Chris Roberts Back in your wallet - STAR CITIZEN

[Samprimary]

i can install ED on my computer and scoot around space and get myself a midgrade ship and shoot some pirates and trade some goods and travel to some nebulae and scan some stellar phenomena and ship rare artifacts and land on some planets and buggy around collecting materials and whatnot. Super sandboxy, mostly about the hard-sim euro-space-trucking experience of learning how to be best space pilot, but that's what it do. It's a game fo sho.

i can install eight trillion terabytes of SC on my computer and get my head stuck in the wall while my unoccupied ship vibrates stridently off the landing platform. i guess that is a game too??

[Pennilenko]

People get real pissy over Elite Dangerous because everybody has a different dream about what their space game should be like. Unfortunately this means that Elite only lives up to the expectations of a portion of the player base. I love the shit out of ED, but that doesn't blind me to the fact that for some players it is wildly empty and unfulfilling.

However, at the rate that Frontier is developing their title, it will be everything SC is promising before SC ever gets released if it does become released.

For the record, I have both installed on my computer and so far, Star Citizen is a hot mess and it feels tiny after playing ED.

[apocrypha]

Whatever your personal views are regarding ED it's released, it's functioning, it's updating, it's a real thing that you can pay for and get something in return for that payment. Call it a game, call it a simulation, call it what you want, it exists and it does what it says on the tin. Nobody has been ripped off by ED, nobody has been fleeced to the tune of $1000s, nobody had their life ruined by it's deceptive and amoral marketing.

Then there's SC.

[brellium]

Star Citizen: Will big budget space game satisfy its backers?

fluff piece.

[Malakili]

Star Citizen: Will big budget space game satisfy its backers?

fluff piece.

So, it looks like we are going to have to wait a little bit longer to play the full Star Citizen experience.

 

[Margalis]

So now SC is like a single player game that you have to buy, then buy each episode for, then a multiplayer game you also have to buy separately, then also an competitive FPS which is...also separate?

I guess the new strategy now is rather than introducing new ships and other promises people can pay for just keep subdividing the game into smaller chunks and charge for each.

[Zetor]

Perhaps make it so that player-bought spaceships are only available in one of the games by default (probably the singleplayer one), and you need to pay extra to be able to use them in the other game modes? Heck, make the surcharge scale with the value of the ships.

[jakonovski]

They'll just keep chopping it up until whatever is live is the full release. Kickstarter complete!

[Jeff Kelly]

However, at the rate that Frontier is developing their title, it will be everything SC is promising before SC ever gets released if it does become released.

Which was my point also

[Samprimary]

People get real pissy over Elite Dangerous because everybody has a different dream about what their space game should be like. Unfortunately this means that Elite only lives up to the expectations of a portion of the player base. I love the shit out of ED, but that doesn't blind me to the fact that for some players it is wildly empty and unfulfilling.

However, at the rate that Frontier is developing their title, it will be everything SC is promising before SC ever gets released if it does become released.

For the record, I have both installed on my computer and so far, Star Citizen is a hot mess and it feels tiny after playing ED.

yeah one of the things that becomes obvious after playing it for a while is you can know who will enjoy the experience, and who will be left wanting. There's so, so, infinitely much breadth but everything is lacking depth and they have a long way to go before they introduce sufficient mechanics and interactivity with the world to make it a real contender for Best Space Ever.

But they have the template. And it is enjoyable to surf the edge of what might be. Right now it's Euro Space Trucker and that's cool too.

[Big Gulp]

yeah one of the things that becomes obvious after playing it for a while is you can know who will enjoy the experience, and who will be left wanting. There's so, so, infinitely much breadth but everything is lacking depth and they have a long way to go before they introduce sufficient mechanics and interactivity with the world to make it a real contender
But they have the template. And it is enjoyable to surf the edge of what might be. Right now it's Euro Space Trucker and that's cool too.

I don't think ED will ever be more than the shallow sandbox it was on launch.  It wasn't designed to be anything more than what it is, and that won't change, no matter how many other boring, shallow modules you tack onto it (for full price each time!)

I don't condone how they've handled space ponzi, but in a weird way I'm completely confident that whatever they launch when they finally go gold will be more compelling than ED.  It's not like the bar is that high.

