Star Citizen General BS

[dsmart]

Do they think it's going to improve much from the buggy picture show it is? They won't remain satisfied with this. At the worst things will continue in a slow decline. Fewer and fewer backers finding merit in playing the same limited jobs, ships not making it through the pipeline and serving no use in game. Fewer people wasting money on the latest flavor of fighter until staff cuts slow the already slow improvements to a glacial crawl.

Well, if you recall, they did the same thing with 2.0 and 2.6; though they weren't anywhere as bad as 3.0. So it is likely that they will try to at least get it a bit more stable then release it for the holidays. I don't think they care about the stability, performance, networking etc - as they can just hand wave it off a being in development.

[dsmart]

Even on Reddit there's some serious shit being debated

Yeah, we just ignore those guys now. They have no power, and no say. Heck, a bunch of whales just gave CIG another $6M in November. So yeah.

[dsmart]

#neverforget

https://starcitizentracker.github.io/



Every ship in Red, isn't in the game at this point.



https://robertsspaceindustries.com/starmap

[dsmart]

The servers are currently mostly unplayable right now. Repeated freezes, sub-10fps frame rates, AUS servers completely dead, US/Europe servers shitty (as usual) etc.

Pretty much the patches have gotten progressively worse - if you can imagine that. And now that the 3.0 euphoria has worn off, the Twitch viewership has normalized back down to sub-400 again.

God I hope they release it to live for the holidays. That would be the greatest holiday gift to the thread, and which would best even the anniversary land sale fiasco.

[Greggy_D]

Every ship in Red, isn't in the game at this point.

HOLY SHIT!  Look at all of those ships from 3-4 years ago.  How are people not LIVID over the fact that ships they've paid hundreds/thousands for are not in the "game"?

[Flashwit]

Every ship in Red, isn't in the game at this point.

HOLY SHIT!  Look at all of those ships from 3-4 years ago.  How are people not LIVID over the fact that ships they've paid hundreds/thousands for are not in the "game"?

Exactly, and how many of those red ones do you think are even being worked on? I don't believe for a second that a speck of work has been done on the Hull-* series beyond the initial concepting.

[StanTheMan]

Pretty much the patches have gotten progressively worse - if you can imagine that.

I have a good imagination but I am definitely struggling ....

[StanTheMan]

Every ship in Red, isn't in the game at this point.

HOLY SHIT!  Look at all of those ships from 3-4 years ago.  How are people not LIVID over the fact that ships they've paid hundreds/thousands for are not in the "game"?

Exactly, and how many of those red ones do you think are even being worked on? I don't believe for a second that a speck of work has been done on the Hull-* series beyond the initial concepting.

and you would have thought at least one of the Hull series would be relatively easy to develop...

[Spunky Munkee]

I think they would have a lot to do to make that ship relevant. Robbers would insist that there be some mechanic to load each and every box and it be viewable, and probably some poor bastard will have the unenviable job of a space forklift loader to load the entire ship manually, and there will be huge container yards. Or you just land and never see a thing as it's automated but simple never makes Robbers happy. Lets complicate everything and prevent progress.

I think he is probably riding his people hard to make magic happen and get the game to be stable, add in actual gameplay, I would if I believed this should continue. But I don't.

Had he simply made the single player S42 with multiplayer arena he could have secured funding for the other stuff building out a  growing company based on success. He would probably have fucked that up too as he did to Freelancer. Now he will have his name live in gaming infamy. Not that I am sympathetic, not one bit.

[Spunky Munkee]

MMO, Mass of Morons Online.

The only way they can see 3.0 is from some dude with the most up to date top of the line PC capturing it on You Tube. Luckily they can all experience the thrill of it all, taking off, flying in a straight line, re entering a moon's atmosphere landing, taking off...repeat...

Nothing to do but they are all OOH AAH, I can't wait!

To do what exactly?

I didn't even see a single pirate spawn.

