- cross-posted to:
- games@sh.itjust.works
- cross-posted to:
- games@sh.itjust.works
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every new thing i learn about Star Citizen is like far sketchier than the last thing I learned about it.
Always remember “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.”
There’s a lot of bullshit in the Star Citizen controversy. Hating it generates a lot of revenue for Massively and The Escapist (two of the worst tabloids in the industry). Just play it once during a free fly before you judge. If everyone did that, these articles wouldn’t exist.
And how exactly does a free fly invalidate the article about refunds requiring an NDA? Nobody is questioning whether there’s is some semblance of a game in a project that has been in development for over a decade, it would be a massive red flag if there’s wasn’t. What people are questioning is why is there a secret shop page that players can access ONLY after they’ve spent a thousand dollars on the game, and then another secret shop page after they’ve spent 10k? What’s up with the predatory practices?
Is your response “No no no, don’t look at those controversies. Look at how pretty the game is”? A free fly event doesn’t invalidate the claim that you might need to sign an NDA to get a refund. It doesn’t invalidate the claim that the devs had to pull 7 day work weeks. There are loads of criticism that the free fly does not address at all. These articles would exist even if everyone tried the free fly.
From my experience games that get “hate articles” are games that are already doing questionable things. You don’t get such articles circulating about good games because that shit just won’t stick. When it comes to SC and CI that shit does stick.
“A” refund, from “one” redditor who has provided no proof. On a subreddit that’s been known to brigade. I’m not saying CIG is a saint, but I feel like a rag piece and the outrage need to hold off for more info.
On a subreddit that’s been known to brigade.
How do you know this? There is a reason why I am asking.
And would you be willing to change your opinion if a redacted copy of the NDA was published?
Seeing is believing and it would sway myself and many more. Until then, it is just another article written based on an unsubstantiated reddit post. And I’ve seen enough Reddit posts be bullshit to need to see that NDA before believing.
What’s your reason for asking? I’m assuming because you linked a rag piece and not the original reddit thread for context?
I’d need to see at least two different people with the same claim submit redacted copies. One of which should not have any history on the refunds reddit. One motivated person could forge an NDA, and again, I wouldn’t put it past that community to hallucinate yet another slight.
I am just curious how you know this? The SC reddit sub is huge compared to the refunds sub.
Just seems strange to claim to be so focused on “proof”, while seemingly making your own claims without any data. Shouldn’t there be a common standard?
Right, because the refundians are a loose collective, and CIG is a company. You can’t point at a singular post and go “there’s the brigading,” mostly because they get removed by mods, but hate groups brigade. But to cite a source, the Derek Smart “90 day cash flow” claim is a good place to start.
CIG has plenty of things to rightfully criticize, but this isn’t one of them until multiple people from multiple sources come forward. It’s sensationalist bullshit until proven otherwise.
secret shop page
This is a luxury brand staple: it engenders loyalty because it makes the whales “better”.
You can’t buy certain luxury bags or watches or cars or whatever unless you have spent a giant pile of money on crap you may or may not want as the price of being allowed the special sales.
Same thing.
They aren’t half as shady as every other AAA gaming company. These things are blown way out proportion and CIG is held to double standards. They have crunch time and NDAs for disgruntled assholes? Oh no, the world is over, this company is pure evil like none other! It’s really not a big deal that this one refund has an NDA. Their others don’t, so it’s a weird thing, but to say this is proof of wrongdoing is fallacious grasping. To believe what Massively has to say about Star Citizen is like listening to what fox News has to say about Climate Change. Every little thing they can spin into making cig look bad they take, even things every other company does without issue. Hating SC gets way more engagement and ad revenue then almost any other kind of critical article in gaming. Just look at any post about SC on this community compared to others. It’s insane. And I don’t use that term lightly.
And I don’t use that term lightly.
Narrator: yet he did, just now.
I’ve played it several times during those.
It’s never improved. It’s a piece of shit game designed to take money from morons.
Defending it isn’t going to make your loss of money any less painful.
I love these encouragements. Yes,by all means,play it during a free flight event and see what a POS tech demo it is. Good luck completing a single mission without dying to endless bugs or having top notch hardware to even hope of it being a fairly decent experience.
In the year 2024 CIG doesn’t even know what FSR 1 is. They’ve been promising Vulkan for years now. Even single indie dev games have it to some extent.
SC will never be finished.
They actually already implemented Vulcan. Though in true CIG fashion it’s pretty unstable compared to DX11. Also those free fly events are ironically a terrible time to play the game because the fragile ass servers get super bogged down. Outside of those events it’s usually decently stable.
