Is Star Citizen a giant scam?

[Rosss]

6 hours ago, george357 said:

They opened Star Citizen as an Alpha for those that are interested in backing to have an opportunity to playtest each iteration of content as it is being developed. At the start of the project there was very little to do, walk around a hangar and look at your ships. Then as they built the game, the first system was added and still with little to actually do because it is a development process. Now we have that system roughly 2/3 complete with 2 planets, 11 moons, 6 rest stops and a Protoplanet. Currently there is enough content to tinker around here an there but of course there are still bugs and such that are inherent to an alpha build. I have been a part of the project since November 2016 and have over a thousand hours in game. There are other people that backed at the Original Kickstarter and have never played yet. 

 

This is not like a typical game that is worked on for years before players see anything about it, this game has had backer participation since the hangar modules I mentioned. This is not the early access crap on steam, it is a true Alpha build that will iterate and add stuff over time.  Here is a link to the Roadmap of what they hope to add in the coming ~year

 

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/roadmap/board/1-Star-Citizen

 

Here is a copy of their financials through 2017

 

https://cloudimperiumgames.com/blog/corporate/cfo-comment-2012-2017-financials

Their road map in the past has been something akin to that of a deadbeat father that always lets you down though, correct? They were clearly promising huge things back around 2012-2015 which they didn't seem to come close to delivering. I'm just saying there is living proof on the sincerity of the hype that was star citizen, and it's actually crazy that it still hasn't lived up to the original promises.. When I heard them talk about star citizen on 6 year old WAN shows I thought "how have i never heard of this game" because like you said it is a game that is supposed to be built upon for a very long time. But even the early content they were talking about seemed awesome!

 

Have they ever met their roadmap very accurately in years past? 

[george357]

1 hour ago, Rosss said:

Their road map in the past has been something akin to that of a deadbeat father that always lets you down though, correct? They were clearly promising huge things back around 2012-2015 which they didn't seem to come close to delivering. I'm just saying there is living proof on the sincerity of the hype that was star citizen, and it's actually crazy that it still hasn't lived up to the original promises.. When I heard them talk about star citizen on 6 year old WAN shows I thought "how have i never heard of this game" because like you said it is a game that is supposed to be built upon for a very long time. But even the early content they were talking about seemed awesome!

 

Have they ever met their roadmap very accurately in years past? 

The Roadmap I linked just started the first of last year. They have made the quarterly updates ever since.

[JZStudios]

On 6/3/2019 at 12:17 AM, Helly said:

sorry to burst your bubble, most of the city in cyberpunk will also do absolutely nothing. Its how games work, most of it does nothing cuz making it all takes 1. way to much time to make. 2. Way to much system resources to properly render at a decent framerate. It's just to fill the empty void of nothing so you have something to look at.

Also, the buildings on the planets in SC are just there for testing, that's what they do in alpha builds, testing.

 

2 Paragraphs getting absolutely rekt by the 3 words and number coming after it. I just gotta say, that's damn impressive of you.

For a company (almost) out of money it is really impressive to keep going for 3 years. Chris has got to be doing something right if people keep working for him for 3 years without getting paid.

 

This game was and still mostly is completely made for and backed by random people all over the world. CIG is not letting the backers make decisions, they are listening to the people who are going to play their game. They are smart to listen to the people who care as much about their game and they do. Quite honestly, it's what all game companies should do.

 

You do realize you just described No Mans Sky as empty shit right? Everything you've said so far only shows you know nothing of SC and its development.

 

SC is or will be using procedural generation to create random planets and the cities on them. After that is done they will go over them and put the finishing touches on it such as adding specific details and such so the whole place comes alive and is not empty shit. They are only using procedural generation to save a whole shit ton of time on developing all the planets/system themselves by hand. That is the right way of using procedural generation.

 

You also either know nothing about running a company or you work for EA. Because this whole time you're saying they should have released and empty shell of shit and fixed it afterward, exactly like EA would have done. If you would have done the same, you should look to yourself for horrible mismanagement.

Hey, you quoted me on a topic I said I was done with.

Based off The Witcher 3, most of the world in Cyberpunk will not do absolutely nothing. There's a difference between having a sculpted environment with towns and villages where you can get quests and have a small amount of interaction and literal copy-place random generation of buildings you can't enter which has already been showcased in SC.

Also, people REALLY need to understand that LOD is a thing that exists and it's not that hard to simply not render things you can't see. But clearly you're a genius of video game design.

 

Again, you people are borderline retarded and miss the point completely. Please explain to me exactly where I said the employees aren't getting paid you dipshit? I said there's mismanagement so shit always changes without anything being finalized or released, but because the head idiot in charge lets the customer constantly change features, there is work being done and the customer keeps paying for it, but eventually one party or another runs out of money. But just forget the entire fucking point of what I just said.

And no, they shouldn't. They sold an idea for the game years ago and let the customer balloon the scale and scope instead of delivering on what was promised in the first place. You lunatics are the only ones that find this acceptable. You advertise a product, you sell the product. You don't advertise for selling a small, economical family car and balloon it into the Bugatti Chiron.

