Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
and that completely fits their agenda. Seeing as they have no intention to release it, they will upgrade to DX13 and then DX14 when they come out. The white knights will continue to rationalize all of this as improvements to the non-existent game.
The thing is, even refactor they do shows great improvement on the game once implemented, so it's not like people are really mad about it. Sticking with DX11 for SC with the visual standard they push for wouldn't be smart future-proofing of the game either. MMOs that did it after had very long and difficult refactors to work through for DX12.
The mere fact we have full planets, whole cities and all that came to be, is because that very same mentality of taking the time... instead of sticking with loading stream-in smaller landing zone maps to fulfill the planet-side of things.
Was it worth it or not? I think it was... but opinions will surely vary there.
What is the incentive to release? They already are proud of all the money they made.
How much more money would they make if they had a salable product? How many new people would pay to play if it was a real game?
They may have decided that they have already gotten most of the money for a game in this market, and have no incentive to release anything.
Once a game releases then there are expectations...YOu cant get away with this isn't working and that still isn't implemented once you release because people are paying for it now....By constantly staying in an alpha state, then people feel they are just donating to improve the game, and if the players donating haven't called them on anything after almost 10 years, then they most likely never will.
What is the incentive to release? They already are proud of all the money they made.
How much more money would they make if they had a salable product? How many new people would pay to play if it was a real game?
They may have decided that they have already gotten most of the money for a game in this market, and have no incentive to release anything.
Once a game releases then there are expectations...YOu cant get away with this isn't working and that still isn't implemented once you release because people are paying for it now....By constantly staying in an alpha state, then people feel they are just donating to improve the game, and if the players donating haven't called them on anything after almost 10 years, then they most likely never will.
I'm assuming that most or all of the people who already donated or pledged money won't pay even more money if the game officially releases. If you take all of the people who already donated out, how many new people are left to pay for the game if it releases as a salable product?
Until the progression is turned on with no more wipes the game is not 'released'
No other definition is necessary or matters, until then it's just another game in testing.
Persistent wipes the big thing obviously, I aim at the technical term of it because you buy it "as is", such is on any steam EA game, independent of wipes or not, they just offer you to get in during early stages of dev.
What is the incentive to release? They already are proud of all the money they made.
Well, because there is no profit.
If CIG was a company that was making all this money, and kept a minimum development team working on the title, then the argument could be used that they are just "milking the same cow with no incentive to release the title".
What we see instead is that CIG has been spending more on their operative cost, the company is up to 600 people now, a huge growth and investment on their own studios, so they are actually using other money (we can see by the financials) beyond the crowdfund from the returns to investor money to fill the rest of the cost the company has.
So obviously, they wouldn't be hiring up to 600 people, with 6 world-wide studios just to artificially reduce productivity, they would be reducing their scale to actually self-sustain well without any secondary sources of income instead.
Now has everyone who bought SC already did? I highly doubt that, if anything this project just beaten expectations over and over again on how much income it can generate and maintain, and that translate to the huge investments & valuation it attracted I'd say.
Until the progression is turned on with no more wipes the game is not 'released'
No other definition is necessary or matters, until then it's just another game in testing.
Persistent wipes the big thing obviously, I aim at the technical term of it because you buy it "as is", such is on any steam EA game, independent of wipes or not, they just offer you to get in during early stages of dev.
What is the incentive to release? They already are proud of all the money they made.
Well, because there is no profit.
If CIG was a company that was making all this money, and kept a minimum development team working on the title, then the argument could be used that they are just "milking the same cow with no incentive to release the title".
What we see instead is that CIG has been spending more on their operative cost, the company is up to 600 people now, a huge growth and investment on their own studios, so they are actually using other money (we can see by the financials) beyond the crowdfund from the returns to investor money to fill the rest of the cost the company has.
So obviously, they wouldn't be hiring up to 600 people, with 6 world-wide studios just to artificially reduce productivity, they would be reducing their scale to actually self-sustain well without any secondary sources of income instead.
