Variise
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Star Citizen Online - The search for more money
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Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
Go here and give us your nominations!Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
Variise
N00b
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And why are you trolling now?
You should be above that shit. You claim to know better. Act like it.
Blackwulf
N00b
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Hey guys, you got me - I'm hopeful about a game that is pushing the industry forward. I usually only post news and sometimes if I think something is cool or not. Not trying to sell anything. If you don't like the idea of SC, that's cool, but why come here to shit on us that are interested?
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Skanda
I'm Amod too!
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Erronius
<WoW Guild Officer>
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Mr Creed
Too old for this shit
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Posting about game updates is fine, occasional rebuttals are fine. However, you engage every fucking troll under the sun in a drawn out discussion every time they throw a bait. You might want to ask yourself if that's really something you just have to do.
Ridas
Pay to play forum
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To be honest your posting is totally fine here and it seems you learned a lesson from the ESO debacle. But you have to admit, that Variise is awfully similiar to you and Rescorla back then.
Maybe this game will be the second coming of Jesus, but dont be suprised that a lot of people are skeptical.
Denaut
Trump's Staff
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Like I said, textbook example of Dunning-Kruger.
Variise
you are so ignorant about how things should work you think the way things happened on SC are how they are supposed to happen. They aren't, and if you knew better you'd see red flags all over the place.
It takes 1-4 weeks to make a formal pitch, not 52. If it takes you a year to match a pitch for a game then you are probably functionally retarded.
You are right about design documents being outdated almost as soon as they are written, which is why you don't blow a colossal amount of time, like say 1.5 years, writing one. A very detailed design document takes 1-3 months for initial creation, not the year and a half or whatever they spent on it after they got funding.
You don't even realize how blatantly you contradicted yourself by saying that they weren't wasting their time writing design documents to me and then in the very next post confirming that they were indeed wasting their time.
What I, and many other people, said was you couldn't possibly make a game of the scope they were promising in the time-frame they were claiming. We have also already been proven correct about SC considering it is now 2016, there is no game, and they are still fiddling around with tech demos that have no content.
Currently the game is slated for 2017/2018, which will be twice as long and 4 years later than the initial projections. And even if that happens, who knows what it'll be? It is very possible it will be a larger scale No Man's Sky, a bunch of intermittent features that aren't actually stitched together into a coherent game with enough content.
Variise
you are so ignorant about how things should work you think the way things happened on SC are how they are supposed to happen. They aren't, and if you knew better you'd see red flags all over the place.It takes 1-4 weeks to make a formal pitch, not 52. If it takes you a year to match a pitch for a game then you are probably functionally retarded.
You are right about design documents being outdated almost as soon as they are written, which is why you don't blow a colossal amount of time, like say 1.5 years, writing one. A very detailed design document takes 1-3 months for initial creation, not the year and a half or whatever they spent on it after they got funding.
You don't even realize how blatantly you contradicted yourself by saying that they weren't wasting their time writing design documents to me and then in the very next post confirming that they were indeed wasting their time.
What I, and many other people, said was you couldn't possibly make a game of the scope they were promising in the time-frame they were claiming. We have also already been proven correct about SC considering it is now 2016, there is no game, and they are still fiddling around with tech demos that have no content.
Currently the game is slated for 2017/2018, which will be twice as long and 4 years later than the initial projections. And even if that happens, who knows what it'll be? It is very possible it will be a larger scale No Man's Sky, a bunch of intermittent features that aren't actually stitched together into a coherent game with enough content.
iannis
Musty Nester
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Battlecruiser 3000AD
It was before EQ came out. I remember the dev cycle for that was an AWFUL lot like this one. They kept talking it up in computer gaming (back when that was a real, credible thing). And when it finally came out like 3 years later it was not so terribly good.
It was before EQ came out. I remember the dev cycle for that was an AWFUL lot like this one. They kept talking it up in computer gaming (back when that was a real, credible thing). And when it finally came out like 3 years later it was not so terribly good.
Variise
N00b
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I don't have to ask myself if I should engage trolls. I call them out with a couple of words when it's blatantly obvious and leave it at that. I only go further when they straight up lie or make shit up about the game which recently has been more common I'm assuming on purpose. I guess someone's bored.
This community purposefully embraces trolls. At some points there were 2-3 full pages of this shit in this thread all without me ever entering the thread. You don't need me to have a bunch of bored trolls create days long circle jerks about a topic they know nothing about. Seems endemic in other threads too.
Skanda
I'm Amod too!
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Variise is not an objective voice by any stretch and I take major exception to the way he presents both information as well as himself in this thread.
- He has admitted to spending tens of thousands of dollars on the game
- He uses the very little amount of knowledge he has to try and present himself as most experienced with game development as anyone else in the thread
I am no expert in game development having never personally made a game myself though I do consider myself familiar with the basic processes. Currently on my shelf are 1, 2, 3, 4 books (among a host of programming books) that deal directly with game creation of one stage or another because it is something I am interested in. Now I am not claiming any real authority on the subject but trying to give a little bit of proof that it is a hobby that I have explored a bit. You also have an actual professional in this thread sharing his experiences.