 

Okay, sure. Fuck it, you guys are the geniuses. Have you ever ran a business? What kind? When you tell the customer you'll have a certain product at a certain time for a certain price that you both agree on, did he not get angry when years after the initial agreed upon deadline there was only a slight framework of what he actually asked for as you started to implement a bunch of changes and shit they didn't ask for and didn't need?

Or did you let your customer make all your decisions for you and constantly make changes so the product got delayed by years and you then are going well above and beyond what you're contractually obligated to do by the purchase order? If you actually finish the project on time and budget and meet all of the agreed upon specifications and the customer is unhappy about the "empty shell," he shouldn't have agreed to buy what your selling. No other business practice does this without failing. But yeah, okay, I work for EA.

 

It's not like I actually have first-hand experience with this or anything. Please let me know what business you've run and how successful it was. What did you sell? How do you interact with customers? Do you make custom products tailored to each individuals needs, or sell a singular product? What do you do with a customer who always asks for changes or features outside of your agreement? How do you ensure that you release products on time? How do you ensure that you stay on budget?

I'm sure you have very good answers for all of those questions as a business owner.

[Helly]

12 hours ago, JZStudios said:

Hey, you quoted me on a topic I said I was done with.

Based off The Witcher 3, most of the world in Cyberpunk will not do absolutely nothing. There's a difference between having a sculpted environment with towns and villages where you can get quests and have a small amount of interaction and literal copy-place random generation of buildings you can't enter which has already been showcased in SC.

Also, people REALLY need to understand that LOD is a thing that exists and it's not that hard to simply not render things you can't see. But clearly you're a genius of video game design.

So you want them to have released this game years ago including sculpted environments with thousands of towns and villages where you can get quests and enter every single building.

Oh and you base your entire opinion on an example testing city they showcased for this game. A city which is probably at least 10x the size of cyberpunk and witcher 3 combined. Yeah clearly you're the genius here in game design. To be clear here, like everything else using procedural generation in SC, the city was created using that tech and then artists go over it and add details needed for the city to come alive. Can you enter every building? nope you can't. Will you eventually be able to? I got no idea, i would not rule it out and i haven't been keeping that close attention to SC anymore to know with any certainty.

 

13 hours ago, JZStudios said:

Again, you people are borderline retarded and miss the point completely. Please explain to me exactly where I said the employees aren't getting paid you dipshit? I said there's mismanagement so shit always changes without anything being finalized or released, but because the head idiot in charge lets the customer constantly change features, there is work being done and the customer keeps paying for it, but eventually one party or another runs out of money. But just forget the entire fucking point of what I just said.

Ok, here's the dipshit explaining to you where you said employees aren't getting paid. Read the quote below.

13 hours ago, JZStudios said:

You seem to not like Forbes, but based on this article in reference to an article on the Escapist, that's exactly what's happening at CIG;

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2015/10/01/report-star-citizen-is-almost-out-of-cash-and-chris-roberts-insatiable-ambition-is-to-blame/#2517ca5d5eed

The original article on Escapist has been pulled because CIG threatened to sue Escapist, demanded a public apology, and a third party investigation into the articles. The article itself has apparently been reinforced as to it's sources.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2015/10/04/star-citizen-developer-threatens-lawsuit-against-the-escapist-demands-apology-and-retraction/#79c956c817b1

 

And that was 2015.

Notice the first link, it says SC is almost out of money. Now read the last bit where it says 2015.

Here's the extremely complicated part of this. If they (almost) ran out of money in 2015. How are they still running 4 years later? Go back 4 years from 2015, that's 2011. That's before or around the time they even started. So if they are (almost) out of money, how can they run the whole company for as long as they have been going? They wouldn't be able to. They would have certainly run completely out of money within 1 MAYBE 2 years after that. So according to you and your sources, they have been running the company without paying anyone for at least 2 years.

Not that this point is in any way valid anymore, The link to their financials on the previous page shows they are nowhere near out of money and are in fact making money here and there.

 

13 hours ago, JZStudios said:

And no, they shouldn't. They sold an idea for the game years ago and let the customer balloon the scale and scope instead of delivering on what was promised in the first place. You lunatics are the only ones that find this acceptable. You advertise a product, you sell the product. You don't advertise for selling a small, economical family car and balloon it into the Bugatti Chiron.

The original idea needed only maybe a few million $$$. By the time they got to coding, money was coming in by the truck loads. At the time the deadline you speak of came around they had over $150 million. Yeah they could have just made the game they initially pitched and promised and then just go buy a few houses and and entire parking garage full of Bugatti Chirons. But nice people that they are, they took that money and changed the project into a much bigger much better game. Call me (and millions of others) a retarded dipshit (hey, you already did!) but i very much appreciate them not running away with the money and actually make the game they promised bigger and better.

 

13 hours ago, JZStudios said:

Okay, sure. Fuck it, you guys are the geniuses. Have you ever ran a business? What kind? When you tell the customer you'll have a certain product at a certain time for a certain price that you both agree on, did he not get angry when years after the initial agreed upon deadline there was only a slight framework of what he actually asked for as you started to implement a bunch of changes and shit they didn't ask for and didn't need?

