Chris Roberts Back in your wallet - STAR CITIZEN

[Lucas]

....Aaaand it's out!

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13233-Hangar-Module-Released

[Falconeer]

And?

[Stormwaltz]

And so far, it's a long wait followed by "ACCOUNT LOGIN TIMED OUT."

Like any MMO launch, really.

[Miasma]

I was unable to spin my ship like in Eve, I honestly miss that.

Other than that not much to say, as advertised it's just a big room with a ship in it that you can walk around.  Controls had some serious latency, you press jump or move and it takes a good half second before anything happens.  Patcher was nice looking.

[Mrbloodworth]

Download and install was painless for me.

EDIT: Yep. They check a second time it seems after log in to get the data I guess. I'm getting the "ACCOUNT LOGIN TIMED OUT." while trying to load too.

[Mrbloodworth]

Finally got in. This is so cool. This has to be some of the most fully realized and engineered ships I have ever seen in a video game. I just want to open my cargo door on my freelancer all day long.

[Xuri]

Managed to get into the hangar as well, earlier today, and I not-really-but-almost clapped my hands and went "gleeeeeeeee" as I ran around the place and looked at my ship from all angles. Apparently the hangar itself scales to fit all your ships, though I have only one - the Freelancer. Curiously, said Freelancer had two functional seats (with controls) in the cockpit. Hmm!

[Mrbloodworth]

Found @ the labeling of a 325a

[Stormwaltz]

They spelled "personnel" wrong. 

[Mrbloodworth]

Greetings Citizens,
I hope you are all enjoying the early release of the Hangar Module. Now that the build has rolled out to many fans, we’re going to add a new layer to keep the experience interesting! Today we’re unlocking additional items in the RSI store that you can use in your Hangar. Two types of items will be available: decorative hangar items like posters and trophies as well as ship upgrade parts like laser cannons and tractor beams.

You may have noticed that the RSI website now includes a ‘credit ledger’ which shows your United Earth Credit (UEC, or “Imperials”) balance. When you download the Hangar Module for the first time you are awarded 5,000 UEC to play around with in this new system. Many of our early backers also have credits they earned during the first days of the pledge campaign. Credits included in pledge packages are not yet represented here because you will need some credits in order to start the game itself; we don’t want players bankrupting themselves and locking themselves out of space travel! You can use these credits to buy ship parts and hangar items which you can then interact with in your hangar.

The key is that this all ties directly in to the finished game. The items you see for sale through the website are the ones that will be available galaxy-wide in a number of stores. Here you access it through an online store, Voyager Direct, which is a futuristic equivalent of Amazon.com. You may well need to travel across the galaxy to find an especially rare or advanced laser… but you will always be able to purchase a reliable Behring M3A from a local arms dealer. To prevent players from stockpiling credits and damaging their game experience, we are imposing a strict 25,000 UEC-per-day limit and an upper bound cap of 150,000 UEC on your ledger at any time. Similarly, you cannot melt these items as you would a game package: once you have purchased them they are considered ‘played with.’ When the game launches you will be able to sell them to NPCs or trade them to other players… and until then, they’re yours!

There are several limitations you should be aware of right now. At this time, decorating your Hangar is not persistent. If you move a laser to a particular ship and then quit the game it will go back into your storage area. Additionally, only one of every decoration will appear at the moment. While you can have multiple lamps in your web inventory, only one can appear in each hangar at this time. Both of these things will change as the Hangar Module expands. Ultimately, the web store will go away and be replaced with an in-game interface starting with the first release of the Planetside Module.

As previously stated, additional Imperials will be available for purchase within the limitations discussed above. Please keep in mind that you are not under any obligation to purchase Imperials at this time. We are giving you the option right now because there isn’t a way to earn credits in the game (as we’re still building it!) and this is a great way to let you support the development of the game as well as play with other game elements we’ve already created. But be warned, purchasing a stock of extra lasers through the catalog right now will not provide any great advantage when Star Citizen launches; there will be a lot more to discover in the living universe and some of the best weapons or upgrades will have to be earned through gameplay or sought out by traveling to the appropriate planet to buy them. Ultimately all items in the store today and in game will be purchasable via UEC earned in game. Outside of the initial ship package everything will be purchasable through UEC in the final game. There is no pay to win here!