Pitchforks and rabble rousing is fun, but I actually play the game. It is a fun time, worthy of hundreds of hours as it is right now. Many people have thousands of hours. The growing number of players and growing revenue tell a different story than your ill informed guesses and chipped shoulder. This is as much a tech demo as any other early access game. I know this because I actually play it regularly. The lived experiences of the vast majority of players outweighs the angry whinging of people who don’t know what they’re talking about.
Who cares if it never finishes? It’s fun now. I have had much more than my money’s worth of fun. $50 ten years ago is still paying off in enjoyment now and it’s getting better with every update. This is what the overwhelming majority of the growing number of thousands and thousands of regular players all say. Crying about it doesn’t change facts.
Do you have any source for that claim regarding MOP and The Escapist? Just bringing up that quote isn’t a magical “I am right” button.
I tried their free trials 4 times. Twice I encountered game breaking bugs (required a restart and switching servers respectively).
Let’s ignore that for now. I will start with the good things. The planet to space transition was pretty cool, not going to lie. The cities were also detailed and looked nice (the first time you take the train in one of the cities, it does contribute to the world building). That being said, both the planets and the POI have nothing to offer in terms of actual gameplay structure. The cities might as well be a menu based system for purchases/interactions. The planets just have some random uninspired mission locations that all feel the same. You might as well have a separate map that you enter via cutscene.
But the biggest issue was the horrible gameplay. It’s one of the reasons I believe star citizen is a scam.
I will use a small trading indie game called Merchant of the Skies as a comparison point. It was developed by a husband and wife duo in less than 12 months. The game has:
- Dynamic world impacted by trading activities. City taxation/reputation, new resources, new locations, new ships and upgrades all open up as you complete various trading missions.
- Bazaar system. There are several location on a map that have weekly bazaars. Certain days have peak visitors while others are off days. You have to time your arrivals/trading.
- Supply and demand system in bazaar sales. You over/under price your goods depending on how much of your ship’s inventory you want to sell. This is also tied to the weekly visitors intensity system.
- Refueling system. Locations on the edge of the map have refuelling station that are few and far between. There is a simple RNG system for bonus fuel during travels.
- Mail/passenger travel side missions. You can occasionally help travellers and deliver mail. It’s fun to align this with your trading activities.
- Different late-game ships that you can pick depending on your play-style (it’s not only about cargo capacity, it does actually have a relatively big impact on how you go about the game).
This is just the gameplay that is relevant for comparison. There is also in-depth base-building, complex trade fleets and delivery scheduling, a simple RPG system, a simple ship employee system, a simple bank system, a resource gathering system, rudimentary exploration (map is randomized on each run), a mainline story and a bunch of different side missions.
Now compare that to star citizen. No supply/demand. No world impact. No economy. There is nothing to do except get more money to get ships. Sure you play with other players, but is there any kind of competition in terms of trading? They don’t even have a functional escort system where you can hire NPC ships for defence against griefers.
And crude gameplay is not limited to trade. FPS combat with single digit ticks? Exploration with one fully explored system? I will add that they sell non-functional “exploration ships” for hundreds of dollars; some of them are literal JPEGs. There is a bunch of other stuff that they’ve marketed but have simply not implemented or completely abandoned after the initial cash shop sales campaign (data running, journalism spaceships, refuelling spaceships, passenger transport spaceships, medical spaceships, farming spaceships, flying bazaar spaceship, mine laying spaceship, the list just goes on and on).
And this is after ~12 years and allegedly ~$750 million spent on development.
I will speculate a lot of that money goes to the founder’s family, key insiders and friends and they knowingly lie about their capabilities, intentions and just make shit up to sell JPEGs.
You don’t have to agree with the last point, but am I wrong with respect to trading/hauling in SC?
“People give them money for a game” as a business model seems to be applied evenly for everyone else except CIG and Star Citizen. They were given money by fans to make a game. It currently is playable and is in active development. You put up an example where the game has similar systems but radically different gameplay. Star Citizen has gameplay, it is a fun activity to play with friends and it has a thriving ecosystem (despite your clearly untrue claim otherwise). You don’t play it, only know about it in the abstract, and don’t seem to understand game development.
Hating Star Citizen feels less like genuine criticism and more like angry people grasping at a meme.
So what gameplay is there for trading/hauling?
Two months ago they released it: https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/1eo7m5w/the_new_hauling_missions_are_a_ton_of_fun_but/
Why you hate this game is a mystery. It hasn’t done anything to you and is working to fulfill the promises it made. But you are acting like a 3 year old child who wants it immediately and fuck the waiting.