Even through all of that you can still see frame rate issues under the best of circumstances.

I see some new names pumping out videos, I have to wonder if these were done in house by CIG and handed out? It wouldn't surprise me one bit. This whole thing has been a cock and bull story.

I don't know if that expression is universally used, a bullshit story. Fiction to entice continued financial support for Chris to take a crash course in modern game development.

He probably could have earned enough money to float his project by making this whole development a reality show. It would have been like American Chopper, Ben Lesnick as Mikey  :ohdear: It would have been very entertaining. Obviously Chris would play the part of Pops,  :smith: the blowhard who storms around to say it's my way or the highway. He could make a lot of money and his wife could get screen time 

See how well that works out. America loves to watch dopey people cause problems, make mistakes. It would have had universal appeal. They could have had the guys from Top Gear   :) narrate and mock Robbers. BBC would have picked it up, Home boy screws up every week, ratings heaven. Get Honey Boo Boo  :stare: and Momma June    to come in too.

[dsmart]

Adventure report from the PTU tonight. My self-imposed mission: complete one in-game "Quest."

Attempt #1:
Spawned in the wank pod and despite running a whole bunch of config changes and various performance tweaks, the game was as much of a 3 fps slideshow as ever. I jittered my way out of bed and then painstakingly made my way to the ship spawn chamber. Seriously this took about 3 minutes. Every time an npc would t-pose onto the screen or stutter-dance around a corner, my whole computer would freeze up for 5-10 seconds. It was like a horror movie except instead of murdered by the uncontrollably vibrating monsters I just got kind of mildly irritated. The consolation is that at least once you get out of port Ollisar the whole experience smooths out somewhat. Why they decided to make every player spawn in a tiny area when their main server performance issue occurs due to player density, I'll never know.

Eventually managed to make it to the ship spawner and decided to spawn an "Aegis Saber Tomcat Punches Above Its Weight Edition Mk 7." No idea what it was, just one of the PTU ships they allow players to spawn, but I was guessing that it was a single seat fighter because that is everything now. It spawned on pad C07. Painstakingly janked my way to the airlock and... it wouldn't open. That's no problem, dealt with that before, the solution is to jank your way to one of the other airlocks and then laboriously work your way back to your landing pad from the outside. Went to the next closest airlock- also broken. I should point out here that this bug has been in the game since 2.0 launched in fucking 2015 and they still haven't fixed it. Eventually after checking every airlock on the level, I found one that would let me out- on the far side of the pads from my ship. Great! Ran out into space. I decided it'd be faster to jump off the pads and then nipplejet my way over to my ship. Jumped off the pads, and my character went into a tumble animation and just kind of stayed there, 2 feet away from my launch point, flailing wildly and never returning control. Eventually I found the buttons to kill myself.

Attempt #2:
Back in the wank pod. Same shaky journey to the outside, where I discovered that my ASTPAIWE Mk7 was still spawned... on a whole separate set of pads from the one I respawned on. Undeterred, I threw myself off the landing platforms again and this time the nipplejets kicked into life. With a mighty fssssshhhhhh I kicked the jets in and spent the next 5+ minutes staring boredly at chat while my spaceman inched over to my ship. I guess some other people were planning to all hop in a caterpillar and fly to one of the planets but they couldn't get the doors to work? I made a mental note to grief them if I finished my mission.

Finally arriving at the ship, I noted that it was indeed a single-seat fighter, I guess... some kind of stealth ship? I didn't really take long to think about the ramifications of a stealth ship in a world where all combat happens at WW2 dogfight ranges and everything fires bright red lasers. Got in the ship, and miracle of miracles was able to take off without any jank. Now, when I say "Without any jank" I should clarify- everything in the game sucks shit. At no point in this experience did my fps jump above 5, and my spaceman is barely controllable at the best of times. But I didn't clip through anything, and didn't die, and that is a win in a Citizen's book. That's living the fucking dream. So anyway I pop into the ship and get a notification that I now have missions waiting for me to accept them if I will only bring up my retarded wrist-mounted HUD. So I hit f1 and the spaceman begins repeatedly punching himself in the dick really hard which I guess is what happens when the "Open menu" animation bugs out and starts looping. I'd heard that the bugfix for this is to just mash f1 a thousand more times, so I do that and eventually get to a menu.

