Maybe you can talk among one another and sort out what the criticism is.
I think my trying to convince americans on the evils of modern day capitalism, is about on par (maybe slightly harder even) with those like Ryan trying to defend Star Citizens method of construction.
For the record i would love for modern day capitalism to not be evil, as much as i hope Chris Roberts can deliver a decent game. I’m an optimist, especially in the face of adversity.
Menzo
2965
Aren’t people allowed to have different criticisms? Or multiple? I don’t think there should be a requirement that everyone vote on and agree about what their concern is.
rshetts
2966
Nope you are only allowed one valid criticism per Chris Roberts game. Anymore will automatically be considered invalids badgering and will be forthwith dismissed with extreme prejudice.
Heres the basic problem with Star Citizen. It has all the earmarks of a long con. It gets strongly defended by people who have dropped money on it, because to criticize the project at this point interrupts the wish fulfillment aspect that Star Citizen greatly relies on. There are very few people who want the game to crash and burn but if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck and looks like a duck, its probably a duck. The fact that some people look at the duck and see SPACESHIPS!!! doesnt make it less of a duck.
It’s a duck with my money, dammit!
meeper
2968
Or more specifically, the lack of public progress on old ideas.
Maybe RSI has make Wicked Awesome progress on the project and is keeping it all hidden from the public Because Reasons. Or perhaps a more probable scenario, and one that follows occam’s razor, is that maybe they haven’t made any Wicked Awesome progress at all. And given the sheer feature set that even the ‘old ideas’ had, this smells like trouble.
The RSI business model is entirely based on releasing their visible accomplishments to the public as fast as possible in order to entice new users into buying in. From an outsiders perspective (I didn’t back the project, but I sure would like to be able to eventually play Wing Commander 2016/2017/2018/2019), the glacial pace of visible progress combined with semi-educated guesses on their burn rate against publicly-stated revenue and the semi-recent adoption of ‘free week’ specials leaves me with legitimate concerns that their business model isn’t (or won’t be) able to keep up with expenses. At the very least, their patented Whale Milking Mechanism isn’t producing the revenue that it previously did.
Bottom line: I don’t think this project is going anywhere, but I sure as hell would like to be proven wrong and have an awesome sequel to one of the first PC games I ever played.
Timex
2970
Or more specifically, the lack of public progress on old ideas.
Well, you can play the game yourself for free and check out the progress they’ve made so far for the next week.
While I hope the game works out to be everything it promises to be, there are way too many red flags, real or imagined, that would scare off any investor not already sucked in with the sunken cost fallacy.
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Roberts wants to make movies, not games. Warren Spector said as much with the original Wing Commander, Roberts has his (terrible) movie, and now he is more into mocap with celebrities than a design plan for the game itself.
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Roberts has been down the path of wild and loose with design documents before. Again, Spector had to reign in his vision in Wing Commander. The Freelancer debacle where Microsoft bought out the assets and had to cut the vision short. Star Citizen is what happens when you give a dreamer unlimited funds to make a movie, oh, and there might be a game behind it with all of these pie in the sky promises and ideas.
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The money is being pissed away. I’m not an expert on game development, but $20,000 coffee makers, expensive furniture, fancy doors, reeks of hubris. They are spending backer money, and yes you need things for morale, you need the office party and free snacks or whatever is standard, but how someone can spend investor money on these things (plus again the aforementioned excesses with the mocap studios) is highlighting poor financial control.
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The Cryengine system. Again, I am not an expert, but there are questions about the wisdom of using this. At best case, it will work, but gamers will need substantial upgrades to their systems to be able to play it as they have ‘designed’.
There are other rumors floating around and yes, anyone who takes Derek Smart as gospel is a fool, but there is insider talk about the remaining developers not having the experience needed for a project like this, lack of any meaningful project management (look at how the patches are developed), and just a complete lack of substantial progress on basic gameplay design while Roberts continues to promise features that in no way can exist.
