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

[bertram_tung]

I hope the "fan favorite" voice actor from wing commander is Tom Wilson.

 

[Disgruntled]

Got the hangar at last. I have to say im rather pleased, cant wait to get this thing into space.

 

[Gurkog]

While I think the game will be shit for trying to do everything, I hope it turns out heaven!

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

FFS, my comp is all packed and I won't be getting the hangar for another 2-3 weeks. I hate moving.

 

[Dexter]

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.

What you think you are doing is helping the amazing Chris Roberts create the game of his dreams, rejuvenating PC gaming and bringing back large-scale space trading/combat games and simulators.

What you are most likely actually achieving is playing into the hands of a calculating businessman, someone that believes this: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1016417/-100-000-Whales-An should be the future of video games, possibly helping it to tumble into an even further dark abyss than it already is with all the DRM, DLC, Microtransaction, Pre-Order and Season Pass crap out there. A new revolution in buttfuckery, that the chinese market is already practicing.

If you believe he has already revealed everything about the “payment model” of his final game then you are more delusional than I’d have thought.
He will continue revealing these little surprises and bit by bit the frogs will start to boil as Blaine will hand-wave the water as merely lukewarm and agreeable.

Vanity items in retail single player games, where everyone gets the same experience at the end or enhanced Collector's Editions with a few extra tchotchkes aren’t anywhere near paving the way for thousands of dollars of power-based player-upgrades and bragging rights shit in multiplayer in the west.

Congratulations, you are a:

And Chris Roberts is:

 

[MetalCraze]

Wait... There are going to be microtransactions in Star Citizen?

 

[Grunker]

Wait... There are going to be microtransactions in Star Citizen?

Is that a serious question?

 

[Morgoth]

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

Looks pretty good, but there is a lot of work to be done on it.

 

[Drakron]

Care to elaborate?

Simple, right now he is getting the money but he is not answering to anyone, meaning there are no constraints so bad ideas and poor allocation of resources are stopped because he is not answering to anyone.

In this case, without a real publisher this inst going to get off the ground in terms of population since a lot of people will not even be aware of its existence and many people that are, will not because the payment options are ridiculous and this means you get a game for a few people, there will be asymmetries in terms of regional demographics since this is very much a NA game as it stands meaning everyone else gets fucked because of timezones and likely poor network performance.

Now, this affects the future became if the game is good and flops because of what I said about distribution then you see the raise of the whale milking, the cash shop becomes more and more intrusive and you start to see RNG Lock boxes despite assures from the regular crowd its not going to happen, fact is this is a product and they arent thinking on actually getting it on the market and if it fails the fact is they got 20+ millions so why not 40 millions? why not 60? He can lament all he wants about insurance but I read the same in STO with the Galor on the Lock box so excuse me if I havent seen this before and excuse me if I dont think its crocodile tears and excuse me if I dont think the moment the heat goes up because they screwed up on selling the game they arent to go sell power on a cash shop and the like.

Then again, my main issue is this ... they arent putting a effort on actually selling the game, going on about "we would like to put it on Steam" is not enough.

 

[Stereotypical Villain]

Hiking simulator.

 

[J_C]

Care to elaborate?

Simple, right now he is getting the money but he is not answering to anyone, meaning there are no constraints so bad ideas and poor allocation of resources are stopped because he is not answering to anyone.

In this case, without a real publisher this inst going to get off the ground in terms of population since a lot of people will not even be aware of its existence and many people that are, will not because the payment options are ridiculous and this means you get a game for a few people, there will be asymmetries in terms of regional demographics since this is very much a NA game as it stands meaning everyone else gets fucked because of timezones and likely poor network performance.

Now, this affects the future became if the game is good and flops because of what I said about distribution then you see the raise of the whale milking, the cash shop becomes more and more intrusive and you start to see RNG Lock boxes despite assures from the regular crowd its not going to happen, fact is this is a product and they arent thinking on actually getting it on the market and if it fails the fact is they got 20+ millions so why not 40 millions? why not 60? He can lament all he wants about insurance but I read the same in STO with the Galor on the Lock box so excuse me if I havent seen this before and excuse me if I dont think its crocodile tears and excuse me if I dont think the moment the heat goes up because they screwed up on selling the game they arent to go sell power on a cash shop and the like.

Then again, my main issue is this ... they arent putting a effort on actually selling the game, going on about "we would like to put it on Steam" is not enough.

Would you like some publisher dumb down the game, or cancel it altoghether because it is not marketable enough instead?

 

[Overboard]

Ah, the good old false dilemma logical fallacy.

 

[Drakron]

Would you like some publisher dumb down the game, or cancel it altoghether because it is not marketable enough instead?

