That seems pretty big. If Roberts and co can put that behind them, that’s a big iceberg avoided for this particular Titanic.
Strange we haven’t seen any response from Derek since that last piece of info came out that Crytek didn’t have a leg to stand on. He’s usually so talkative about this subject.
Sir, you have won the internet for today.
CIG have released all sorts of videos that look cool. I remember excitedly showing my friends one of the CitizenCon gameplay videos like five years ago, and jokingly saying Star Citizen was basically going to be the end of my “real” life.
After this many years, and deadlines that have not just been missed, but basically slipped over an event horizon into a black hole, CIG are deserving of nothing but skepticism these days. If they eventually deliver what I enthusiastically backed all those years ago, great. But at this point no one should be acting like there’s nothing wrong here.
Eight years. A quarter of a billion dollars.
lol
Yeah, Derek not posting his opinion is like the sun rising in the West.
And, yet, over the past couple of years, CIG have been releasing several updates and new ships and contents that bring us closer to that vision. By all means be a skeptic. They are beyond late and over budget. I don’t expect the figurative moon at this point.
But some of the ships and mechanics that have made it out are very cool and exciting for space sim / exploration fans. We shall see what comes out of it.
The low effort jpeg jokes are a bit sad by this point in development though.
That’s been true ever since the first pre-alpha build though. Technically we are forever marching towards that “vision” any time they add anything.
A bit tired? Sure. Inaccurate? CIG still sells ships that are nothing but concept artwork at the time. In some cases they even sell ships based around in-game mechanics that don’t exist yet, which is two layers of IOU abstraction between your money and a tangible, finished, in-game product.
I would love to still feel the excitement for SC that I used to feel. But at this point it almost feel irresponsible for me to even consider buying into hype, or trying to hype anyone else about it.
I will say it’ll be hilarious if Star Citizen ever is actually finished, and you’ve got hundreds of people who already own veritable fleets of high end ships already.
DF has just posted their second video in the series looking at 3.8. it has an interesting look at the particle system, the damage system and how CIG creates small detail at the micro level within the large scale of Star Citizen.
But then they become actual ships. There are over 100 flyable ships in the game now, over 50 if you don’t consider the different variants of the same frame to be different ships.
Was just about to post it, I am really enjoying these looks at the technology behind SC. It looks so damn gorgeous, I really hope that S42 beta will pan out this or next year.
Flyable ships but what about the playable game?
Not sure what the argument is here. I’m sure they are working on making ships. I’ve personally stood in the “Constellation” model ship that I think my old package gave me (I can barely remember any more).
But they also absolutely sell ships that are nothing but concept artwork at the time they go on sale - often times with no real date for when the ship in question will even be modeled and finished - in order to raise money to continue work on the current ships and stuff they are developing. Therefore, they are often selling “jpegs” that are nothing but glorified IOUs at the time.
And that strategy works… as long as new money keeps rolling in to “pay off” the development of in-game assets promised by older pledges. This is also why some uber-skeptics think the ship selling can never end.
The elephant (ok, there are a herd of them) in the room for me is, assuming they get a real honest to goodness playable multiplayer space game out that works, what happens when there is no balance, no level playing field, and you instantly have a game universe where a chunk of the population is geared up and armed for bear, and anyone else coming in is fodder? Even if the universe is mostly not PvP-ish, the disparities will be astronomical, and if experience with other MMO type games is any guide, utterly destructive to the game community.
Buying a giant ship doesn’t actually make you more competitive in terms of combat. The most combat capable ships are the fighters, which aren’t expensive.
The really expensive ships tend to be the huge ones that can have multiple people in them, or which can haul a huge amount of cargo.
You ever play Eve?
Are you sure? In the 6dof Newtonian space mmo I play when a cap ship appears on the horizon in combat it dominates the field. That doesn’t mean it’s never vulnerable versus fighters but it’s more or less a queen on the chessboard.
I can basically expect to be Poe in SW8 versus say… a Javelin?
I get where this comes from… different tools for different jobs… but I often see equating the two in terms of power and aside from this being conjecture, currently, I’m not sure anyone really believes it.
The 2 main issues have been and will be:
- No game balance is possible when you’re selling your units. This is going to be a messy sandbox rather than a well-designed game.
- This thing is extremely extremely unlikely to ever be massively multiplayer.
I think if you can live with these two limitations, given the never-ending stream of money, something decent will eventually come out. Especially now that the lawsuit is gone.
Which game is that?
Well, i only have small fighter type ships, so my experience with the bigger ships is limited to what I got to do with them when I stole them… But in my experience, they were not dominant at all.
The bigger benefit was that you could run a whole crew of people in them. But I suspect that with those same resources piloting multiple ships, you’d be stronger overall. Of course, the larger ships do potentially let folks who might not be good at piloting make the shop more effective by managing power and shields and stuff.
But i suppose this stuff is all going to come down to balance, like in any game. I don’t see any reason to assume the balance is going to be bad.