It’s an amazing goal, I wish them nothing but the best, but I really feel bad for people who dropped thousands into this.
Had he made the $2 million game first, based on the original kickstarter and then expanded on it with the additional funds, there would be a lot less doubt and taking the piss than is going on now. Love it or hate it, but Elite: Dangerous is doing a great job of creating a functional game and system and then expanding on it in tangible, defined stages.
Timex
2972
There are other rumors floating around and yes, anyone who takes Derek Smart as gospel is a fool, but there is insider talk about the remaining developers not having the experience needed for a project like this
Who exactly are the “insiders” talking about this?
None of the stuff Derek said ever panned out, and every end-times deadline he gave came and went.
meeper
2973
I have both times and frankly, I’m still more dubious than I expected. If what has been released publicly is any sort of representative sample of the speed of development, the term ‘glacial’ would be generous.
Like pretty much everyone else here, I want the damn game to succeed. I’m just not seeing any indications that it will given, as I said previously, their entire business model is predicated on showing backers (and potential backers) as much progress as possible to attract additional revenue and the stunning lack of progress is damning.
I’ve spent my entire career building pretty complex simulation software and there was even a point in my life where I professionally worked on video games, so I very much understand the importance of architecting your system for where you want to eventually be rather than meeting the demands of today. But the experience I’ve gleaned over the years has forced me to take a much more pragmatic view of how things actually pan out and as a result, I now place much more emphasis on demonstrating progress and reaching milestones than in building the ‘ideal’ system. I would argue that the biggest reason reason why so few ventures succeed with a ‘dreamer’ at the helm is because they tend to seldom know when to reign in a design and hold the course steady, and as a result everyone else on the ship is trying to hit a moving target. This is exactly what I see when I look at SC.
JonRowe
2974
I think you are conflating our opinions into something else. I am not criticizing the game that Star Citizen is, because it isn’t a game. It hasn’t been released. I, and pretty much everyone else here, are criticizing RSI’s methods of funding their game in development, and the way they have blown past so many milestone checkpoints without anything to show for it. When the game does come out, and someone does complain about how it doesn’t play like Rogue Squadron or some other arcade-flight game, then you have an argument.
In this instance, I’m very specifically questioning the idea that RSI can create compelling and engaging gameplay around crew ship mining because I’ve rarely ever seen it done well in other games. In fact, there are whole games built around the concept of crew cooperation, (Artemis, Pulsar, etc) and they do it to varying degrees of success. If RSI pulls it off, more power to them, but I doubt their ability to do so.
I would, if I could download it, but I never can, and somehow I feel like I’m missing no and thing.
I was once like you guys, optimistic, hopeful. Then I took an arrow to the expectations, and they’ve been falling down the drain ever since.
Thankfully there’s other stuff to play like Elite and the surprisingly amazing Vendetta Online!
Since we’re speaking of realism as the goal of Star Citizen (though I think the correct term should be “authenticity”), note that, right now, in Star Citizen, if you leave your spaceship (i.e., EVA) which is going at 100 m/s, the moment you leave the ship you’ll “stop” (have your speed set to 0 m/s) and watch your spaceship go away at 100 m/s.
Realism!
(Someone even called CR on that in one of the 10 for the Chairman episodes, and while his explanation might make some limited sense from a gameplay design perspective, it utterly fails if you consider realism or authentiticy)
Does your space suit have its own little jets that stop your forward momentium mayhaps?
I’m sure there’s some way that they reverse the polarity of the subspace field.
Inertial Dampeners! It’s always Inertial Dampeners!
On a spacesuit? C’mon now, that’s just ridiculous.
Or, cuz it’s awesome to watch your ship zoom away and explode.
Screw Realism when cool or gameplay supersede.
NO! It’s a Chris Roberts game filled with genre-destroying Realism ™! And for $30,000 real dollars you can buy the factory starship on which the inertial dampeners that are standard on every space suit are assembled.