What exactly did they release in terms of trading/hauling gameplay? Can you be specific?
If anything the post suggests whatever they did release is still pretty crude (as one can assume based on the feedback given in the thread - this is basic stuff).
In context of a multiplayer game, you would want some sort of dynamism and player interaction. Something along the lines of “planet X is building Y, requiring delivery of Z within the next 2 IRL months.”
Successful completion of this mission would result in % discount on trade NPC escorts (which don’t exist in SC) or additional NPC security on major trade routes. Pirate players and NPCs pirates would need to try and stop traders/haulers from successful completing the mission within 2 months. You know, real gameplay for traders and other “classes” with an impact on the game.
I am a 3 year old because I think trading/hauling gameplay in SC is complete shit after 12 years and raises questions about the where the money is going? Come on…
I don’t hate the game. Hate is reserved for serious things. I do think it is a scam and outlined why. It’s a reasonable assumption considering the history of SC.
Something along the lines of “planet X is building Y, requiring delivery of Z within the next 2 IRL months.”
I have literally never seen that in a game. Every single MMO out there abstracts it’s economy unless it’s a specific world event requiring x number of deliveries by players to trigger. Stop holding SC to unrealistic standards.
“Wow, this half developed feature is so interesting, here’s a list of improvements that should be made to make it fun!” are 3/4s of the comments on that thread.
‘Proud’ owner of a 300i, still waiting on that ‘Rework’ from
20142018???.
No, just no. You compared it to a very simple game that can run all of that from a single back end. I created a similarly simple economic simulation in an Excel sheet from a single supply/demand curve in college, in a weekend.
And then you go on to knock them for not being feature complete when they tell you that themselves. They absolutely are still developing, they’re releasing the second system in the next big patch.
Nobody is going to argue with you that it’s had issues. But at least give it a fair comparison. That’s what’s got people upset.
I left out features of Merchant of the Skies that are not relevant for a comparison.
The fact is that after 12 years and ~$750M allegedly spent on development, the trading/hauling gameplay is more crude than a indie game developed by two people.
That they are “still developing” is irrelevant. It is not unreasonable to question where the money is going considering how crude the gameplay is (if it even exists as we can see from the journalism spaceship JPEG).
Because they’ve got about a million things to do. So yeah, it’s pretty basic gameplay right now. Nobody is denying that. But to reduce multiple engine switches, court enforced stop work orders, and assets in production to “they spent everything over a decade and all they have is a jpeg”, is just ridiculous.
multiple engine switches … court enforced stop work orders
Citation needed.
Star Citizen is a game that exists, so sure, maybe “scam” isn’t the right word for it, but they’re still insanely sketchy. They constantly make promises they never meet, constantly beg the community for more funding when they already have an outrageous amount of funding, add insanely overpriced microtransactions to try to profit off whales, etc…
SC is driven by hype and nothing else. So many years later it still runs like ass and is very barebones, there’s a giant question mark on where all that money went and how the project is being handled. No Man’s Sky had a fraction of the budget and size and they managed to do so much more.
At best it’s the worst managed video game project of all time.
Ten years on and you think their growing players count and revenue is still just hype? No. The people who try the game are sticking around. If it was just hype it would have died years ago. It is genuinely fun to play right now. I can tell you this because I’m having lots of fun in it right now. When is the last time you played it?
Where does any game spend it’s money? That’s not ever public info. The fact that SC is publicly posting its revenue is opening them up to this double standard they are better than other companies with. We know they just bought a massive new building to hire more devs, so the evidence suggests they spend their money on development. They don’t spend any of it on dividends for any already rich ultracalitalist investors because they don’t have any, so they already have every other AAA company beat. (Those investors also invest in gaming journalism).
They do have investors. And at any rate, it makes no difference if the money is instead going to the founders family members. He hired his unqualified spouse (openly admitted to not know what SEO was and how metrics worked) for a senior position and they changed her surname and told employees to not reveal that they were married.
He turned into a snake and convinced Eve to eat the fruit of knowledge, he dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, and he is the real developer of Spore. His wife is actually a Hitler clone. CIG funded 9/11.
Your reply is why people call star citizen a cult.
Passionately enjoying something is far less cringey than passionately hating a videogame this much.
I was going to side with you, but then I visited their webpage. 12 necessary cookies? This company is scummy.
I have played it and it spends the entire time trying to make me buy virtual ships for real money. And this isn’t microtransactions either, this is substantial quantities of cash.