None of that matters to Variise as he uses his thimble of knowledge combined with the marketing material CIG puts out to try and present what is going on at CIG as 'the norm' when it very clearly is not anything close to the normal for actually developing a game. This is what I take exception too. I don't come in here and shit on the thread just to trololol. I just can not ignore Variise combining both a lack of objectivity with trying to present himself as an authority in development in order to explain away the questionable things CIG has and is currently doing in their company. As I've said many times before, I bought into the game as well and remain somewhat hopeful that Roberts can manage to pull that rabbit out of his hat but everything I see coming from the company makes me doubt and watching Variise come barging in with the latest line the marketing department has fed him is ridiculous.
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Variise
N00b
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Like I said, textbook example of Dunning-Kruger.
It takes 1-4 weeks to make a formal pitch, not 52. If it takes you a year to match a pitch for a game then you are probably functionally retarded.
You are right about design documents being outdated almost as soon as they are written, which is why you don't blow a colossal amount of time, like say 1.5 years, writing one. A very detailed design document takes 1-3 months for initial creation, not the year and a half or whatever they spent on it after they got funding.
You don't even realize how blatantly you contradicted yourself by saying that they weren't wasting their time writing design documents to me and then in the very next post confirming that they were indeed wasting their time.
What I, and many other people, said was you couldn't possibly make a game of the scope they were promising in the time-frame they were claiming. We have also already been proven correct about SC considering it is now 2016, there is no game, and they are still fiddling around with tech demos that have no content.
Currently the game is slated for 2017/2018, which will be twice as long and 4 years later than the initial projections. And even if that happens, who knows what it'll be? It is very possible it will be a larger scale No Man's Sky, a bunch of intermittent features that aren't actually stitched together into a coherent game with enough content.
You don't even realize you are conflating details even after I explained two different situations. That's why you think I'm contradicting myself.
1. IIRC CryTek (Sean + 2 guys in their spare time for free) created the animation/assets to pitch Chris to get him to buy CryEngine which he did for IIRC $1 million. This was held together by silly string and sticky tape.
2. Chris reused this along with some additional PR with help from Sandi and Ben to launch Kickstarter and their own website. During this first year Chris worked with Dave to write the over arching story which goes into the Design Document.
They did not build a Vertical Slice (functional slice of the game). At best it was a visual Prototype (non-functional) of what might be.
I'm not the one saying they were wasting their time. You are. That's not a fact it's an opinion. Fact is Chris used that prototype in his pitch. That's all. Stop conflating.
As for the rest you are describing a specific process that is endemic in the game industry. Creating soulless games that have no new features, no story or if they have a story it's shallow enough to fit on a few dozen pages and the player can complete it in a few hours. That is the current state of the game industry. Hardly something to cheerlead and the fact that others here seem to rally around this dead end concept is hugely hypocritical.
Why are you declaring to me how you and others called it that the game won't launch on time or that it's late as if I was standing against that argument. This doesn't suddenly give your other opinions credibility since I said the earliest the game might launch is 2017/2018 back in 2015 when ScamCitizen was still an active meme.
The only problem I have with the rest of your opinion is the comparison to No Man's Sky.
No Man's Sky has/had a developer who outright lied about the existence dozens of gameplay features that don't exist in the game.
SC has has an open development process with a staggering amount of detail available on most features. You know what's in the current build and you know what's immediately coming in the next build and you have at least an idea of the direction they are heading in the future.
No Man's Sky did not allow people to test the game prior to release so you literally had to take the developer at their word. With so few information available No Man's Sky had virtually no scrutiny put on it by anyone.
SC's PU is playable today. You aren't wrong that it's very light on content but that's by nature of the development process which is front loading technical solutions and building the game later.
SC's SQ42 however is not playable and apart from a few PR videos and the asset leaks from last year nobody knows anything about it. CIG claims they are virtually content complete or will be by CitizenCon or soon after. At that point they are waiting on some required gameplay features and final testing/polish.
Take any other game and you can't judge it because the Publisher won't release information on the game so you can't sit there and play armchair CEO from your cubicle.
Look what happened when EA released their last couple of videos on the new Mass Effect game. People lost their fucking shit because animations, art etc were NOT final and that game is coming out early next year. Despite Bioware stating this before the video barely functional idiots can't help but judge the game as a final product.
That is not to say you are wrong about the direction they took with their Designs. A good example is unified scales. This actually came up in that investigative article. Not sure if you read it. They didn't finalize all scales for everything in the Design Document or if they did it changed. Characters, doors, world objects are all done and have been for a couple of years but scaling was off on ship weapons because they kept going through major revisions. They fucked up with contractors repeatedly and didn't learn lessons wasting god knows how many millions in the process. Now that's a waste and that's ultimately Chris' fault.
However reading commentary from other developers they go through this same process and have huge waste internally all the time. Million dollars on a single AAA character or hero object for a game is not unusual and apparently neither is scraping it but that's just what I read. That's not something you would run into working on a LEGO game.
