Star Citizen General BS

[GaryII]

1) I can agree that Derek overexaggerates about CIG collapse, I personally do not believe that it will be that soon, currently there are just to many SC fanboys left and they will do everything to push CIG, even if v3.0 is released in dec of 2017 (lol at least CR got month right this time :D)
also because CR will repeat the same marketing trick and market v3.1 as next great patch...           

2) I never played games developed by Derek, but from yt videos I see that he actually did similar things, that now CR is trying to do..
   BIG difference is that Derek compared to CR did that without 155m+ of pre-order money, basically without money if we can even compare... 

  So he can speak from personal experience and basically was qualified to see FIRST that there is something wrong with SC project...       

[Serendipity]

The thing with the budget is how you look at it.

Chris said, if you give me 65m, this is what you'll get for that. So people starting to give and after some time 65m was given. So he asked for a budget of 65m to build XYZ in promises. He didn't keep most of those promises, but as long as CIG has not spend over 65m until today, Chris has a budget left. Unfortunately, we don't know how much money CIG has spend until today. However, did Chris deliver as promised? No. Is it likely that they have spend over 65m until today? Yes. Therefore, did Chris deliver as promised within budget? No.

Now, the thing is, even after reaching 65m, money kept coming in. That is extra money to be spend on the game in general. We said we'd do 2 moons, let's make it 4. Stuff like that. The thing is, since there is no specification how those extra millions are to be spend in newly defined targets, they also can be allocated to previous existing targets. If one assumes that the extra money also is allocated for the original goals, then Chris did not deliver for the 65m and everything extra received since.

Since no specification has been made about the allocation of the extra money, one could argue that that all is extra money to be spend on other stuff. There is no way to tell how that money is spend, if at all.

Did Chris go over budget? We don't know since no financial disclosure has been given. Did he deliver as promised? No. Is it likely that the orginal 65m has been spend totally and that for some time now, the additional money has been used to keep up running CIG? Yes. Does that imply that Chris now spend over 65m and has not yet delivered what was agreed upon that he would deliver for 65m? Yes. So, is he over budget then? Yes. Plain and simple. This is Derek's view.

The argument that additional money has been spend to do extra, not-specified things, that as a result hinder the completion of the original promises, does not change the fact that still this project is most likely over original budget and original promises made. Despite his thoughts, backers did not give Chris a carte blache to do whatever he wanted after 65m was reached. He could do that but he had to keep his original promises first. Nobody gave permission to go for changing the orginal promises. If he wanted to change the goalposts for the original targets, he should have asked. Bottomline now is that CIG still hasn't delivered as promised (fact) and can't deliver what was promised. Not at the 65m mark and not with an extra 90m (very good guess).

Is this speculation? Yes, it is. It can only be checked and verified with the actual financial data. That will tell how much money in total was invested and spend. The thing is, we'll only get those details after CIG falls over and simply by falling over, Chris proves he couldn't deliver within specs or budget.

However, since the funding chart is the only way CIG talks about their income stream, let's all pretend that they actually have received 155m so far. Not much to show for if this current 2.6.3 alpha build is all they can deliver right now. Unless they haven't spend that much money in the first place, but that'll be highly unlikely regarding the offices and staffcount.

So the choice as you and Derek see it was to either continue adding stretch goals and adding to feature creep/bloat or pocket the extra themselves? Both options open to valid criticism. What they've done is add staff and studios to help with getting the game done and speed up certain of the stretch goals, like research into PG planets changing to actually doing PG planets, as well as add more vehicles. That seems like the best option to me.

Nobody asked them but they did the honourable thing when the funding didn't stop. Bravo.

[Serendipity]

You can't get out of your seat in Elite and you can't compare NMS to either. That's a cartoon. So no, nobody has done what CIG are doing before in a single game and certainly not to the visual beauty.

So uhm, what about Call Of Duty Infinite War and Mass Effect Andromeda?

So this tech innovation in Star Citizen is about explorable planetoids and being about to enter/exit ships in fps mode?  :lol: :lol: :lol:

PLEASE list ALL the innovative tech in Star Citizen, which nobody has done before, so we can discuss them fully. It should be very interesting.

Mass effect and call of duty are both very different games. You know this. Again, what CIG is doing doesn't stand up to being new for each element on it's own, it's combining all of the elements together that's new and exciting. 155 million in pre orders exciting.

[N0mad]

it's combining all of the elements together that's new and exciting. 155 million in pre orders exciting.

That's the problem. CIG are selling an overhyped dream based on flashy ships and tech demos.