If it was just a bit of a cash grab but it was otherwise an okay game I guess it would be acceptable. But there’s nothing to the game, all you do is you fly around in your basic ship because you refuse to buy a good one, and shoot pirates. It doesn’t do anything that you can’t do in Elite Dangerous or No Man’s Sky.
SC is a scam. Of course they’re willing to break the law to keep the money they stole.
Downvoted by a sucker 🙃
My employer after they let me go wanted me sign a contract saying I absolve them and all their associates of everything from the begining of time. yes it actually said from the begining of time.
One time I got an “in between” job at a local business. The first day I showed up and the place made me sign a 17 page front and back NDA.
I’ve signed actual, legitimate NDAs. They are like 3 pages, max. Some people are just preposterous.
Yeah I go through all the contracts and paperwork and I am never wild about any of them but this is one of two types of things I refused to sign despite losing a fair sum with them. I totally get people signing them though as its a tough loss to deal with. There needs to be laws around reasonableness of contracts.
At least in the EU there are rules about contracts and how they need to be understandable. Companies are not allowed to just hire a lawyer who’s going to latinize everything simply to make it as impenetrable as possible.
Of course lawyers still use 16 words where one would do but it results in documents that are more rambly than incomprehensible.
thing with the contract I got was it was readable enough, at least for a person like me, what it was proposing was unreasonable.
There are and a lot of those weird ass NDA’s won’t hold up…so I’ve heard on videos from hopefully lawyers but who knows…
yeah its like do you wan to take the risk they can’t enforce the indentured servitude contract when the top judiciary came out of a facist fad period.
But we don’t know if time even had a beginning, thus the contract is unenforceable.
nice.
I hope you told them to go fuck themselves.
I had an employer (wrongfully) terminate me and they wanted me to sign a similar thing. I asked if I could just… not. My (very cool, forced to do this) manager said “absolutely.” I didn’t sign it. I applied for unemployment. Started getting free money.
They fought it. I had a conference call with a judge and that same manager. I was shaking. The judge asked “MANAGER, did you have any reason to suspect that Rai did the thing they’re accused of doing?”
“Nope.”
End of call.
Thank you for the year of playing TF2 for 40 hours a week, dope-ass manager.
What a gift, TF2 in it’s hay day no doubt
Somewhere around 2010, so absolutely! It really was a gift!
I did. Means I lost a severance they waived in my face. I think most people actually take the deal but wtf man this is crazy.
Been there. What is the problem with signing it and getting the cash if you are not going to sue the employer?
So the begininig of time was the one part but it also had this paragraph that listed all associates and went on for awhile. It had things like all stock holders and the company is owned by a holding company so all associates they way they listed could conceivably be practically everyone. Anyone who through all of time owned any company stock that the holding company had or had owned it or since its the begining of time any predicessor of it. Lastly it did not limit the scope to my work at the company. I talked with a lawyer and it did technically have the capacity of disallowing lawsuits for anyone for any reason. Case in point is a doctor fucks up a surgery on my wife and it later comes out he was drunk but he owned stock in a company that was bought by the holding company.
That is not an NDA at all then! A very different contract and you are absolutely right to refuse signing it. The company is totally acting outside of a normal legal practice, worth suing.
oh im sorry. I did not mean to say its an nda like in the story just an effed up contract. It was what they wanted me to sign to get my severance. As I said second time I have had to leave the money on the table.
I don’t get why people defend this game so fiercly
Sunken cost fallacy maybe.
This is a large part of it. But there is also other people who have put the minimum amount or no money into it and just want a cool space game and also want the developers to not be pressured into rushing updates out (they were once and it was unplayable for a month). I am not defending the sketchy stuff cig have done, they really need to look at how they manage this game and their business, I would have gladly put more than the bare minimum into the game if they didn’t charge so much for everything beyond the first purchase (about £35) but they do too much wrong for me to support it any more than I have
I haven’t bought into it or anything, but I followed the development for a while in the 2010s because I was really excited for what they showed.
Speaking personally, I just want a game that would let me feel immersed in a spacefaring future human civilization. I’m never gonna live to see that. So, I’d like a game where I can at least pretend.
EvE doesn’t work for me. I’m not interested in spreadsheets, and I want to be able to fly my ship instead of just clicking to move (I assume that’s still how it controls? I only played briefly in the 2000s)
Starfield is…Starfield. I just appreciate that they tried something, honestly. No Man’s Sky seems pretty neat, although I don’t really know what you do in that game outside of just collecting resources. I need to try it sometime.
