Far from done IMHO. Not my cup of tea

[amd133mhz]

I played when it was free. I just feel that at $107m this should be a bit farther along. I dunno. I just was disappointed after seeing all the hype. 

 

However, even though I am disappointed with how poorly it ran on my rig, I do feel it will be actually be finished eventually. Unlike many other games doing early access, pay for alpha, crowd funding whatever you wanna call it.

 

IMHO. 

 

I guess in 3+/- years we will see. I am rooting for it. I just don't like it and feel it should be running better at this point in the money and timeline.

[Adreyu]

You are absolutely entitled to your opinion, however the way it runs and what it is, is expected for a big budget alpha (its not even really in alpha yet). If you played any big game at this stage in development you would find the same stuff, and for the scale they are doing this on its kind of impressive it even works.

[Deusrex]

Yeah I started to get concerns with the game when they delayed the FPS module, yet again. I love the idea of the game, and I wish them best of luck, but I just jumped off the hype train a few miles back.

 

It still feels like it's still few years out, and nothing is finalized. So we'll see.

[Thylbanus]

This is nothing new.  As my sig on the site says, "If Star Citizen was given the same time as Elder Scrolls Online, it wouldn't be out until 2019."  So you are kind of stating the obvious.  It's further along than any game of its ambition, though that is conjecture as no game has been this ambitious.  They always just seem to give up before they reach their goal.

[Deusrex]

2 hours ago, Thylbanus said:

This is nothing new.  As my sig on the site says, "If Star Citizen was given the same time as Elder Scrolls Online, it wouldn't be out until 2019."  So you are kind of stating the obvious.  It's further along than any game of its ambition, though that is conjecture as no game has been this ambitious.  They always just seem to give up before they reach their goal.

I understand what you mean, and I'm not one of the people screaming for a refund or anything. The money I spent on this game was a gamble from the beginning, I've just decided that Squadron 42 will have to be enough for me, for now, and if I get the rest of the game than I will be happy with it.

[Grrizz]

This point in development (alpha) is mainly about backend and base functionality, you generally don't bother with client optimisation till you get to beta, although because of the open nature of this game they have done a lot more optimisation than you would normally see at this point. Once they get the background work done churning out content to fit over that framework becomes a lot quicker and client optimisation becomes more practical because things aren't changing as much.

 

One of the problems I see is that a lot of people get their sense of scale from public alphas/betas these days, when a public alpha is more like a beta and a public beta is basically a demo/pre-release server stress test which tends to skew peoples perception of where a project like this should be at, the reality is if you've ever had the fortune (or misfortune) of playing an actual alpha this is miles ahead of what you would see in closed development and most games at this point might have been announced but all you would have got was a 10 second pre-rendered teaser making you aware the game is coming in a year+ (or 3 after delays ).

 

Bear in mind that after a point money doesn't speed up development, things just take time to do and throwing more money/people at it wont speed it up and can even slow things down, more people can create more overhead in handovers etc. and more money tends to mean higher quality targets (if not siphoned off for pure profit).

 

Edit: This is how I see your average closed development vs. what the public gets these days;

 

                                                             Alpha                                                                                              Beta                   Release

|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|----------------------------------|->

                                                                                                                                                  ^                                  ^    ^

                                                                                                                                 Closed alpha               Closed beta    |

                                                                                                                                                                                     Open beta

[abyss03]

5 hours ago, Grrizz said:

Edit: This is how I see your average closed development vs. what the public gets these days;

 

                                                             Alpha                                                                                              Beta                   Release

|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|----------------------------------|->

                                                                                                                                                  ^                                  ^    ^

                                                                                                                                 Closed alpha               Closed beta    |

                                                                                                                                                                                     Open beta

I agree fully, people don't seem to realise that what's released in Star Citizen is well before any early access game available and to a much larger scope as well. What we have so far is pretty good in my opinion, I know its been 3/4 years since starting the project but as other people have said if it was the same development time as ESO then we still have 3 years left. Squadron 42 is planned for release year and I would imagine the online game will develop quickly given what they have already made for the single player.

 

PS: I'm so stealing this @Grrizz for use in BESSI

[rentaspoon]

 

11 hours ago, amd133mhz said:

I played when it was free. I just feel that at $107m this should be a bit farther along. I dunno. I just was disappointed after seeing all the hype. 

 

However, even though I am disappointed with how poorly it ran on my rig, I do feel it will be actually be finished eventually. Unlike many other games doing early access, pay for alpha, crowd funding whatever you wanna call it.

 

IMHO. 

 

I guess in 3+/- years we will see. I am rooting for it. I just don't like it and feel it should be running better at this point in the money and timeline.