They have no trouble showing off their planetary tech at conferences, together with giant sandworms but seem totally unable to provide players something to test themselves. At some point the alarm bells have to start ringing when a company can't prioritise the essential systems like netcode but can produce endless PR videos, pre-scripted clips, and of course endless ships, fully functional and with huge fidelity and price.

If people had confidence that they could actually make the blockbuster game as promised then all of this wouldn't be a problem. I'm sure even Derek would be happy. But progress on Game seems painfully slow especially when you compare it with the progress they can make producing high fidelity ships to go on sale. They seem to be spending too much time on distractions like box carrying animations, simulated breathing and lots and lots of artwork, instead of making gameplay mechanics and engine optimisations to make it playable.

I genuinely believe they want to make the game, but I'm not sure they can, at least not in a form which would meet people's expectations and fulfil the promises they made.

I also believe that they're misleading people by continuing to make promises which they know must be unrealistic.

Just my opinion though.

[Serendipity]

it's combining all of the elements together that's new and exciting. 155 million in pre orders exciting.

That's the problem. CIG are selling an overhyped dream based on flashy ships and tech demos.

They have no trouble showing off their planetary tech at conferences, together with giant sandworms but seem totally unable to provide players something to test themselves. At some point the alarm bells have to start ringing when a company can't prioritise the essential systems like netcode but can produce endless PR videos, pre-scripted clips, and of course endless ships, fully functional and with huge fidelity and price.

If people had confidence that they could actually make the blockbuster game as promised then all of this wouldn't be a problem. I'm sure even Derek would be happy. But progress on Game seems painfully slow especially when you compare it with the progress they can make producing high fidelity ships to go on sale. They seem to be spending too much time on distractions like box carrying animations, simulated breathing and lots and lots of artwork, instead of making gameplay mechanics and engine optimisations to make it playable.

I genuinely believe they want to make the game, but I'm not sure they can, at least not in a form which would meet people's expectations and fulfil the promises they made.

I also believe that they're misleading people by continuing to make promises which they know must be unrealistic.

Just my opinion though.

Over hyped is fair enough but we'll have to wait and see if they can pull enough off of what they've said they can do to satisfy. 4.0 will be the point that I'll assess that and not before. If we have all the professions in and working to the level that the deep dive articles suggest, then it'll be fantastic. That 'if' is a big one I know.

Until then I'm happy to watch and play each build as we get it. 3.0 looks great on paper and AtV. Really looking forward to trying it out and getting my hands on the first real gameplay of the alpha.

[dsmart]

You can't get out of your seat in Elite and you can't compare NMS to either. That's a cartoon. So no, nobody has done what CIG are doing before in a single game and certainly not to the visual beauty.

So uhm, what about Call Of Duty Infinite War and Mass Effect Andromeda?

So this tech innovation in Star Citizen is about explorable planetoids and being about to enter/exit ships in fps mode?  :lol: :lol: :lol:

Mass effect and call of duty are both very different games. You know this.

I wasn't talking about that. I was talking about specifically the parts you mentioned above. "You can't get out of your seat" and "you can't compare to NMS either"

My point is that you can do those things in both COD:IW and ME:A. Also, "getting out of your seat" isn't innovative in any regard.

Again, what CIG is doing doesn't stand up to being new for each element on it's own, it's combining all of the elements together that's new and exciting. 155 million in pre orders exciting.

Right. So which elements is it "combining" together that makes it so innovative? You keep ignoring this part. So...

PLEASE list ALL the innovative tech in Star Citizen, which nobody has done before, so we can discuss them fully. It should be very interesting.

I repeat this for you, in case you somehow missed it; though I don't believe that you did.

155 million in pre orders exciting.

Said every conman raising money for some reason or another. Or the so many companies that raise money through anti-consumer practices, then never deliver the goods. And yeah, raising money is now far more important than making a game; or they've had focused on making the game and shipped it by now back when it was fully funded at $65M back in Nov 2014.

[Motto]

So the choice as you and Derek see it was to either continue adding stretch goals and adding to feature creep/bloat or pocket the extra themselves?

I didn't say that. The thing is, they didn't stop the funding. If they had continued to accept pledges for a basic ship, that's one. But they didn't. Without anything to show for on their original promises, they kept on adding stuff to buy and selling more jpegs and more and more and more. Because they needed the money. Not to make it an even better game, but to keep afloat. Because the idea was to have a game by 2014 and from 2014 on, make money on exploiting the game and expanding the game in bits. But, no game in 2014. Whoops. Now what? We need to finish the game but where's the money to pay for that? What we had is gone now. Well, get extra money. Sell more stuff, sell other stuff. Hell, sell your mother for all I care, but get the money!