Or did you let your customer make all your decisions for you and constantly make changes so the product got delayed by years and you then are going well above and beyond what you're contractually obligated to do by the purchase order? If you actually finish the project on time and budget and meet all of the agreed upon specifications and the customer is unhappy about the "empty shell," he shouldn't have agreed to buy what your selling. No other business practice does this without failing. But yeah, okay, I work for EA.

Yay, welcome to the world of software and game development. Where things change on a daily basis and projects get shutdown all the time even after years of development.

Anyway, no idea who or what you're talking about here. CIG is still going, evidenced by the earlier financials, and not failing. The scope and promise of SC has also been locked now for several years. They've also been making deadlines for over a year now.

13 hours ago, JZStudios said:

It's not like I actually have first-hand experience with this or anything. Please let me know what business you've run and how successful it was. What did you sell? How do you interact with customers? Do you make custom products tailored to each individuals needs, or sell a singular product? What do you do with a customer who always asks for changes or features outside of your agreement? How do you ensure that you release products on time? How do you ensure that you stay on budget?

I'm sure you have very good answers for all of those questions as a business owner.

1. software
2. through email, forums, social networks etc...
3. a little bit of both actually
4. See if it fits within the time frame we agreed to, if not come to an agreement for a new time frame.
5. Calculate as best we can with the knowledge we have at the time to see how long each part of the project takes and add some research time and a little more and stamp a date. But hey this is software, unforeseen issues are always possible to make a product late. We notify the client and make sure they understand we're doing everything we can and give them a new date.
6. awww crap, you got me, i don't run a business, well i tried. Financials suck, they always get me. But hey i did pretty good so far right? right? Well knowing your anger now, i probably did terrible.

Speaking of your anger, lets get down to it. Why ARE you so angry? Seeing as you have all this experience with businesses and all. I can't figure it out.

First i thought, well he must have backed at the beginning and then found out it all took so long and backed out. But then he would have gotten a refund and couldn't be so pissed about it cuz he lost nothing right?

Then i thought, Oh he must have backed later and then found out the project was already so long underway and nowhere near ready, found out refunds are no longer a thing and got pissed. But that can't be right, he has all this vast business experience, surely he must have done some research into the project and the company behind it that he would have known what he was getting into.

Then i thought of a third option, He must have so much empathy that he cant just sit by and see other people invest in such a poor terrible company full of terrible mismanagement. He just has to make everyone understand its a big mistake. Yeah this option just doesn't work cuz of the dipshit and retard comments.

 

Neither option makes any sense... so tell us, why are you so angry?

[JZStudios]

18 hours ago, Helly said:

So you want them to have released this game years ago including sculpted environments with thousands of towns and villages where you can get quests and enter every single building.

Oh and you base your entire opinion on an example testing city they showcased for this game. A city which is probably at least 10x the size of cyberpunk and witcher 3 combined. Yeah clearly you're the genius here in game design. To be clear here, like everything else using procedural generation in SC, the city was created using that tech and then artists go over it and add details needed for the city to come alive. Can you enter every building? nope you can't. Will you eventually be able to? I got no idea, i would not rule it out and i haven't been keeping that close attention to SC anymore to know with any certainty.

 

Ok, here's the dipshit explaining to you where you said employees aren't getting paid. Read the quote below.

Notice the first link, it says SC is almost out of money. Now read the last bit where it says 2015.

Here's the extremely complicated part of this. If they (almost) ran out of money in 2015. How are they still running 4 years later? Go back 4 years from 2015, that's 2011. That's before or around the time they even started. So if they are (almost) out of money, how can they run the whole company for as long as they have been going? They wouldn't be able to. They would have certainly run completely out of money within 1 MAYBE 2 years after that. So according to you and your sources, they have been running the company without paying anyone for at least 2 years.

Not that this point is in any way valid anymore, The link to their financials on the previous page shows they are nowhere near out of money and are in fact making money here and there.

 

The original idea needed only maybe a few million $$$. By the time they got to coding, money was coming in by the truck loads. At the time the deadline you speak of came around they had over $150 million. Yeah they could have just made the game they initially pitched and promised and then just go buy a few houses and and entire parking garage full of Bugatti Chirons. But nice people that they are, they took that money and changed the project into a much bigger much better game. Call me (and millions of others) a retarded dipshit (hey, you already did!) but i very much appreciate them not running away with the money and actually make the game they promised bigger and better.

 

Yay, welcome to the world of software and game development. Where things change on a daily basis and projects get shutdown all the time even after years of development.

Anyway, no idea who or what you're talking about here. CIG is still going, evidenced by the earlier financials, and not failing. The scope and promise of SC has also been locked now for several years. They've also been making deadlines for over a year now.

1. software
2. through email, forums, social networks etc...
3. a little bit of both actually
4. See if it fits within the time frame we agreed to, if not come to an agreement for a new time frame.
5. Calculate as best we can with the knowledge we have at the time to see how long each part of the project takes and add some research time and a little more and stamp a date. But hey this is software, unforeseen issues are always possible to make a product late. We notify the client and make sure they understand we're doing everything we can and give them a new date.
6. awww crap, you got me, i don't run a business, well i tried. Financials suck, they always get me. But hey i did pretty good so far right? right? Well knowing your anger now, i probably did terrible.

Speaking of your anger, lets get down to it. Why ARE you so angry? Seeing as you have all this experience with businesses and all. I can't figure it out.

