser noises. It let's you live the dream for a while. That's gotta be worth something.

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I'm curious what specifically have they done in developing this game where they grossly mismanaged funds? Humor me.

Sylas beat me to it. The truth points to itself.

Some highlights though:
Chris and his intern-wife turned executive paying themselves millions of dollars.
Chris paying millions more to actors in a transparent attempt to relive his failed Hollywood aspirations.
$20,000 cappuccino machine.

Big Phoenix_sl said:

You heard of SimCity?

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lol truth...what a big let down that game was.

Sylas_sl said:

idk being about on par with Pantheon's development?

like seriously 3-4 years and 90+ million dollars and they have the equivalent of the base build, starter zone and dungeon for levels 1-10? Actually they probably have less than Pantheon content wise but they have more things going (like fps mode) which counter that.

not saying they are the same level, production value wise or anything, obviously star citizen has more than Pantheon. But Pantheon is built on a coke habit and what, 8, maybe 10 months of fanboy non-volunteer work and however much money brad could scrape up selling his ass and the last bit of what pitiful amount of reputation he had left?

edit: I'm not saying this is all some con, it looks like this game is finally rounding the corner. I hope it launches. I'm glad there are retards dropping 30+ grand on it to get it launched, because it sure as fuck isn't going to be me footing that bill. But i'm also saying that apparently, that's what it takes, rabid fanboi's dropping their lifesavings into this "dream" to get this thing launched because that's what it takes with the horrible mismanagement of funds thus far. Any other AAA studio given the money, manpower, and time that these guys have had would of launched a AAA game at this scale and production values delivering everything on the wish list by now, and already in work on a whole new list of additions for the first expansion. SC is just finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, getting basic systems running. How you can see that as anything other than "grossly mismanaged funds" is beyond me. The only other explanation is he really did spend half the money on making movies for his wife to get her back in hollywood.

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queue me facepalming...

This is why I vanish for weeks/months at a time. I just can't keep doing this forever. Seriously you could just Google this and find out you are wrong in about 1 minute.

Look the only games that you will be able to find that actually meet your standard are games released by EA, Activision, Ubisoft and CDPR. Take a long hard look at the games from the first 3 studios. Battlefield, COD and AC. Those are what the industry considers tentpole AAA titles where the Publisher basically throws money/manpower at it to the tune of 100-250million and 300-500 employees per project because they will sell a billion dollars of the these mass market games. It's actually getting worse. In the vast majority of cases virtually no new feature has been added since the the first of these games hit the street apart from limited multiplayer inside a box. In some cases a lot of features were stripped and either never see the light of day or get stuffed into Season Passes. The latest Battlefield game comes to mind. Gamers bitch and complain about these games endlessly especially how shallow they are yet they keep buying. EA, Activision and Ubisoft don't give a fuck until people stop giving them money. IMO it's pure lunacy and I exited this whole mess back around Battlefield 3's release. So yeah I put my money where my mouth is.

So that leaves CDPR. They made Witcher 3 and are the closest example I can come up with to a studio like CIG and it's not really that close. Maybe someone can find me a better example but I don't know of one. In their case CDPR started with 40 odd vet employees that came from Witcher 2 and eventually about half way through CDPR claims they actually ran out of money and had to suck some corporate cock. That has allowed them to increase their development team to around 300 employees at their peek and complete the game in about 3 years. The scope of Witcher 3's main story is comparable to SQ42 Chapter 1. What gives these guys a leg up is they don't have to invent new features that very few other studios use. They stick to what works and being single player allows them a metric ton of freedom in that regard. CIG is not that lucky. They have had to develop features from the ground up very few other studios ever tackled and are basically on their own. They do collaborate but it's on a single tech like clothing and it's more of an idea of how to do it and not a copy of another developer. That's where their item port system comes from which alone has gone through a complete revision at least once and it's still only implemented in a very limited way. A full item port integration won't occur until next year. However unlike CDPR CIG didn't have a core set of employees beyond 7 people and didn't even hit 40 after the first year of full development. Comparing them to anyone is a challenge.

So you compare them to Pantheon's development. Fair enough but they aren't development major feature sets in the same way or at least they weren't until now. One of the biggest complaints from people is nothing is being developed and they don't see the work being done because discussing it endlessly in interviews means money is being massively wasted. So a partial end product of that is SC 2.0 instead of holding back "modules". People bitch about that too. Oh look they threw everything together. Yes because the German office figured out a bunch of features ahead of schedule and the full FPS development continues to have issues with animations and polish. Modules are gone at this point as a result. It's why they refunded people for the module buy ins and got rid of any previous plans to pay for Alpha access to them. That's all gone. Pre-set feature sets for patches are also gone as a result. From this point on we get whatever they finish whenever they do a patch. Some will be tiny and others will be bigger or at least that's what Chris said. IMO that's a better way of doing it and it will shut a lot of people up if he actually follows through with that over the next 12 months.

Nobody should kid themselves. They won't get all the features done in 12 months. But I think it's reasonable to suggest that they will launch the PU in 2016 with most of the core features and will patch the rest in later. The Port they build for SC 2.0? Built in a few hours. How? Manchester office spending a year and half building the Schubin Mining Station. Those modular blocks are now used to build other buildings in a matter of hours. But yeah it took a year and half to build that asset set.

I swear to god nobody understands game development and when in interviews they explain all this nobody listens. Virtually everyone here hasn't watched a single interview and just assumes they know everything because they purchase a AAA title that gets shat out by EA, Activision or Ubisoft every year.

I'm done venting. Got games to play...