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Am I right to avoid Star Citizen?
MightyUnclean
Member EpicPosts: 3,531
in Star Citizen
I know Star Citizen is a highly polarizing subject. I've avoided it thus far because I've mainly heard negative things about its development progress. Here's a couple of questions to help me clarify things:
1) What is there to do in the current build of the game?
2) Is the current iteration of the game (I know it's in development) a buggy mess?
3) Is it likely to be highly P2W?
4) Is there any indication from the developers as to when the game may actually launch?
Thanks for any info!
1) What is there to do in the current build of the game?
2) Is the current iteration of the game (I know it's in development) a buggy mess?
3) Is it likely to be highly P2W?
4) Is there any indication from the developers as to when the game may actually launch?
Thanks for any info!
Comments
3) Yes, it is straight "pay to..." Now win/make easy/convenience whatever word you want to fill in at the end, its a "Pay to..." scenario You can buy game currency direct https://robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge/extras?product_id=41
Maybe you see that as pay to win, maybe someone else sees it as pay to convenience.
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2) Yes and no. There are bugs with some features and there aren't bugs with others, those bugs change dynamically as the game is patched and new content is released. This is true of nearly every piece of software that has ever been produced (at this scale).
3) Winning is subjective, and paying is the only way to acquire ships at the moment, so in a way it is Pay to Win. The future of the current 'pay to win' structure (as it is now) has not entirely been decided, but the current version will likely not be how the game is when the game releases. It is to my understanding that the current structure is for crowdfunding purposes only.
4) The game will launch when all features are implemented. I don't think it really matters what that date is for Chris Roberts. At their current pace, I would anticipate a soft release (pre-launch) in Q2 2019, and a hard release in Q1-Q3 2020 (my own timeline). Eventually SQ42 will launch as well, so I guess you could assume that there will be a separate hard launch date for that game, but a date has not been announced. I imagine that SQ42 will release in concert with a Pre-Launch Star Citizen Patch for marketing purposes.
Disclaimer: I have not personally spent any money on Star Citizen/SQ42. My opinion (while leaning toward the side of the developers) is mostly objective.
The size of this team,the amount of money,looks like less than 1/4 of that.
So far after all this time and money,it is still just a virtual cash shop.
I seriously do not know how this can end,if he ever announces a finished product it will get critiqued to no end and he can't have that.He has made more money than most developers out there and with no finished game,so why would he want to complete it.
If he ever announces a finished release,which i believe will NEVER happen,he will instead word it in a way that the game is never done.Anyhow when that time comes,he will still just be a virtual cash shop,VERY little will happen to the game afterwards,mostly more work on the cash shop items than the game.
So for me,NO i don't like to support scammers and this has been and always will be a RMT operation,something we used to detest in a big way back in the day.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Yes, it is very buggy. Doors might fling you out into space at 10,000 m/s or not work at all, ramps might not reach the ground, elevators disappear into planets, crashes cause all your cargo to disappear, there's all sorts of glitches, stuttering, low framerates, rubber banding etc. Physics is very odd, vehicles move like RC toys, hoverbikes are just plain dangerous, ships fly as though they have no mass, characters fall from space and land on planets before walking off as though nothing happened etc.
The seed for the game's P2W is in motion now, all this pre-purchasing under the guise of supporting crowdfunding will certainly have an effect post-launch, how large that effect is remains to be seen. They intend to sell currency and some ships (via game packages) after launch, there was also a rumour of concept ships being sold post-launch, I don't know if that is true or not.
None at all. The only thing really said, in recent times, is that when the game is ready for a wider audience it would contain 5-10 star systems, that was said about a year ago and there is not even a quarter of 1 star system completed at this time.
If by some miraculous optimisations of the workforce they manage to push out 1 star system every 3 months (absolutely no way this will happen!) we are looking at 2.5 years before an early release. To get all 100 star systems in game would take 25 years...
Arena style play in the simpod:
Ship PvP
FPS PvP
Ship PvE (waves getting stronger and stronger)
Racing:
Ship racing on dedicated tracks
and much more fun:
Ship racing on moons (think Star Wars "Beggars Canyon Run")
vehicle racing (with fast buggies or hoverbikes, including jumping across canyons, with the ships racing IN the canyon ;- )
in the Hangar:
hangar interior decoration with various pieces of art and furniture
fiddling around with the loadout of your ships
in the ArcCorp module:
social interaction in the bar
dancing
buying
golfcart crashcar derbies
in the Crusader mini-Universe modules
mission running
ship PvP and PvE
FPS PvP
mapping
exploration (including looting wrecks for special usable items like rifles)
buying and selling
player generated missions (transport, fight, pirating)
transport jobs
social interaction, parties and player events
Quantum travel interceptions / pirating
escorting / merc jobs
boarding / anti-boarding fights in large (!) ships
testing the system to its limits (like dropping vehicles from orbit) - after all we are Alpha testers
fooling around with vendor machines (The Big Benny Challenge ;-) )
exploring stations (including hidden pirate bases with their own shops)
and more (whatever players come up with - more and more every day)
ad 2)
You will encounter bugs - its an Alpha game. We write reports and upload them. Take a look at the Issue Council for special, dedicated bug hunting. Bugs are being patched out regularily.
frames per second has improved, but you will experience microstutters and frame rate drops
In my opinion it is playable already. I have been playing it for years now.