First i thought, well he must have backed at the beginning and then found out it all took so long and backed out. But then he would have gotten a refund and couldn't be so pissed about it cuz he lost nothing right?

Then i thought, Oh he must have backed later and then found out the project was already so long underway and nowhere near ready, found out refunds are no longer a thing and got pissed. But that can't be right, he has all this vast business experience, surely he must have done some research into the project and the company behind it that he would have known what he was getting into.

Then i thought of a third option, He must have so much empathy that he cant just sit by and see other people invest in such a poor terrible company full of terrible mismanagement. He just has to make everyone understand its a big mistake. Yeah this option just doesn't work cuz of the dipshit and retard comments.

 

Neither option makes any sense... so tell us, why are you so angry?

I still don't care. My point from my first post was mismanagement and letting the customer runs things which is a terrible idea. Instead a whole bunch of other shit gets brought up, like for example making planets you can land on with procedurally generated cities that won't be as detailed as CDPR's. It was not in the original pitch which would prove my point, but having customers run your business for you is apparently the secret key to success which is why every single business that has run that way has failed.

 

So, why am I angry? Because all I tried to do was make a statement about how the game has been mismanaged, which is reflected by some higher ups that have said the same thing before leaving. That's all I wanted to say, because based on personal experience of having a customer change his mind rapidly and having us scramble to try and make essentially an entirely new product well outside the scope of our initial agreement, only for both parties to run out of money.

But you're the business major. I don't care about what they've added in, how much money they've made or any of that other bullshit. You're referencing the monetary values in an article where I was clearly citing the claims of mismanagement, not bankruptcy. You all miss the point and just basically attack blindly.

 

The problem is people keep giving them money and asking for more changes and features. So eventually people will realize they've spent thousands on something they don't have any returns on, which was the case with our customer, and stop giving money so the project dies, OR, they keep adding more features and try growing too fast so the project never actually finishes.

 

"But people voted for it!"

I don't care. It's a bad way to run a business.

"So you want them to release an empty shell of a game!?"

No. Fuck off. They had an initial pitch you paid for. If you didn't like the initial pitch, why did you pay for it? That initial pitch was the agreement both parties set upon, and so far this many years after the deadline, it still hasn't been met.

[Rosss]

2 hours ago, JZStudios said:

I still don't care. My point from my first post was mismanagement and letting the customer runs things which is a terrible idea. Instead a whole bunch of other shit gets brought up, like for example making planets you can land on with procedurally generated cities that won't be as detailed as CDPR's. It was not in the original pitch which would prove my point, but having customers run your business for you is apparently the secret key to success which is why every single business that has run that way has failed.

 

So, why am I angry? Because all I tried to do was make a statement about how the game has been mismanaged, which is reflected by some higher ups that have said the same thing before leaving. That's all I wanted to say, because based on personal experience of having a customer change his mind rapidly and having us scramble to try and make essentially an entirely new product well outside the scope of our initial agreement, only for both parties to run out of money.

But you're the business major. I don't care about what they've added in, how much money they've made or any of that other bullshit. You're referencing the monetary values in an article where I was clearly citing the claims of mismanagement, not bankruptcy. You all miss the point and just basically attack blindly.

 

The problem is people keep giving them money and asking for more changes and features. So eventually people will realize they've spent thousands on something they don't have any returns on, which was the case with our customer, and stop giving money so the project dies, OR, they keep adding more features and try growing too fast so the project never actually finishes.

 

"But people voted for it!"

I don't care. It's a bad way to run a business.

"So you want them to release an empty shell of a game!?"

No. Fuck off. They had an initial pitch you paid for. If you didn't like the initial pitch, why did you pay for it? That initial pitch was the agreement both parties set upon, and so far this many years after the deadline, it still hasn't been met.

Yeah I agree it is entirely a case of bad business practices. Even if they were romanticizing the future of what they were going to create by giving unrealistic expectations of what they could do, they have had a very long time to rectify that. 

 

It really has nothing to do with the customer. The way it has been described it literally a type of pyramid scheme or matrix scheme.. Continually attracting new niches whilst you haven't delivered on your original product is a pretty messed up business practice. 

[Helly]

8 hours ago, JZStudios said:

Instead a whole bunch of other shit gets brought up, like for example making planets you can land on with procedurally generated cities that won't be as detailed as CDPR's. It was not in the original pitch which would prove my point, but having customers run your business for you is apparently the secret key to success which is why every single business that has run that way has failed.

What fantasy world are you living in here? Star Citizen is a SPACE game. Space has planets, in the lore of SC humanity has been traveling and colonizing space for centuries. That lore was there at the very start of the kickstarter. So a game with that description has planets, which you can land on, and cities. This WAS all in the original pitch.

CIG has not failed and is in fact making money, so this entire statement is FALSE. Simple as that.

 

8 hours ago, JZStudios said:

So, why am I angry? Because all I tried to do was make a statement about how the game has been mismanaged, which is reflected by some higher ups that have said the same thing before leaving.

What higher ups? I've only read about developers and artists being fired. That causes people to be pissed and speak badly about their former employer. Literally hundreds of people have been there for years. If there really was horrible management, a lot more people would have left. If you have a terrible job to go to every day and don't want to anymore, a new job is not hard to find, especially if your current job is that bad, you'll go for ANY other job.

