Can we call it dead yet!!

[alright_MEATBAGS]

Can we officially say that star citizen turned into a scam and this game is about as dead as that possum we all pass on the way to work? At this point if the game does launch I'm not even sure it would make any money considering the fact that almost everyone who wanted the game already bought in and now gets to play semi-working but mostly broken gameplay features that were never suppose to be in the game in the first place. Add to the fact that this game has had multiple release dates spanning several years, and yes I mean several, considering this game was originally suppose to launch back in 2012, and at this point has changed their Terms of Service so many times and forced paying customers to agree to them, otherwise they can't even access the game they paid for 4 years ago. Maybe I am just ranting here, but I will give Star Citizen one thing, it is maybe one of the most successful and failed games in video game history.

[abyss03]

1 minute ago, VOLUNTEERbrowncoat said:

Can we officially say that star citizen turned into a scam and this game is about as dead as that possum we all pass on the way to work? At this point if the game does launch I'm not even sure it would make any money considering the fact that almost everyone who wanted the game already bought in and now gets to play semi-working but mostly broken gameplay features that were never suppose to be in the game in the first place. Add to the fact that this game has had multiple release dates spanning several years, and yes I mean several, considering this game was originally suppose to launch back in 2012, and at this point has changed their Terms of Service so many times and forced paying customers to agree to them, otherwise they can't even access the game they paid for 4 years ago. Maybe I am just ranting here, but I will give Star Citizen one thing, it is maybe one of the most successful and failed games in video game history.

It's still in development and they plan on releasing another big update around Christmas. I'm not sure if your trolling but yes games get delayed but most (pretty sure SC I'd the only one) don't share as much as they do about development as they can.

 

4 years in development is still a relatively small amount of time in the grand scheme of things given the budget they now have.

[alright_MEATBAGS]

They started development back in 2011, when they showed off a demo of the game they were suppose to create. I'm not by any means trying to troll, I am more or less just wondering if anyone else in the community feels the same way about a game they may or may not have pledged money for years ago. I call it a scam because by definition Chris Roberts has essentially scammed everyone who pledge financial support for this game. He offered a future product for a given price, and then changed that product and the agreement to use that product after he already collected the money and refused to give any type of refund when you didn't agree to the new terms of service.

[porina]

I'm only indirectly interested as I got a free account with an AMD GPU purchase previously. It does seem to be taking forever, in part due to the shifting goals. Would be better if they stuck to the original plan and released that before looking at expansions.

[Space Reptile]

the biggest problem is that the boss (insert name here) wants "more pretty tech demos" than actual game ,

he also is over ambitious and aims to release a AAA+ game on a indie budget , most of his funds are gone by now and the game is 30% done at best ,some of his staff and programmers are behind on pay and the mood in the team is becoming more and more sour , and this is what I heard from an inside report from a few months ago (I have to dig to find the sauce again) from someone who jumped off as stuff started to crumble

 

I really hope the game gets somewhere , but its the titanic 3 at this point

[SCHISCHKA]

14 minutes ago, VOLUNTEERbrowncoat said:

they showed off a demo

Smoke and mirrors; was it a game or did they hire an artist to make a video?

Early access games that require payment for beta quality release pretty much flop around. Rust & Ark get a lot of complaints.

They already have your money so what is their motivation?

Compare these game with how BF1 did their free beta; BF1 is going to get solid sales for the next two years but Star citizen is giving themselves a bad name by making people pay for a beta product with no guarantee of a stable release.

[RollinLower]

This sounds like what happened to that last duke nukem game. glad i didn't buy into the hype way back when

[porina]

3 hours ago, SCHISCHKA said:

Smoke and mirrors; was it a game or did they hire an artist to make a video?

Early access games that require payment for beta quality release pretty much flop around. Rust & Ark get a lot of complaints.

They already have your money so what is their motivation?

I wasn't involved at the start so I might not be fully correct on the following. What was promised to the early adopters has now evolved into something much bigger and more ambitious, and that I think is a major part of the problem. If they focused on the original plan, they could bank that release and follow up on future expansions.

