It’s subject to absurd feature creep and overambition, in addition to regular ol incompetence.
The design goals for Star Citizen are kinda absurd. It’s like how the No Man’s Sky devs claimed at one point they’d individually simulate air molecules and a unique periodic table, except the difference is that NMS axed that (or more accurately, were never actually doing it) instead of spending the next decade trying to make it work.
At the same time, it helps that their supporters have essentially given them a financial incentive to keep adding feature creep instead of releasing, because if they release a game they can’t keep asking for more donations for increasingly lofty goals.
This game is going to be No Man’s Sky 2.0. I’m calling it now. Watching that whole demo the other day, all I could think of was, yep, no man’s sky of 2023.
No disrespect to No Man’s Sky, because they got that game pretty much sorted. Not sure Bethesda will ever throw that much resources, especially with this news, at Star Citizen. I’ll be waiting for the first Steam Sale, and only if they have it mostly sorted by that point. Their track record isn’t awesome, in that regard.
You’re definitely thinking of Starfield, which is the new Bethesda game. Star Citizen won’t be No Man’s Sky 2.0, because Star Citizen is never going to come out.
NMS released. They put it in a box and said “This is the finished game”. It was then torn to shreds and the long road of updates was a redemption story for an already released product.
Star Citizen will NEVER be done. It will always exist in some weird development alpha-beta limbo. It’s never going to go on Steam or shelves as a finished product. This allows the developers cover to always say the game is in development as a shield against any and all criticism. From their perspective it’s kind of perfect. Fans throw money at it endlessly and the development never really needs to reach a coherent state of being finished. Why would they ever want to actually release a finished game?
You really think nobody legitimate would have blown a whistle on a project like this years ago? Yet the only opposition claiming to be of that sort of whistleblower, turned out to be an incompetent and even more scammy failed game developer than said slanderer claimed Star Citizen was, and said slanderer never actually worked for the developers of Star Citizen.
A glorified tech demo? Maybe. Admittedly 2022 didn’t look like a good year for the developers, but progress was and is being made on the game, with the main issue being that at the rate they’re going, they’ll still be developing the game’s “100 star systems” in 2033. That being said, World of Warcraft was in development - in a sense - for 20 years and is only now being made irrelevant.
You also have to understand that the first 3-4 years, they had to deal with the feature creep by both hiring tons of employees and upscaling drastically, and also by saying what should be said; enough was enough, even if funding continued to accumulate it couldn’t continue to promise anything and everything. The last checkpoint for new “guaranteed” features was in 2014. Then there’s the effect that COVID-19 had on development.
Is it perfect? Far from it. Is it a scam or a failure? Also far from it. If you want scams, take a look at “Star Atlas” and how it just added NFTs to the Star Citizen funding model and jacked up the price, while not even ever leading to any progress after 4 years and yet continuing to put out trailers and marketing material.
Keep in mind that from the trailer to the AMD “Mustang Omega” deal, all marketing for Star Citizen was word of mouth, and the AMD deal did not become a habit for it, while Star Atlas is nothing but enticing marketing material.
I get the urge to point a finger, but Star Citizen has been criticized by people who haven’t actually done any research for 7+ years now, and yet something like Line of Defence, Star Atlas, or even Voidspace are only uncriticized because they scammed away less money than has been legitimately put into Star Citizen to date.
If you want something to complain about, how about the sheer time investment that has gone into Star Citizen? At this rate, the Metaverse (VRChat, Neos VR, Decentraland, etc.) could displace Star Citizen’s appeal within the next 5 years.
EDIT: Even worse, Star Atlas is not providing even the most basic proposals for real gameplay. 1 year into its development, Star Citizen’s developers were proposing basic gameplay documents and lore. 1 year into Star Atlas’ development, the proposals were “trade currency X for currency Y and then trade Y for Z” like a few other NFT crowdfunded game scams.
