Star Citizen - The E.L.E.

[dsmart]

Yeah, I watched it live and I'm still astonished. They've clearly lost the plot. Completely. Even my prediction score card based on what I figured and what sources told me, was closer than I ever imagined.

The sad thing is that we were all hopefully for this game. I've done my best to educate people that this is nothing more than a scam and that there is never going to be the game pitched. So anyone still giving them money, or who hasn't yet put in for a refund, only have themselves to blame.

As I wrote here, I can't wait to see Shitizens reactions when they find out what's coming next.

[dsmart]

So this massive thread was deleted: Announcing New Ships to Buy Shouldn't Be Celebrated

[dsmart]

An Open Letter to CIG from someone who actually cares

Hey Guys! I just sent a refund request! Do you think there is still hope?

[dsmart]

[dsmart]

*moved*

It's going lower and lower...

[Kyrt]

I said it was doable for the ORIGINAL game that they pitched back in 2012. Not the Vision 2.0 behemoth that it evolved to.

Yes....and as I understand it then and now, the original pitch was for what has essentially become Squadron 42. A single player Wing Commander type game. The PU aspect of it was a stretch goal and has since taken over the SC title.

Don't confuse "understandable" with "acceptable". They are different.

I'm not. What is unacceptable is CIGs continued inability to provide realistic dates for public consumption.

Leaving that aside, the question is whether the progress seen to date is reasonable for a game of this scale and scope. Whether or not it is "acceptable" depends on what exactly has been done.

The usual comparator is GTAV. That reportedly took 5 years. But - they started with an experienced team in an established developer, a working engine and usable tools. Everything CIG did not have.

How long would GTAV have taken if they weren't an established studio? If they were a new team, if they were essentially building from scratch? If they also had to recode their engine and write up their toolkit? Probably a good bit longer than five years.

And yes...CIG has wasted a lot of money. They entered into contracts with third party developers that appear to have resulted in nothing. And I have the feeling that they squandered a fair bit of money as well in the days when it seems people were just throwing money at them.

But - leaving aside their hopelessly optimistic target dates, is the progress to date "acceptable" for a project of the scale and scope they have promised? Setting up those studios, recoding their engine, building their own tools? Not doing anything particularly innovative but building things their way?

Is what we are seeing a suitable acceptable output for 3-4 years development?

CIG have made mistakes - lots of them. And continuing to hand out unrealistic delivery dates is one of those. But that's also a sin others are guilty of. They have and are suffering from bad management and poor communication.

I would even say they are running a bit slow even counting all the excuses they have provided. And I think for all the plus points of their funding model, CIG also have shown themselves a good example of all the points as well. Principally, the loss of accountability and even need to publish. Given the scale of SC, I think CIG should have followed the same route as Elite; publish a viable product and then build upon it. I know Elite has issues, and it could be better - but it is still fun for me to pick up and play, even if only on a  casual basis.

2.6 for example has suffered repeated delays; it would have been far better - IMO - to have saved Star Marine for the major 3.0 patch instead of the minor 2.6 and get 2.6 out on time instead of rushed, semibroken and incomplete as it is. Of course, I also think they should have built a custom engine for the game and THEN used that to build the game instead of building the game and engine at the same time so who am I to judge?

But unless CIG blew all their money early on (which is possible - we've all heard stories about the one who won big and blew it all), then they should have a healthy buffer, especially with their continued crowdfunding efforts. $38 million and counting is what they made this year - unless they are lying about how much is coming in.

[dsmart]

I said it was doable for the ORIGINAL game that they pitched back in 2012. Not the Vision 2.0 behemoth that it evolved to.

Yes....and as I understand it then and now, the original pitch was for what has essentially become Squadron 42. A single player Wing Commander type game. The PU aspect of it was a stretch goal and has since taken over the SC title.

Actually, that's not accurate either.

Star Citizen (aka PU) was the original pitch. It was the multiplayer component. Squadron 42 was the single-player component. They were always separate games. In fact, that's where the whole promise that your SQ42 single-player character would be able to migrate to the PU, came from.

Says so right there in the original pitch.

Is what we are seeing a suitable acceptable output for 3-4 years development?

No. And not by a long shot; otherwise nobody would be having this discussion.

