Star Citizen Catch-all

The year is 2150. CIG open a new studio on Mars. All humans are now working on Star Citizen. 49 thousand ships are available as of Alpha 5934.4. Squadron 42 has just released a new roadmap to reach beta by the end of next year.

DudleySmith wrote:

All humans are now working on Star Citizen.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/aem4gmL.png)

Star Citizen now has Easy Anti Cheat. Now the only way you'll be cheated is directly by CIG themselves.

Roadmap drama!

Remember how much effort it took to make the roadmap? It was such an ordeal that it had its own roadmap? But finally they got it right and it came out?

Well, the trouble with roadmaps is that they say you're going to do certain things at certain times. And, surprise surprise, CIG has been missing those marks!

So, they have decided to gut the roadmap, restricting the Release View (ie. the part that says when things will happen) to only show what is planned for the very next patch.

Because our focus was very vocally shifting from delivery to progress, we also intentionally decided to minimize the importance of the Release View. We no longer wanted you or our developers to focus so much on when a feature was coming out, but to instead focus on what we were working on in the moment and what we planned to tackle next

In other words, they took the roadmap part out of their roadmap.

The reaction at /r/starcitizen is what it always is: some longtime backers realizing they've been taken for a ride, eventually drowned out by the "true believers".

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/jFcm4pX.jpg)

Also, we missed last month, when they announced their five-year plan.

By 2026, they claim, they will be working on "multiple sequels to Squadron 42".

As for actually releasing Squadron 42 itself, they said "it could be one or two years more."

Hey 2024 GWJers reading back this far in the thread, are you playing Squadron 42 yet?

Bold prediction: It will be renamed Squadron '42.

*Legion* wrote:

The reaction at /r/starcitizen is what it always is: some longtime backers realizing they've been taken for a ride, eventually drowned out by the "true believers".

Quote taken from one of the current top threads right now:

I remember all the people crying out when they delayed cyberpunk. We want it now and so on. They released it, with one year delay, it still sucked. After nearly a decade of game development.

SC isn't a game, and you're not buying a game. Your buying into a mans dream. I knew that when I bought it and I am sorry to all that didn't. But stop spreading this negativity, you won't get the game one day sooner. I don't worry about any dates anymore CIG gives out, because I know they are pressured to do so. This game is gonna be ready when it's ready, probably the only game that can claim so, and I am okay with it. This is what you get when you buy SC. And if you thought otherwise then you are either delusional or simply misinformed.

I mean... I have dreams. I don't see people lining up to fund them though. Beyond that, there are some really good memes getting posted over there roasting CIG.

merphle wrote:

Bold prediction: It will be renamed Squadron Released in 2042.

FTFY.

MilkmanDanimal wrote:
merphle wrote:

Bold prediction: It will be renamed Squadron Released in 2042.

FTFY.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/os2qz9F.jpg)

PurEvil wrote:

Quote taken from one of the current top threads right now

Yeah, I saw that one. The thread title was something about delusional people, and I thought it was going to be a roast of the true believers, but no, it's the true believer calling everyone else delusional.

Star Citizen fandom is cut from the same cloth as Qanon, antivaxxers, etc, just with far lower stakes. But I don't know what else to compare that level of reality denial to.

*Legion* wrote:
PurEvil wrote:

Quote taken from one of the current top threads right now

Yeah, I saw that one. The thread title was something about delusional people, and I thought it was going to be a roast of the true believers, but no, it's the true believer calling everyone else delusional.

Star Citizen fandom is cut from the same cloth as Qanon, antivaxxers, etc, just with far lower stakes. But I don't know what else to compare that level of reality denial to.

Glad I'm not alone there, I hopped into that thread thinking the exact same thing. I thought it was odd that someone calling the community delusional would have a bunch of awards and be upvoted so highly.

For me, I see the hardened SC backers, the true believers and white knights, like professional slot machine players. That next pull, that's going to be the one that's going to change their lives forever. That's their ticket to their best life, they'll be rich and powerful. One more pull. One more pull. One more pull, that'll show everyone how wrong they were. The next pull, that's the one! That's the one that will show that I all the money I put into this machine wasn't for nothing. Next pull, I can feel it.

Sure many of us can walk up and toss a bit of disposable cash into the machine with that hope of striking it big, but most of us can walk away knowing that it's rigged against us, and just enjoy the short dream of hitting it big. Many of us are perfectly comfortable spending a bit of time playing and just breaking even. But those professional white knights, they'll never see how they're the product, and not the customer.

Basically any insulated online (and maybe rl) community is. The Folding Ideas guy joined a boatload of NFT Discord channels while researching that particular dystopia and all the bros in there acted the exact same way. They feed their self delusion, roast anyone that doesn't 'get it' and even develop their own mini-language, idioms, etc to make sure outsiders feel like outsiders.