So give me sources for these comments. (do keep in mind, the reports i read were years ago, there is no running out of money any time soon for CIG, as once again evidenced in the financial reports posted before.)

 

8 hours ago, JZStudios said:

You're referencing the monetary values in an article where I was clearly citing the claims of mismanagement, not bankruptcy. You all miss the point and just basically attack blindly.

The article YOU are/were referencing, stated CIG was running out of money IN THE TITLE, on top of that YOU have stated MULTIPLE times now that horrible mismanagement LEADS to bankruptcy (running out of money means bankruptcy, if that was unclear). You miss your own point and just basically attack us all blindly, we're not the ones calling you a retard or a dipshit after all. We are just contradicting your points with verifiable facts.

 

8 hours ago, JZStudios said:

The problem is people keep giving them money and asking for more changes and features. So eventually people will realize they've spent thousands on something they don't have any returns on, which was the case with our customer, and stop giving money so the project dies, OR, they keep adding more features and try growing too fast so the project never actually finishes.

The problem is that you refuse to accept that which has been stated multiple times now. Star Citizen has been FEATURE LOCKED for YEARS now. Feature locked means no more new features will be announced and the ones that are will be developed and implemented into the game.

I neither know nor care what your customers ask for. You completely fail to understand SC and its development. SC is a MMORPG, it will NEVER be finished. Now before you get all excited, i'm saying finished, NOT released. SC will definitely be released. But finished? World of Warcraft, also a MMORPG you might be familiar with, was released in 2004. I double dare you to tell anyone that game is finished. It's seventh expansion was released last year, so NO it's not finished.

That is both the beauty and curse of software, it's never finished. There is always things you could do better, always some new technology that is released that you can implement to make it better. So all your comments about businesses leads me to believe that, if you even have a business, it has nothing to do with software, or you're horribly mismanaging/selling it.

Oh and backers certainly have had returns on their pledges, the ones who have spend thousands have probably thousands of hours into the game already. $1/hour is not a bad game, if you had fun many will say "money well spend".

 

8 hours ago, JZStudios said:

"But people voted for it!"

I don't care. It's a bad way to run a business.

"So you want them to release an empty shell of a game!?"

No. Fuck off. They had an initial pitch you paid for. If you didn't like the initial pitch, why did you pay for it? That initial pitch was the agreement both parties set upon, and so far this many years after the deadline, it still hasn't been met.

Do you even know what the original pitch was? Have you looked it up? Please explain to me what you see as the original pitch.

 

Here's the official quick version (from the original SC kickstarter)

Quote

Real quick, Star Citizen is:

• A rich universe focused on epic space adventure, trading and dogfighting in first person.
• Single Player – Offline or Online(Drop in / Drop out co-op play)
• Persistent Universe (hosted by US)
• Mod-able multiplayer (hosted by YOU)
• No Subscriptions
• No Pay to Win

That is the pitch i paid for and that they are working on every day. Yes the original release date they stated was far to ambitious, chris roberts has admitted to that, years ago now. Every single backer had a refund option for years upon years. That option was taken away some time after the whole game was feature locked (at least i think the refund is no longer an option, not for the original pledge anyway). Anyone who is pissed off that its taking so long should have taken the option long long ago.

 

As a final thought i would like to say that you should stop worrying about what other people do with their money, you'll probably live longer. Hell, if you live long enough for you to be right, you can just laugh in their faces right? Win win!

[george357]

6 hours ago, Helly said:

What fantasy world are you living in here? Star Citizen is a SPACE game. Space has planets, in the lore of SC humanity has been traveling and colonizing space for centuries. That lore was there at the very start of the kickstarter. So a game with that description has planets, which you can land on, and cities. This WAS all in the original pitch.

CIG has not failed and is in fact making money, so this entire statement is FALSE. Simple as that.

 

What higher ups? I've only read about developers and artists being fired. That causes people to be pissed and speak badly about their former employer. Literally hundreds of people have been there for years. If there really was horrible management, a lot more people would have left. If you have a terrible job to go to every day and don't want to anymore, a new job is not hard to find, especially if your current job is that bad, you'll go for ANY other job.

So give me sources for these comments. (do keep in mind, the reports i read were years ago, there is no running out of money any time soon for CIG, as once again evidenced in the financial reports posted before.)

 

The article YOU are/were referencing, stated CIG was running out of money IN THE TITLE, on top of that YOU have stated MULTIPLE times now that horrible mismanagement LEADS to bankruptcy (running out of money means bankruptcy, if that was unclear). You miss your own point and just basically attack us all blindly, we're not the ones calling you a retard or a dipshit after all. We are just contradicting your points with verifiable facts.

 

The problem is that you refuse to accept that which has been stated multiple times now. Star Citizen has been FEATURE LOCKED for YEARS now. Feature locked means no more new features will be announced and the ones that are will be developed and implemented into the game.

I neither know nor care what your customers ask for. You completely fail to understand SC and its development. SC is a MMORPG, it will NEVER be finished. Now before you get all excited, i'm saying finished, NOT released. SC will definitely be released. But finished? World of Warcraft, also a MMORPG you might be familiar with, was released in 2004. I double dare you to tell anyone that game is finished. It's seventh expansion was released last year, so NO it's not finished.