If your in the Universe that it's server slowdown as it's not optimised,  Arena Commander runs at a stable 60+ FPS. THe other issue is that squadron 42 is the main priority and IMO always has been but with giving out the storyline they have had to keep quiet about the devolpers. 

Star Citizen is only there because of what they have built for SQ 42 and maybe they should have run the whole thing as squadron 42 rather than Star Citizen and people would be more accepting.. I dunno

11 hours ago, Deusrex said:

Yeah I started to get concerns with the game when they delayed the FPS module, yet again. I love the idea of the game, and I wish them best of luck, but I just jumped off the hype train a few miles back.

 

It still feels like it's still few years out, and nothing is finalized. So we'll see.

Well the FPS is in the verse but thanks to people complaining about Arena commander we won't see star marine until it's fully polished. We should see more in 2.2 and 2.3 but I don't think it'll be out until late spring/summer.

[Geekavenger]

14 hours ago, Grrizz said:

Edit: This is how I see your average closed development vs. what the public gets these days;

 

                                                             Alpha                                                                                              Beta                   Release

|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|----------------------------------|->

                                                                                                                                                  ^                                  ^    ^

                                                                                                                                 Closed alpha               Closed beta    |

                                                                                                                                                                                     Open beta

Also post Release development most AAA games go through these days is even longer.  Not saying this is good or bad necessarily, but I think it is worth noting that the true end game of a modern development cycle isn't really release.  Not necessarily relevant to CIG, they are being so much more transparent in their process.  But just thought it was worth noting that even traditionally funded games are often a little broken on release and not really "done" until much later. 

 

                                                             Alpha                                                                                       Beta                   Release       DLC1       DLC2

<-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|----------------------------------|-----------------|------------|------------->

                                                                                                                                        ^                                  ^    ^   ^                                            ^

                                                                                                                      Closed alpha               Closed beta    |   Week 1 Emergency Patch      |

                                                                                                                                                                        Open beta                              Promised Game

                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Mostly Delivered  

[Deusrex]

22 hours ago, Grrizz said:

This point in development (alpha) is mainly about backend and base functionality, you generally don't bother with client optimisation till you get to beta, although because of the open nature of this game they have done a lot more optimisation than you would normally see at this point. Once they get the background work done churning out content to fit over that framework becomes a lot quicker and client optimisation becomes more practical because things aren't changing as much.

 

One of the problems I see is that a lot of people get their sense of scale from public alphas/betas these days, when a public alpha is more like a beta and a public beta is basically a demo/pre-release server stress test which tends to skew peoples perception of where a project like this should be at, the reality is if you've ever had the fortune (or misfortune) of playing an actual alpha this is miles ahead of what you would see in closed development and most games at this point might have been announced but all you would have got was a 10 second pre-rendered teaser making you aware the game is coming in a year+ (or 3 after delays ).

 

Bear in mind that after a point money doesn't speed up development, things just take time to do and throwing more money/people at it wont speed it up and can even slow things down, more people can create more overhead in handovers etc. and more money tends to mean higher quality targets (if not siphoned off for pure profit).

 

Edit: This is how I see your average closed development vs. what the public gets these days;

 

                                                             Alpha                                                                                              Beta                   Release

|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|----------------------------------|->

                                                                                                                                                  ^                                  ^    ^

                                                                                                                                 Closed alpha               Closed beta    |

                                                                                                                                                                                     Open beta

This would be a fair argument if Star Citizen was the only game they were making. However this is not the case, and I think that's something most people overlook. The state that star citizen is in, is because they're in a state of flux over how the game is going to function when all of the elements including the PU are combined. Squadron 42 isn't dealing with any of that. It's a space sim game, and this is where my worry comes in. That part of the game is largely still really buggy, further more that game was scheduled to come out nearly six months ago at this point. So I feel it's perfectly valid to feel that feature creep has caused development problems because it clearly has.

[Albatross]

Given what they hope to accomplish with this game, it makes perfect sense why they haven't finished it yet. Their goal is tremendous.

[Grrizz]

4 hours ago, Deusrex said:

This would be a fair argument if Star Citizen was the only game they were making. However this is not the case, and I think that's something most people overlook. The state that star citizen is in, is because they're in a state of flux over how the game is going to function when all of the elements including the PU are combined. Squadron 42 isn't dealing with any of that. It's a space sim game, and this is where my worry comes in. That part of the game is largely still really buggy, further more that game was scheduled to come out nearly six months ago at this point. So I feel it's perfectly valid to feel that feature creep has caused development problems because it clearly has.