[Falconeer]

I ask Braben about the state of the game today, and whether there’s anything that he thinks could be improved. “There are a lot of things wrong with the powers,” he says, referring to last year’s Powerplay update. “We’re close, but the details stop it from being great. But we can improve it, and we will improve it.”

“There are missions out there I know almost no players have seen,” he says. “But we haven’t communicated it properly. There’s so much in there, and what we see from play patterns is that many do the same thing over and over. In that cycle, they just don’t get to see some of the variation. I’m not blaming players. We got it wrong.”

Braben adds that even when he was playing the game in a certain way, he wasn’t seeing everything. “I wasn’t making friends with the minor factions. I was missing out on missions. And most players do that,” he says. “It’s a shame, because the missions actually drive you around the galaxy. But if you keep going back to the same place, you won’t venture very far. We need to change the way we communicate that.”

But, at the same time, Braben doesn’t want to be telling players what to do. It’s a difficult balance in a totally freeform sandbox game like Elite Dangerous.

[Ironwood]

That seems fair comment.

[Pennilenko]

Easy peasy, so all they have to do is communicate options and intent better while not telling the player what to do.

[Samprimary]

ED may benefit from employment tracks where you are given assignments, station, and perks associated with your job.

[Pennilenko]

ED may benefit from employment tracks where you are given assignments, station, and perks associated with your job.

This has been suggested so many times on the official forums, Frontier doesn't appear to be interested in exploring that type of game play.

[Margalis]

Perhaps make it so that player-bought spaceships are only available in one of the games by default (probably the singleplayer one), and you need to pay extra to be able to use them in the other game modes? Heck, make the surcharge scale with the value of the ships.

Now you're using your noggin! This is the sort brilliant idea that CIG needs more of!

[tmp]

Easy peasy, so all they have to do is communicate options and intent better while not telling the player what to do.

Even something basic like getting daily 'assignment' of a few randomly picked tasks, the way World of Warships/Tank games do it, could probably do a trick.

[IainC]

A guy on SA has been transcribing all of the devblogs. They are kinda bad. Part 1, Part 2

Q: So the Endeavour has bio domes. What will be the point of farming? And will there be bacon farming?
 
A: Well the point of farming will be... ah, you know, the BIO DOMES will allow you to grow, ah, agriculture, you know, crops, ah, and you'll be able to... SELL those, probably for a premium so the idea will be, the Bio Domes in the Endeavour are sort of growing things that you couldn't normally necessarily grow on a planet, and you can maybe sell for a premium, whatever it would be, ah, I'm sure lotsa people will go "SPACE WEED!" but um, you know there'll be plenty of other things too, ahaha, um, so... you know it's, it's ah, it's a sort of farming mechanic, so you'd have that in, ah, you know you'd have that in space, you'd maintain it like perhaps you know, you have to take the... your ship would have to be a certain distance from the local system STAR or, you know you'd have to tend, fend for it make sure it's... ah, you know GROWN in, you know, like, perhaps the lower gravity setup makes you able to grow a better strain of... whatever it will be, WHEAT etc ah, so there you go

Bear in mind that the questions are cherry picked in advance, he's not getting blindsided live by gotchas. He has time to prepare an answer for each of them.

[Gimfain]

A guy on SA has been transcribing all of the devblogs. They are kinda bad. Part 1, Part 2

Q: So the Endeavour has bio domes. What will be the point of farming? And will there be bacon farming?
 
A: Well the point of farming will be... ah, you know, the BIO DOMES will allow you to grow, ah, agriculture, you know, crops, ah, and you'll be able to... SELL those, probably for a premium so the idea will be, the Bio Domes in the Endeavour are sort of growing things that you couldn't normally necessarily grow on a planet, and you can maybe sell for a premium, whatever it would be, ah, I'm sure lotsa people will go "SPACE WEED!" but um, you know there'll be plenty of other things too, ahaha, um, so... you know it's, it's ah, it's a sort of farming mechanic, so you'd have that in, ah, you know you'd have that in space, you'd maintain it like perhaps you know, you have to take the... your ship would have to be a certain distance from the local system STAR or, you know you'd have to tend, fend for it make sure it's... ah, you know GROWN in, you know, like, perhaps the lower gravity setup makes you able to grow a better strain of... whatever it will be, WHEAT etc ah, so there you go

Bear in mind that the questions are cherry picked in advance, he's not getting blindsided live by gotchas. He has time to prepare an answer for each of them.

