Star Citizen Online - The search for more money

Punko said:

As if this is ever going to launch.

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Given their funding stream seems stable and they actually are making some pretty good leaps in their back end tech I think eventually it will launch. Probably be a few more years yet but I think in some form or other it will launch.

One indication is the improvement of their planatary tech. It took them how many years to make the first four worlds but with their new planetary tech system they basically remade all the old planets and a new one in about 2 months. Up until now I think they were stuck in the making the tools to make the tools stage which is why visible progress was slow.

Can't find any "updated" info on it, but what happened with the CryTek Lawsuit ?

Holy shit balls, this game still isn't out?!

From what I've seen there is a game to play, just not a very good one. There is definitely stuff to do but it's true you have a ton of downtime where your just traveling or trying to load a vehicle and just hoping that shit doesn't bug out.

A lot of the gameplay mechanics seem to be absolute trash. I haven't played the game myself but I've watched quite a few videos. From what I've seen the ship battles are awful. It doesn't look fun at all. Same with the guns. I've watched people shooting at each and it doesn't look all that great. Definitely not the level of Tarkov or even any of the Farcry games for that matter.

Even character movement looks bad, not so much your character but other characters.
They seem to move faster than they should or I dont know it just looks off.

The only really fun part of the game was watching people drive on the planet, but not because of the driving mechanics which sucked but because of the scale of the planets. One thing and the only thing this game has going for it are the graphics. The ship exteriors and the planets are cool and look nice however the interiors are rather drab.

And what gets me is how people seem to ignore how crappy the gameplay is in this game. I've watched videos from the same people where they pick apart others games for various reasons but mechanics in those games far exceed what you find here. It's seems that the gacha game mentality is at work. You get people to invest enough money into a game and even if you hand them a plate of steaming dog shit they will praise it as ambrosia. Or maybe it's Stockholm syndrome at this point.

So that's my rant. Yes there is a game, but a lot gameplay mechanics are very basic and game needs a lot of work.

Grundge said:

So that's my rant. Yes there is a game, but a lot gameplay mechanics are very basic and game needs a lot of work.

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I know this sounds silly, but what you described isn't a game.

This is where terrible designers and amateurs always go wrong. It was clear from the beginning, based on what Roberts and everyone he hired said, that they hadn't the first clue about how to design a game. A list of context-less specs about a non-existent ship is not a game. A bunch of unconnected and un-designed features aren't a game. Tech isn't a game.

Games (good ones at least) are about goals and the decisions players have to make in order to reach those goals. The decision-making and execution process have to engage the player and everything else needs to be in service to it (even graphics). They didn't know that and they still don't know that, this is why I am fairly confident in saying that SC will never be an even passable game (or at least never in a reasonable time-frame).

Not picking on you directly, your quote just sort of sparked my thought process.

Valderen said:

I think the biggest issue is that they aren't trying to make a game, they are trying to make a space simulator and that leads to game design decision that favors simulation accuracy over fun.

I still strangely enjoy parts of it, enough that it has kept me playing for the past week.

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That is what they say, but it isn't true. They aren't aiming for anything like what an actual space simulator would be, they are very much just making a game and then justifying their terrible design decisions with "but its a simulation!". Kerbal Space Program is a space game simulator, or at least significantly closer to one than SC.

Apparently they intend to add a more complex ship health/armor system so ships are more durable in combat also allowing part damage so you may need to move around your ship in a fight to fix stuff or give you the option to disable a craft without destroying it so you can board it. They at least sound like they are starting to get more persistence. The lack of persistance is currently the real fun killer for me. If they can get it to where more standard levels of persistence are there and less full resets every patch should allow a lot more incentive to actually do stuff. I am not sure this is ever going to be much more than a super niche game but it is interesting enough to me to keep at least following it and plinking around when I am in the mood.

In theory one of the next couple 3.8 minor updates should be turning on some more server persistence so hopefully in this update cycle or the next one they at least move to a point where you can more consistently accumulate money/harvest stuff and do things without losing it all on crashes or server updates.

Valderen said:

I'm not disagreeing with you, and it's mostly semantics at this point. I think they are trying to make a space simulator/game, but most of their gameplay decisions seems to favor trying to do a simulation over fun.

Now whether they are succeeding at being a good simulator, I don't know, I can tell you though that they are not succeeding at being a fun game for the most part.

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I might not be explaining myself very well. I am not trying to play semantics, my point is that they don't actually know what they are trying to make. If they knew what they were trying to make then all the time and money would have been directed towards a goal and we'd see it.

They aren't making a simulation, because we know what a simulation would look like it isn't even close. They appear to be trying to make some sort of game, but they are so incompetent at design it is failing miserably and they don't have one yet. This isn't unique, I've seen it a disheartening number of times, just usually with far less time and money.

It's the old origin mantra at work, "We create worlds"

Used to pass by the sign every day going to / from work

Denaut said:

my point is that they don't actually know what they are trying to make. If they knew what they were trying to make then all the time and money would have been directed towards a goal and we'd see it.

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I would say they know pretty well what they are making. Dicking around making pretend-spaceships, no accountability or deadlines, and you still get money flowing in month after month, year after year? What's not to like.