Star Citizen – General Discussions
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23 (hint, its a movie ^^)
+1 for amusement reasons and because it does fit but to be fair such a list could be produced about everything.
I follow various websites about Star Citizen and while there are sane people in both camps a lot of “fans” seem to be crazy psychopaths (to be fair, the ratio probably is something like 90:10 pro:contra SC). The amount of self-delusion is breathtaking in the SC camp to a degree where I need to worry about these people having responsebilities or kids and are relied upon in real life.
I see many people trying to get a serious discussion going. They stay polite and to-the-facts and usually such threads simple get downvoted or attacked in a frenzy without giving any counter-arguments. The level of toxical behaviour is incredible and acts like a deterrent for “normal” people to participate else I d say we would be looking at a far bigger critical crowd.
The only reason IMO that croberts is STILL running his scam is because he successfully created a cult. Once people got involved mental sanity took its departure and remaining is the frenzied base which doesnt understand anything going on but react to “threats” by lashing out.
The company at large stands by and does not interfere or when it does….only in a very selective manner (attacks versus SC are taken out immediatly regardless how carefully they are constructed but personal attacks AGAINST critiques are strangely “okay”).
I ve seen so many discussions coming up against the tiniest things evolving into full-scale flame wars where people sound as if they would bash their heads in if they had the chance. And the reason for these things is that croberts is so non-saying or vague in his appearances that I wonder if he does it by design or simply is so stupid. He also refuses to clear up the mud by either giving a statement nor providing any tangible proof about progress of the game.
Both possebilities are worrying because one is a scam and the other makes you wonder if this project ever had a chance with such a stupid person in the lead.
Open Development is also a carrot on a stick because none of the backers actually “knows” what that means. There usually is no open development in other games. The best you can hope for is an early-access and alpha access to the game. Nothing remotely new and nothing more has been given so far. The additional “shows” are all filled with non-information and make me fall asleep but they certainly are filled with hype of which…sadly….over the years many of the given statements and deadlines has been proven wrong. I am currently involved with several early-access titles, not even announced as “open development”. These titles are working on much smaller funds yet I see more progress, ingame content and actual information given then what croberts provides. All I know is when I m following an AAA title over the years I dont get to see any financial data, detailed lists of current ingame features and can NOT visit the actual company grounds and expect to have a tour to see development on my own.
…..so far Star Citizen is exactly the same.
Listing all the “possible” features (admitted to not be in the game at the moment – see MVP) of the game only strengthens my worries about HOW the company will actually achieve this when the BASE you can see in their pre-alpha (I m participating in several alphas at the moment, this isnt one) doesnt support the claims in a technical way, yet, some cultists list them as if they are already in the game. Official statements given is reduced to “we are working on a LOT” and comes down to trust.
And theres the fundamental difference between people watching the game from a distance. Either they have “trust” or they dont. Not having any trust is okay too, its the companies responsebility to turn the non-believers……ERRRR….non-backers into customers. This would involve controlling your fan base to prevent them attacking everybody like a frenzied mob as soon somebody offers criticism because this isnt in your best interest as a company which WANTS as many customers as it can get.
Taking sides is easy as well if you approach the matter in a neutral stance.
Contra-arguments are often given in a detailed manner, include a lot of vocal experience (it doesnt matter if DS is a good or bad game designer….what he says makes “sense”) and often concern basic functionality like coding, underlying base mechanics and speaking from knowledge when it comes to actually turn all what was promised into actual game data (see technical debt). If I m on the look-out for information because I m trying to decide if I should become a backer too these are the threads which catch my eye because they touch concerns which are similar to mine.
The pro-SC crowd usually counters with belittlement, personal attacks, disregard or cut-and-paste replies which are as non-saying as the statements of croberts. Watching the map on stream makes me cringe because he really doesnt sound like a man who knows what hes doing. His underlings (some of them are very talented) biggest concern seems to be to not knowing what they actually can say and what not. Watching ingame footage isnt convincing enough and makes me wonder HOW in the world some people can be as involved as they actually are (I mean they act as if croberts is their family or they are being paid for it…..which some are rumored to be)
Following FACTS which are available and I m not going for opinins here (some say that the current PU is stable, contains 4x as much content as actually released games, and is a lot of “fun”……..yeah) there isnt a whole lot of reasons why I should be so passionate about the game…so far it hasnt delivered anything exceptional yet. But things change when I m financially involved I guess. Plus the fact that most of the backers are private people who have no experience with such things (just imagine publishers acting like this lol).
– The game was announced on kickstarter 2012
– croberts stated in his kickstarter campagin that work on the game was underway for 1 year prior to 2012
– the original target was 500.000$ and ended at 2.100.000+$
– additional crowdfunding on their own website resulted in a total of (so far) 116 MILLION $
– tied to the increased pool of money was an increasing list of stretch goals
– in the 4+ years (there are heated debates about WHEN the development of the game actually started) croberts hasnt managed to provide even the BASE game which was part of the 500.000 campaign
– lately the trickle of information (if you can ever call it that) has dried down and it has become very silent about croberts. You can see his underlings giving non-saying statements but there is no actual “proof” given about any progress in the game. The latest video material I was able to find on the net is dated back to 2014 with some advertisement videos in 2015.
Personally I am very able to ditinguish between a promotional video and actual ingame footage. Sadly there is hardly any ingame footage available which would prove progress but a lot of promo videos which show “dreams”. So far there is no “tangible prove” about seamless planet-surface-to-space transitions (sorry folks, what you saw is a promo video), there is no ingame prove about PG content at least I havent seen any planetary landings yet.