 

Look at the other recent online space game as a parallel. I did buy into Elite: Dangerous at kickstarter time. I knew this was a risk, and I didn't just buy in at basic level, but at lifetime expansion level. For a game that didn't exist and wouldn't for over a year, and I wouldn't know if I like it, let along make use of the expansion. Well, it did happen, although late but that's not unexpected. Was it perfect at launch? No. Is it perfect now? No. But they got a game out, they sold it to others beyond the kickstarters. They have released expansions since then adding more functionality, with ongoing plans to expand ever more. Would it have been better if Star Citizen took a similar roll out path?

 

I'm backing two other games on kickstarter. Neither look likely to happen any time soon and are already over a year late. One I'm writing off as a loss as I don't see it happening. The other I think will happen eventually, but the lead is notorious for being slow at everything he does...

[steffen_anywhere]

@porina I bought Elite Dangerous a year ago (plus the Horizons Season) for quite some money. It was worth it in my opinion, and I'm looking forward to see how it progresses in the future. I have to agree that this would have been a better model for Star Citizen as well.

[Mihle]

The game was never supposed to launch in 2012? what are you talking about? The first date they did set was end of 2016 (if I dont remeber wrong), they arent hitting that, but that is because the game is going to bigger than it ever was intended to be.

 

Game takes a lot of time to make, longer than it seems like you think it does, especially how big the plan for SC is.
A lot of stuff have been done behind the curtain. The engine is so different that what it started with that they have changed its name. We know almost nothing of Squadron 42 (the singleplayer), (except for actors) but it is supposedly out in 2017. 2018 at the latest.

[abyss03]

6 minutes ago, Mihle Gaming said:

The game was never supposed to launch in 2012? what are you talking about? The first date they did set was end of 2016 (if I dont remeber wrong), they arent hitting that, but that is because the game is going to bigger than it ever was intended to be.

 

Game takes a lot of time to make, longer than it seems like you think it does, especially how big the plan for SC is.
A lot of stuff have been done behind the curtain. The engine is so different that what it started with that they have changed its name. We know almost nothing of Squadron 42, (except for actors) but it is supposedly out in 2017. 2018 at the latest.

This. 

 

I admit Star Citizen has a very big case of feature creep but I would rather that than make a game to a lower budget and then just keep the rest of the money as profit. I don't know if 2016 was the first release date, I do remember rumours of releases around 2014 and 2015 but never thought that was an option in reality. I'm personally happy just to sit hear and get drip fed star citizen content and wait in the long haul for Squadron 42

[Corwin111]

Interrogative sentences are punctuated with a question mark. Unless it is a rhetorical question, which yours isn't. Because it has a very firm answer.

 

No - we can not call it dead, quite the opposite. What you call " semi-working but mostly broken gameplay features that were never suppose to be in the game" are features that are very much part of the game and are getting less and less broken as the Alpha progresses.

 

Even though it is a crowd-funded indie endeavor, Star Citizen has grown into the largest and most ambitious gaming project in history. And I say this with no hyperbole. There has literally not been a game developed on this scale. Ever. As such, it will take time to develop. So far it is well within the regular development cycle of a normal game and has actually taken much LESS time than a number of popular and less ambitious AAA titles.

 

Here are some for perspective:

 

Dragon Age: Origins - 5 years

Half Life 2 - 5 years

Morrowind - 6 years

Fallout 3 - 6 years

L.A. Noire - 7 years

Star Craft 2: Wings of Liberty - 7 years

Spore - 8 years

Team Fortress 2 - 9 Years

Prey - 11 years

Diablo III - 11 years

 

 

So you tell me. Can we call it dead yet?

[Napper198]

Some corrections on your statements: There were exactly 2 release dates given, November 2014 and "2016".

November 2014 was the release date for both Star Citizen and Squadron 42 as stated in the Kickstarter campaign. This would have been the 19 mio $ SC/SQ42 as you saw it back in the Kickstarter video and tbh I'm not mad that we didn't get that one as it would never been able to live up to the hype the community created for it. Chis Roberts also saw this and tried to rase even more money after the campaign to get the game to a real AAA level. So with all the additional funding going in late 2012 early 2013 the game we pledged for basically got cancelled and replaced by a much bigger one, increasing the development time from a 2 year medium budget indie game to an estimated 5 years. And this was the first issue as this was never publicly communicated and is still mostly speculation.