But no one has access to S42 yet so how can we comment on it, all we know is a rough outline of the story, it should be coming this year (TBH I wouldn't be surprised at an early 2017 release) and it has expanded beyond its original scope (due to the increased funding) in terms of story, content and quality. Based off the limited information we have on it I would say its still a fair way away from being in its beta stage too (still working on ships, characters, levels and animations).

[Deusrex]

This is precisely what I mean by feature creep effecting the release of the game, squadron 42 was ment to be a faithful space sim, now due to the bloated feature set that he wants in SC Squadron 42 is being effected. Further more the flight gameplay is not that great to ensure "realism" the game sacrificing fun; every time I turn around its more complex and further away.

[Thylbanus]

7 hours ago, Deusrex said:

This is precisely what I mean by feature creep effecting the release of the game, squadron 42 was ment to be a faithful space sim, now due to the bloated feature set that he wants in SC Squadron 42 is being effected. Further more the flight gameplay is not that great to ensure "realism" the game sacrificing fun; every time I turn around its more complex and further away.

This it totally erroneous.  SQ was never meant to be a faithful space sim, it was meant to be a fun military space sim that had as much realism that fun could stand.  Fun will trump reality in EVERY case.  So only as faithful as fun would allow.  

 

The features were added at community request and had to be stopped by CIG lest it get too large.  WE requested additional features and wanted greater ambition.  WE gave CIG the green light on this.  The only thing now that wasn't part of the feature set that WILL be making it in is the seamless planet to space transitions.

 

As for further away, it has had no date since we opted to allow CIG as much time as they needed to get it right somewhere around when we passed $20 million on Sept. 26, 2013 (upon further review, there was never was a release date stated).  If you follow game development at all, you know how long a game takes, but someone was nice enough to provide a chart last year June 2015 (hope someone updates it):

It's why I keep reminding people, if we follow ESO, SC woun't be out until 2019.

[Deusrex]

Okay, they're two different games. One game is Star Citizen, that game will be out when it's out. I agree. Now let's move on the game I was talking about, Squadron 42.

 

Squadron 42 Should not take more than 3 years to complete.

[Wauthar]

1 hour ago, Deusrex said:

Okay, they're two different games. One game is Star Citizen, that game will be out when it's out. I agree. Now let's move on the game I was talking about, Squadron 42.

 

Squadron 42 Should not take more than 3 years to complete.

There are rumours that SQ42 episode 1 is almost done completely and that CIG is keeping it mostly hidden because of spoilers. We'll see, I can't say anything more about it than that, but I'd really want to play it

[Deusrex]

2 hours ago, Wauthar said:

There are rumours that SQ42 episode 1 is almost done completely and that CIG is keeping it mostly hidden because of spoilers. We'll see, I can't say anything more about it than that, but I'd really want to play it

Totally agree, I'm looking forward to it indeed. I miss my space sims, the freespace were my favorites, but the old Wing Commander games were gems all on their own. I miss good single player games as well, so I think it can deliver on that for sure.

[rentaspoon]

9 hours ago, Deusrex said:

Okay, they're two different games. One game is Star Citizen, that game will be out when it's out. I agree. Now let's move on the game I was talking about, Squadron 42.

 

Squadron 42 Should not take more than 3 years to complete.

Just two things I want to bring up is before you've said the game has feature creep, can you explain what features have been creeping?  I hear this a lot but no one explains what features are creeping, also why only 3 years? We seen engine development, handling refinement, fps refinement as well as localised physics grid. All good for the gaming community and CryEngine if they share the technology  (hoping they do) so they need to take their time and most of the older games I play were over 3 years of development due to the game being built to be perfect not to make money and be buggy messes.

[Deusrex]

21 minutes ago, rentaspoon said:

Just two things I want to bring up is before you've said the game has feature creep, can you explain what features have been creeping?  I hear this a lot but no one explains what features are creeping, also why only 3 years? We seen engine development, handling refinement, fps refinement as well as localised physics grid. All good for the gaming community and CryEngine if they share the technology  (hoping they do) so they need to take their time and most of the older games I play were over 3 years of development due to the game being built to be perfect not to make money and be buggy messes.

These things are really good, and I have no problem with them being in Star Citizen, my problem is with the game I pledged to get which was a space sim, not an MMO. These changes while interesting I don't think add to the over all experience of a wing commander style space sim. But they've keep pushing them both back. I just want to fly around and shoot things again, and I'm not really that invested in the persistent universe.

[Grrizz]

14 hours ago, Deusrex said:

Okay, they're two different games. One game is Star Citizen, that game will be out when it's out. I agree. Now let's move on the game I was talking about, Squadron 42.

 

Squadron 42 Should not take more than 3 years to complete.

