Star Citizen Online - The search for more money

Variise_sl said:

It's a complete overhaul of CryEngine.

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All this time spent jury-rigging a proprietary engine could've been spent writing one in-house that's more suited to the task.

Tuco_sl said:

So we're talking 24 for 2016 and maybe 32 in the next few years? I remember when X-Wing Alliance had hundreds of ships in one area. In 1999. I understand that SC is targeting a different experience and that the server load in it is very different than X-Wing Alliance, but when EVE can technically support this shit show:

It's really hard to accept a technical excuse for a 24 ship limit.

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Do we really have to get into how Eve and SC are not even remotely comparable again? SC is much more like Battlefield than it is like Eve, so their theoretical max players would be around Battlefield (or maybe Planetside) numbers, assuming a ship is about as complex as a usual player avatar.

Denaut_sl said:

Do we really have to get into how Eve and SC are not even remotely comparable again? SC is much more like Battlefield than it is like Eve, so their theoretical max players would be around Battlefield numbers, assuming a ship is about as complex as a usual player avatar.

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Except that Battlefield type of number of players is really nothing compared to what was described and promised to be in a persistent universe/sandbox when the entire funding campaign was kicked up. The universe is really going to feel about as lonely as ARK currently does. You're on an island the size of a city with 20 other guys. You don't see anyone unless you go exploring. And the only focal point is the volcano which has the largest metal spawn.w

Slyminxy_sl said:

Except that Battlefield type of number of players is really nothing compared to what was described and promised to be in a persistent universe/sandbox when the entire funding campaign was kicked up. The universe is really going to feel about as lonely as ARK currently does. You're on an island the size of a city with 20 other guys. You don't see anyone unless you go exploring. And the only focal point is the volcano which has the largest metal spawn.w

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Yes, they were talking out of their ass, as anyone with even the remotest idea of how MMOs are made knew. It was obvious from the get go.

I'm not sure Tuco. What Chris wants and what Chris gets out of the engine are two different things. Chris originally wanted 3 star systems up and running by latest... early this year. We have 1 planet and 3 moons. Why? R&D. They overcame massive R&D hurdles late last year by the German office and decided to scrap their existing release schedule to accommodate it. That culminated in this:



This is also when they ditched large patch plans in favor of smaller ones due to so much of the engine having to be ripped up and re-built by some of the original CryEngine team they hired in Germany.

R&D is a funny thing. If you have the funding, skill and time you can achieve amazing things. This is virtually non-existent in the current AAA game market. Most innovation happens when smaller studios have great ideas and get bought out by bigger ones. One takes risks and the other is risk averse. It's why most AAA games are utter shit.

So who the hell knows where they will end up next year. All I know is that this is the year of the final CryEngine overhaul. This is when the majority of what gets ripped out and rebuilt happens or at least scheduled to happen. So far they are on point. They are not on point in the overall project based on the original release schedule but that got binned by Chris publicly back in 2014 with the majority of supporters backing it regardless. People just forget because facts don't matter.

Will they increase player count this year? Possibly but I try to be conservative so I doubt it. So many changes are planned for the engine that anything can happen but no release date for sure. Not with the changes they are putting in. Germany has been pushing so much of their R&D it's nuts. Weather systems were dismissed even by Chris a few months back as ... yeah post release. Now they are actively working on a first pass implementation. That's all R&D paying off. They were stuck on the above problem I linked with planets and players existing seamlessly for a couple of years. Fixed with a single line of code.

As for CryEngine being the problem. You can argue that sure but look what happened to practically the only other person who built a custom built perfect (efficient and scalable on anything) engine for a title that is only a chunk of what SC is trying to do... Metal Gear Solid 5. Kojima sucked so much cash from Konami to make his game, which is awesome btw, that he was not only fired but banned from the company and all related events. Do you see others stepping up and filling in that void? I don't. Kojima is one of the few that takes risks with making games because he wants to make a good game, cost, time be damned. You need a publisher or individuals that are on the same page to back that. Chris didn't think for a second he would get this far, while Kojima had Konami to suck dry and his give a shit meter the entire time was at 0. Different circumstances and personalities. In fact the last time Chris tried to pull that stunt he quit (arguably MS fired him by sidelining him).

TLDR: Nobody knows not even Chris or the German office. Give them a few months and see what falls out of R&D then give them 6-9 more.

Variise_sl said:

As of Alpha 2.3 it's 24 ships/players.

If we go backwards Alpha 2.0 was 16 ships/players.

Before that Arena Commander was 8 players.

Large World is what allowed them to expand to 16 and cutting down the size of memory usage per ship helped hugely as well. That's still pending for a whole bunch of early ships. Aurora, 300 series and I think even the Hornet and M50. Mostly the newer ships have been getting the tech to scale down their memory size but they did sink months of effort to scale down the size of other ships through sheer optimization which they know they will have to bin the moment they go through the new ship pipeline to get scaled down.

Btw when I say scaled down it doesn't necessarily mean less details. In one example they re-built the Constellation and it's twice as detailed as before but at 1/4 of the memory cost before you even factor in the damage state which is further reduced.

EDIT: Don't expect them to expand the player size above 24 this year. Way too many underlying engine changes need to go in. Having said that Chris hinted that the 2.4 patch is as big a change to the game as the 2.0 patch was. Reading what's coming I'm not seeing it. Maybe they fixed a bucket full of bugs? I know things like falling through ships is purely an engine problem and not a coding problem which they have had to rip out and recode from scratch. Will see how 2.4 pans out.

