Vapourware Star Citizen - Only people with too much money can become StarCitizens! WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE?

Rich

 

Yes, Blaine, you know everything. But... if you know EVERYTHING then... oh my god! YOU'RE OMNIPOTENT! Forgive my heresy against thine wishes lord, please don't banish me to hell! ... but then again would I really want to go to a heaven constructed by a guy who'd probably suck off Chris Roberts if given the chance? HELL IT IS.

But here I am, wasting my time responding to the guy who used Star Citizen as an example of why Chris Roberts deserves a pass. You're halfway-decent at pulling bullshit out of your ass and making it sound pretty respectable (a critical Codex skill in my experience), but it fails when the person you're addressing knows the subject matter far better than you.

 

I know enough to recognize that someone who forms an opinion on a subject while ignorant of fundamental facts—criticizing a man while citing a product he didn't make as the prime example, assuming I work at fast food restaurant chain just like you do (hyuk hyuk) and saved up for two years to pledge for Star Citizen, and finally resorting to flat-out angry blithering and mimicry—is probably an idiot.

Your trolling attempts are blatantly obvious. If you really want to get my goat, you'll need to base your mockery on actual facts about Star Citizen. Right now you're in the retard club along with Dakron and some other people who's names I've forgotten because I just scroll right past their posts. Hell, I only remember Dakron because of something astonishingly stupid he posted a day or two ago. I did a triple-take when I saw that whopper.

As annoying as Grunker's dog-with-a-bone tactics are (the slightest hint of something unflattering about Star Citizen and he's tap-dancing on that soapbox, though I think he's recognized that that looks dumb and has toned it down, or else has stopped caring [I approve of the latter]), he bases his criticisms on facts and is able to separate his opinions and predictions from fact.

 

it'll be good. even if the online part sucks(and I think it'll be pretty good for an online game) , the squadron 42 single player campaign alone will be better than any space sim that's come out in the last 15 years.

 

Frankly, Blaine, you overreact to every little bit of skepticism one might have about Star Citizen so doing anything other than trolling your inane attempt to defend the thousand-dollar hole you've dug yourself into is an exercise of futility.

Have fun putting your fingers in your ear for the next five to ten years though.

 

Shhh. When complaining and trolling, it's inconvenient to recall that Squadron 42 will feature 50 missions in a branching structure, motion-captured acting from CIG's own mocap studio which was paid for by pledge ships, professional sound recorded from CIG's own studio which was paid for by pledge ships, celebrity voice acting including a favorite from the old Wing Commander games (voice acting isn't a bad thing for all genres), and a full orchestral score. In addition this will include moddable, user-hosted multiplayer a la the Privateer universe writ large (playable solo of course), all for slightly more than the price of Minecraft, a game that was developed by one person on 1/1000th the budget.

Meanwhile, almost everyone else overreacts to every little bit of potentially unflattering information about the game, so it all evens out. If you're going to spew faffery, rhetoric and vitriol, expect the same in return; I'll reply reasonably to legitimate, well-thought-out, well-researched (I'm not talking weeks of research here, just a few minutes) debate. Heaven knows why you expect me to respond reasonably to people behaving like insufferable 12-year-olds who've just discovered trolling.

 

You're acting like a different 12 year old though, the kind who got butthurt that some pals around the playground said that his favorite cartoon sucks.

 

I have yet to be butthurt by a bunch of irrelevant nerds' opinions of any game, good or bad, and regardless of whether I like or dislike said game. I'm just throwing the mindless nonsense right back in your face. The actual difference is that I'm intimately familiar with the Wing Commander series, flight and space simulators in general, and Star Citizen, and can provide interested parties with information and advice upon request. For example, if someone asks, "What joystick should I buy?" or "What kind of hangars will be available in Star Citizen, and how do they work?" or "What games should I play now to practice for Star Citizen?" I can provide them with informed answers and additional sources. You on the other hand serve no useful purpose, as there's already a raft of people saying, "Star Citizen sucks, Chris Roberts sucks, and you suck."