That is both the beauty and curse of software, it's never finished. There is always things you could do better, always some new technology that is released that you can implement to make it better. So all your comments about businesses leads me to believe that, if you even have a business, it has nothing to do with software, or you're horribly mismanaging/selling it.

Oh and backers certainly have had returns on their pledges, the ones who have spend thousands have probably thousands of hours into the game already. $1/hour is not a bad game, if you had fun many will say "money well spend".

 

Do you even know what the original pitch was? Have you looked it up? Please explain to me what you see as the original pitch.

 

Here's the official quick version (from the original SC kickstarter)

That is the pitch i paid for and that they are working on every day. Yes the original release date they stated was far to ambitious, chris roberts has admitted to that, years ago now. Every single backer had a refund option for years upon years. That option was taken away some time after the whole game was feature locked (at least i think the refund is no longer an option, not for the original pledge anyway). Anyone who is pissed off that its taking so long should have taken the option long long ago.

 

As a final thought i would like to say that you should stop worrying about what other people do with their money, you'll probably live longer. Hell, if you live long enough for you to be right, you can just laugh in their faces right? Win win!

Helly, it's not worth wasting your time. He has his opinion formed and cannot be bothered by the facts and he seemingly has a deep dislike for Chris Roberts for whatever reason. Arguing with people of this ilk are similar to trying to teach a pig how to sing, it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

[xreaperx22]

personally i cant wait for it to be finished,however i wont be paying 45 bux to play bug city,usually alphas have signups or key giveaways for free,i understand they need funding but they have that going on already why make peeps pay for it? and theres no guarantee that once u pay for alpha that you dont have to pay again at release  that would prolly piss a lot of peeps off so maybe not....but yeah its gonna be pretty epic of a game when done,but honestly i doubt that huge a game will ever be bug free,i foresee endless frequent patches,which is fine i just want it launched already lol then they can have my 65 bux for premium or whatever.

[Wauthar]

On 6/14/2019 at 4:22 PM, xreaperx22 said:

and theres no guarantee that once u pay for alpha that you dont have to pay again at release

That's a weird thing to assume. With Star Citizen, you pledge for ships. Most of them come with a 'game package', which includes a playable character. This grants you access to the game, this is how it has been from the beginning and will be how it works when the game releases.

 

After release, new players are able to buy the game and will get a starter ship, some cash and some insurance. You'd have to really work your way up to get bigger and better ships, if you so desire.

On 6/14/2019 at 4:22 PM, xreaperx22 said:

i doubt that huge a game will ever be bug free,i foresee endless frequent patches,which is fine

Which is pretty standard for each MMO  

[enigmakahn]

On 6/7/2019 at 8:21 PM, JZStudios said:

I still don't care.

ok

On 6/7/2019 at 8:21 PM, JZStudios said:

You all miss the point and just basically attack blindly.

um....but didn't you...?

On 6/7/2019 at 8:21 PM, JZStudios said:

The problem is people keep giving them money and asking for more changes and features.

wait i thought you said....

On 6/7/2019 at 8:21 PM, JZStudios said:

I don't care. It's a bad way to run a business.

but i thought you didn't care up there? ^^

 

So to summarize, you don't care, but you do, because they are doing it wrong, but you don't care, so you made several posts just to explain how much you don't care?

 

Look, i really don't care, i gave them $60 a few years ago and i can duck in every few months to see what is changed, and who cares how they run thier company, people obviously still want to work there, people obviously still want to play the game, and unlike a healthy majority of crowd funded crap on the market, at least they are regularly updating their fans and keeping them in the loop, is it what everyone wanted, no, is it what they promised, no, but life moves on, and SC slowly continues to have work done on it and new features come online.

 

Hell i only booted it up for the first time in like 6 months to see what was new and i was shocked how much better loading times and stuff was, did i still glitch out of my ship, yes, did i still get stuck on part of port olisar, yes, but that's why it still has an alpha attached to it's name.

 

Remember the immortal words of the creator of mario

“A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever.”
― Shigeru Miyamoto

 

</sarcasm> in case of any hurt butts

[JZStudios]

4 hours ago, enigmakahn said:

ok

um....but didn't you...?

wait i thought you said....

but i thought you didn't care up there? ^^

 

So to summarize, you don't care, but you do, because they are doing it wrong, but you don't care, so you made several posts just to explain how much you don't care?

 

Look, i really don't care, i gave them $60 a few years ago and i can duck in every few months to see what is changed, and who cares how they run thier company, people obviously still want to work there, people obviously still want to play the game, and unlike a healthy majority of crowd funded crap on the market, at least they are regularly updating their fans and keeping them in the loop, is it what everyone wanted, no, is it what they promised, no, but life moves on, and SC slowly continues to have work done on it and new features come online.

 

Hell i only booted it up for the first time in like 6 months to see what was new and i was shocked how much better loading times and stuff was, did i still glitch out of my ship, yes, did i still get stuck on part of port olisar, yes, but that's why it still has an alpha attached to it's name.