I was curious in the beginning because croberts really touched a site in me which WANTS all he promises but after the years it appears that he promised FIRST and THEN started to think how to implement everything he promised. Most of the things I can see ingame at the moment seem to be dead ends which cannot be improved anymore and the lack of new stuff or information given makes me think that croberts began to realize he cannot do this thing. I hope there will be a book in the future touching the details and inner workings of this whole project (I m not talking about the current “projections” available on the net)…I m sure to buy one. It will be very amusing and entertaining in hindsight to people who actually lived through it.
There is a fanbase of the game acting like school children which makes me scratch my head because I am actually watching adults. People on youtube having “fun” only act in a make-believe manner because the actual game crashes, glitches and doesnt look remarkable in any way compared to actual products. Yet they claim FPS and flight mechanics in SC are already superior to the likes of COD (….seriously?) and ED (…again….what?). Its like watching a picture of blue color yet people claim its red.
Personally I ve made up my mind back at the end of 2014. Everything since then only confirms my inital and final impression. Its a little sad to see current backers becoming confused and desperate but that is reality catching up. When years before it was thousands of white knights coming down on any criticism (being so large that even gaming sites trembled in fear of the backlash and decided to hold their piece and not ask the tough questions (shame on you btw)) I can see this crowd being a lot smaller now and mostly containing the fanatics who are so blinded or heavily invested that its appearant they dont think for themselves anymore. I believe this course will hold up and we ll eventually see a catastrophic collapse of the game…..personally I m surprised its able to hold on this long. I m still watching the whole thing because my sense of justice enjoys the exposure of liars and scams. Examples from the world of politics sadly show that there hardly is any punishment for this kind of behaviour (financial mismanagement and blatant lies) but it ll be nice to see people “waking up”.
I guess SC is a large animal so the dying takes its time but the grave wound leading to its demins has been appearant for some time now.
Wow….I wanted to give a quick reply and this came out, sorry bout that 🙂
My latest blog, “Star Citizen – The Fidelity Of Failure“, is now live on the front page.
A good read, albeit long but getting used to that now. And one of the bigger tragedies is that your blog and twitter are my best source of news what’s going on with “Star Citizen”, I just can’t stand more of the awkard Sandi / Ben shows.
Now for the negative – Unfortunately it’s still filled with “reports indicate” (and sometimes you’re the one reporting :/), “sources tell me” and predictive statements much like the one that CIG would fall apart in January. Well here we are in late June and they _say_ they are still rolling and publically they aren’t showing any signs of being in any trouble at all.
Now for the positive –Â what I did like was that it wasn’t as personal against Chris/Sandi as some of your previous blogs have been, that was refreshing.
But if I ever saw a red flag that this is indeed going to hell it’s the new TOS. Fortunately I’ve worked enough with lawyers to actually read those so I didn’t click accept. Which means I’m an original backer with some $1000+ pledged that can’t play “the game”, not that I’d want to in it’s current state. And consequently politely requested a refund. Which was equally politely denied.
I’ve said it many times before, even if (which seems to be likely) the money has gone down the drain I still think of it as a donation to all the hours, days, weeks probably even months of enjoyment Chris earlier games have given me so not too upset about that.
What I am upset about are the things that went down early on that made people like me go “well they can’t be that stupid, CR is an experienced game dev, he must know what he’s doing. I wouldn’t do it like that but what do I know” and here we are years later being proven right that yeah, he was that stupid. One example being the “MVP” should have been the goal from day 1 and then built upon and expanded like E:F instead of promising the world and kitchen sink and then scale down to “MVP”.
At this stage I’m atleast hoping there’ll be a SQ42 campaign worthy of being a Wing Commander sequel. Even with cheesy script (which is Chris’ signature) and stuff like that, I’d play it as long as it was stable enough to play and immersive enough. I’ve never been that into the whole MMORPG in space thing he expanded this to be.
Btw, whatever happened to Nyx? We had the video demo of Nyx last august (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2YMlnn4Ngk) with “coming soon”? Is it in 2.4 (as I said, I wouldn’t know because I’m not allowed to start the game). Not to mention what happened to multi factor auth for our accounts that was promised 4 years ago.
As always time will tell and fortunately there are some great games coming out to kill the time until this folds or delivers. COD being one. But there’s plenty of space for space games 🙂
Another hilarious Major Tom video is up.
“OK, just to head people off at the pass here. this is not a ‘bug’ this is the way the game handles space itself. The game has no way of knowing whether you are in space (should die) or inside (should live). They’ve been able to get away with this until now because everyone had a spacesuit on all the time, but now, well. It’s a massive and fundemental part of how the game should work, and it doesn’t. hand waiving it away as a ‘known bug’ is hilarious. use your brains commandos, lmao – star citizen does not have space“
Since I keep getting messages about my “beef with Lesnick”, here is a section I added to the blog, and which sheds some more light on it.
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And he’s been having a go at me for years now. Here is a comment he made, twelve years ago, when rumors were going around that I was attempting to do a Freespace game. This is his comment on the official forums last July after my first blog; and which led to the all-out war we’re now waging. A  war which they don’t stand a snowball in hell chance of winning.
That dog under the table is  being fed vast quantities of prime steak paid for with backers dollars.
It certainly isn’t Lesnicks because if it was it would be skinny
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