 

2016 was the release for the first chapter of Squadron 42 in its current state that they announced back in October 2015 at CitizenCon. However because of the great improvements they had with procedural planets they wanted to have those included so they moved it to early 2017 (no official statement on that tho). Interestingly, the planets doesn't seem to be the problem at all here as the tech demo showed at Citizen Con 2016 was cut by half and only showed the planet. Sounds like feature creep but if this part is ready while other main components are not, why not include it for a better game experience?

 

Looking at the development logs it looks like their bigger problems right now are FPS and AI. FPS as in the current playable demo doesn't really feel finished to me, which is probably their feeling to, as 2.6 was supposed to give us an overhaul on this and was set to be released soon after CitizenCon 2016. 5 Weeks later we're still waiting for that update.

 

Regarding the long development, you also have to consider that the studio had to be build in the first place. The Kickstarter demo was build by 12 guys, a year later they had I think about 70 people. 2014 there were already 270 hired and as of October 2016 CIG has now 360 developers and they're still hiring. Going through the years you could really feel accelerated development. There were barely any patches before 2014, and especially early 2016 the hammered patch after patch. (there was a nice timeline but I cant find it)

 

All in all, no, Chris made some questionable decisions which shows that he has been absent from game development for a while and his inexperience with crowdfunding that my let SC look like a scam, but it is not dead, it's more alive than ever when you actively follow it and I'm still happy with the progress and looking forward what we will see the next 2-3 Months

[Gyre-Taenn]

@ixi_your_face please keep this thread for posterity. I will be necro-ing it after SQ42 launches to hang it over OP's head.

[Hayashi]

If they abandoned the project, then took the money and ran then yes it would be a scam. Games take time to make (Though Digital Homicide begs to differ) and if you actually looked at the frequent updates as shown on their Youtube channel then you would see why it is taking so long.

 

It's one of the most ambitious games to date. It takes time and effort to make something great and isn't done over night. Ah, who am I kidding? You're probably just a troll.

[KevinTipcorn]

Development is chugging along at a pretty good rate if you ignore all the dates they put out in the big marketing presentations.  

People pointing out these things take forever are good to keep in mind when you see their advertising/"community engagement" stuff. 

 

If they can't work out the netcode for the game to run over the next year, maybe call it dead.

If they get 3.0 out in the next 6 months to a year and its actually a fun star system to play around in, with fully fleshed out planets space stations etc., it seems like it is pretty rapid dev on a massive scale if you ignore all the dates they give and just look at the work.

[RS2007GOD]

Im still tempted to buy it just to try it. Gonna wait a lil longer though maybe mid 2k17 or later

[Space Reptile]

On ‎14‎.‎11‎.‎2016 at 4:05 PM, Corwin111 said:

Dragon Age: Origins - 5 years

Half Life 2 - 5 years

Morrowind - 6 years

Fallout 3 - 6 years

L.A. Noire - 7 years

Star Craft 2: Wings of Liberty - 7 years

Spore - 8 years

Team Fortress 2 - 9 Years

Prey - 11 years

Diablo III - 11 years

dok nookem - 14 years

[Delicieuxz]

Max Payne 3 was also some large number of years, iirc.

[Corwin111]

On 11/17/2016 at 2:34 PM, Space Reptile said:

dok nookem - 14 years

True. I deliberately didn't put it in there, though, since it was eventually utter crap when it came out. It was the ultimate hype train wreck! God knows why I still left Spore in that list, but oh well...

 

The point I was trying to make was that all the games I listed, with the possible exception of Spore, were massively delayed, but were also very successful, widely acclaimed, unmitigated successes when they finally came out. And they were also all much smaller in scale than what Star Citizen aims to be. 

[rentaspoon]

 

On 11/14/2016 at 9:13 AM, VOLUNTEERbrowncoat said:

They started development back in 2011, when they showed off a demo of the game they were suppose to create. I'm not by any means trying to troll, I am more or less just wondering if anyone else in the community feels the same way about a game they may or may not have pledged money for years ago. I call it a scam because by definition Chris Roberts has essentially scammed everyone who pledge financial support for this game. He offered a future product for a given price, and then changed that product and the agreement to use that product after he already collected the money and refused to give any type of refund when you didn't agree to the new terms of service.

Chris started in 2011 with help from a few cryengine advisers to make sure the engine was capable, 2012 was the crowdfunder and 2013 they had a place to work.