 

Remember the immortal words of the creator of mario

“A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever.”
― Shigeru Miyamoto

 

</sarcasm> in case of any hurt butts

Please stop quoting me. It's annoying and I seriously don't care. I didn't attack anyone, I said the way they're doing business is stupid.

Saying something is being run inefficiently does not equate to caring. My initial point was "No, it's not a scam, just a bad business practice." It's an answer to the original question. I don't care about anything else.

I don't care.

I really don't care, stop quoting me. Beyond the irritation, you guys all keep saying the same irrelevant thing to counter-argue my point. I'm confused as to how you think I care because I said it's a bad way to run a business.

[Corwin111]

On 6/25/2019 at 3:10 AM, JZStudios said:

I don't care...

...I don't care....

...I really don't care,...

...you think I care...

There are those of us who are SC fans and actually agree that it  has a terrible and unsustainable business model.

 

Yet you've managed to stretch this pointless thread to three pages now by baiting people who don't. I shudder to imagine what you would do to a subject that you DO care about.

[JZStudios]

6 hours ago, Corwin111 said:

There are those of us who are SC fans and actually agree that it  has a terrible and unsustainable business model.

 

Yet you've managed to stretch this pointless thread to three pages now by baiting people who don't. I shudder to imagine what you would do to a subject that you DO care about.

For fucks sake, all I wanted to tell the op was that it isn't a scam but it is a terrible business practice. Then people jumped on me. I didn't want to stretch it over 3 pages and people are still @'ing me.

You have an issue? Take it up with the people who got butthurt because I said it's a terrible business practice.

 

Literally the first thing I said was "It's not a scam, just horrible mismanagement." followed by talking about why it's a bad business practice and how other developers have evolved since the launch of the kickstarter.

[Corwin111]

Am I an evil person for wanting ti ping him again just because he gets so touchy about it?

[Corwin111]

On 6/8/2019 at 2:26 PM, Helly said:

 

That is the pitch i paid for and that they are working on every day....

I will probably regret this, but seriously, that pitch is no longer valid. Here is the 2019 abridged version:

 

• A rich universe focused on epic space adventure, trading and dogfighting in first person.
• Single Player – Offline or Online(Drop in / Drop out co-op play)
• Persistent Universe (hosted by US)
• Mod-able multiplayer (hosted by YOU)
• No Subscriptions
• No Pay to Win

 

In yellow is the stuff that is currently quite the opposite. Dogfighting in the new FM is shit, and for the first time it's not because of bugs or issues, but because of pointed design decisions that seem to be here to stay going forward. There are several tiers of subscriptions and there really isn't anything to win at this point but paying is the only way to test new content. The latter point, has long ago gone past mere crowdfunding. It is now the only way to keep the project going. If people don't buy the new concepts, the project will die. The moment they stop selling assets and start selling game copies, the project will die. Most people who would otherwise be interested in purchasing a copy, are already backers. They have screwed themselves into a corner with this one and I don't see a way out of it other than keeping up selling assets forever.

 

In red are the things that have been officially discarded. It has been confirmed that the game will be "always online", no matter what you do. Modding and hosting private instances is out the window and in fact against the EULA. 

[Helly]

2 hours ago, Corwin111 said:

I will probably regret this, but seriously, that pitch is no longer valid. Here is the 2019 abridged version:

 

• A rich universe focused on epic space adventure, trading and dogfighting in first person.
• Single Player – Offline or Online(Drop in / Drop out co-op play)
• Persistent Universe (hosted by US)
• Mod-able multiplayer (hosted by YOU)
• No Subscriptions
• No Pay to Win

 

In yellow is the stuff that is currently quite the opposite. Dogfighting in the new FM is shit, and for the first time it's not because of bugs or issues, but because of pointed design decisions that seem to be here to stay going forward. There are several tiers of subscriptions and there really isn't anything to win at this point but paying is the only way to test new content. The latter point, has long ago gone past mere crowdfunding. It is now the only way to keep the project going. If people don't buy the new concepts, the project will die. The moment they stop selling assets and start selling game copies, the project will die. Most people who would otherwise be interested in purchasing a copy, are already backers. They have screwed themselves into a corner with this one and I don't see a way out of it other than keeping up selling assets forever.

 

In red are the things that have been officially discarded. It has been confirmed that the game will be "always online", no matter what you do. Modding and hosting private instances is out the window and in fact against the EULA. 

whether or not the dog fighting is shit doesn't matter. It simply says dogfighting in first person. That is what you can do in the game. No reason to cross it out here.

I haven't been following the project closely anymore, simply don't have the time, but are you saying even squadron 42 will be "always online" now to? Because that is the offline part as far as i knew. If that is still the case, then that hasn't been discarded. mod-able multiplayer wasn't going to work with how they've made it anyway, universe is (going to be) way to big to host it yourself for a few friends, doesn't (and didn't really) make sense anyway.

 

The subscriptions right now is just a backer thing, the final game won't have them, same with the pay to win. You won't be able to buy ships on the website anymore and only in the game itself. The only thing you will be able to buy on the site is a limited amount of in-game money. This is how it was last time i checked. Are you saying they changed this? Could you please post some sources for that, i would like to see this for myself.