The UEC Store is a great way to let players start interacting with the game world while continuing to support Star Citizen’s development. As more features of the Hangar Module are rolled out, we will offer further ship parts and decorative (and interactive) items for your hangar. This will be one of the ways we demonstrate our dedication to keeping the Star Citizen setting fresh: just like the game will have a responsive live team, the Hangar Module will feature a continually expanding amount of content!

Please enjoy your new found freedom to experiment with items in your Hangar! This is your first taste of how ship upgrades and other personalization elements will work in Star Citizen…

   

Many Citizens have experienced delays and other issues downloading the Hangar Module and patches. We are aware of the issues and are working to resolve them as quickly as possible. Wondering what happened? Here’s the explanation from our cloud hosting service:

    It used more outbound bandwidth from the storage server than we’ve ever seen by an order of magnitude for the 30 minutes or so following your release.

We are establishing a “origin shield” (not related to Origin Systems or EA’s hosting service) to improve load balancing and make the hangar download speeds more reasonable. All part of the testing process!

FAQ here.

Basically the buggy is 20$. This has caused a new meme:

First Patch notes:

   

    KNOWN ISSUES:
        BUG: A wall and ladder do not render in discount hangar
        BUG: After first initial launcher patch when patcher auto restarts the sound effects may not play, toggling the mute button and restarting the launcher usually sloves the problem.
        BUG: The installer on some systems doesn’t install DirectX properly. Usually re-installing DirectX manually solves this problem. Still requires DirectX 11 and DirectX 11 compatible graphics cards
    LAUNCHER:
        NEW FEATURE: Added support for patch notes, which are also available on the website
        NEW FEATURE: Hourly patch checking, as long as the launcher is running it will check for new patches every 60mins
        BUG FIX: Closing the game client now restores the launcher music if mute is off
        BUG FIX: Launcher audio fader code works better
        BUG FIX: Now saving the state of the mute button
        TWEAK: Launcher now as a max download limit of 4MB/s to help steady traffic during heavy loads.
        TWEAK: “Webget Request Failed” message is now more descriptive
    HANGAR:
        GENERAL:
            NEW FEATURE: Ladder now forces 3rd person on use.
            BUG FIX: Interior ship lighting fixes
            BUG FIX: Adding missing foot IK helpers
            BUG FIX: Added collision detection to vehicle orbit camera
            BUG FIX: Blendspace animation fixes on door exit
            BUG FIX: Fixed 350r power plant
            TWEAK: Adjusted the fog and fog color
            TWEAK: Specular of the metal on the constellation
        HOLOTABLE:
            NEW FEATURE: Sounds for holotable
            NEW FEATURE: Added holotable to all hangars
            BUG FIX: Lots of holotable fixes
    NETWORKING:
        Added 32 more authentication servers to better handle game client authentication load
    DATA:
        112TB of patch data transferred
        59,370 download requests for the installer
        Peak transfer rate for downloads/patching: 35.31 GBps
        39,232 users have agreed to the EULA
        2,085,000 UEC have been given out to users as part of the hangar V1 reward program. (users get 5,000 UEC by downloading)

[Stormwaltz]

In the words of Khan, "I find myself growing fatigued" of the endless sell-ups.

"Hey, you like that gameplay-free hangar module? Spend money to enjoy more non-gameplay!"

I know it's not quite that bad, but this is getting rather shameless (said the guy who backed the crowd-funding drive on the first day).

[calapine]

This finally seems to be a game that gives a reason excuse to buy new PC parts.

A screenshot posted by someone. Spoiled due to size:


Please note the VRAM usage, almost 4 GB  

[Mrbloodworth]

I'm not sure I would use the current state as any sort of bench mark. Most likely optimization was not on the list for this.

[calapine]

Oh, sure there will be plenty of opmitiztion. But considering it was just a hangar view the specs are more likley to go up rather than down.

Roberts himself somewhat bragged about the hardware requirements at an interview to PC Games at Gamescom in Köln. (link, german):

• 8 GB RAM minimum to play
  
• asked if more than 8GB will be beneficial "can't say yet but, but it is likely"
• 64-bit OS mandatory
• quad-core PC needed
• current generation graphic cards like GTX 770 "probably only good for medium settings".

That's quite steep. Not that I disapprove, the phrase PC Gaming Master Race needs to be filled with meaning again.  