Now has everyone who bought SC already did? I highly doubt that, if anything this project just beaten expectations over and over again on how much income it can generate and maintain, and that translate to the huge investments & valuation it attracted I'd say.
One of the famous old books in Computer Science is the "Mythical Man Month".
IBM
was releasing a new operating system, and they needed to speed up
development of a major piece of it. So they hired more people.
But
that slowed it down even more. So they hired more people, which slowed
it down even more. Eventually, they had 5,000 people working on it, and
failed.
Brooks Law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
One of the famous old books in Computer Science is the "Mythical Man Month".
IBM
was releasing a new operating system, and they needed to speed up
development of a major piece of it. So they hired more people.
But
that slowed it down even more. So they hired more people, which slowed
it down even more. Eventually, they had 5,000 people working on it, and
failed.
Brooks Law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
More people never guarantees anything and has its own set of challenges, but point here was how is the money flowing as far this project goes, and the numbers show a huge self-investment and operative cost so they on that aspect are not going thin and making ops cheap to pocket money or something like that.
The big projects around have armies on teams that scale well, mostly the people involved on asset creation, design, qa, etc. Even on SC as far I've noticed the engineering teams and all are small and localized, that hints to be in part with how it tends to work.
And for a title like the SQ42, they deff can speed up the creation of the levels and a ecatrillion of assets (can see on the roadmap chapters are still not close to be on final art) with those type of hires, I'd speculate a lot of this hires havebeen put in to boost that.
One of the famous old books in Computer Science is the "Mythical Man Month".
IBM
was releasing a new operating system, and they needed to speed up
development of a major piece of it. So they hired more people.
But
that slowed it down even more. So they hired more people, which slowed
it down even more. Eventually, they had 5,000 people working on it, and
failed.
Brooks Law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
More people never guarantees anything and has its own set of challenges, but point here was how is the money flowing as far this project goes, and the numbers show a huge self-investment and operative cost so they on that aspect are not going thin and making ops cheap to pocket money or something like that.
The big projects around have armies on teams that scale well, mostly the people involved on asset creation, design, qa, etc. Even on SC as far I've noticed the engineering teams and all are small and localized, that hints to be in part with how it tends to work.
And for a title like the SQ42, they deff can speed up the creation of the levels and a ecatrillion of assets (can see on the roadmap chapters are still not close to be on final art) with those type of hires, I'd speculate a lot of this hires havebeen put in to boost that.
Every major product that I have been involved in started with a business plan that set out the costs, the schedule, and the projected return on investment. The return is calculated on how much it costs to produce, how much you can sell it for, and how big the market is (or how many you expect to sell).
Normally investors want to see a good track record before investing. They want to have confidence that what the projected return is, and when they will get it, is going to actually happen. If you develop the reputation of over-promising, or missing the schedule very badly, it is harder to raise money or get your project approved.
But this appears to be a new business model. There is no schedule, no estimate of costs. And I'm wondering at the size of the market. If they have already spent $350 million, and are nowhere close to having a product, how many copies will they have to sell to recoup the costs? In a crowd-funded mechanism, you don't recover the costs. So that makes me wonder what the incentive to release is.
Every major product that I have been involved in started with a business plan that set out the costs, the schedule, and the projected return on investment. The return is calculated on how much it costs to produce, how much you can sell it for, and how big the market is (or how many you expect to sell).
Normally investors want to see a good track record before investing. They want to have confidence that what the projected return is, and when they will get it, is going to actually happen. If you develop the reputation of over-promising, or missing the schedule very badly, it is harder to raise money or get your project approved.
But this appears to be a new business model. There is no schedule, no estimate of costs. And I'm wondering at the size of the market. If they have already spent $350 million, and are nowhere close to having a product, how many copies will they have to sell to recoup the costs? In a crowd-funded mechanism, you don't recover the costs. So that makes me wonder what the incentive to release is.