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An actually real game you can play right now (and the thread is in "Other Games", not here).

What's your point? By that logic what's STO doing here? What's GW2 doing here?

Move it or leave it. You will never make everyone happy.

What do you care anyway? Aren't you one of the biggest shit disturbers here? Nothing will ever make someone like you happy so why would anyone give a shit what you think about anything to begin with?

You can fly for free for this week. Check shit out, see what you think if you haven't yet.

Here's a nice guide a fellow on reddit made:

Free Fly Megathread - FAQ, QA, Live support! : starcitizen

Variise_sl said:

What's your point? By that logic what's STO doing here? What's GW2 doing here?

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Strawman.

What do you care anyway? Aren't you one of the biggest shit disturbers here? Nothing will ever make someone like you happy so why would anyone give a shit what you think about anything to begin with?

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Ad hominem.

Oh dear.


Anyway, the point is that there's an actual gamein the same genrewith greater local player caps and more integrated social content and it's thread is in Other Games, so why the fuck is this vapourware scam still in the MMO forum? It should also be in Other Games or, out of preference, the Rickshaw.

Variise_sl said:

What's your point? By that logic what's STO doing here? What's GW2 doing here?

Move it or leave it. You will never make everyone happy.

What do you care anyway? Aren't you one of the biggest shit disturbers here? Nothing will ever make someone like you happy so why would anyone give a shit what you think about anything to begin with?

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I don't have a problem with Star Citizen being here. Never look in the other area anyways and I am interested in how this turns out.

One thing about Elite Dangerous though, as cool as a it's tech is, it's ultimately boring. Star Citizen could end up the same. A whole lot of money spent for some cool tech without any engaging (fun) gameplay.

Itzena_sl said:

Strawman.


Ad hominem.

Oh dear.


Anyway, the point is that there's an actual gamein the same genrewith greater local player caps and more integrated social content and it's thread is in Other Games, so why the fuck is this vapourware scam still in the MMO forum? It should also be in Other Games or, out of preference, the Rickshaw.

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I think ED and SC should both be in this forum. Well, I've never played ED, but I'm assuming it's like SC in that everyone exists in the same universe, just different instances, right? If so, I'd say it qualifies as an MMO. The thing about SC is that even though there will be limits to how many ships can be present in one instance, that doesn't make it not an MMO. They're shooting for ~100 ships at release, but even if they get half of that, I'd say that's pretty fun. On planets you'll easily have 50-100 people hanging around the same hub instance. The whole universe will be shared, so that trade and communication will be cross-instance. It will feel like an MMO, imo. Certainly it won't be like a single player game or small, separate server game ala Rust.

Sylas_sl said:

Uh no. It'll have the same player cap. They've never claimed it was going to be an mmo, they have no intentions of making it an mmo. It'll be lobbies just like other online games, with persistent factors like characters and perhaps instances. Slightly more persistent than diablo, but not by much.

Don't really care what forum it goes in, doesn't matter, but arguing that its more of an mmo than ed is lols, it's the same game

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When you say, " Uh no. It'll have the same player cap," what exactly do you mean? Are you saying that their efforts to get more than 24 players in a zone will fail? I disagree, and most people following the development do. BTW, ArcCorp is already a 40 player cap...

Devs have, on many occasions, referred to the Persistent Universe as the "MMO portion of the game." Chris Roberts, early on, said, "Star Citizen will take the best of all possible worlds,ranging from a permanent, persistent world similar to those found in MMOsto an offline, single player campaign like those found in the Wing Commander series." Since then, I've listened to a lot of dev interviews where the PU was referred to as an MMO. Even taking that aside, the game can objectively be considered an MMO because:

• The universe, characters, economy, etc., are all persistent and shared by all players.
• Once in the PU, there are no lobbies - it's a seamless universe from planet to space to the next solar system
• If a zone cap is reached, you are put into another instance, not a lobby, not another server, not another universe
• Lots of other games use systems like this and are considered MMOs - ESO, GW2, etc.

Btw, I never said SC was more MMO than ED - I think they both should be on this forum.

Anyone looked into the issue with their community guy? Seems like every screening process any company has have failed.

(Sorry for the slight derail).

Double, tripple, quadruple post... forums working subpar.

Grim1_sl said:

One thing about Elite Dangerous though, as cool as a it's tech is, it's ultimately boring. Star Citizen could end up the same. A whole lot of money spent for some cool tech without any engaging (fun) gameplay.

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Oh I dunno about that, I am currently quite happy to keep myself occupied with the faction thing. Sure its not turning in 10 bear asses but on the other hand its managable "take it or leave it" stuff. I dont have an issue keeping myself busy as it stands, thou a greater diversity of activity is never a bad thing /shrug.

Faith_sl said:

Anyone looked into the issue with their community guy? Seems like every screening process any company has have failed.

(Sorry for the slight derail).

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SC screening process: "Are you a fan of the game prepared to endure oppressive working conditions purely because of your mancrush on Chris Roberts? Congratulations, you're hired"

Itzena_sl said:

SC screening process: "Are you a fan of the game prepared to endure oppressive working conditions purely because of your mancrush on Chris Roberts? Congratulations, you're hired"

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Well the pedo/nazi/racist stuff seems to be more of a concern then his loyality to Chris Roberts atm.