And it's not 3-4 years of development. It's 4-5 years of development. And it's 5 years based on croberts own public statements. Especially if he paid himself back for that one year from proceeds of the funding campaign as various sources have claimed.

Aside from that, even so, he promised a 2014 release date. So if you're saying that it should take more time, then you should be willing to accept that he willfully lied.

And it's gets worse...

Even after the scope was increased and acknowledged, he did in fact subsequently move the goal posts to Q4 2015, then Q4 2016. Then again to Q4/2017 (4.0 patch). And now, neither of the two games is anywhere near completion, and SQ42 - like Star Marine for a time - is now MIA.

2.6 for example has suffered repeated delays; it would have been far better - IMO - to have saved Star Marine for the major 3.0 patch instead of the minor 2.6 and get 2.6 out on time instead of rushed, semibroken and incomplete as it is. Of course, I also think they should have built a custom engine for the game and THEN used that to build the game instead of building the game and engine at the same time so who am I to judge?

That's the thing. They didn't have to resurrect SM and put it in 2.6. They did that because they had nothing significant for 2016; and also because croberts - once again - went public and flat out lied about 3.0 being in development and coming before end of the year. And just as I predicted and said they would, they are poised to release it to PU prematurely if they are to make their end of year goal; even though it's completely broken.

They somehow can't build an FPS with an engine designed for the genre.

But unless CIG blew all their money early on (which is possible - we've all heard stories about the one who won big and blew it all), then they should have a healthy buffer, especially with their continued crowdfunding efforts. $38 million and counting is what they made this year - unless they are lying about how much is coming in.

They don't. Wait for what comes next. I've hinted at this these past weeks, but can't say more than I already have. The project is dead. Period.

[Scruffpuff]

The usual comparator is GTAV. That reportedly took 5 years. But - they started with an experienced team in an established developer, a working engine and usable tools. Everything CIG did not have.

How long would GTAV have taken if they weren't an established studio? If they were a new team, if they were essentially building from scratch? If they also had to recode their engine and write up their toolkit? Probably a good bit longer than five years.

But - leaving aside their hopelessly optimistic target dates, is the progress to date "acceptable" for a project of the scale and scope they have promised? Setting up those studios, recoding their engine, building their own tools? Not doing anything particularly innovative but building things their way?

Here you hit upon the crux of the issue.  You presented it here as a partial defense of their progress, but I'd like you to consider it from a different angle.  Chris Roberts placed himself, first and foremost, as a seasoned and successful game developer who knew exactly how to make this game.  It was his genius, his vision, and his experience in the industry that was going to rocket this project to completion.  Chris himself figured it would be done in 2014.

He tied his name to this project to assure backers that their cash was well in hand.  Backers who were unaware of his string of failures over the years, each of which played out, note for note, exactly how Star Citizen played out.  The reality is that Chris has no idea what he's doing - absolutely none.  He was an unskilled, untalented, untrustworthy steward of backer cash - and above all, he was disrespectful of the faith that was placed in him.  He used that money to direct actors in motion capture sessions before they had a game to place the motion capture in.  Before the engine was even locked down.  Before the physics worked, before spaceships could fly - even before the basic game loop was designed.

But you bet your ass he was in those motion capture studios - because that's all he ever cared about.  Making a "movie" and pretending to be a film director.  That's where the backer money went.

Even had he stuck to that as his top priority we could have had a game by now, if he hadn't meddled in every single aspect of development with his late-80's early-90's design methodology, showing a deep ignorance of every single gaming lesson learned over the last few decades.  According to Chris, CIG "invented" the <<USE>> key (contextual key in nearly every game in history), the concept of saving your character's progress (almost goes back to the dawn of gaming), something called "subsumption AI" (which is supposed to be how crowds of AI navigate each other, visible working flawlessly in Assassin's Creed but certainly not in Star Citizen), and countless other examples where he can't get even the most basic design principles nailed down - yet when he "comes up with" some sort of trope that actually does something, he claims to have invented it, then he builds it the worst way anyway.

There is no example in gaming history where someone so unqualified was given so much to build so little.  Even Daikatana technically functioned as a game.

