(09-02-2018, 08:33 AM)Riehl Wrote: Don't bother here, the discovery community is full of anti SC toxicity.
So I've noticed. Just a bunch of freeloaders who dont want to pay for their games =P
Yeah. We're all a bunch of freeloaders because we don't pay for a game that is literally impossible to buy from the publisher anymore. Quite evidently.
For the sake of of clarity (and being argumentative), here is why I (and a good many others) have little to no respect for Star Citizen. Development of the game started in 2011 and was formally announced in 2012 as part of Cloud Imperium's crowdfunding campaign. The promised release date was 2014. This crowdfunding campaign ended up being the largest in history, raising (as of this year) over 190 million US dollars¹.
The first form of playable content came about near the end of 2013, very close to their planned release. Known as the "Hanger Module"², all this allowed players to do was roam around a hanger and look at what they'd spent their money on. It was massively exaggerated and significantly more was promised than what was actually provided at this point. However, at this point, people were still hopeful as the release date had not been reached and the campaign had been very successful. It would be assumed that all that money went to good use, you'd think?
Within very close proximity to what was the expected release date, the first proper module was released. The Arena Commander module. This time people were actually allowed to use ships and test the game and physics and such. It was at this point for many of us that the realisation set in that the chances of a full game being released in time for the promised release date really set in. The game wasn't even close to being finished and what little they published needed a lot of polishing.
While I am paraphrasing and simplifying things a lot for the sake of an easy explanation, the core points and facts remain the same. It's almost 2019 now and Star Citizen is a joke. It's been in development for 8 years and there are entire game series that have been released, sold, and continued within that space of time; with half the budget.
The budget of SC is so high that there is literally nothing they can release that would explain the amount of money they've had for the project. It's a similar case to Half Life 3 I suppose. If Valve ever made HF3, there is no way they could make it meet people's exceptions due to how high they are; similar case here. To pile things on, Cloud Imperium have been sued by CryTek, further removing any confidence people may have placed into it.
(09-02-2018, 03:53 PM)Laz Wrote: Yeah. We're all a bunch of freeloaders because we don't pay for a game that is literally impossible to buy from the publisher anymore. Quite evidently.
For the sake of of clarity (and being argumentative), here is why I (and a good many others) have little to no respect for Star Citizen. Development of the game started in 2011 and was formally announced in 2012 as part of Cloud Imperium's crowdfunding campaign. The promised release date was 2014. This crowdfunding campaign ended up being the largest in history, raising (as of this year) over 190 million US dollars¹.
The first form of playable content came about near the end of 2013, very close to their planned release. Known as the "Hanger Module"², all this allowed players to do was roam around a hanger and look at what they'd spent their money on. It was massively exaggerated and significantly more was promised than what was actually provided at this point. However, at this point, people were still hopeful as the release date had not been reached and the campaign had been very successful. It would be assumed that all that money went to good use, you'd think?
Within very close proximity to what was the expected release date, the first proper module was released. The Arena Commander module. This time people were actually allowed to use ships and test the game and physics and such. It was at this point for many of us that the realisation set in that the chances of a full game being released in time for the promised release date really set in. The game wasn't even close to being finished and what little they published needed a lot of polishing.
While I am paraphrasing and simplifying things a lot for the sake of an easy explanation, the core points and facts remain the same. It's almost 2019 now and Star Citizen is a joke. It's been in development for 8 years and there are entire game series that have been released, sold, and continued within that space of time; with half the budget.
The budget of SC is so high that there is literally nothing they can release that would explain the amount of money they've had for the project. It's a similar case to Half Life 3 I suppose. If Valve ever made HF3, there is no way they could make it meet people's exceptions due to how high they are; similar case here. To pile things on, Cloud Imperium have been sued by CryTek, further removing any confidence people may have placed into it.
Not to mention they have the balls to try and charge people $27,000 for access to all the ships and skins.
(09-02-2018, 08:33 AM)Riehl Wrote: Don't bother here, the discovery community is full of anti SC toxicity.
So I've noticed. Just a bunch of freeloaders who dont want to pay for their games =P
Yeah. We're all a bunch of freeloaders because we don't pay for a game that is literally impossible to buy from the publisher anymore. Quite evidently.
For the sake of of clarity (and being argumentative), here is why I (and a good many others) have little to no respect for Star Citizen. Development of the game started in 2011 and was formally announced in 2012 as part of Cloud Imperium's crowdfunding campaign. The promised release date was 2014. This crowdfunding campaign ended up being the largest in history, raising (as of this year) over 190 million US dollars¹.
The first form of playable content came about near the end of 2013, very close to their planned release. Known as the "Hanger Module"², all this allowed players to do was roam around a hanger and look at what they'd spent their money on. It was massively exaggerated and significantly more was promised than what was actually provided at this point. However, at this point, people were still hopeful as the release date had not been reached and the campaign had been very successful. It would be assumed that all that money went to good use, you'd think?