To compare Star Atlas to something other than Star Citizen for perspective, look at the difference between Star Atlas and Decentraland; The former is focusing on the appearance of being fun and using doublespeak to hide that its all about the NFT speculation. The latter isn’t intending to rip you off (at least, not visibly so, I checked and people do not have good things to say about Decentraland) and STILL ends up failing because it actually is incompetantly-programmed, has no userbase and charges too much just to register a username. NFTs in gaming or the metaverse might have a future (see Viverse, for example), but not if greed continues to play a role in things. $100 of real money worth of cryptocurrency to register a username is not conducive to a metaverse economy, so why would a $500 imitation of a mashup of several Star Citizen ships be worth its price tag?
I know what you mean, but even the idea of “getting into Star Citizen” doesn’t make sense to me because, well…what in the world is there really to get into beyond the few demos they released?
In fairness, the “Persistent Universe” stuff they have going right now can be pretty fun with friends, and the jank is kind of novel for a while. I tried to deliver a box and got a concussion trying to figure out how to get a drink on my journey.
Without friends or a tolerance for jankiness though, it’s pretty hard to get into. You really get the sense the devs have been figuring out what a wheel looks like the hard way, yet still insisting on their own uniquely terrible spin on things.
I think you’re thinking of Starfield, because Star Citizen is nowhere near done. They only have one solar system, with only a few people per instance, terrible optimization, only a fraction of the planned features, etcetera. It’s very immersive (aside from all the glitches and low FPS) but there’s not much actual content.
People are that incompetent. Just look at some of these comments, and the comments on any thread talking about it. These people giving away their life savings will defend it with every breath. Almost cult like devotion.
Absolutely no way Star Citizen isn’t a massive scam. I mean, people can be incompetent, but
…seems like it has to be some kind of upper limit of incompetence?
It’s subject to absurd feature creep and overambition, in addition to regular ol incompetence.
The design goals for Star Citizen are kinda absurd. It’s like how the No Man’s Sky devs claimed at one point they’d individually simulate air molecules and a unique periodic table, except the difference is that NMS axed that (or more accurately, were never actually doing it) instead of spending the next decade trying to make it work.
At the same time, it helps that their supporters have essentially given them a financial incentive to keep adding feature creep instead of releasing, because if they release a game they can’t keep asking for more donations for increasingly lofty goals.
Like a fission reaction between cope, capitalism and hypetrain grease. Compels me though 🤔
This game is going to be No Man’s Sky 2.0. I’m calling it now. Watching that whole demo the other day, all I could think of was, yep, no man’s sky of 2023.
No disrespect to No Man’s Sky, because they got that game pretty much sorted. Not sure Bethesda will ever throw that much resources, especially with this news, at Star Citizen. I’ll be waiting for the first Steam Sale, and only if they have it mostly sorted by that point. Their track record isn’t awesome, in that regard.
You’re definitely thinking of Starfield, which is the new Bethesda game. Star Citizen won’t be No Man’s Sky 2.0, because Star Citizen is never going to come out.
You are definitely right! Can’t keep my star games straight anymore lol
And NMS eventually got good enough to drop a few dozen hours into.
It’s a different kind of beast.
NMS released. They put it in a box and said “This is the finished game”. It was then torn to shreds and the long road of updates was a redemption story for an already released product.
Star Citizen will NEVER be done. It will always exist in some weird development alpha-beta limbo. It’s never going to go on Steam or shelves as a finished product. This allows the developers cover to always say the game is in development as a shield against any and all criticism. From their perspective it’s kind of perfect. Fans throw money at it endlessly and the development never really needs to reach a coherent state of being finished. Why would they ever want to actually release a finished game?
You really think nobody legitimate would have blown a whistle on a project like this years ago? Yet the only opposition claiming to be of that sort of whistleblower, turned out to be an incompetent and even more scammy failed game developer than said slanderer claimed Star Citizen was, and said slanderer never actually worked for the developers of Star Citizen.