Personally I think 3 years is short even for S42, take COD as an example, they were on 2 year development cycles and have since moved on to 3 year development cycles and that's just giving an existing game a bit of a facelift and new story while coming from existing/established development companies with a known budget. Bear in mind CIG has not only been building a game but a company too, with a development budget that quite unexpectedly grew more than 5 times in size which would for the most part negate a lot of their early planning and budgeting unless they just skimmed the excess (something I'd personally be very disappointed about if they did).

 

E:D would be another good example in which it took about 5 years with the last 2 or so being at full burn to release what is a good but fairly Spartan game as it stands.

 

I would love to see this game sooner rather than later but I also think their current timeline is quite reasonable for what they are making.

[rentaspoon]

On 14/02/2016 at 10:22 AM, Deusrex said:

These things are really good, and I have no problem with them being in Star Citizen, my problem is with the game I pledged to get which was a space sim, not an MMO. These changes while interesting I don't think add to the over all experience of a wing commander style space sim. But they've keep pushing them both back. I just want to fly around and shoot things again, and I'm not really that invested in the persistent universe.

Well they've been working on SQ 42 from the start and it's been top priority but they can only show the MMO but you look at the features and you can see what's in game is really only built for SQ42, like most older games the multiplayer is just a by product.

 

Wing Commander is outdated as well so they have to bring the next evolution of it however I do get where your coming from WC was a game from my past that I loved so much but I honest think the setbacks will be worth the wait and the additional mechanics will only add to it.

[Deusrex]

1 minute ago, rentaspoon said:

Well they've been working on SQ 42 from the start and it's been top priority but they can only show the MMO but you look at the features and you can see what's in game is really only built for SQ42, like most older games the multiplayer is just a by product.

 

Wing Commander is outdated as well so they have to bring the next evolution of it however I do get where your coming from WC was a game from my past that I loved so much but I honest think the setbacks will be worth the wait and the additional mechanics will only add to it.

Yeah I'm really hoping so. I'm not saying I've lost all faith or anything. I just think people are giving this game way too much of a free pass, and I understand why, I just don't put myself in that category.

[Majestic]

But they're close to releasing Squardron42, and the game still runs on one core. You know, this is exactly why I dislike early acces/alpha debates. All criticism gets swiped away under the same banner, indefinitely.

 

You can have criticism about the progress and state of the game, even under the caveat of it being early-acces/alpha. The game runs like absolute dogshit, and that isn't something which should be still the case 3,5 years later. It can't even run the hangar module anymore without stuttering all over the place.

 

 

 

[abyss03]

43 minutes ago, Majestic said:

But they're close to releasing Squardron42, and the game still runs on one core. You know, this is exactly why I dislike early acces/alpha debates. All criticism gets swiped away under the same banner, indefinitely.

 

You can have criticism about the progress and state of the game, even under the caveat of it being early-acces/alpha. The game runs like absolute dogshit, and that isn't something which should be still the case 3,5 years later. It can't even run the hangar module anymore without stuttering all over the place.

 

<Snip>

 

 

Runs on one core? what are you on about star citizen has run on multiple cores for ages. If your having any issues (A few people are) there is a user.cfg file that forces the game to use multiple cores. SC is very CPU intensive which isn't surprising really so if you have a weak sauce CPU that's probably the issue.

 

You say 3.5 years it should run a hell of a lot better than it does but I have never had any issue with the hanger module through out my upgrades (GTX 480, Radeon HD 6950 and GTX 980), they did have lower fps but not the stuttering you are on about. Also most games with a large scope probably run about as well as this does about 3.5 years into development, Batman Arkham Knight is a good example (They had the groundworks to begin with I might add).

 

As people have said before, other games that have been built from the beginning have had much longer in their development process so they would have probably have equally as bad performing builds as you say you are having.

 

Please correct me if you think anything I have said is wrong but this is correct as far as I am aware.

Edited February 16, 2016 by abyss03

[drewjn]

@abyss03

I wouldn't bother even arguing on it. Most people disregard the fact that peoples' computer builds can be quite different, and that most people that complain normally have no idea about the subject they complain about.

 

People don't have to be informed to be able to form an opinion, and they normally don't care if 99% of the people have entirely different experiences. As for the op, seems he legitimately has no idea whatsoever on how progression of game development works.

 

 

 

At this point I'm just tired of the idiotic back and forth of this mess. Just wait and see what happens, if you are afraid of 'feature creep' (term that is actually incorrect, as the core of the game is still being made; hence alpha), then don't put money in the project. If you kickstart, if you put money and faith in a game in alpha, you should know the risks and the possibilities. Constantly being paranoid and saying the sky is falling when everything is speculation serves absolutely no one.