Checks exist to make sure things work, I dislike the bullshit that is publishers that teh evilz ... developers are quite capable of fucking up and rather blame everyone else rather then themselves for the choices they made on their own.

 

[Disgruntled]

Im finding some of the complaints a bit bizarre. I have my concerns about the game but p2w is probably one of the lowest.

The real humps for me are down to the technical level and scope feasibility. Will they manage to get latency right in multiplayer without getting stuck for a year?
Will they manage to get the economic system gelling in a meaningful fashion? so we dont find 1 optimal resource with 1000 trash stocks.
Can they get the instances working coherently such that you dont feel burnt out shooting down the same limited variety of npc ships within a month.
Can you get a sizeable number of these ships balanced in combat without crashing everybodies computers.
Will they simply end up liars who shit out another mechwarrior online situation etc..

If it all works out perfect except we have some millionaire untouchables cruising around, i wont be too fussed quite frankly. The vast majority of the population are npcs, for every real guy not there an npc takes his place. You could avoid the 'whales' indefinitely exploring a swathe of non optimal space enjoying yourself.
Im not getting this impression that Star Citizen is a pvp centric be all end all where being cash poor invalidates everything else. Im taking the gamble on an innovative semi-mmo and dont blame anyone else considering the lack of exciting projects in the AAA market.

 

[J_C]

Would you like some publisher dumb down the game, or cancel it altoghether because it is not marketable enough instead?

Checks exist to make sure things work, I dislike the bullshit that is publishers that teh evilz ... developers are quite capable of fucking up and rather blame everyone else rather then themselves for the choices they made on their own.

Letting devs be creative and make the game they want, even if there is a small chance they fuck up>>>>>>letting publishers vomit out shitty game after shitty game.

 

[MetalCraze]

Would you like some publisher dumb down the game, or cancel it altoghether because it is not marketable enough instead?

J_C still thinks Evil Publishers personally design and develop games. Dumb people never change I guess.

 

[J_C]

Would you like some publisher dumb down the game, or cancel it altoghether because it is not marketable enough instead?

J_C still thinks Evil Publishers personally design and develop games. Dumb people never change I guess.

Neither do dumbfucks it seems. It is probably the devs who dumb down the games so they reach a wider audiance. Oh wait, no, the publishers tell them to do so.

 

[Stereotypical Villain]

Hey guise I herd newtonian laser cannons fire at a lesser velocity than a bullet. Sure can't wait for the high fidelity of fidelity in action.

A++ to Chris Roberts if he lets Blaine buy an alien prostitute for another 4000 dollars.

 

[Drakron]

Letting devs be creative and make the game they want, even if there is a small chance they fuck up>>>>>>letting publishers vomit out shitty game after shitty game.

You made me agree with Skyway you dumbfuck and since you like to have long answers lets begin ...

When you say developers you mean who exactly? teams today around over 40 people at a low estimative and do you really think 40 people have the same idea of the "game they want to make"? how many of those are programers and modelers that will only work on boring and repetitive basic work?

That leads us to the truth, games stop being done by 10 people, they are done by teams 10 times that if not more and so when you say "devs" you mean a actual small number of people that are the leads, those people make those decisions and said decisions are made in meeting when something is proposed and its accepted or rejected based on several factors, as the programing lead saying it cannot be done or it can be done or if it can be done ... the only people that are "creative" is just writers and art and art just does concept that gets passed to modelers that are unlikely to do a 100% reproduction of said artwork due to medium differences and actual requirements.

At the end a game "creation" is the decisions made my a small number of people and those are ultimate the responsibility of the lead developer since those ideas come from development, that is people that are the ones that are there to come up with ideas and concepts, also mechanics and systems ... everyone is on their box doing part as a cog in the machine because its not if they are going have 120 people sitting and debating what should be done because nothing would get done that way.

In fact you are such a dumbfuck you dont even realize Star Citizen is being in 3 diferent locations, Cloud Imperium that is located in Santa Monica and Austin (offices in West Hollywood, just mentioning for completeness sake) ,Massive Black that is located in San Fransisco and Behavior Interactive that is located in Canada ... now you can discount Massive Black and Behavior Interactive as "hired guns" and not real developers (oh, hi there Aliens: Colonial Marines) but still you have one studio in California and another in Texas from Cloud Imperium alone, not counting the "hired guns"

How about we drop the act as if developers are some kind of star eyed young adults with dreams and creativity instead of being what they are, payed professionals with degrees and years in the industry?

 

[Blaine]

snip

Your post is long on bias, speculation, and histrionics, and short on facts and reasoned analyses. This is a much longer reply than it deserves.