Within very close proximity to what was the expected release date, the first proper module was released. The Arena Commander module. This time people were actually allowed to use ships and test the game and physics and such. It was at this point for many of us that the realisation set in that the chances of a full game being released in time for the promised release date really set in. The game wasn't even close to being finished and what little they published needed a lot of polishing.
While I am paraphrasing and simplifying things a lot for the sake of an easy explanation, the core points and facts remain the same. It's almost 2019 now and Star Citizen is a joke. It's been in development for 8 years and there are entire game series that have been released, sold, and continued within that space of time; with half the budget.
The budget of SC is so high that there is literally nothing they can release that would explain the amount of money they've had for the project. It's a similar case to Half Life 3 I suppose. If Valve ever made HF3, there is no way they could make it meet people's exceptions due to how high they are; similar case here. To pile things on, Cloud Imperium have been sued by CryTek, further removing any confidence people may have placed into it.
I understand why a lot of people have lost faith in the project, myself I'm just playing other games and passively waiting for my investment to pay off - which I'm sure it will some day. I dont contribute new money to CIG, but I've put in what I consider a fair amount.
My point of view on it is a little different, though. For years and years, the video game market has been absolutely dominated by a few large publishing companies (namely activision and EA). These companies are entirely and completely focused around profit: they hype up games for 1-2 years, only show enough little glimpses of trailers or gameplay to get people excited, and then they release a ludicrously sub-par product with promises to 'fix it with content updates' - content updates that you then have to pay for, on top of subscription fees or microtransactions. These companies have benefited entirely from convincing players to invest pre-order money for exclusive features, and then yank the carpet out from under them, and they manage to do this again and again and again and nobody ever learns from it. They're preying on the entire gaming community and rolling in piles of wrongfully-gotten cash for it.
Chris Roberts and CIG started out star citizen with little more than a dream, or an idea even. Roberts was behind the wing commander series as well as starlancer and freelancer, some of my favorite games of all time, and I'm absolutely confident that the vision he has for star citizen is what I'm after in a game. That said, he's a game creator, not a business manager or marketer, and yes CIG under his direction has made a lot of mistakes and gotten bad publicity along the way.
The delays that we've seen with star citizen have all been for a reason. The initial reason was over-projecting their capabilities, a lot of the technologies they wanted to use for the game just havent advanced quickly enough, or have only recently become available. The game engine has had to be rebuilt from the ground up just to support what they're trying to accomplish, and that took vastly longer than they predicted. We've all been known to overestimate how quickly we can get something done in the past, and that one came back to bite CIG in the arse.
The following delays were not due to CIG's incompetence, but rather due to their ability to actually listen to what players - backers - wanted. At first star citizen was going to be simply a dogfighting space-focused game, much like wing commander, with little to no detail beyond that, but that's not what we wanted. The backers for star citizen have continually asked for more and more features to be added to the game: we wanted a persistent universe, we wanted seamless space-to-planet transitions, we wanted a full functioning economy, we didnt just want space combat but also mining, trading, smuggling, salvage, exploration, the list goes on. We wanted a living universe with toilets and beds and intelligent NPCs filling out the empty spaces.
All of those things that we wanted have been progressively added to the product, and all of those things obviously are going to take time to develop and implement.
That's one of the many ways that this project differs from the fecal matter EA or Activision pushes on its customers: We have a voice in how things are done, CIG listens and implements the features its backers are asking for, and they openly communicate about it. Very few other game companies can claim that kind of connection to their fans.
Just like everyone else I have grown a bit impatient to see the game actually release, but at the same time I'm willing to wait and have an amazing game that will keep me occupied for years rather than trounce off to another EA product that will hold my attention for a week before I have to return it for a refund because it was nothing like the marketing claimed. I'm more than willing to put a couple hundred dollars up front for a game that wont have microtransactions or subscription fees than to buy a 60$ game that costs me thousands over a couple years of play because they nickel and dime me for every feature the game offers. This isnt the first crowd funded game that I've participated in, and it wont be the last, i'm sure. How many of you remember minecraft, before it's official release? I paid 5$ for minecraft, and I still have that 5$ digital copy of the game even though it now retails for 60$ and is one of the most popular games in the world. Back when I paid that 5$, minecraft was literally a shell of what it is now, it had none of the features that people have in the current iteration, and the only reason it became the monster of a product that it is today is because of backers like myself.
I come from a day and age where gamers made games for other gamers, and publishers werent involved; from a time where gaming was purely for enjoyment rather than profit. How many remember ID software releasing the first doom as freeware? Those days are gone now because the suits at big publishing companies have discovered that they can milk the wallets of every gamer in the world for something that they used to get for free, and I'm sick of it. I'm sick of the business practices that have corrupted the gaming industry. Yes, CIG has raised over 190 million via crowdfunding for their game, but when you consider that most popular games on the market today are developed at a cost of 100-150 million dollars, and that CIG had to build their entire 500+ developer infrastructure from the ground up for star citizen, it's really not that bogus a budget.
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