And that's my criticism of your criticism. This isn't fucking LEGO Batman or a supposed AAA Copy/Paste game. Trying to compare it to that in the industry is just dumb.
At a certain point you are still just writing code and doing assets like LEGO Batman. That aspect of it isn't revolutionary. That aspect of it is taking too long because every couple of months they completely scrap what they had before and revamp it from scratch.
You know who else was a visionary MMO developer who wasn't going down the mundane route? First name Curt and last name rhymes with "can't pay his billing".
Who in this thread is comparing this project to No Man's Sky?
You know who else was a visionary MMO developer who wasn't going down the mundane route? First name Curt and last name rhymes with "can't pay his billing".
Who in this thread is comparing this project to No Man's Sky?
Skanda
I'm Amod too!
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Both Denaut and I have brought it up before. I can't speak for Denaut but my comparison was about the marketing. I think this game will suffer the same fall that NMS did once it is released. CIG has made so many promises I just can't see him being able to keep.
Variise
N00b
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Your very first point is an outright lie. I already said I'm not that invested in the game anymore and I never spent tens of thousands of dollars. If you want specifics I did help buy a bunch of ships for people back when they couldn't buy LTI ships so that did inflate my account to over 10k at one point. However I was not part of the black market. That was for friends and org mates back in like 2013-14. I think I'm maybe 3-4k in "in value" in right now. A healthy chunk of that is friend and org mates money from helping them. My actual money is maybe half that. I didn't keep a ledger.
You have a valid point about objectivity. I do want the game to succeed and that does influence my opinion.
You do not have a valid point about me putting the game only in the best light. If I did that there is no evidence of it from Day 1. Posting facts is objective. You literally lie about the facts about the game repeatedly and gloss over it when called out on it. Posting opinion is not objective. I have already shared some of my negative opinions regarding their release dates and so far I was right about how late it will be. You conveniently leave that out because it doesn't fit the narrative you have constructed.
If you have those books you should know better and you have access to information I don't but you keep saying false things. That doesn't make you some evil person out to get me, it just means you are incompetent.
You again construct this "the norm" narrative. Yet you and the "expert" are the ones that keep conflating facts surrounding the game because you don't know what happened and fill in what you don't know with what you think happened since I never gave a step by step run down until my previous post.
Yeah I don't subscribe to this nonsense.
Get the facts surrounding the game right so you can make an argument. You still haven't done that. All you do is talk around it.
Skanda
I'm Amod too!
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Variise
N00b
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Most developers don't do R&D because it's expensive and often leads nowhere. EA had to hold back Bioware's DA:I from release because R&D on 4 legged animations/rigging didn't work despite that being the only change to the Frostbite engine and despite spending countless months on it. Ubisoft just announced they will finally do R&D for a year to develop features for AC. They may very well fail to do anything but at least they are trying.
The problem in the industry is that those things are unusual, the exceptions. Not the norm. They simply don't need to innovate because the consoles can't handle the ever increasing requirements of pushing gaming forward.
So R&D is something unique. CIG is doing so much R&D they can't even be compared to the next closest studio. That brings with it a metric ton of uncertainty and complexity. I recognized this immediately and called BS on their release dates. I still think 2017 for SQ42 is very optimistic simply because SQ42 and the SC: PU uses the same assets/features and they will want to include advances they make in both builds. This will likely push development on SQ42 into 2018. It all depends on how long it takes them to get SC feature complete and that means move from Alpha to Beta. No fucking way that's happening in 2017. Not unless they do the same thing other studios do which is call an Alpha build Beta and a Beta build Gold.
As far as scraping everything that's not true. Art assets are mostly retained and they have been building modular kits for constructing buildings for about 2 years now. None of that changed. The ship flight model didn't change, I told you I was wrong about that. That's a balance pass. Most of the tech they built is still there in the engine. Very few of them were scrapped.
The most obvious things that have changed are the original plans for planetary landings. That did require them to figure out how to place the modules they build for landing zones onto the planets but they didn't scrap any of them. Another big change is damage states for ships. They used to spend 1-3 months building a ship and 1-3 months on animation and damage states. That entire system was scrapped once a powerful R&D tool automated the entire process using different techniques which also saves them memory. I don't know the technical terms for it but it has to do with blending shaders I think. They still break up ships but it works differently now. I think it takes them about 1 month to do what used to take them 4-6 months. This also required that they go back and re-do every single ship. Another reason for re-doing them is to lower the memory they take up typically reducing their memory size to 1/10 of what it was before.
Finally you have characters which have gone through a complete revamp I think twice now. They are also on the 8th skeleton if I recall correctly.
So Procedural Planets, Ships and Characters were the chief issues during development resulting in a re-do. A lot of the requirements for features in the game also required the CryEngine to be re-written. The UI is perhaps the only other major feature going through a complete revamp.
Ground assets that were unique were never re-done. Rooms however were scrapped and replaced with the modular kits they built but again that's going back at least a year and that's not being re-done again.