You can't quite do that when you don't have a budget or have any idea about how much will you reach upfront. Obviously nobody there would have imagined the success it seen, then the original scope via stretch goals and such got vastly expanded. Having a sort of publisher upfront with a budget + a general timeframe is a complete different thing for the scale they'll go for and the scope of the project.
As far investors go recently nuf SC got the huge investment of over 60m for a small minority cut, so there is stuff going on there on what they seen on the project because literally nobody else that started on Kickstarter ever got a deal like that.
But then the thing about the costs, the crowdfunded money is not a cost you have to recoup, beyond the actual investors that put those ~63m on the company time ago.
Err, just so you know most here are regularly playing games, released ones even. So your premise is flawed which surely you know.
Well I'm sure they are regularly playing games, but It doesn't look like they are actually having enough of a fulfilling gaming experience to fill their jaded mmorpg heart with enough content that it will allow them to not be triggered by seeing gamers having fun or being hyped by things they don't particularly like.
They want to reach that level but they can't so they feel outside of the bubble and missing out, hence the resentment.
Every major product that I have been involved in started with a business plan that set out the costs, the schedule, and the projected return on investment. The return is calculated on how much it costs to produce, how much you can sell it for, and how big the market is (or how many you expect to sell).
Normally investors want to see a good track record before investing. They want to have confidence that what the projected return is, and when they will get it, is going to actually happen. If you develop the reputation of over-promising, or missing the schedule very badly, it is harder to raise money or get your project approved.
But this appears to be a new business model. There is no schedule, no estimate of costs. And I'm wondering at the size of the market. If they have already spent $350 million, and are nowhere close to having a product, how many copies will they have to sell to recoup the costs? In a crowd-funded mechanism, you don't recover the costs. So that makes me wonder what the incentive to release is.
The incentive is to make the best game possible and only release it when it's ready.
In this day and age, with very fresh examples of games like Anthem or Cyberpunk, it's still baffling how some can't accept that some gamers are fine with a company taking their sweet time to develop the game exactly as they see fit.
Just stop circle-jerking for a minute and think about it.
Cyberpunk was rushed to released after 8 years of development, many major parts of the game were released broken and others simply cut from existence. The game who had special themed edition consoles made for it that couldn't run it and had to be pulled from the store.
YET it made US$563 Million dollars in a couple of months of sales.
That's more than half-billion dollars in revenue for the shareholders and a lot of disappointment for the CDProject Red fans and a taint in their credibility and history.
If CIG was profit focused they would just have half-asset their universe and sticked with a limited scoped game copy pasted 4-5 ships with minimal changes release it and call it a day lol
That some think that CIG is raking in cash to fill their pockets isn't paying attention. Money is being poured into development to make a bigger and better game.
The graphical quality of their universe, the sheer number, scale and detail of their ships or even the cast they went with for Squadron 42 should tell everything about their commitment to make a no holds barred gaming experience.
For many this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to play the game of their dreams and that haters and trolls in sidelines get restless won't change a thing.
They can cry all their hearts out but the game will just keep being backed and enjoyed by those that matter the most.
on my point of view, after all this time, i see more a problem of retention and new players pledging vs backers.
i played many mmo, enjoyed some, got bored on others and see the wave of the mobile "mmo" and similar...
i dont think the population of players staying 6/8 hours on a mmo still exist today (ok for a very poor %) and when i pass some time to watch SC video (some are nice but really, i cant really imagine myself take X minutes to do a single action, i really think the best state for the moment is: "let prepare roadmap and let dreams new backers"!
all these article, all this energy... we'll see if it was a waste of time.
on my side, it's a long time i got my $$ back, not for the long wait but for the possibility to have time to play and enjoy (got kids meanwhile ^^).
Starting to look so dated..... alpha 3.xx... Clearly a scam game. Some people enjoy scams... so yeah... Ive seen people pay triple for some tourists scam in india and feel really happy about it... yeah.. they still got some kind of experience..