Sounds like he spent some money on space weed himself

[Samprimary]

someone repost that goon video about smoking weed in star citizen space court

[HaemishM]

Yeah, he probably bought that good low grav space weed. 

[Malakili]

"We thought the idea of a spaceship with a biodome sounded cool, but we have not actually put any more thought to it yet."

 

[Pennilenko]

I am waiting for the announcement that they need to push back the release schedule so the can redesign the engine again so that they can get farming just right, because they only want the best quality for their loyal marks...I mean supporters.

[Samprimary]

parallel launch of SpaceVille allows you to crew an active player's space farm ship

[Yegolev]

Putting thought into game design = Stretch goal

Keep those checking coming!

[UnSub]

Is there a proper term for a madlibs version of 'choose a space opera feature set' game like Star Citizen? It's not even vapourware, it's more like dreamware or wishware.

[IainC]

Is there a proper term for a madlibs version of 'choose a space opera feature set' game like Star Citizen? It's not even vapourware, it's more like dreamware or wishware.

Dawnware

[Merusk]

Panderware

[Falconeer]

In the future, the expression "citizenware" will be used.

[Rasix]

We have someone on our (Black Desert Online guild) voice comms that has totally drank the Kool Aid on this.  Mentioned something about the sandboxy-ness of BDO, and he cheerily chimed in with "yah, but the only thing that will be better is Star Citizen".  Immediate response from Ard and myself was along the lines of anything you'll see in this thread, although more of the lines of "90% of the crap he's promising won't be there".  Dude sounded like we really hurt his feelings so we just dropped it.

The believers still believe.

[Lucas]

While I'm still in the iwanttobelieve.jpg camp, at the same time  I'm having too much fun lurking in the dedicated somethingawful thread 

[IainC]

We have someone on our (Black Desert Online guild) voice comms that has totally drank the Kool Aid on this.  Mentioned something about the sandboxy-ness of BDO, and he cheerily chimed in with "yah, but the only thing that will be better is Star Citizen".  Immediate response from Ard and myself was along the lines of anything you'll see in this thread, although more of the lines of "90% of the crap he's promising won't be there".  Dude sounded like we really hurt his feelings so we just dropped it.

The believers still believe.

There's a video interview with one of the former graphics leads. He's being very circumspect and not throwing CIG under the bus explicitly but the tone of his unprompted answers about the state of SC shows that he's very pessimistic about the whole thing. He even brings up the Escapist article at one point and the interviewer says 'well all of that was bullshit though' to which he replies, 'no it wasn't'.

Needless to say the true believers are still claiming that a guy who worked at a high level on developing the game doesn't understand the game development process and that he's just bitter that he's not working on the greatest piece of software ever to exist any more.

[Hoax]

Most of the ships they've sold for buckets of real money have been like that though.

Yacht/luxury liner/passenger transport

Exploration

Hauling/mercantile/caro

Police?

Search & Rescue / EMT?

Mining

Salvage

Boarding other ships

Information smuggling

-All of those things need to be game systems somehow. Yet none of these rubes seem to care? Like if you wanna buy a combat ship so you can be a wolf for those first few weeks(?) and pwn noobs. Fine I guess. But who the fuck are these people buying farming ships or Info smuggling ships when there is zero sign those are going to be actual fun and functional game systems?

[Kail]

-All of those things need to be game systems somehow. Yet none of these rubes seem to care? Like if you wanna buy a combat ship so you can be a wolf for those first few weeks(?) and pwn noobs. Fine I guess. But who the fuck are these people buying farming ships or Info smuggling ships when there is zero sign those are going to be actual fun and functional game systems?

Yeah, that kind of stuck out to me, too, with the "LOL SPACE WEED" thing.  Like, is managing your character's hunger actually a thing in this game?  I haven't really heard much about that aspect so far.  Like it's Space DayZ or something?  Because a yes/no answer there would make farms either the most important strategic assets in the game or completely useless.