Shooting for the stars isn't automatically a noble endeavor.  If you don't have a plan for reaching them, you don't have qualified pilots, and you don't understand physics, then shooting people into space with the unparalleled ineptitude of Chris Roberts isn't "noble" - it's murder.  Chris Roberts is like a guy who walks up to a guy on the street with a gunshot would claiming "I'm a doctor", then nicks an artery trying to dig the bullet out, killing the victim.  Then he walks away with his nose in the air, convinced he's untouchable because he "aimed high."  Chris is not absolved of guilt because he aimed high - he's needs to be qualified to take that shot.  He's not.

He misrepresented who he was and what he could accomplish, took over a hundred million dollars, and squandered it.  He was irresponsible with backer money, and that's why the concept of "having to build everything, even the tools, from scratch" was never overly communicated.  The overarching message the whole time was, "I'm Chris Roberts, gaming legend.  I got this.  I'll do it all better than the publishers" even though from day one he had no idea whatsoever what he was doing.  That's tantamount to fraud.  So I don't give him a pass on having to do extra work up front.  Even if he'd listened to 25% of the lessons of gaming development history, we'd be playing something right now.

[Narrenbart]

There are so many things wrong with this Project, starting with the marketing which is rendering EA as a little innocent schoolgirl, up to all the stuff they "innovate" like the new Damage model (which is vertex color masks) or "subsumption" or (no)64Bit and all the white knights are cheering.

Dreams that maybe look nice on paper (they are thinking of orbiting planets) which are nice until someones $2500 ship has been destroyed because a planet just came along when he was AFK.
Rotating and orbiting planets ... with physic bodies on them ... thousands of physic bodies on a sphere ... on a rotating and orbiti ... I just don't want anymore ...
Instances that grew and shrink ... in a 6DOF environment ... with transitions between them ... dynamically ....
NPCs with own personality ... with a PC to NPC ration of  1 to 9 ... that are doing stuff when nobody is watching (in case someone will watch soon) ... that have to be handled by the server exact as PCs network wise only with AI ... AI with personality ...

Can this stuff be done? - Yes, if you do it step by step and if you do it very very clean, have 20+ years and almost unlimited ressources.

Can this be done by using the Frankenengine with hack jobs just to show stuff, building the base on bugs and hack other bugs "invisible" because you can't fix them without creating 5 other - No fucking way - not in 100years.

5 years of pre alpha but as an ex Conitec and ex SOE Dev I may just not understand game Star Citizen Development.

[dsmart]

meanwhile, over there: Is Derek Smart right

I think that the article is correct in comparing the project to No Man's Sky, and that in fact the scale of the fallout for this project is likely to be even worse because of all the backer money tied to it. Of course, because of the unique funding model, the fallout will take a different form.

Take the Holiday Livestream from a few days ago as an example. It was one of the most embarrassing displays I have ever seen from a "AAA" videogame developer. And I don't just mean in terms of all the technical shortcomings, the garish costumes, the extended periods of dead air, the cringeworthy dialogue and tedious interviews. I mean in terms of the disconnect between what the user base expected and what CIG delivered.

What occurred was a rolling cascade of expectation that began earlier in the year in the lead up to Gamescom. At the time, people had a lot of questions about what direction the game was taking. The AtV's and RtV's were filled to the brim with minutia about character and ship models but light on information regarding actual gameplay for SC, not to mention the complete void of details on SQ42 . People in the community began to anticipate E3 and Gamescom for answers to many of these questions. Then news came out that CIG would be skipping E3 this year. So focus centered on Gamescom. Keep in mind, Gamescom is 8 months into the year, and during all that time people were hungry to see what CIG had in the oven.

Gamescom delivers with the 3.0 demo. But it also came with Chris's stated expectation that 3.0 would be ready by December 2016. In addition to this, no SQ42. But ok, maybe CIG is saving that for CitizenCon. So people start to defer their expectations for SQ42 to CitizenCon.

CitizenCon comes, and SQ42 is again a no show. People flew out from all over the country to what was ultimately a meager showing with a demo that was more or less a repeat of Gamescom but not as interesting. The backers were pissed off and disappointed. In order to mitigate the disappointment, CIG puts out a mini-doc showing that they were days away from completing the SQ42 Verticle Slice, but it just didn't come together in time. So now expectations are differed yet again, this time to the Anniversary Stream.

Anniversary Stream comes. No SQ42.