[Mrbloodworth]

I guess what I mean is, there are many things they can do to improve performance in the same scene. 1:1. This is likely as raw as it gets right now.  I personally could not tell what changed between Low and Very high when I was playing with settings. The only things I noticed was it ran smoother on low, and the shadows seems to be handled slightly differently. Most other items looked just the same. Some sort of voodoo!

Anywho,

RE The shop and prices:

Hey guys - long story short, we hear you. The VD store ended up coming across pretty much exactly the opposite way we wanted.  We're working out a plan right now to make this right and I will have more for you as soon as possible.

[Margalis]

Transparent cash grab grabs for cash.

Video game pricing right now is just all kinds of fucked up. You can buy a bundle of games for a dollar, get a free game and get nickle and dimed with micro-transaction, pay $60 for a AAA game, pay $60 for the alpha version of an indie game that will cost $15 on release. In terms of value per dollar it's all over the map.

It's interesting that people looking to support developers are often the ones getting ridiculously gauged.

[Mrbloodworth]

Well, none of that stuff is required. A fool and his money come to mind.

A few things to keep in mind.

This game is:

60$ at launch, no subscription. That grants you a single player campaign, a multiplayer game, you can host your own private server, its fully mod-able ( Including multiplayer ), and the only place any of that will be restricted is in the official persistent server, that is free to play on.

 Is 20$ too much for a buggy? Yes. But we are still in funding territory here. None of it is required for anything above at all, and everything can be bought in game though play ( The guns are said to be stock ones you will find at every dealer everywhere ). Should they have released a shop like this this soon? I don't feel its worth the backlash and perceptions at this point, clearly a bunch of good will was cashed in by launching it. It also looks like they are aware of this. IMO, if they do anything, they should remove the shop and refund everyone, and just let everyone play with everything.

We shall see.

I was unable to spin my ship like in Eve, I honestly miss that.

Did you play with the small console near your ship? You can spin for days. I will say, while the interface for that looks fancy, its kinda hard or clumsy to use. I hope it is improved. Less style, more function.

[Margalis]

They launched the shop before they launched the game. Like...2 years before.

As far as not having to buy anything, I'm sure the final game will be set up so that realistically you have to buy things to have a good experience.

[schild]

So, let me get this straight. People are excited about walking around a spaceship.

Is there really no ACTUAL GAME you all could be playing?

[Malakili]

So, let me get this straight. People are excited about walking around a spaceship.

Is there really no ACTUAL GAME you all could be playing?

They paid good money for the privilege, of course they're excited. 

Also, 20 bucks for a golf cart is hilarious.

[Miasma]

I was unable to spin my ship like in Eve, I honestly miss that.

Did you play with the small console near your ship? You can spin for days. I will say, while the interface for that looks fancy, its kinda hard or clumsy to use. I hope it is improved. Less style, more function.

I tried to use it, it popped up a hologram type thing with a menu but I couldn't interact with it beyond closing it.

[schild]

So, let me get this straight. People are excited about walking around a spaceship.

Is there really no ACTUAL GAME you all could be playing?

They paid good money for the privilege, of course they're excited. 

Also, 20 bucks for a golf cart is hilarious.

People paid money for this shit?

[Malakili]

So, let me get this straight. People are excited about walking around a spaceship.

Is there really no ACTUAL GAME you all could be playing?

They paid good money for the privilege, of course they're excited. 

Also, 20 bucks for a golf cart is hilarious.

People paid money for this shit?

As I understand it, you only get access to the walking around the space station thing if you have paid money for the ships.

[schild]

sigh

[calapine]

I don't see you in any position to complain. Aren't you the one that is really exciting about an upcoming card game. With magic elves and wizards and stuff. Isn't that for kids?  

Edit: I am mocking and agree with your point. Wonder if Roberts is not worried about burning his goodwill with this. The game will have a really hard time living up to the dream version of its people are playing in their heads. (not talking about people on this forum).

[schild]

If the cultural and financial divide between the two projects were any smaller, I might agree. I'm also self-aware enough to know when I'm being completely hypocritical.

This is not hypocrisy.

Paying for this shit is straight stupid.

[Samprimary]

I have an ironclad rule where I never ever purchase a game before release for any reason. I am probably going to throw some money at this project, though, because it's the one thing I want to succeed enough that I'll provide to the cause.