Accepting the contract and navigating to it isn't easy. I'm going on some sort of rescue mission which the text says is on Delamar, the nav beacon that pops up (but I can't warp to) says is in intergalactic space, and the star map says is on Yela. Since the only one I can actually warp to is the one on the star map, I set it as my destination and proceed to hammer the "B" button a thousand times, which is the preferred method of engaging one's quantum drive. I like to imagine that all of the spaceships in the game are basically eastern european autos and all spacemen are in a permanent drunken rage as they hammer the shit out of every control just to get any kind of response. It makes the whole thing slightly less frustrating.

Anyway I get to Yela and it turns out the "Help" beacon spawned inside an asteroid so the person I'm supposed to protect dies instantly. Mission failed.

Attempt #3:
But that's okay because I'm being offered a new mission! Fly over to a wrecked starfarer and collect "The Goods." Deliver them to such and such for who cares and get like 300 credits. I know these are MMO quests and therefor basically just ways to waste your time, but it feels like if a crate is worth recovering from a wrecked spaceship you should probably pay more than the space equivalent of bus fare to whichever mercenary picks it up for you. But what do I know. Luckily the beacon for this is like 30 km away from the asteroid with the failed protection mission, so I don't have to quantum jump anywhere. I point the nose of my ship at the beacon and settle in for another 2 minute flight.

As I arrive, what to my wondering eyes should appear but another actual human being! Or at least, I assume it was. There's the wrecked starfarer, and there nestled up against its belly is a Cutlass that registers as friendly when I target it. Despite the ridiculous close-packed nature of the spawn, this is the first player I've encountered while just flying around in several hours of playing this stupid build. Naturally I set engines to full burn and just hammer those motherfucking triggers as the game devolves into a 1fps slideshow- I mean clearly he was after my loot, it's completely justified. I guess the pilot was actually in the cockpit because the cutlass begins trying to make evasive maneuvers, but either he flies in a straight line or he isn't pounding his controls hard enough because it is incredibly easy to track him and just lay on the fire until he explodes. That was... really odd, actually. Ships in 3.0 are normally completely unkillable due to lag and jank and weird balance issues. I played Arena Commander once (once) and none of the three guys on my team could kill even a single ship of the first wave, they just tanked everything.

So anyway the cutlass is dead and with one nefarious act of piracy under my belt I try to figure out how to get out of my fucking ship to get this loot. Unfortunately entering combat has A) destroyed the server, and B) destroyed my hud, including the "Push F to actually use anything in the cockpit" system that everyone is so keen on. So I'm still stuck at 1FPS and now nothing in the cockpit will respond except flight controls. Eventually I remember there's a hardcoded "Exit" key, Alt-F, and hammer that two thousand times until my guy gets up. Now all I have to do is fly into the crashed starfarer and retrieve a simple box.

Let me digress here for a moment. Do games ever make you feel motion sick? Can you remember the last time a game was so completely disorienting that you had no idea what way was up? For me it was the Descent games back in the 90's. Something about those suckers would just fuck with my inner ear something fierce. Flight sims and VR can't hold a candle to that feeling.