If it pleases you to imagine that such transparent jiggery-pokery angers me in any way, that's your prerogative. The only reason I'm screwing around in this "discussion" with you is that the vaporware Hangar Module will be released tomorrow, so I'm paying more attention to Star Citizen-related threads, websites and so on. You're just kind of there for me to toy with in a mindless way when I check the thread, like a ball of yarn for a cat or something, but it's just a lot of gibberish in my view.

 

Dude what if those 50 missions will play no different from Wing Commander? You know no amount of mocrap will save them from being shit

Singleplayer content added to MMOs for the sake of saying "we have SP" just never works. When their studio is too busy with filling an open space that will work ONLY in MP with content that will be ONLY in MP what effort can a small studio that got money through begging can possibly put into SP?

 

I'm pretty sure it was stated that in both S42 and SC there will be NPCs filling in for the players as needed. So I'm not worried really.

Blaine, what games to practice with? I plan on playing X Rebirth as soon as it comes out, but I kind of doubt it will have similar flight mechanics.

 

The X series is probably the absolute worst thing you can play, since it has blatantly arcade controls and no Newtonian physics at all. For getting used to 6DoF (six degrees of freedom), maneuvering a vehicle in an inertial environment, and also growing accustomed to using your HOTAS if you have one but aren't experienced with it, I'd recommend Evochron Mercenaries single- and multiplayer, FreeSpace 2 modded and multiplayer, Vendetta Online (small monthly fee), Independence War 2, and... there's another, but I'm forgetting it. For getting used to "twitch" gameplay and honing your reflexes and hand-eye coordination, I recommend trying team and cooperative shooters at the low end, and arena shooters (Tribes, Quake, etc.) at the high end. These certainly won't translate directly into piloting skill in a space sim, but the motor skills and such will carry over.

On another note, the imminent release of the Hangar Module has caused pledges to skyrocket. $400,000+ have been raised in just over four days since hitting the $16m mark, and by the end of today the number may be $500,000+.

 

ITT: Blain attempting to change reality by means of denial. Will this bold move succeed? Will Blaine become a real life Doctor Manhattan? Find out in my new text adventure: Blaine goes to Devland.

You are standing in front of the offices of your savior and lord, Chris Roberts. Your hand quakes with anticipation as you grasp the doorknob and turn it... the door slowly opens to reveal nothing! Somebody's already been here, and they've taken the greatest high fidelity newtonian awesome high pixel count of awesome with them, along with its creator!
The room lies barren, however your keen eyes and clearly superior mind detects several options which are open to you.

What do you do?

1. Spit on a cacti.
2. Whip that iPhone out and ask the Codex for help.
3. Walk out of the office and see if there is somebody else left in the building.

 

It seems I've got Evochron Mercs, though haven't played it much. IWAR2 is one of my favs, although the UI is a bit clunky.

 

SV, the further you go down the ad hominem road, the more you embarrass yourself. You can do so much better, both in the discussion, and trolling departments.

 

The thing is though that I wasn't trolling to begin with. I raised some concerns and was met with a brick wall of fanboyism too blind to see anything other than the oh-so awesome gemstone that CLEARLY only the radiant omnipotence of the one true Roberts can bring.

 

He could draw more positive attention to himself by completing the damn LP...

 

All right then, let's start over. These are your concerns:

As I've noted, your prime example is invalid, since Roberts departed that project years before its release. His other computer gaming projects have been successes—great successes in some cases, as it's beyond dispute that Wing Commander and Privateer are legend. Others were less sensational, but nevertheless acclaimed and successful. He's had no failures or bungles to my knowledge, other than the Hollywood movie of course. Furthermore, his former coworkers at Origin Systems and others in the industry who've worked with or for him say the complete opposite about his track record. They note that he's an excellent team leader with a strong vision for the finished project. Unfortunately, sources for such quotables are difficult to simply Google up at a whim, as the keywords are inobvious and I don't know names. I could have bookmarked some of this material, but I didn't think the man's track record was in question.

Other than Freelancer, which I'm sure you can agree is a bad example, can you provide me with names of troubled Chris Roberts projects, a quick rundown of difficulties caused by his involvement in said projects, notable failures or bungles on his part, and/or interviews with his employees, employers, or other industry professionals discussing these faults you speak of? To me it sounds like you're calling the sky green and citing the number 53.7 as your reasoning. I'm asking for specificity.

