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Star Citizen Progress Tracker v1.0

robertsspaceindustries.com

71–80 of 241 posts

Re: Star Citizen Progress Tracker v1.0

#71
post #43

Star Citizen has proven one thing to me, and that is that dreamers (Chris Roberts) who are developing incredibly ambitious need to be held in check by good PMs who are willing to push back when necessary. This thing has been developed for so long, and it seems like there's always excuses as to how there's something new to be added and that's why it's taking so long to even get to 1.0 status.

It's a problem across the artistic genres. Authors who become too famous to be edited often have a bad decline in their later years, because they really need to be edited. (One of the things I respect Larry Niven for is his insistence that he be edited, even though within his niche he reached the point where he could have done the same thing.) Movie directors that become too big to say no to often turn out to not quite have been the raging individual talents they thought they were, but instead have been the front person for a talented team; I think there's good reason to believe that this is what happened to Star Wars, for instance, that George Lucas is in fact not on his own a supreme talent but instead turned out to be a good person to have on the team. A whole HN thread could be filled naming the flabby, overcomplicated, self-indulgent movies that directors have made when they got large enough to be allowed to do whatever they wanted. It would be a much smaller thread naming such movies that ended up good in the end. I think there's a few. But in my opinion, as much as we complain about studio meddling and such, the track record on just writing a blank check to a creative isn't actually that good either.

I'm not sure it's possible, no matter how good you are, to ever get to the point that you don't need someone else assessing what you're doing and willing to be critical, at times even harsh if necessary. You will always be too close to your own work. Cultivating a dispassionate attitude can help, but you'll still be too close to your own work.

Re: Star Citizen Progress Tracker v1.0

#72
post #9

I bought a ship relatively late, in 2013. I also built my gaming PC that I'm still using to this day around then hoping to have something beefy enough to play Star Citizen. Obviously that was stupid, lesson learned. Chris Roberts has made some phenomenal games that I absolutely love, but even Freelancer was in production hell for years before being reigned in by Microsoft. Star Citizen is pretty much all of those hug…

Elite: Dangerous comes pretty close to your specified dream, what with the new expansion.

that game leaves a lot to be desired imo. there are a ton of things to do, but each "thing" is a pretty shallow loop. important components/ships are locked behind lengthy grinds, and you need them to be viable in pvp (which is itself mostly confined to combat zones and random interdictions). it feels more like a bunch of mini-games glued together than a single cohesive game. they did a good job with the basic "fly around in space" thing, I'll give them that.

imo, eve is the best current implementation of "be a real person in space". much less in-your-face grinding, since skill training happens offline. a few noobs in cheap ships can be a serious threat to an experienced player in something expensive. player actions can have serious consequences in-universe. although the last time I played, there were some issues with capital ship spamming in alliance wars. not sure whether they've done anything about that; it's been a while since I played.

Re: Star Citizen Progress Tracker v1.0

#73
post #52

Star Citizen is a cautionary tale about how too much money can be a curse. Star Citizen and Elite Dangerous came around at roughly the same time but Elite has been a complete game for years. Elite did things right in the sense that they released a complete game and added to it. I've seen videos on Star Citizen talking about new systems they're adding like being put in prison and escaping and all I can think of is tha…

> 7 weeks: Enabling support for AI janitors to use multiple tools in either hand.

I think I see your point.

Re: Star Citizen Progress Tracker v1.0

#74
post #52

Star Citizen is a cautionary tale about how too much money can be a curse. Star Citizen and Elite Dangerous came around at roughly the same time but Elite has been a complete game for years. Elite did things right in the sense that they released a complete game and added to it. I've seen videos on Star Citizen talking about new systems they're adding like being put in prison and escaping and all I can think of is tha…

cletus i'm bored... ? ah nnaaah... Klytus I'm bored !

Re: Star Citizen Progress Tracker v1.0

#75
post #11

This is an incredible ongoing project that just sums up all of the pitfalls in development. Bad initial design, change of engines, licensing issues, unbelievable feature creep, questionable management.. And I'm not sure exactly, but this progress tracker suggests the game will be complete by March 2022 ? Its just begging for criticism.