There is only one substantial stream left in the year, the Holiday Stream. The final deferral left. After that, it's another 8 month wait until the next Gamescom.

Minutes before going live, Chris puts out an email saying that the SQ42 VS is not only not going to be there, but that the entire demo has been scrapped entirely. Something that only a couple months earlier they said was days away is now gone (a repetition of what had happened with Star Marine at the start of the year). It also becomes evident that 3.0 is nowhere near ready, even though CIG's last word on the topic was the expected 2016 release. The bubble of expectation bursts, and is continuing to burst, all over the reddit and official forum. The backers are utterly gobsmacked. It's worth noting that the show was not substantially worse than the Anniversary stream in terms of content, but because of the deferred expectations cascade, the fallout has been an order of magnitude larger.

This is what I mean when I say that Star Citizen flopping might take a form that is different from NMS. For NMS, a game was released which forced people to reconcile the reality of the product with the expectations that were built up beforehand. For SC, a game may or may not come out in 2017, but they are dependent on their backers continuing to believe in the dream to stay afloat, and this belief is becoming more precarious and disconnected as time goes on. You can only defer expectations for so long.

[Kyrt]

Here you hit upon the crux of the issue.  You presented it here as a partial defense of their progress, but I'd like you to consider it from a different angle.  Chris Roberts placed himself, first and foremost, as a seasoned and successful game developer who knew exactly how to make this game.  It was his genius, his vision, and his experience in the industry that was going to rocket this project to completion.  Chris himself figured it would be done in 2014.

To be honest.....I love the vision and ideas Chris Roberts has presented. I love the game that he has pitched.

But everything I see and hear about the project....and that may or may not be true or exaggerated....tells me he isn't well suited to be leading this project. He has been trading on his reputation as the man behind Wing Commander for over 20 years now but he hasn't had the same level of success or impact since then.

With Star Citizen he has a great vision.....but to date, if what I hear and read is true, he hasn't really been an effective manager and it was only when Erin took over much of the management that any meaningful progress started to be made.

There is no example in gaming history where someone so unqualified was given so much to build so little.  Even Daikatana technically functioned as a game.

Daikatana and Ion Storm actually show a neat patallel to Star Citizen. An ambitious game written by a new studio continually in a state of flux with delay after delay and missed release date after missed release date as new systems and technologies such as the game engines were changed and adapted. Instead of taking seven months of development, it ended up taking 35....five times as long...and the game was still seen as 'flawed'.

And rightly so.

Star Citizen seems to be following pretty much tne same path.

The only question seems to be if CIG can sustain the funding necessary to continue development and...if it can...whether the finished game will be any good.

Whether or not Roberts needed to reinvent the wheel by creating custom tools is beside the point. He has convinced his backers that they were needed to fulfil his vision and he has spent much of the past few years developing them. And no doubt he will spend the next few years refining them. And he has used that need as an excuse for the relative lack of progress.

Did he need to create those tools? I honestly couldn't say. Are they better than the existing tools or better suited to his needs? Again...I don't know. Maybe the time spent on creating them will turn out to be worth it. I personally suspect that any benefit over existing tools will be marginal in most aspects.

But the truth is....CIG has spent time developing those tools and reworking CryEngine. And that is time CIG could not use developing the actual game. And knowing this...many backers are prepared to overlook the relative lack of progress.

But now that CIG has demonstrated that it has the tools, it is also going to have to accelerate progress to keep the backers happy. And confident.

And events such as that last LiveStream won't help them in that. CIG are doing a horrendous job in managing expectations, at least partially because of their funding model. I can easily see that coming back to bite them.

As it is....I am prepared to give CIG the time necessary to release the game they envision. But I can do that without cost....I haven't backed CIG.

**IF** CIG are telling the truth, they will release the game if funding holds up. With a full team, 4 studios, and backers willing to provide nearly $40 million a year...I can believe the estimates of another 3-5 years before release. Whether it'll be any good is another question.

**IF** Derek Smart is correct....CIG has already spent much of the buffer it may have gathered over the few years meaning any downturn in funding due to discontent is likely to be catastrophic. It will be increasingly unable to meet demands which will cause more backers to lose confidence and leave and soon CIG won't be able to afford to give refunds even if it wanted to. Development will be scaled back or stopped and the released game will not live up to the promise...if it is released.