Oh well... Just yeah... dont expect the game to ever be a real full of people mmorpg. All it will be is a buggy space sim that sells ships and dreams.... enjoy.. and dont forget to... have.. fun....
Basically clicking away text windows ruins every MMO, try to have fun instead of rushing things. Without story and lore all there is left is a bunch of mechanics. Reply Add Multi-Quote
Is alpha the new definition of beta or even finished? Seems to be judging by the supporters of this game. That is sad.
In actual software development terms, alpha and beta have actual meanings.
Spec-- where the goal is defined
Unit test -- pieces of code are tested by themselves, like DB operations, etc
Alpha test -- the first time all the pieces are put together. Not really expected to work very much.
Beta test -- all pieces tested, alpha done, this is the first level that the code is expected to mostly work and can be given to customers for testing
Release -- when the product is done and released
Of course, in game development, these terms have been changed to be almost meaningless.
Some companies believe themselves further advanced than the terminology that 'hindered' professionals from working successfully for all these years. So, instead of trying to devise new methodology and practices to speed development and control costs, they have resorted to redefining the terminology. This is running rampant in the game development sector. What's worse, the customers are accepting this as a new normal. Even worst than that, a select subset of these customers are defending this practice as 'progress'.
Semantics isn't the problem. Development is.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
I have nothing invested in it but if they do finish it I kinda think it looks bad ass maybe something really cool will come of it. I guess we will see.
Nah, nothing cool will ever come out of this game!
Clearly a scam! Avoid at all costs!
I can't tell if you are being sarcastic. All those videos you showed don't show a game. You showed me pictures of characters and space ships that is not a game. I would rather play star wars galaxies with item degradation, randiomzied resources, unquie crafting, creature handling ect. Even no man sky has game play. If all the game is, is looking at pretty avatars and space ships it clearly is a scam. It would be like if black desert released it's game, but all you could do was ride around on a horse and look at your pretty character.
I can't tell if you are being sarcastic. All those videos you showed don't show a game. You showed me pictures of characters and space ships that is not a game. I would rather play star wars galaxies with item degradation, randiomzied resources, unquie crafting, creature handling ect. Even no man sky has game play. If all the game is, is looking at pretty avatars and space ships it clearly is a scam. It would be like if black desert released it's game, but all you could do was ride around on a horse and look at your pretty character.
They indeed showed parts of some cool aspects of a game in development, which was exactly the point considering the context.
- Harsh weather effects affecting the player
- Criminal player being hunted by a bounty hunter who manages to get payback with a well placed rocket
- Players doing a flyby
- "World boss" event
- Ship components which are directly tied to ship health/degradation
- Player saving another player from falling into it's death
- Player exploring the universe
- Showcase of character creation along with the detail of avatars.
Short clips for easy consumption not long gameplay showcases.
If you want to really watch how gameplay is like I'd suggest going on Twitch and watch some streamers. There's a good reason why Star Citizen is the most streamed space game.
If you have the time to burn this RP video is highly entertaining and showcases several gameplay loops, namely multicrew pvp against npc's, prision gameplay, mining and bounty hunting.
Besides that it has all the traditional loops of space games: Cargo Hauling, Trading, Exploration/Scavenging, FPS, several types of mining, pve, pvp etc.
Also it's funny you mention SWG since Star Citizen is probably the closest trying to mimic the full blown living breathing universe with lot's of player freedom and agency. They have made the closest to fully fledge SW planets like Tatooine (Daymar), Hoth (Microtech), Coruscant (ArcCorp) and ships and armour based on SW universe.
Their recently teased homestead and creature updates scream SWG all over
^ Guy never played SWG obviously, but he's gonna tell us what SWG players want. Most vets I know wont touch this. Part of the draw was the IP and the time it was set in. I mean that's like saying Turkish Star Wars is Star Wars, because it's "like" it and has wars in the stars.