The thing is, we don't know how much money CIG has collected over the years. However, it's safe to say that their funding tracker is bogus. And we don't know how much CIG has spend over the years. However, it's safe to say it'll be much.

Is it likely that they have spend most if not all of their money by now and need to turn some drastic tricks to make it any further. Yes, I think that is likely. Highly likely.

[Serendipity]

You can't get out of your seat in Elite and you can't compare NMS to either. That's a cartoon. So no, nobody has done what CIG are doing before in a single game and certainly not to the visual beauty.

So uhm, what about Call Of Duty Infinite War and Mass Effect Andromeda?

So this tech innovation in Star Citizen is about explorable planetoids and being about to enter/exit ships in fps mode?  :lol: :lol: :lol:

Mass effect and call of duty are both very different games. You know this.

I wasn't talking about that. I was talking about specifically the parts you mentioned above. "You can't get out of your seat" and "you can't compare to NMS either"

My point is that you can do those things in both COD:IW and ME:A. Also, "getting out of your seat" isn't innovative in any regard.

Again, what CIG is doing doesn't stand up to being new for each element on it's own, it's combining all of the elements together that's new and exciting. 155 million in pre orders exciting.

Right. So which elements is it "combining" together that makes it so innovative? You keep ignoring this part. So...

PLEASE list ALL the innovative tech in Star Citizen, which nobody has done before, so we can discuss them fully. It should be very interesting.

I repeat this for you, in case you somehow missed it; though I don't believe that you did.

Ok. I'm not going to talk about technology as I don't know much about that but I can talk about the game and why it's so enticing. What makes it potentially so special. The features planned that, combined, nobody has done before. 

Multiplayer, realistic (enough) flight/space simulator mechanics with 6DoF, inertia, momentum etc where you are a pilot in a ship or vehicle able to get out of the seat and engage in FPS play in single, seamless maps, millions of km in size, fully traversable without loading screens of any kind including landing anywhere on PG planetary bodies of near full scale which can be fully explored with hand crafted POIs including both PVE and PVP game elements, deep skill based game mechanics for mining/repair etc which involves more than simply holding down a button, player influenced economy with real-time supply and demand market pressures all in an engine as beautiful as cryengine.

NMS, CoD, Battlecrusier, LoD, Battlescape infinity, Dual Universe, Elite Dangerous, Angels fall first and any other game you can mention simply can't claim all of that. For what it's worth I've played LoD, own Angels fall first and I'm a kickstarter backer for Dual Universe and Battlescape and I'm looking forward to seeing them become cool games in time but they don't have the scope or appeal of SC.

Question back at you. Why do you think the game's fundraising has destroyed all previous records for crowd funding if it isn't the fact it's trying to be something new and special?

[GaryII]

Over hyped is fair enough but we'll have to wait and see if they can pull enough off of what they've said they can do to satisfy. 4.0 will be the point that I'll assess that and not before. If we have all the professions in and working to the level that the deep dive articles suggest, then it'll be fantastic. That 'if' is a big one I know.

 How long you are ready to wait? 5 years ? 10 years ?!
 Game was promised in 2014...
 SQ42 is MIA from year 2015..
 v3.0 was promised in dec 2016..

Those are NOT usual delays that we see from other "dirty publishers"...

CR is missing deadlines not by weeks or few months but by years !!! 
       
About AtV - sure in their propaganda show game looks 10 out 10

but actual game is maybe 3 out 10 if you look at current 2.6.3...   

[Serendipity]

Over hyped is fair enough but we'll have to wait and see if they can pull enough off of what they've said they can do to satisfy. 4.0 will be the point that I'll assess that and not before. If we have all the professions in and working to the level that the deep dive articles suggest, then it'll be fantastic. That 'if' is a big one I know.

 How long you are ready to wait? 5 years ? 10 years ?!
 Game was promised in 2014...
 SQ42 is MIA from year 2015..
 v3.0 was promised in dec 2016..

Those are NOT usual delays that we see from other "dirty publishers"...

CR is missing deadlines not by weeks or few months but by years !!! 
       
About AtV - sure in their propaganda show game looks 10 out 10

but actual game is maybe 3 out 10 if you look at current 2.6.3...