And I can live with that because I haven't backed it.

But as I said before...I think they have more leeway than Derek Smart supposes, but less than CIG might be comfortable with. IF they can better manage expectations and provide concrete evidence of progress now that they have demonstrated their tech and tools they should be able to keep funding going at a level strong enough to support development until release. They might have to cut back on some aspects, and cut'n'paste a bit more wrt art assets to save time and money...but it should be doable.

And if it isn't...well, it'll be a disappointment as I love the concept and really want to play the finished version but I'll live. There'll be other games.

[Scruffpuff]

Lots of words.

I wish all the backers had your reasoned approach to viewing the project.  I suppose if they did it wouldn't be quite as entertaining a circus, but then again, they also wouldn't have all this money floating around either.  Even if their custom tools open the way forward so to speak, I can't see them sustaining this level for much longer.  If anything at all gets released, I suspect it will bear little resemblance to anything they, or we, have envisioned.

[Darklegend1]

 According to Chris, CIG "invented" the <<USE>> key (contextual key in nearly every game in history), the concept of saving your character's progress (almost goes back to the dawn of gaming), something called "subsumption AI" (which is supposed to be how crowds of AI navigate each other, visible working flawlessly in Assassin's Creed but certainly not in Star Citizen).

True. When 2.4 was about to be released CIG was like" this is a momentous update , a history in making and reading all that i was like what the fuck is this 'persistence' and then when i got to know that by persistence they mean that if i buy a pair of pajamas and then logout, next time i will login the game will remember i was having those pajamas..i was like  :psyduck:  :psyduck:. And those motherfuckers had the audacity to say this is a major tech that they have developed .. .

Smoke and mirrors all over. also about the subsumption ai dont forget the outstanding ai of crowd in hitman games.

[Stan]

I have been following Derek Smarts blogs for some time now and after the yesterday live stream disaster I have to say that it is pretty clear now that RSI is going downhill. When I visted RSI website for the first time I was quite impressed, however when I saw the crazy store prices for the ships I went right to google and entered "star citizen scam" lol. This how I found out about Derek Smart and the whole joke Star Citizen has become.

Back in the day, Freelancer was my first Space Sim and when I played it I was 13 and it gave me a lasting impression because it was really a cool game overall, the graphics were good for the time and the game ran smooth on mid spec PCs. Even my sister enjoyed it and that says a lot. It is quite sad that after so many years CR is relying on such obscure cash grab techniques to fund a game which can never be build because it is waay to complex, despite the fact he has proven he can actually create great visions for games.

At live stream yesterday there were so many WTF moments, like when they crushed a monitor and the chat exploded it was unreal I choked because laughing so hard  :haw: The problem is people at the CGI forum are completely out of touch with reality and expecting absolutely insane stuff. They envision not a game but rather a life simulator or something. The only way I see is to take Star Marine and Arena Commander - which are "decent" - and build a space FPS around them with boarding of enemy ships and so on on a large scale. Add to that the SQ42 campaing ynd you got a real game - maybe I would even buy that. But this is never going to happen because CR promised so much.

Yep.

However I am bemused why many people think CR is a visionary. 

He copies things or churns out the same stuff most of us could if we were asked to think about a new space game whilst half pissed down the pub/bar and without having put much thought into it.

[dsmart]

True. When 2.4 was about to be released CIG was like" this is a momentous update , a history in making and reading all that i was like what the fuck is this 'persistence' and then when i got to know that by persistence they mean that if i buy a pair of pajamas and then logout, next time i will login the game will remember i was having those pajamas..i was like  :psyduck:  :psyduck:. And those motherfuckers had the audacity to say this is a major tech that they have developed .. .

Smoke and mirrors all over. also about the subsumption ai dont forget the outstanding ai of crowd in hitman games.

LOL!! Yeah, the "persistence" one was absolutely hilarious. I have been beating them with a big stick over it for awhile now. 

Those clowns took a legacy save/restore system and called it something else. This despite the fact that the game isn't even an MMO by any stretch. So retrieving player info from a dB is "persistence" now. It's truly hilarious. But when you consider their target audience that still keeps giving them money through all this, you have to see how it all makes sense.