I want to love this game, I want to support this game..... but at the same time I do not want to encourage developers to do this type of marketing/development
Comments
Err, just so you know most here are regularly playing games, released ones even. So your premise is flawed which surely you know.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
The mere fact we have full planets, whole cities and all that came to be, is because that very same mentality of taking the time... instead of sticking with loading stream-in smaller landing zone maps to fulfill the planet-side of things.
Was it worth it or not? I think it was... but opinions will surely vary there.
------------
2024: 47 years on the Net.
Once a game releases then there are expectations...YOu cant get away with this isn't working and that still isn't implemented once you release because people are paying for it now....By constantly staying in an alpha state, then people feel they are just donating to improve the game, and if the players donating haven't called them on anything after almost 10 years, then they most likely never will.
------------
2024: 47 years on the Net.
Well, because there is no profit.
If CIG was a company that was making all this money, and kept a minimum development team working on the title, then the argument could be used that they are just "milking the same cow with no incentive to release the title".
What we see instead is that CIG has been spending more on their operative cost, the company is up to 600 people now, a huge growth and investment on their own studios, so they are actually using other money (we can see by the financials) beyond the crowdfund from the returns to investor money to fill the rest of the cost the company has.
So obviously, they wouldn't be hiring up to 600 people, with 6 world-wide studios just to artificially reduce productivity, they would be reducing their scale to actually self-sustain well without any secondary sources of income instead.
Now has everyone who bought SC already did? I highly doubt that, if anything this project just beaten expectations over and over again on how much income it can generate and maintain, and that translate to the huge investments & valuation it attracted I'd say.
------------
2024: 47 years on the Net.
The big projects around have armies on teams that scale well, mostly the people involved on asset creation, design, qa, etc. Even on SC as far I've noticed the engineering teams and all are small and localized, that hints to be in part with how it tends to work.
And for a title like the SQ42, they deff can speed up the creation of the levels and a ecatrillion of assets (can see on the roadmap chapters are still not close to be on final art) with those type of hires, I'd speculate a lot of this hires havebeen put in to boost that.
------------
2024: 47 years on the Net.
As far investors go recently nuf SC got the huge investment of over 60m for a small minority cut, so there is stuff going on there on what they seen on the project because literally nobody else that started on Kickstarter ever got a deal like that.
But then the thing about the costs, the crowdfunded money is not a cost you have to recoup, beyond the actual investors that put those ~63m on the company time ago.
They want to reach that level but they can't so they feel outside of the bubble and missing out, hence the resentment.
i played many mmo, enjoyed some, got bored on others and see the wave of the mobile "mmo" and similar...
i dont think the population of players staying 6/8 hours on a mmo still exist today (ok for a very poor %) and when i pass some time to watch SC video (some are nice but really, i cant really imagine myself take X minutes to do a single action, i really think the best state for the moment is: "let prepare roadmap and let dreams new backers"!
all these article, all this energy... we'll see if it was a waste of time.
on my side, it's a long time i got my $$ back, not for the long wait but for the possibility to have time to play and enjoy (got kids meanwhile ^^).
Oh well... Just yeah... dont expect the game to ever be a real full of people mmorpg. All it will be is a buggy space sim that sells ships and dreams.... enjoy.. and dont forget to... have.. fun....
Basically clicking away text windows ruins every MMO, try to have fun instead of rushing things. Without story and lore all there is left is a bunch of mechanics.
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Add Multi-Quote
------------
2024: 47 years on the Net.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
I can't tell if you are being sarcastic. All those videos you showed don't show a game. You showed me pictures of characters and space ships that is not a game. I would rather play star wars galaxies with item degradation, randiomzied resources, unquie crafting, creature handling ect. Even no man sky has game play. If all the game is, is looking at pretty avatars and space ships it clearly is a scam. It would be like if black desert released it's game, but all you could do was ride around on a horse and look at your pretty character.