Also, thanks all for an amusing morning
Squadron '42 made me snort.

polypusher wrote:

Squadron '42 made me snort.

Coincidentally, that's what Chris Roberts is doing with all that "early adopter" money he's raking in.

As an aside, how f*cking ludicrous is it that Roberts Space Industries hasn't yet purchased "starcitizen.com" from whatever domain squatter is holding it?

merphle wrote:

As an aside, how f*cking ludicrous is it that Roberts Space Industries hasn't yet purchased "starcitizen.com" from whatever domain squatter is holding it?

You can't rush buying a domain; you need to take your time to do it right. Look at all the people who have bought domains in the past and not used them right; I, for one, am glad the $47,254.18 I Kickstarted will be used to buy that domain only when it'll be perfect.

merphle wrote:

As an aside, how f*cking ludicrous is it that Roberts Space Industries hasn't yet purchased "starcitizen.com" from whatever domain squatter is holding it?

Why pay for starcitizen.com when you can host everything on the domain name of the fictional company you named after yourself, who supposedly invents the quantum drive that makes space travel possible? The company which, in game lore, is founded by a future version of yourself, Chris Roberts, in a fanfiction.net caliber self-insert?

This dude has pictures of Elon Musk with his own face pasted over Elon's somewhere, I guarantee it.

Ha! I did a whois lookup of starcitizen.com which confirmed it was already owned by a mysterious and unnamed entity. It then offered a few suggestions including "starseniorcitizen.com" which I just found so perfect for this.

You're on an absolute tear, merphle!

MilkmanDanimal wrote:
merphle wrote:

As an aside, how f*cking ludicrous is it that Roberts Space Industries hasn't yet purchased "starcitizen.com" from whatever domain squatter is holding it?

You can't rush buying a domain; you need to take your time to do it right. Look at all the people who have bought domains in the past and not used them right; I, for one, am glad the $47,254.18 I Kickstarted will be used to buy that domain only when it'll be perfect.

I'm sure that they have a roadmap for acquiring that domain.

I love that we are on page 91 and the game is nowhere close to being released.

TheGameguru wrote:

I love that we are on page 91 and the game is nowhere close to being released.

In October we'll hit the 10 year anniversary of the Kickstarter.

Squadron 42 will still not exist in even a playable alpha state.

Because our focus was very vocally shifting from delivery to progress, we also intentionally decided to minimize the importance of the Release View. We no longer wanted you or our developers to focus so much on when a feature was coming out, but to instead focus on what we were working on in the moment and what we planned to tackle next

It is this section of from the Cloud Imperium Games statement (with my emphasis) that I haven't been able to stop thinking about. It says so, so much.

So it appears that CIG's developers are distracted by "when a feature was coming out", a.k.a. their deadlines... a.k.a. a significant element of their actual jobs.

EDIT:

So, in order to remove this distraction, CIG are effectively telling them to only (1) do what they are currently doing, and (2) think about what they will do afterwards. What they mustn't do is to consider when they're going to finish their current tasks or when they're going to start their next tasks.

So kind of... "Just live in the now."

Is this the first explicit confirmation of what many have long suspected; that CIG aren't working to any meaningful plan? And that CIG aren't willing to make any kind of meaningful commitment to the people that crowdfunded this farrago?

And yet... given the rise of cryptocurrencies and - more recently - Non-Fungible Tokens, and the scams associated with them, 'Star Citizen' no longer seems out-of-ordinary. Indeed, it feels positively quaint... almost innocent. I mean, at least the money from Star Citizen is being used - in part - to pay people's salaries.

Perhaps 'Star Citizen' represents the high water mark for digital-only goods.

*Legion* wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

I love that we are on page 91 and the game is nowhere close to being released.

In October we'll hit the 10 year anniversary of the Kickstarter.

Squadron 42 will still not exist in even a playable alpha state.

In that time, I’ve extensively played Elite Dangerous and X4 Foundations, dabbled in Evochron Legacy, bounced off of X-Rebirth, saw but haven’t tried Rebel Galaxy Outlaw and No Man’s Sky…

The last ten years have been good for sandbox space sims that aren’t Star Citizen, haven’t they?

detroit20 wrote:
Because our focus was very vocally shifting from delivery to progress, we also intentionally decided to minimize the importance of the Release View. We no longer wanted you or our developers to focus so much on when a feature was coming out, but to instead focus on what we were working on in the moment and what we planned to tackle next

It is this section of from the Cloud Imperium Games statement (with my emphasis) that I haven't been able to stop thinking about. It says so, so much.

So it appears that CIG's developers are distracted by "when a feature was coming out", a.k.a. their deadlines... a.k.a. a significant element of their actual jobs.