 

for now i also don't see how they've screwed themselves into a corner. The financials say they are making decent money for now, so they can keep going for a while. But i can see how that will end eventually. But i doubt they don't have any plan to keep making money after they release the game.

[Corwin111]

2 hours ago, Helly said:

 

I haven't been following the project closely anymore,

That much is evident. Otherwise you wouldn't be so quick to dismiss my points.

 

I, on the other hand, have sunk more hours in it than most of the constituency of this section of the forum combined. I don't say this as a boast, just for perspective. And my points are made with nothing but regret, however I like to be objective.

 

In any case, I am done bloating this useless thread. I'm pretty sure I've seen you around the UOLTT Discord. We can continue this in the debates channel there if you insist.

[Praesi]

S42 gets delayed again. Muhahaha. Jesus..Chris Roberts. Best Scammer in Gaming History.

[Jet_ski]

To sum it all up, Star Citizen is a scam and its backers have thrown good money after bad. The only reason SC is afloat is because they prey on their backers who really don’t want it to fail so they constantly make in-game purchases. There is no redemption for a project that is over 5 years past due. Sure the idea sounds awesome but all scams are based on great ideas that won’t happen. FFS it takes most game developers at least 2-3 years to build large maps like the ones in Battlefield 1; say all of the Battlefield 1 maps combined are enough to make one planet, how many years would it take to build 100 solar systems that are playable?! Like 200-300 years?! Also why would you pay for a game and then have to constantly pay for in-game purchases before the game is even released?!! They aren’t just short on planets, gameplay and controls are terrible. Why would you make a game that lets people pay real money for their ships then allow their ships to be stolen?!!!

[Praesi]

7 hours ago, Jet_ski said:

To sum it all up, Star Citizen is a scam and its backers have thrown good money after bad. The only reason SC is afloat is because they prey on their backers who really don’t want it to fail so they constantly make in-game purchases. There is no redemption for a project that is over 5 years past due. Sure the idea sounds awesome but all scams are based on great ideas that won’t happen. FFS it takes most game developers at least 2-3 years to build large maps like the ones in Battlefield 1; say all of the Battlefield 1 maps combined are enough to make one planet, how many years would it take to build 100 solar systems that are playable?! Like 200-300 years?! Also why would you pay for a game and then have to constantly pay for in-game purchases before the game is even released?!! They aren’t just short on planets, gameplay and controls are terrible. Why would you make a game that lets people pay real money for their ships then allow their ships to be stolen?!!!

Around 3 weeks ago, they released a 1 hour Video about how they design Jackets.

Clothdesign...8 Years into developtment...That´s not even funny anymore.

[Helly]

On 9/26/2019 at 1:21 PM, Jet_ski said:

 say all of the Battlefield 1 maps combined are enough to make one planet, how many years would it take to build 100 solar systems that are playable?! Like 200-300 years?! 

Its not, thats maybe half a planet. There’s 4 planets already in (moons really but they’re big enough). So they’re ahead of schedule by your standards.

[Lowbuget]

its funny on how people get so mad over a game *cough cough No mans sky cough cough*

[Kochiha Ichihara]

On 9/30/2019 at 12:33 AM, Helly said:

Its not, thats maybe half a planet. There’s 4 planets already in (moons really but they’re big enough). So they’re ahead of schedule by your standards.

It's more than that, there's the four moons of Crusader, there's little Delamar, the entirety of Hurston is navigable and has surface activity (brutal FPS stuff, really intense), there's its three moons, ArcCorp no longer crashes at the drop of a hat so you can enjoy all of its splendor, including doing some low-flying buzzes all around the planet as well as what's at Area 18, both of ArcCorp's moons are totally mapped out, there's all the space stations including PO, Grim, all the R&Rs... It's kind of amazing how much there is to do in the game, how much there is to see thus far. It's all very beautiful as well, even with some of the graphical oddballs.

 

If Star Citizen were a scam, it'd be an awfully wasteful scam, considering how much there there is to it that you can interact with, and how alive it feels even in this primitive state. Isn't the whole idea of a scam to get as much easy money as possible and then disappear? There's an awful lot of effort present here for there to be any huge "gotcha" down the road.

[Jet_ski]

2 hours ago, Kochiha Ichihara said:

It's more than that, there's the four moons of Crusader, there's little Delamar, the entirety of Hurston is navigable and has surface activity (brutal FPS stuff, really intense), there's its three moons, ArcCorp no longer crashes at the drop of a hat so you can enjoy all of its splendor, including doing some low-flying buzzes all around the planet as well as what's at Area 18, both of ArcCorp's moons are totally mapped out, there's all the space stations including PO, Grim, all the R&Rs... It's kind of amazing how much there is to do in the game, how much there is to see thus far. It's all very beautiful as well, even with some of the graphical oddballs.

 

If Star Citizen were a scam, it'd be an awfully wasteful scam, considering how much there there is to it that you can interact with, and how alive it feels even in this primitive state. Isn't the whole idea of a scam to get as much easy money as possible and then disappear? There's an awful lot of effort present here for there to be any huge "gotcha" down the road.

Roberts Space Industries is the Theranos of the gaming industry. If it had been setup as a corporation with investors instead of a kickstarter with backers, they’d be in so much trouble. And that’s the scam part of it: they never delivered anything solid because they made vague promises.