 

Not those concerns, champ. Go back a year. You've always been a brick wall.

Addendum: You know what? It's pointless to argue about this since we all have different perspectives. Enjoy your game.

 

As you'll note, I think Blaine is a cool guy for managing the Codex Squadron: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...r-citizen-squadron-thread.83766/#post-2701338

But why that should any bearing whatsoever on the fact that I think gameplay exclusives is a sucky backer model, I have no idea.

 

The end justifies the means. It is utterly retarded and pointless to whine at this point; this project is going for $17million USD already. You voted with your wallet and you lost.

The end justifies the means.

If the end result is good, I don't give a fuck about what kind of whoring Roberts did to get there. Especially is the whoring in question only affects the multi-player portion of the game.

Did I mention that the end justifies the means?

 

Disregarding that the concept of 'voting with a wallet' is highly overrated, didn't I just say I would have done the same in Roberts' position? You must have missed that.

That doesn't mean I'm going to personally pledge/recommend other people to pledge to a game that compromises game content with the goal of profits.

The fact of the matter is that while none of us can know either way, there's a good chance all this backer exclusive shit will result in a worse game.

 

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Every Kickstarter project is a blatant cash grab, bar none. If you pledge, you're agreeing to pre-order a game that hasn't even begun to be made based on a pitch; if no game emerges, then for all intents and purposes, you'll have no legal recourse to reclaim your payment. You're allowing yourself to be exploited. Waffling about magnitude is intellectually dishonest—the basic principle remains the same in all cases. I do acknowledge that there are varying degrees of coercion inherent to pledge packages, from next to no coercion and limited special rewards on offer (largely seen in obscure games developed by small teams, such as Limit Theory) all the way up to Shroud of the Avatar, requiring large bags of money to secure limited-quantity persistent virtual property and exclusive titles of nobility.

Shroud of the Avatar goes much too far for my tastes (and for most people's, I suspect, which I suppose might be why it's fared comparatively poorly), but you'll never see me spewing vitriol at those who do choose to pledge. I'm simply not going to pledge for or play Shroud of the Avatar, and because I support Star Citizen, it's not my place to judge. Where Grunker et alia go wrong in my mind is in believing they hold the moral high ground because Project Eternity and such "aren't nearly as bad as" Star Citizen. That may be true from a certain point of view, but those are single-player games and thus the developers cannot meaningfully sell virtual property and exclusive vanity collectibles to backers. Being immortalized in a single-player game is about as far as they can push it, and guess what? They all go there, with backer-designed NPCs. statues, monuments, backer-designed items, name in the credits, signed collectors' editions out of many people's price ranges, and so on. How amazing would it be to have been immortalized in Planescape: Torment? If Project Eternity or T:ToN become timeless classics, having an NPC in your likeness in-game will be a great privilege indeed.

Just because your tolerance for Game X's coercive pledge options is lower than mine doesn't mean your hands aren't dirty. "Fuck you, Blaine, you killed twelve people! I only killed three, you're horrible!" That's the essential logic being used here.

"The team fucking sucks, you suck, the game will suck, fuck you" type sentiments are just ridiculous, really. I said my piece once or twice about Molyneux and GODUS (I just don't like his track record, mainly, and also he has AAA industry connections), I said my piece about Shroud of the Avatar and very occasionally bring it up, but I haven't launched a months-long campaign of ridicule against those who did pledge. They're just doing the same thing I'm doing and for the same reasons: Allowing ourselves to be exploited within boundaries we choose for ourselves so that X game will be made that otherwise wouldn't. Molyneux kind of bends even that otherwise fairly solid crowdfunding principle, but whatever. He's not disallowed from using the system, so, so be it.

 

Yo Blaine show me all dem ships you bought in that module

 

Download servers are swamped, and the Hangar Module won't download the final patch. I had no expectation of a fast and smooth download process on the first day.

At least they didn't do this on Friday and then fuck off for the weekend.

 

I recorded and uploaded the orchestral track from the launcher: