(12-29-2015, 12:12 AM)Dusty Lens Wrote: Thirty three minutes without crashing is considered a good run
It's an alpha. ALPHA. Most games that reach the beta stage have just as many issues and arent nearly as polished.
Quote:sixteen people online is the current high end goal.
No, it isnt. Sixteen online right now is the CURRENT limit for the alpha servers, of which there are about a dozen instances. That limit is already being raised in the next iteration to 48 people per instance, and that's STILL in alpha. Tell me, when was the last time you saw more than 16 people in the same system in disco?
Quote:People, such as our good friend Tenacity in the OP, are still hoping against hope to be able to jump behind the wheel of a ship that was sold as one of the kickstarter pledges back in 2012 and was earmarked to be in the running prior to the "2.0" rollout scheduled for this past June.
I've already flown nearly every flight-ready ship in the alpha, and that ship I pledged to the game for initially (the freelancer) is flyable now in the latest alpha PTU build. You're confusing a crowd funded game with a published game, and the comparison doesnt really stand. A published game doesnt see the light of day or any marketing whatsoever until it's in the late alpha/early beta phases, after all of the work has already been done. That's usually 3-5 years into production before you even HEAR about the game being developed. We've known about star citizen from the very start, so yes, it seems like it's taking longer than a game should, but it isnt.
Quote:CIG doesn't know how to get a lazy afternoon in Manhattan orbit functioning, Chris was shocked at his own chat interface the last time he stumbled through what could only be called a playthrough of his game by the most ardent of supporters and I can assure you that if what we have been presented is a fraction of what they have planned as a hard deliverable in terms of a MMO experience they've got the square root of jack all.
All he said was that text chat systems are outdated and inefficient. Everyone knows this, that's why VOIP software has become so popular with gaming in the past few years.
It's asinine to think that it wont change, especially when the producer dislikes the system.
Quote:That is not a resume that should encourage someone who is mentally well to buy a picture of a spaceship promised to be delivered at some point in the future which will be manned by a platoon of people.
$2,500 for a picture of a ship. It doesn't even come with the game. Cripes alive.
I do agree with you here. Some of the ships are severely overpriced, and I would never in a million years dish out that kind of cash for them.
I started with the basic 45$ package that included access at no additional cost to the full release of the game at launch, as well as access to the current alpha. 45$ is less than the game will be when it does go live - you can expect at least the 60$ standard for a new PC game on store shelves. Over quite a bit of time, I repeatedly exchanged the ship packages for store credit and added 5-10$ here and there to upgrade to other ships that I could try out in the current model of the game, very recently all the way up to the freelancer once it became flyable.
I've paid less overall for star citizen, at this point, than I ever spent on traditional MMO's. Hell, in the four years that I played World of Warcraft, I spent a grand total of 900$ and change between game/expansion costs and monthly subscription fees. In two years I've spent around 480$ just in game costs/subscription fees for star wars: the old republic, and an additional 100-200$ in microtransaction purchases.
These numbers look huge when you see them piled together, but over a long period of time it's really not that big an expenditure. A coworker of mine spends nearly 80$ in cigarettes every month, around 1000$ per year for something that destroys your furniture, your clothes, your skin, and gives you cancer. That's a far worse expense, in my opinion, than spending money on entertainment that I enjoy.
The bottom line is, I'm having more fun and spending more time playing the star citizen alpha right now than I am with other fully developed games. Yes, the 'persistent universe' isnt really all that functional at the moment, but arena commander is awesome and well worth the cost of any of the starter ships.
Quote:Bottom line what Freelancer is to simple SC is to complex. Can someone please find a middle ground
That's where our opinions differ. I want the complexity SC is offering. I want a fully immersive universe to get lost in. I want a next-gen sandbox game that lets me do anything I can think of without restrictions. I'm sick and tired of the streak of themepark, on-rails games that have been infecting the market lately. Even the RPG's force you to take a linear path now. Game developers are taking the easy way out by limiting your experience to a very specific path that they can control in every facet, and that just isnt fun for me. There hasnt been a properly sandbox game since SWG.