Thing is, though, is that I don't want to buy a ship, nor the hype goodies. I want to start the game from rock bottom, ground zero, in the straight up schlub ship. Like starting in the Shuttle in EV Nova, getting to eagerly anticipate the initially fast-paced diversification in ship options. I want to support a project, not buy myself up as a Space Romney.

[schild]

The Mega Man project is way more interesting than this stupid shit.

[Falconeer]

One funny aspect is that half of those entitled reging asshats who are now trying as hard as they can to have people fired at PGI by badmouthng the game before launch because some mechanics haven't been changed the way they wanted or some featires haven''t been completed fast enough are now all excited about Star Citizen and can't stop posting in the MechWarrior Online official boards about how good is Chris Roberts cause he really listens to the community and what a fantastic game Star Citizen is gonna be. Oh boy...

The sooner you ask people for money, the harder they will start growing a furious and violent sense of entitlement. But then again, at 15M earned, who cares about internet threats?
I am really, really curious to see how long the honeymoon phase will last here.

[Samprimary]

Eh, PGI's situation is one where it is in a pile of deep shit that it has earned for itself, and I can really see why the community has no faith in the developers anymore.

I do like the idea that burned MWO players are latching onto Star Citizen like a rebound relationship they can rub in the face of PGI (Chris is better to me than YOU ever were!), but the general total of their jilted rage is ... valid.

[jakonovski]

Oh, sure there will be plenty of opmitiztion. But considering it was just a hangar view the specs are more likley to go up rather than down.

Roberts himself somewhat bragged about the hardware requirements at an interview to PC Games at Gamescom in Köln. (link, german):

• 8 GB RAM minimum to play
  
• asked if more than 8GB will be beneficial "can't say yet but, but it is likely"
• 64-bit OS mandatory
• quad-core PC needed
• current generation graphic cards like GTX 770 "probably only good for medium settings".

That's quite steep. Not that I disapprove, the phrase PC Gaming Master Race needs to be filled with meaning again.  

What I want to know is how they make a space sim require such power. Do they model the physics of entire solar systems and let you nudge planets off their orbits?

[calapine]

What I want to know is how they make a space sim require such power. Do they model the physics of entire solar systems and let you nudge planets off their orbits?

CryEngine 3 (Crysis 2, 3) bumped up to the max running space battles with dozens of participants?

A very good question actually. I'll do some digging and report back.

[Mrbloodworth]

As some of you may have noticed we launched the very beginning of our IN-GAME store with Voyager Direct yesterday.

It had a soft launch (we deliberately kept it back from the weekly email) so we could roll it to get feedback and see how to integrate what is a tricky thing into Star Citizen at such an early stage of development.

Even with a soft launch quite a lot of people started using the store (no surprise the Buggy is the top seller!)

Unfortunately there seems to be some misunderstanding in our intentions with the prototype in-game store, as the forums erupted with a significant amount of “discussion” last night!

I have read all of the criticism and there have been many great points. One of the great things about Star Citizen’s development is that we can get feedback like this… and use it to figure out how to make things better.

The intention of creating Voyager Direct right now was the very opposite of what a lot of people are upset about. It is not supposed to be a cash shop! It’s meant to be the very opposite!

I felt that it was important that we should make clear what are in-game items, earnable via game play. This was the whole reason of segregating these new items into the Voyager Direct store rather than the pledge store. We intend for players to be earning UEC in a limited fashion as early as the dogfighting module (say for fighting so many test battles, or winning a team battle competition) and felt Voyager Direct would be the first step in getting the basic systems in place. Ultimately you will be purchasing all these game items inside the game from in-game vendors on various planets but this won’t come online until the Planetside module. Since the web team at Turbulent had already built a store interface and the team here was already creating items to outfit the hangar and ships, it seemed like an easy option to create Voyager Direct now to allow all of you to play with and check out some of the game items as they are created rather than waiting for Planetside module to see them in engine. The concept was that people that wanted to show their support and contribute towards the development cost of the game could buy some items to play with in their hangar but by establishing the prices in game terms it would also make it clear that these items are all earnable in game. I should also point out that Voyager Direct is intended only to sell cosmetic items or basic ship items that would be available on pretty much any planet – the better items will always have to be bought by actually flying to the appropriate planet or earning the via gameplay. There is no need to buy anything from Voyager Direct – it is all OPTIONAL and should be viewed the same way that you view paying for a subscription or buying a skin. All of this will be earnable in the game, without too much time invested.