Elite Dangerous is great. It comes the closest to scratching the itch. Zooming through the galaxy looking for different astral phenomena and sights to see is a really chill way to spend an afternoon. But, it only really gets so deep. The space legs (I mean, the Odyssey expansion) only do so much to make you feel present. Space stations and outposts really only consist of two or three different layouts of one big room with the same shops. Settlements mostly only exist to be mission objectives. You get 8 guns and 3 pistols to choose from. That’s about it. Not super immersive once you step outside of your ship (personally speaking).
But, pretty much the main thing they’ve been trying to accomplish with Star Citizen is to make it the most immersive experience they can. It’s right there in the name, isn’t it? You get to play at a citizen of an interstellar civilization. That’s the idea. I’m not sure if that’s the reality.
So, yeah. Speaking personally, I’ve got a dream I’ll never see realized, and (it feels like) no one stepping up to offer a proper simulation. I imagine a lot of folks are clinging to Star Citizen out of desperate hope, since there’s not really a proper alternative if it ever goes away.
claiming Bethesda tried anything with starfield is pretty generous.
To me NoMansSky feels like singleplayer Minecraft but with planets and tasks/missions.
So if you arent fond of that, I’m afraid it’s not for you. You can play witg randoms but I would say this isnt the norm.
I had an argument with someone who kept claiming that it was all okay because it was “in alpha”, all the developers have to do is claim that the game isn’t finished yet and is still in development and then they can sell it for whatever price they want an idiot will buy it and defend it.
It’s a bubble.
A friend of mine who bought it clearly states that that’s never going to get anywhere. But he’s only paid a regular amount and accepted the risk and loss.
Because it’s in a genre that has no good alternatives?
EVE is spreadsheet simulator, Elite Dangerous is space-truck simulator, NMS is all planets not space, StarField is StarField.
The only viable alternative I found was X4. Even that is slightly different from what Star Citizen promises (it’s more empire management than solo flying in the endgame, vanilla balance is also questionable: you can “luke skywalker” a destroyer with a scout with pure dogfighting skills)
Honest question, what does it give that eve doesn’t? If X4 is a good alternative why is eve really so lacking? Give it a try, do a level 1 security mission in a merlin, it’s very similar to X4
- I can’t simultaneously play a third MMO (already got FFXI and FFXIV)
- X4 custom start allows me to jump to the parts I want to play instantly, no matter if it’s starting wars, flooding the market, dogfighting, etc
- My X4 save is a gzip file: no need to worry about latency after moving to another country etc (my EVE account is locked to a region halfway across the world)
- I don’t have to wait for irl people to do something fun in X4
- The gziped save file is in xml format. If something breaks I can just fix it
- X4 has a huge modding scene for whatever features you want
- X4’s modding tools are super easy to learn: it’s all xml and lua. Took me only 2 hours to figure out how to modify the UI from scratch.
I received a refund in 2018 though they have since tried changing their EULA and TOS to make it harder, they have no legal standing to refuse a refund to Australian customers.
I was refunded for around $750 USD IIRC and at one point was in email contact with Will Leverett prior to my refund being approved.
It’s always hard to leave a cult
All of the complaints against Star Citizen and CiG are made by folks who don’t understand how games are made AND believe the people who make them, like Randy Pitchford, Peter Molyneux, Emoji Imagine, and others. Game designers talk about all the features that they want and then meet reality and have to pull those features back or cut them from the game.
A publisher traditionally puts limits and deadlines on funding, requiring a developer to meet a criteria to get paid and continue development. The publisher will preview builds and give feedback on game mechanics or broader suggestions for game polish.
Game designers who see success begin to dream big and will eventually pitch an idea that they can’t make because the money or time needed to implement the feature would prohibit the game from releasing in a timely manner. Chris Roberts made all of the Wing Commander series. He has a track record of making games that were so big and full of features that they inevitably see many features missing from the final game. Freelancer is the one everyone thinks of when they think chopped up Chris Roberts game.
Star Citizen has no publisher to guide the veteran game developer. This allows Star Citizen to change game engines 3 times, having to rebuild much of their progress each time. Any why change the game engines? They were forced to because Crytek are bitches who wanted that giant pile of crowdfunding Star Citizen has gathered. Crytek forced the game to stop development - which is a large part of the delay in getting the game to market.
People don’t know or care about the actual reason Star Citizen is still being developed instead of being released years ago. Most of you don’t care, but given the circumstances, no one could do any better.
$735m raised and still no full release lmao
God damn, it’s been a while since I’ve crossed paths with an honest-to-god rube! Keep on keepin’ on, you flickering bulb.
The fact that you think that Peter Molyneux is a good individual to hold up, is really telling. The man hasn’t been behind a successful projects since the dawn of the century.
