Regarding Star Citizen, the network side of things has always been holding it back. The reason Arena Commander (back when it was the Dogfighting Module) was delayed in late 2013 was because they had done very little work on the network side of things and they were going to take the time to “do it right”. Then Arena Commander came out in mid-2014 and pretty much showed they had taken the time…but it was far from right.
I’ll say it again and again. The reason Star Citizen isn’t out yet has nothing to do with “feature creep” (though it doesn’t help). They still don’t have the fundamental backbone to make ANY of the versions of Star Citizen. Even the KS version, which was little more than empty space instances with the ability to zone to FPS-level “landing zones”. And the reason they have expanded beyond has more to do with them feeling around in the dark for a shortcut than it has with increased ambitions.
We all know what’s going to happen. By the end of this year Chris Roberts will be so disgusted with the lack of progress in the “3.x” series that they’ll totally shift gears away from it, because the current development thread will run into roadblocks.
You mean away from 3.x to SQ42 or shift away from the current implementation/engine? I could imagine the first scenario too, even though I am not that pessimistic about 3.x as I think the progress in the 3.x versions is OK compared to 2.x. But yeah, not unlikely…
I doubt the second scenario as this would clearly make the desaster state transparent and public for everyone, no one would continue to believe in the project when years (literally) of development would be thrown away, even “the lovers” wouldnt. Then I think its more likely they continue to reengineer everything until the whole thing (and money) fades away for nothing…
The biggest problem with the project is something Chris Roberts has mentioned a small number of times in development videos but never really noticed as being an issue. Production teams are given the job of designing and implementing the features and gameplay mechanics they’re asked to work on as they go.
This sort of thing worked fine for the Wing Commander series or Freelancer with their teams of 10 to 13 people; it’s something that works well for small independant videogames when the whole team can sit in a skype call and chat about how everything in the game is supposed to work together, but for hundreds of people spread out over multiple studios? It’s a bad idea.
There’s no design team. There’s no plan being worked from. It’s not something that’ll kill the project, just something that’ll make everything take a lot longer than it should, and lead to multiple re-designs to allow the different systems to work together properly.
It’s a good thing CIG have so much money to throw at the project, or the above would matter a great deal more.
I mean the 3.x series of patches, the small part of the Crusader system we’ve seen. I think a lot of it will be set aside (and have to be redone later) for a new “4.0” vision of how the game will go forward.
We saw the idea for “modular” that lasted through the Hangar Module, then Arena Commander. Then it shifted to them integrating Star Marine with ArcCorp18, which was supposed to lead to the 2.0 “mini-PU”, however Star Marine went AWOL for a long time. Then went they were having problems making the 2.x series of patches work and a lot of work being done on SQ42, they sold everyone on 3.0 being the way forward. Of course that was the 3.0 due out in Nov-Dec 2016 and not the 3.0 we finally got in January this year. I just think at some point CR will get frustrated with how things are going (if he isn’t already), come up yet another NEW master plan, the tech for which will shift and the kernel for the larger game will finally be planted.
People blame feature creep for where SC is. I don’t. CIG just hasn’t ever been where they can actually, truly move forward, from a technical standpoint. The main issue is getting thousands or even hundreds all into an integrated game world. The original idea was instances. They ran from instances because they either didn’t know how to do them or they were going to take too long. So they decided larger areas with PG planets and no instances. Yet they can only fit so many on a shard (and it’s painful if too many are in one place). Either they’ll have to shift back to instances or shift in some other direction. But the way they are building the 3.x series just isn’t going to get to a full star system with hundreds and hundreds of people flying around. I don’t think all the blind culling, serialized variables, nor whatever else is supposed to be in the “Jesus Patch” will go far enough.
Whatever becomes “4.0” won’t be simply ramping up everything done in 3.x. It will be a shift in thinking to a new way of trying to make concrete progress, which will lead to a lot of reworking, a lot of breaking stuff and we’ll still be waiting for the “Jesus Patch” that will make the whole thing “work”.