Well, Star Citizen can. See the thing is, the Starfarer is wrecked, so it has no power. That means the inside is zero-G, pitch black, and covered in floating debris. And every time you touch any piece of that debris, your spaceman starts doing sick 360 noscopes. Within seconds I'm completely disoriented, before half a minute has passed I am actually physically nauseous. The box, literally labelled "The Goods" is only 20m away but it might as well be 200. I seriously cannot make any progress towards it down a straight line fucking corridor, my spaceman janks and spins wildly every time I touch a control. But I am undeterred. I stand up and do a shot of maalox and then inch, ever so carefully, around every fucking piece of debris and down that hallway. The final door is in sight but it is covered in other boxes. I have no choice but to nipplejet straight at it and hope that I can bust through like some kind of retarded kool-aid man. Somehow, this actually works! I find myself in front of "The Goods" and somehow, manage to engage my grabby hands! This mission is so close to being over I can taste it. Now I just have to maneuver my way back out.

I hear laser fire from outside. Well, I assume it's laser fire. I hear noises, space noises, chopped up into incomprehensibility by the 1-2 fps that I'm getting. Did Cutlass man come back? Did the game spawn pirates on me when I got the box? I can't lose now! Slowly, caaarefully I - fuck, touched some debris, time for the zero-g tilt-a-whirl from hell again. I get back out the door and to the ship- I'm guessing it is NPC pirates shooting at it, but I really can't tell. Either way they appear to be doing zero damage to my entirely stationary, powered-off ship. Sure, okay.

I jet to the ship, pilfered goods in hand, and at last the moment is upon us. "Enter pilot seat" I tell my character, and he does just that- immediately chucking the box into the void of fucking space as he enters his pre-canned animation god DAMN IT. So apparently if you have single seat fighters, you should basically not do any mission that involves moving any kind of good because you literally have to physically stuff that shit in your ship, I guess? CIG I feel that you perhaps did not think any of this through very well.

In order to complete the mission I'd have to fight off the two basically invincible npc's, fly back to jankbase prime, spawn a ship with a cargo area, come back and redo the starfarer carnival ride bullshit a second time. I want to emphasize, this is a starter mission, paying 300 credits, and to complete it you're going to need 1+ hour and a ship that costs more than 100 bucks- one that can fight and carry cargo. 

Mission abandoned.

Thank you for the kind words everyone. Not sure how often I'm going to do any kind of PTU writeup because it really is a pile of unfun garbage, but if I find something amusing I will write about it for you.

It really can't be emphasized enough how bad the combat is right now. There's a reason all of the posts on the subreddit, and all of the streamer videos, feature people just flying from planet to planet and loading/unloding cargo- you literally cannot fight in the current build of the PTU. Between super low framerates, input lag in the 2-3second range, and targets jittering all over the screen like coked up hummingbirds, it's next to impossible to land a shot. Even if you do, some asshole at CIG decided to make combat more like Elite, I guess, which means your average engagement if you can hit the target will take 3-4 minutes just to do enough damage that they die. And there is literally nothing stopping them from ignoring you for the 10 seconds it takes to set a jump destination and fly away if they feel like they're losing. Not that you could tell you were losing because, as far as I can see, the shield indicators don't work and the damage states are broken as fuck. Missiles almost never hit, and if they do hit seem to do next to no damage.

I'm actually really excited for them to fix the FPS. The game is stable enough that it doesn't crash very often already, and the only reason it is so riveting is because just fighting through the lag and low FPS to land on a planet feels like a real achievement. Smooth those framerates out and people are going to get tired of wanking over landing and go try to actually do things in the PTU, only to realize that literally every system is either a stubbed-in placeholder, or broken, or both.

[nightfire]

Mission abandoned.

He's in way over his head. He should have started with simple missions instead.

For example: "My self-imposed mission: complete one refund".

[Flashwit]

Nah, I think this person is providing a service with their storytelling. Pretty hilarious.
Better them than me.

[dsmart]

Mark Abent is the bravest dev on the project. See if you can spot the g:\gamedev\cryengine path @ 4:27 (Hint: Not Lumberyard)

[dsmart]

SQ42 hype train has left the station!

http://mailchi.mp/cloudimperiumgames/tbd-140681