They haven't changed engines. Lumberyard is just a fork of CryEngine 3.8

Re: Star Citizen Progress Tracker v1.0

#76
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've seen videos on Star Citizen talking about new systems they're adding like being put in prison and escaping On its face, this seems like an obviously awful idea. Escaping from prison the first time sounds awesome. Escaping from prison the fifth time sounds super boring.

It adds a consequence to griefing/PVP. If you’re a pirate who has been to prison multiple times you really don’t want to go back… so your behavior is different.

Hot take: trying to appeal to both PvP and PvE players is the biggest mistake game designers make.

History is littered with the corpses of "WoW killers" in the MMORPG genre and nearly all of them touted PvP as their killer feature, usually some form of world PvP. And it never works. Even WoW largely moved away from world PvP in favour of sandboxed PvP (ie arena, battlegrounds).

This focus on PvP is my biggest concern with Ashes of Creation.

The reason it doesn't work is because of people. People do things in PvP because there are no consequences. You don't really die. You can communicate outside of the confines of the game. You know there are no consequences. This leads to antisocial behaviours like griefing even though the griefer gets nothing in-game for doing so.

Many have tried to make in-game consequences to deter griefing and they never work and (IMHO) never will work because in-game isn't reality. Death isn't permanent. Even the permanent death of a character isn't permanent.

Game designers spend so much effort on these systems to appeal to the minority of players and it literally kills games. But no one seems to learn this lesson. Or it's just hubris that "my game will be different".

So what Star Citizen should do is just not have open world PvP, at all. That requires no development effort whatsoever. Maybe you could have an arena or some BG like concept but those are optional and can be added later.

No system will eliminate pointless griefing and you just alienate those who don't want PvP.

Re: Star Citizen Progress Tracker v1.0

#77
post #43

Star Citizen has proven one thing to me, and that is that dreamers (Chris Roberts) who are developing incredibly ambitious need to be held in check by good PMs who are willing to push back when necessary. This thing has been developed for so long, and it seems like there's always excuses as to how there's something new to be added and that's why it's taking so long to even get to 1.0 status.

Is the lack of a PM the problem with Theranos? I think the problems are the same.

Re: Star Citizen Progress Tracker v1.0

#78
post #52

Star Citizen is a cautionary tale about how too much money can be a curse. Star Citizen and Elite Dangerous came around at roughly the same time but Elite has been a complete game for years. Elite did things right in the sense that they released a complete game and added to it. I've seen videos on Star Citizen talking about new systems they're adding like being put in prison and escaping and all I can think of is tha…

I am a huge E:D fan, but they really botched the last expansion, to the point I no longer play at all. I get the feeling they are starving for programmers and designers.

I've honestly been meaning to get around to playing E:D for years but it never happened. First I tried No Man's Sky at I think the Atlas patch, which is the point where it started to become really good. And then... other stuff.

Part of me was turned off by how long it seemed to take to travel between systems. I saw some streamers play this and taking an hour to do something like that is just way too much for me.

I was excited about the idea of the new expansion. Like being able to walk around in a world you can fly in seems like such a good addition but I've come to realize that you're really developing a completely different game with almost no crossover.

Re: Star Citizen Progress Tracker v1.0

#79
post #76
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It adds a consequence to griefing/PVP. If you’re a pirate who has been to prison multiple times you really don’t want to go back… so your behavior is different.

Hot take: trying to appeal to both PvP and PvE players is the biggest mistake game designers make. History is littered with the corpses of "WoW killers" in the MMORPG genre and nearly all of them touted PvP as their killer feature, usually some form of world PvP. And it never works. Even WoW largely moved away from world PvP in favour of sandboxed PvP (ie arena, battlegrounds). This focus on PvP is my biggest concern…

Agreed with all this. There was at one point a notion of a "PvP slider" that you could turn down to reduce encounters with other players (I assume via instancing) but it's gone away in favor of a totally in-universe "crime stat" and law system.

Predictably, it does fuckall because the defense turrets on stations can't even hit anyone.

I think the plan is for all landing pads to eventually be replaced with hangars so at least the pad ramming greifers will have to wait until you've gotten in your ship and taken off before they can ruin your fun for cheap entertainment.

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