 

Once they had enough money to be able to build star marine AND star citizen at the same time they decided to ask the community if they wanted a bigger scoped game or stop the funding, they asked twice and the community wanted more. AS for the terms of service, the first didn't have anything in it, the second was poorly written and the third was re-written for clarification.

 

It's now easier to get a refund and the only people that say it isn't are the nay-sayers.

On 11/14/2016 at 9:26 AM, Space Reptile said:

the biggest problem is that the boss (insert name here) wants "more pretty tech demos" than actual game ,

he also is over ambitious and aims to release a AAA+ game on a indie budget , most of his funds are gone by now and the game is 30% done at best ,some of his staff and programmers are behind on pay and the mood in the team is becoming more and more sour , and this is what I heard from an inside report from a few months ago (I have to dig to find the sauce again) from someone who jumped off as stuff started to crumble

 

I really hope the game gets somewhere , but its the titanic 3 at this point

everything he has displayed has been in game minus the 3.0 stuff and up coming 2.6, they could be out of money but they've been pulling 36-ish million a year and are only 3 million away from breaking last years record.

 

This source sounds like something from Derek Smart or Escapist or Something Awful has said.

On 11/14/2016 at 9:27 AM, SCHISCHKA said:

Smoke and mirrors; was it a game or did they hire an artist to make a video?

Early access games that require payment for beta quality release pretty much flop around. Rust & Ark get a lot of complaints.

They already have your money so what is their motivation?

Compare these game with how BF1 did their free beta; BF1 is going to get solid sales for the next two years but Star citizen is giving themselves a bad name by making people pay for a beta product with no guarantee of a stable release.

why finish it?

Because this is Chris Roberts dream, this was what he wanted with Freelancer before Microsoft fucked that up, thus why he wants no publishers.

On 11/14/2016 at 0:57 PM, porina said:

I wasn't involved at the start so I might not be fully correct on the following. What was promised to the early adopters has now evolved into something much bigger and more ambitious, and that I think is a major part of the problem. If they focused on the original plan, they could bank that release and follow up on future expansions.

 

Look at the other recent online space game as a parallel. I did buy into Elite: Dangerous at kickstarter time. I knew this was a risk, and I didn't just buy in at basic level, but at lifetime expansion level. For a game that didn't exist and wouldn't for over a year, and I wouldn't know if I like it, let along make use of the expansion. Well, it did happen, although late but that's not unexpected. Was it perfect at launch? No. Is it perfect now? No. But they got a game out, they sold it to others beyond the kickstarters. They have released expansions since then adding more functionality, with ongoing plans to expand ever more. Would it have been better if Star Citizen took a similar roll out path?

 

I'm backing two other games on kickstarter. Neither look likely to happen any time soon and are already over a year late. One I'm writing off as a loss as I don't see it happening. The other I think will happen eventually, but the lead is notorious for being slow at everything he does...

"Would it have been better if Star Citizen took a similar roll out path?" No Star Citizen relies on hand crafted worlds, Elite relied on Procedural Generation tech a lot more than SC.

 

Both had good paths but doubt they would suit each others, it's also worth remembering that Elite had been worked on 4-5ish years before the kickstarter IIRC

On 11/17/2016 at 8:00 AM, RS2007GOD said:

Im still tempted to buy it just to try it. Gonna wait a lil longer though maybe mid 2k17 or later

there will probably be a free fly come January February if you can wait

[Gyre-Taenn]

2 hours ago, rentaspoon said:

snip

Dang, and you said I was a bit ferocious on forums.

[rentaspoon]

7 hours ago, Gyre-Taenn said:

Dang, and you said I was a bit ferocious on forums.

I was holding back..

[dalekphalm]

On 2016-11-14 at 4:02 AM, VOLUNTEERbrowncoat said:

Can we officially say that star citizen turned into a scam and this game is about as dead as that possum we all pass on the way to work? At this point if the game does launch I'm not even sure it would make any money considering the fact that almost everyone who wanted the game already bought in and now gets to play semi-working but mostly broken gameplay features that were never suppose to be in the game in the first place. Add to the fact that this game has had multiple release dates spanning several years, and yes I mean several, considering this game was originally suppose to launch back in 2012, and at this point has changed their Terms of Service so many times and forced paying customers to agree to them, otherwise they can't even access the game they paid for 4 years ago. Maybe I am just ranting here, but I will give Star Citizen one thing, it is maybe one of the most successful and failed games in video game history.