A glorified tech demo? Maybe. Admittedly 2022 didn’t look like a good year for the developers, but progress was and is being made on the game, with the main issue being that at the rate they’re going, they’ll still be developing the game’s “100 star systems” in 2033. That being said, World of Warcraft was in development - in a sense - for 20 years and is only now being made irrelevant.
You also have to understand that the first 3-4 years, they had to deal with the feature creep by both hiring tons of employees and upscaling drastically, and also by saying what should be said; enough was enough, even if funding continued to accumulate it couldn’t continue to promise anything and everything. The last checkpoint for new “guaranteed” features was in 2014. Then there’s the effect that COVID-19 had on development.
Is it perfect? Far from it. Is it a scam or a failure? Also far from it. If you want scams, take a look at “Star Atlas” and how it just added NFTs to the Star Citizen funding model and jacked up the price, while not even ever leading to any progress after 4 years and yet continuing to put out trailers and marketing material.
Keep in mind that from the trailer to the AMD “Mustang Omega” deal, all marketing for Star Citizen was word of mouth, and the AMD deal did not become a habit for it, while Star Atlas is nothing but enticing marketing material.
I get the urge to point a finger, but Star Citizen has been criticized by people who haven’t actually done any research for 7+ years now, and yet something like Line of Defence, Star Atlas, or even Voidspace are only uncriticized because they scammed away less money than has been legitimately put into Star Citizen to date.
If you want something to complain about, how about the sheer time investment that has gone into Star Citizen? At this rate, the Metaverse (VRChat, Neos VR, Decentraland, etc.) could displace Star Citizen’s appeal within the next 5 years.
EDIT: Even worse, Star Atlas is not providing even the most basic proposals for real gameplay. 1 year into its development, Star Citizen’s developers were proposing basic gameplay documents and lore. 1 year into Star Atlas’ development, the proposals were “trade currency X for currency Y and then trade Y for Z” like a few other NFT crowdfunded game scams.
To compare Star Atlas to something other than Star Citizen for perspective, look at the difference between Star Atlas and Decentraland; The former is focusing on the appearance of being fun and using doublespeak to hide that its all about the NFT speculation. The latter isn’t intending to rip you off (at least, not visibly so, I checked and people do not have good things to say about Decentraland) and STILL ends up failing because it actually is incompetantly-programmed, has no userbase and charges too much just to register a username. NFTs in gaming or the metaverse might have a future (see Viverse, for example), but not if greed continues to play a role in things. $100 of real money worth of cryptocurrency to register a username is not conducive to a metaverse economy, so why would a $500 imitation of a mashup of several Star Citizen ships be worth its price tag?
I think you’re thinking of Starfield?
I am. I’m an idiot.
No, you are not :)
To have spent that much money and yet not have anything really resembling a game, just a glorified tech demo, is pretty sad.
I have a friend who just got into Star citizen and I just don’t understand why. There are actual games to play.
I know what you mean, but even the idea of “getting into Star Citizen” doesn’t make sense to me because, well…what in the world is there really to get into beyond the few demos they released?
In fairness, the “Persistent Universe” stuff they have going right now can be pretty fun with friends, and the jank is kind of novel for a while. I tried to deliver a box and got a concussion trying to figure out how to get a drink on my journey.
Without friends or a tolerance for jankiness though, it’s pretty hard to get into. You really get the sense the devs have been figuring out what a wheel looks like the hard way, yet still insisting on their own uniquely terrible spin on things.
The thing is, there is no “actual game to play” that fulfills the dream that star citizen promises.
Well, at least maybe until starfield comes out.
Don’t forget all those jpgs they have too!
What do you mean, just a glorified tech demo? I thought it’s almost done??
I think you’re thinking of Starfield, because Star Citizen is nowhere near done. They only have one solar system, with only a few people per instance, terrible optimization, only a fraction of the planned features, etcetera. It’s very immersive (aside from all the glitches and low FPS) but there’s not much actual content.
I dunno, seems incredibly competent to me.
People are that incompetent. Just look at some of these comments, and the comments on any thread talking about it. These people giving away their life savings will defend it with every breath. Almost cult like devotion.