You haven't seen me call publishers dirty and I've waited patiently for many games down through the years. Delays don't bother me. I have a life and plenty of other games to play. Deadlines must mean something different to you than the rest of the world. When someone says they hope to achieve something by a certain date or they're trying to get something done, it doesn't mean they're promising it or it's a deadline. Hope. Trying to. Feel free to look up the definitions.

The massive funding also allowed more to be done than originally envisaged for the 2014 release, more disengenuous.

I'm willing to wait as long as it takes. I shall never ask for a refund. Looking at a current alpha build, (pre alpha build even) as indicative of the final product is just silly, myopic and disengenuous. 

[Serendipity]

So the choice as you and Derek see it was to either continue adding stretch goals and adding to feature creep/bloat or pocket the extra themselves?

I didn't say that. The thing is, they didn't stop the funding. If they had continued to accept pledges for a basic ship, that's one. But they didn't. Without anything to show for on their original promises, they kept on adding stuff to buy and selling more jpegs and more and more and more. Because they needed the money. Not to make it an even better game, but to keep afloat. Because the idea was to have a game by 2014 and from 2014 on, make money on exploiting the game and expanding the game in bits. But, no game in 2014. Whoops. Now what? We need to finish the game but where's the money to pay for that? What we had is gone now. Well, get extra money. Sell more stuff, sell other stuff. Hell, sell your mother for all I care, but get the money!

The thing is, we don't know how much money CIG has collected over the years. However, it's safe to say that their funding tracker is bogus. And we don't know how much CIG has spend over the years. However, it's safe to say it'll be much.

Is it likely that they have spend most if not all of their money by now and need to turn some drastic tricks to make it any further. Yes, I think that is likely. Highly likely.

The only argument against this line of reasoning is that they're still in business so the funding tracker must be on the right lines otherwise how could they stay afloat all this time with an ever increasing number of employees?

Fact is, first 2 years overheads were tiny compared to today but funding was almost the same. Well over 50 million in two years, one of which they had less than 20 employees and a single office. They had tonnes of cash in reserve. Tiny Z used to be a hedge fund manager which means, I guess, he knows how to invest large chunks of cash.

Repeatedly saying they're about to run out of cash...for the last 2 years, becomes sillier and sillier as they continue to stay in business for longer and longer. They can have sales. They will deliver more game play. Money keeps coming in.

Don't you believe Derek's sources and the 220+ million in total received? Have they blown through all of that? Seriously?

Edit: From Derek's 'End game' blog from Oct 2015

"THE BEGINNING OF THE END

The four year, $90m+ Star Citizen video game project, is no longer a going concern. The project is FUBAR and there is no going back."

No longer a going concern. He thought they were bankrupt more or less two years ago. Is it time to call BS yet?

[GaryII]

Deadlines must mean something different to you than the rest of the world.

 Looking at reddit and even CIG forums and also watching some pro-SC streamers  I think I am not unique here...
 
 Current v2.6.3 state/mess after 5+ years shows, that they just have no idea/skill/talant how to build promised game...

 
     

[Serendipity]

2.6 isn't that bad. It's empty and small compared to what's on the way but it works. As  a test bed and proof of concept it's fine.

[GaryII]

2.6 isn't that bad. It's empty and small compared to what's on the way but it works. As  a test bed and proof of concept it's fine.

 For me its bad, maybe if it was done in 1-2 years as tech demo that it was OK..but 5+ years...no way...
 Maybe I have too high standarts, but if dev promises to create game of decade, than I will set expectations very high..

[Serendipity]

2.6 isn't that bad. It's empty and small compared to what's on the way but it works. As  a test bed and proof of concept it's fine.

 For me its bad, maybe if it was done in 1-2 years as tech demo that it was OK..but 5+ years...no way...
 Maybe I have too high standarts, but if dev promises to create game of decade, than I will set expectations very high..

They never said that but I agree they've set the bar high with the BDSSE malarkey! Maybe waiting until they get to beta before judging though huh? Judging a pre alpha is silly. Again, they've changed scope and direction a hell of a lot and added some truly impressive features, like PG planets etc, which, for me at least, means an excusable delay.

You want the world right now, which is fine, that's up to you. It's just unrealistic. It was realistic to offer 2014 as an estimate for the much more basic game originally envisioned, (please notice estimate), but I'm chuffed they've taken the stupid amounts of money and are attempting to creat something much, much more. It's great they haven't just pocketed the extra after creating that simple game.

Edit: Also, please remember they built a company from a few individuals to hundreds in the first couple of years too. That doesn't happen overnight and limits what you should expect from the production side of things.