I won't go into much detail, since others have already touched on just about everything you've said.

 

1. Can we call it dead? Hahaha no. The game has continual development, we're constantly seeing new features, bug fixes, improvements, etc, added in weekly. They've even opened up their internal schedule to show people like you that they're not just sitting on their asses.

 

2. It's a semi-broken game because it's in ALPHA. Most AAA games you wouldn't even have heard about it while at this stage of development. Most AAA games get announced (and corresponding media attention) when the Alpha is basically done and closed, and the Beta phase is getting into gear.

 

3. As others have mentioned, this is straight up wrong - please provide a source claiming the 2012 release date. They've had two, as @Napper198 points out: November 2014, and 2016 in general. The first one was never going to be hit, because that was based off of meeting minimum funding goals, with NO Stretch Goals hit. Furthermore, they kept adding stretch goals because money kept coming in. More goals = longer time. All backers had plenty of time to cancel their kickstarter donations before the campaign ended. Also, I do believe that if you ask, CIG will give you a refund. They've had several periods in the past where they accepted refunds, at least.

 

We've pretty much seen behind the scenes for this game since near day one. Most AAA games don't get any attention until a year or so before release. Yet most AAA games take 4-7 years to make. Star Citizen isn't really behind at all in that sense yet.

On 2016-11-14 at 4:13 AM, VOLUNTEERbrowncoat said:

They started development back in 2011, when they showed off a demo of the game they were suppose to create. I'm not by any means trying to troll, I am more or less just wondering if anyone else in the community feels the same way about a game they may or may not have pledged money for years ago. I call it a scam because by definition Chris Roberts has essentially scammed everyone who pledge financial support for this game. He offered a future product for a given price, and then changed that product and the agreement to use that product after he already collected the money and refused to give any type of refund when you didn't agree to the new terms of service.

Yes they started in 2011. Yes they showed off a (very scripted) tech demo. Chris Roberts has not by definition scammed anyone. He offered a future product for a given price, with stretch goals (the goals evolved over time, but the basics were still there in Kickstarter). This was mostly done right around the time the Kickstarter campaign took off, BEFORE they collected the money. There were some changes after, sure, but not many fundamental ones.

On 2016-11-14 at 4:26 AM, Space Reptile said:

the biggest problem is that the boss (insert name here) wants "more pretty tech demos" than actual game ,

he also is over ambitious and aims to release a AAA+ game on a indie budget , most of his funds are gone by now and the game is 30% done at best ,some of his staff and programmers are behind on pay and the mood in the team is becoming more and more sour , and this is what I heard from an inside report from a few months ago (I have to dig to find the sauce again) from someone who jumped off as stuff started to crumble

 

I really hope the game gets somewhere , but its the titanic 3 at this point

Just so you know, CIG has raised over $135m USD for the game, plus their own financing/investing. I'd hardly call that an Indie Budget. If the original $10m USD was hit, then sure, you could claim indie, but this is basically a AAA game, just using their own studio and self publishing.

 

Can you provide any sources about "most of the money being gone", and the game being 30% done at best? I'd say the PTU is maybe 30% done (maybe more, hard to say), but we have no idea how far along SQ42 is, and that's half the game. It's chugging along nicely from what I've heard.

 

Where did you hear that they aren't paying their staff? That definitely requires a source. I've not heard a single bad thing from any of the employees about the conditions or the pay.

[2FA]

5 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Just so you know, CIG has raised over $135m USD for the game, plus their own financing/investing. I'd hardly call that an Indie Budget. If the original $10m USD was hit, then sure, you could claim indie, but this is basically a AAA game, just using their own studio and self publishing.

 

Can you provide any sources about "most of the money being gone", and the game being 30% done at best? I'd say the PTU is maybe 30% done (maybe more, hard to say), but we have no idea how far along SQ42 is, and that's half the game. It's chugging along nicely from what I've heard.

 

Where did you hear that they aren't paying their staff? That definitely requires a source. I've not heard a single bad thing from any of the employees about the conditions or the pay.

Probably from Derek Smart and his co-conspirators. There were claims of discrimination but they were couldn't be backed up since the source was anonymous and most of wording was similar to things Derek Smart has said in the past.