I’m very opposed to having a game where ANY of the items, outside of your initial game / ship package can be only purchased with cash. I hate the bifurcation of items in most online games, even when they are just for flair items. I want Star Citizen to allow players to earn everything they need in-game for ships, upgrades and even flair.

Our plan is once Star Citizen is launched the games ongoing running and content costs (which will be significant as we’re a data & content heavy game) will be supported by the ongoing purchase of new game packages as well as the money the game will earn by some of the players choosing to buy some UEC credits with real money as they don’t have the time or patience to earn the item in game (and for this I wanted to establish a cap so someone can’t just come in and buy everything, although with a skill based game with a heavy rock paper scissors approach to ship design and weapons this won’t help that much as you think). We are making the bet that this will be enough to cover the game ongoing running costs and we will not need a subscription like other big online games live Eve Online or World of War Craft. But it is a risk as we’re taking some of the things that games use to support on-going running costs like sale of flair items and making them not require money just gameplay.

I was disappointed to see so many people feeling that we were trying to gouge people or do a money grab. I thought I had been very clear in my post yesterday that everything was optional and only should be done with the intent of supporting the game financially as opposed to something that was required. The whole team is incredibly grateful for all the incredible support we’ve received but as far as we’re concerned anything beyond the most basic pledge is optional and should be done to support the game’s development and not because you feel like you have to.

I do agree that pricing structure feels off – part of that is the problem of a blend of real world prices (cosmetic items to show support had been established at $5) and the in-game prices we need to manage. One of the other things we have been focusing on is the idea that the pledge or add on ship you opt for now should be cheaper in real money terms than its equivalent in UEC when the game is live, so the few weapons have been priced to our best guess as to what these should be relative to the actual in-game costs of a ship once the game is live. This leads to a dichotomy in value – of course a poster should be a lot less than a laser gun! It also doesn’t help that we’ve established an exchange of 1000 UEC to $1. 5000 UEC for a poster just sounds a lot more than $5! I am inclined to halve the prices in the Voyager Direct Store, with some of the smaller flair pieces, like posters getting a reduction even beyond this.
Holotable concept by Chris OliviaHolotable concept by Chris Olivia

In addition there’s been quite a few complaints about having to “pay to test”. Which absolutely was not the intention! From a testing perspective what everyone can do now with their basic hangar (and don’t forget you can move items around between ships now) we have everything we need on the testing front. There is no need to buy a poster to help test it. The real testing will happen when you can earn UEC in-game and you then buy all these items. But we appreciate everyone’s eagerness to help out, so I’m investigating the difficulty of implementing “TEST UEC” now rather than waiting for the dogfighting module – the idea would be that everyone would get a certain amount of TEST UEC at different periods and could use the credits to buy items that would exist for a day in your hangar to check them out, try them on your various ships, walls and so on. This is doable but does require some significant work on the web side, so if we take this route it will be a little while before it can be implemented. We had originally planned this for the dogfighting module (as it is useful for people to try different load outs in balancing) but we can move up the schedule if enough people think it’s important.

In the spirit of community involvement and discussion and as a big thank you for reaching $17M I think the best thing to do is to give everyone a further 5,000 UEC and let you voice your opinion on some of the proposed solutions (and know that if you vote to reduce the Voyager Direct prices we will credit back the difference in UEC to people’s accounts for people that have already spent UEC)

So let us know!

Source and vote options.

[Mrbloodworth]

I tried to use it, it popped up a hologram type thing with a menu but I couldn't interact with it beyond closing it.

Hold tab for your cursor. You can pick the ship, play/read about parts, spin it ETC..

I have an ironclad rule where I never ever purchase a game before release for any reason. I am probably going to throw some money at this project, though, because it's the one thing I want to succeed enough that I'll provide to the cause.

Thing is, though, is that I don't want to buy a ship, nor the hype goodies. I want to start the game from rock bottom, ground zero, in the straight up schlub ship. Like starting in the Shuttle in EV Nova, getting to eagerly anticipate the initially fast-paced diversification in ship options. I want to support a project, not buy myself up as a Space Romney.

I believe there is a pledge level that gives no ship, for like 5$ I think. The package title is: "Shut up and take my money". Also: Civilian for 10$.

[Pezzle]

If it is not supposed to be a cash shop, why is it a cash shop?