Yeah , … squadron 42 is delay as usual , not big deal.
SC making more money by controversial bizness model. Greed is natural.
i think this is some thinly veiled extreme humble troll bragging here (me include). ha ha !
(i mean the whole topic)
Anyway , as long as whole eco-system works . Got no issue :
Devs get paids and got jobs and paid gov tax :
Chris R get rich.
Medias feed posts.
Fans chats & shares.
Haters hate and drop thier “explicits” “toxics” or not comments.
Lurker get thier popcorn.
Meme drop their.
Everybody free to spend the money on their passion.
Proof that you should be careful what you back on Kickstarter! It’s a gift of money in the hope of a product you like, not a business investment or preorder (though that can be a reward)!
What you say is true. But the example is not a normal kickstarter case. If someone continues to buy 16 packages he cannot argue that they suddenly changed the product.
I brought one at the beginning and never added anything later. I guess it would be easier for me to argue that they are not building what they promised in the beginning.
But I won’t try to refund. they kickstarted the space sim genre. And thats what i wanted
Given that there hasn’t been an influx of space sim games being released in the last couple of years since Star Citizen’s Kickstarter (at least not more than usual from what I can tell), I would argue that SC didn’t really kickstart anything. But apart from that I am looking forward to see how (if) the game will make an impact once it is released.
There was a flurry of them. Fairly small. David Braben decided to go ahead and commit to Elite: Dangerous because of Star Citizen. There have been a few indie tiles too. Sony threw money behind NMS, there was the Transverse disaster and Mass Effects: Andromeda started out as more of a PG planet open world.
Though a common theme to most of the games, Elite, Limit Theory, NMS and the original concept for Andromeda was procedural planets. Star Citizen was really the last to jump on that bandwagon, mainly because CR’s idea of a totally handcrafted universe was unworkable.
A lot of other companies probably took a look at the genre and either decided to wait and see (and since SC is taking so long and so much money and NMS’ issues they’ve decided not to) or just decided it wasn’t worth it for a niche game.
Are you sure that it was SC that made DB go through with E:D? Both KS were made public in the span of 2ish weeks (18.10 vs 05.11), which means it is fair to assume, that DB already had E:D in the works way before CR announced SC on KS (coming up with the game concept, making the video etc probably took longer than 2 weeks). I may be wrong, but it is annoying to use a little smartphone, so I will check once I am back home.
Edit:
You do have a point though about Sony picking up NMS. That might be directly linked towards SC’s success on Kickstarter. I wonder how NMS (which again was probably already under development when the Star Citizen Kickstarter started) would look like if it hadn’t been picked up by Sony.
CR didn’t “make” Frontier go through with E:D, it was something they had been working off and on since 2009. Though it was SC’s kickstarter success that influenced Braben to commit to a KS of his own.
‘Also, worth noting that even though the judge dismissed section 2.1.2 (exclusivity), the 2.4 breach is even more harmful to CIG. PLUS - right there on the last page of the filing - the judge invited Crytek to file any amendment if her understanding of their intent (e.g. 2.1.2) was misunderstood. If the judge was certain that 2.1.2 and the punitive damages issue were open and shut, she would NEVER have left that door open for Crytek to file an amended complaint as per the two items she didn’t dismiss. She’s not stupid.’
and then went on to say,
Make no mistake, seeing as CIG/RSI are basically INSOLVENT, this is the final death knell. Especially if Crytek files an injunction to prevent them from continuing to operate Star Citizen. The damages alone are going to be catastrophic. If you’re an investor, you just got rekted.
They have basically DESTROYED the company with this because they simply cannot afford for this to go to trial.
Now, this MtD ruling has not only given Crytek a massive upper hand in any settlement talk, if I were in Crytek’s shoes, I would just go in, take every f-cking thing, kick them all out, finish the game and extract their losses and damages.
For posterity sake, I am calling it now.
We’re going to wake up one day and find that Crytek owns EVERY asset of CIG/RSI entities.
. Got no issue :