How about we drop the act as if developers are some kind of star eyed young adults with dreams and creativity instead of being what they are, payed professionals with degrees and years in the industry?

Creativity, professionalism, and the desire to have a successful career aren't mutually exclusive concepts.

Looks like, as do most disingenuous jackasses, you dug just enough to get some facts for your rant, while ignoring other key facts so as not spoil your buffoonery. The "hired guns" you mention are doing the grunt work designing some star systems. The core Star Citizen team is exactly 30 people, including customer service, the webmaster, the IT guy, the community manager, and so on. The team members designing the game number no more than 25 people. Ironic, given the "THEY'RE A BIG TEAM AND THEREFORE BAD, ARGH!" fallacious logic you're employing. Yes, they're farming out some work, and that fact was announced publicly on the front page of the RSI website months ago. It would be physically impossible for them to implement 100 star systems by early 2015 without outside help.

Now in general I agree that massive development teams are often a symptom of the decline, but it's not a foregone conclusion (the credit rolls from more than a few Codex favorites are 50+ people minimum), and really, CIG's not a massive team. The people to whom the star systems are being farmed out aren't designing core mechanics, they aren't designing ships, they aren't working on physics, they aren't working on the story or dialog, they're simply building planets, asteroids, space stations and so on that will be vetted and finalized by CIG.

 

[Drakron]

Creativity, professionalism, and the desire to have a successful career aren't mutually exclusive concepts.

No but there is still people that treat developers as 5 guys doing it on a Commodore in their parents basement, this is a job and you might like your job and enjoy it but its still a job, acting like very developer is a "indy" and we all seen what indy games are like, filled with passion perhaps but that doesnt mean the end result is good, I only need to present "Dinner Date" as evidence.

As for the rest, that was generalist towards development teams ... some might have 25 but others certainly dont, this was not aimed at Star Citizen itself but a commentary we cannot act if we are back in John Romero's garage because thats not the truth on game studios, if you blaming me of fallacious logic I am going to point out you are constructing a strawman since you cannot deny the game is being made in Santa Monica and Austin, we had a feed didnt we? but that was not the point either as I know some games that had parts developed by different studios and dont hold that against them, *I* dont think its a issue that network code is done off house or the engine is licensed or even that conceptual design is off-sourced as long the end product is good and everything done by a core team does not mean it will be better or worst, it will just be done that way.

Also massive development teams are not a symptom of the decline, they are a reality on the fact that games today require a LOT of boring repetitive necessary technical work, if you modded anything you should know how long things take now compared to a decade ago, with Super Mario you had sprites ... today you have a 3d model with a texture that will have a bump map and a light map if not a alpha map and that means something that taken someone a couple day will now tale 3 people a week, simply we cannot avoid this because this is how things are, more complicated.

Wing Command had sprites, Star Citizen have 3d models ... what you think will take more time? you cannot avoid that and you cannot avoid having a larger team or your development cycle will just go bigger because even the most simple tasks will require more time, I am not saying this is wrong ... I do say what is wrong is acting as if you are a indy and blame things on "the evil publishers" as if they are the cause of all goes wrong ... again, "Dinner Date".

I understand publishers positions, they are people that finance a game and naturally expect results ... nothing wrong with that either, what is wrong is what currently happen in the entertainment industry that because they made wrong bets they became very afraid to invest on something that does not produce results and currently are in a spiral that was something they created, a self-fullfilling prophecy but then again I also distrust the messiahs that show up with their enlighten paths to salvation.

In the end Star Citizen will be judged by itself, Chris Roberts himself is not as dogmatic as some wish to be considering he talked about possible console versions and also mentioned that things are subject to feedback in relation to PvP, my fears is that by being a self published game it will doom itself to being a niche game played by fanboys only that are blind to any fault it might have and if I wanted that, I would be still playing The Secret World, as much you dislike STO at least people bitch about everything Craptic does ... sign of a relative health game because something is always wrong, this is human nature.

 

[Blaine]

Ninth Jump Point, URL should be accessible by anyone:

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/...source/JumpPoint_01-09_Aug_13_Hanging_Out.pdf

 

[MetalCraze]

Neither do dumbfucks it seems. It is probably the devs who dumb down the games so they reach a wider audiance. Oh wait, no, the publishers tell them to do so.

So which publisher told Shadowrun Returns and Dragon Commander devs to dumb down their games to reach wider audience?

I mean you almost had an intelligent thought there. But then you just had to go and ruin it with your stupidity.

 

[Volrath]

DC dumbed down? Most of the Codex can't even play the RTS because it's too hard