EDIT:

So, in order to remove this distraction, CIG are effectively telling them to only (1) do what they are currently doing, and (2) think about what they will do afterwards. What they mustn't do is to consider when they're going to finish their current tasks or when they're going to start their next tasks.

So kind of... "Just live in the now."

Is this the first explicit confirmation of what many have long suspected; that CIG aren't working to any meaningful plan? And that CIG aren't willing to make any kind of meaningful commitment to the people that crowdfunded this farrago?

And yet... given the rise of cryptocurrencies and - more recently - Non-Fungible Tokens, and the scams associated with them, 'Star Citizen' no longer seems out-of-ordinary. Indeed, it feels positively quaint... almost innocent. I mean, at least the money from Star Citizen is being used - in part - to pay people's salaries.

Perhaps 'Star Citizen' represents the high water mark for digital-only goods.

What that is is a cry for help for a new project manager. That is 100% a sign of a project that is burning down. And if I was an employee of CIG I would be seriously considering leaving before it all comes crashing down. Because it will.

Hahaha feature releases are supposed to have some logical order and sense to them. In Agile
Development you are supposed to be guided by smart people that can break down complex projects into a series of small(er) tasks to logical
Complete the steps required to complete a “feature” (story——epic).

The fact that they see this as some impediment to getting stuff done just means they literally are getting nothing done. It’s just hey let’s build a coffee shop!! That would be cool!

Never forget:

The rise and fall of 38 Studios is a fascinating case study of poor planning, passion, and pride.

At least CIG is private and (presumably) doesn't have any sort of regulatory body or independent auditor overseeing what they're doing.

misplacedbravado wrote:
*Legion* wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

I love that we are on page 91 and the game is nowhere close to being released.

In October we'll hit the 10 year anniversary of the Kickstarter.

Squadron 42 will still not exist in even a playable alpha state.

In that time, I’ve extensively played Elite Dangerous and X4 Foundations, dabbled in Evochron Legacy, bounced off of X-Rebirth, saw but haven’t tried Rebel Galaxy Outlaw and No Man’s Sky…

The last ten years have been good for sandbox space sims that aren’t Star Citizen, haven’t they?

To a large degree, I think that's one of the biggest issues that's drawn SC out so long. Back when Wing Commander was released in 1990, it really didn't have competition. The 90's were big on space games, but generally didn't pick up steam until '93-'94 or so. So Chris Roberts had years of basically being king of the hill with no challengers, and was pretty much heralded as a genius in the industry (not trying to knock him, just being realistic).

Now, every time any company does something new, RSI works to try to one up it to jump from ground level back to the top of the hill. And there are A LOT of other companies out there carving out little niches in the industry for themselves, or trying to improve older designs. RSI has created a massive sunk cost hole that I doubt they'll ever get out of. Two different companies have created actual space programs in the amount of time SC's been in development. There is no possible way to release anything now that would justify the amount of time and funding they've gotten.

My prediction though, is that within the next few months they will release a limited number of NFTs, which will sell for some absurdly high amount of money, and the whales following SC will be out en masse attempting to crush people under their wallets to be the proud owners of nothing but digital gloating rights.

Not that I've drunk the Kool-Aid, but I know two separate guys who are seemingly intelligent who have told me that they actively enjoy SC in its current state. They have both played ED and think that SC is better (especially since they claim ED was broken after the last DLC). Personally I think they are letting their sunk cost color their perspective (one of them has spent over $1000 on the game), but it is interesting to hear that someone is extracting enjoyment from this hot mess.

Nevin73 wrote:

Not that I've drunk the Kool-Aid, but I know two separate guys who are seemingly intelligent who have told me that they actively enjoy SC in its current state. They have both played ED and think that SC is better (especially since they claim ED was broken after the last DLC). Personally I think they are letting their sunk cost color their perspective (one of them has spent over $1000 on the game), but it is interesting to hear that someone is extracting enjoyment from this hot mess.

I see people on the SC Reddit say that, but I never hear that from people that aren't already deeply invested in SC.

Whenever I turn on a Twitch stream to check in on the game, someone is always either struggling to get something started due to bugs, staring at their expensive space ship, or playing some simplistic looking combat at lackluster framerates.

Apparently a lot of the combat "depth" isn't implemented right now.

What they needed to do was build a really great, polished combat gameplay loop first and foremost, and then worked on adding in their high concept features around that over time. I would have bought into that game.

That said, I will have to give the game a shot at the next free-play.

Can I enjoy the current hot mess for, say, $10? Or do I need to throw in a paycheck and assorted body parts as tribute first?

JLS wrote:

Can I enjoy the current hot mess for, say, $10?

Nope, it will cost you $45 to get in.

They have free play sessions every so often that last a few weeks. I'll be sure to post here when the next one happens. Maybe a few of us can jump in and enjoy the hot mess together.