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In my opinion no. EVERYTHING can be obtained in game after launch for in game money only.
All you need is a 35 $ starter package. There is no World of Tanks style special ammo etc.
Also it is a PLAYER skill based game. Not a ship progression style game. Bigger ships are not better - they just have different roles. I would also say - large multiplayer ships flown by solo players with NPC crew only will be expensive death traps. And a player can only fly one ship at a time. Even if he has 50 ships in the hangar.
After launch only starter ships will be sold. Many people confuse the current VOLUNTARY crowdfunding donations (and bigger reward ships you get with more expensive packages) as
P2W. It is a controversial subject ... the P2W debate on the official forum is already at many hundreds of pages and many tenthousands of posts.
In my experience from many other space games, most recently Elite Dangerous - any differences at the launch of the game become insignificant when players learn to gamble the trade system in a game (after a few weeks) and soon have ridiculous amounts of money that allow them to buy any ship they want. And it does not matter what crowdfunding package that player bought initially.
ad 4)
You can follow the development roadmap. Announcements from CIG tend to be very optimistic ;-)
and you may want to be patient - or just buy the finished game after it launched.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/roadmap/board/1-Star-Citizen
For most Star Citizen backers I know it does not matter how long the development takes. It is important to us that it will be an exceptional sandbox game. In my case a worthy successor to the old Star Wars Galaxies.
There will be a solo game (Squadron 42) that will come out sooner than the main game (Star Citizen). It should help make waiting easier.
Have fun
Not completely sure but i believe there are docking comps to be hand in E:D. Should make docking easier.
They implemented a first persistant universe, then now a secon version that a good chunk bigger. That was super heavy changes compared two years ago.
Its literally the first push to more missions, more content, trading, exploring, shooting, more players in instaces and thelike. Since a couple months its just burning hawt.
That said, its a real alpha, bugfixes, whipes, new bug come, old bugs gone.
2)
Since i raised my mem from 8 to 16 gb, i noticed a significant performance boost.
The playability depends heavy on the situation of the server and its instance, on the network and the state of the current development of the network interface. All that is going on at the same time.
Yeah its buggy but compared to the time of the implementation over the recent months, its surprisingly well playable. There is pretty often free-flight weekends, i suggest you take a taste here on what it is, what it is not and what it can become (!).
AC and SQ42 will be implemented at one point into the universe as well as many many more.
3)
I dont know, ive spent 50.-€ for a starterpack and 20.-€ for an upgrade to my ship.
I also doubt CIG makes it p2w, there is practically no need for it, what is there is breathtaking already and i hope they learn from history
4)
Not yet, no, but i see a rather stable alpha at the end this year or early next year.
There will be a final implementation of the "real"persistant universe, persistancy is just this days a huge topic as it is currently implemented
Maybe a beta next year ? Two or three years to release ? Faster ?! /shrug
The development is professional, we finally have become a patchsystem now and dont need to download the whole chunk again and again. You can see the game growing and its a great experince to me.
Hop in the verse already, not mutch wrong here ^^
Today, the situation is identical. Entering a ship from space, which should be a pretty core feature, is still a buggy mess.
That's the story of the project for me. Yes, new features are being added, but the game doesn't feel any closer to a polished experience. I backed the project when the promise was "100 systems and a release next year." A year later, it was "We will do 6 systems right and ship next year, then add more." A few years later, we have no targets on having even 1 system in a playable state.
People who still have faith in the project will tell you "But it's still early in the development. These things take time." I won't disagree. But chances are 5 years from now, Star Citizen will still be early in the development.
At present, it is a buggy tech demo that has some merits, but doesn't resemble anything I'd like to sink time into. If the game ever does release in a playable, polished form, the question is whether it will still look impressive. The characters are already starting to look dated.
Iaxie, do you think they flat out lied about the development timeline? Or were they just incredibly optimistic?
Missions
Trading
Piracy
Racing (I don't think it's in the PTU but it's in Arena Commander)
Space Combat
Ground Combat
Essentially every meaningful type of content that was available in Freelancer + Racing. Freelancer had mining but it was bad.
Mining and Salvaging are the next content types due to be released.
2) Is the current iteration of the game (I know it's in development) a buggy mess?
That's a highly subjective question even in a released game. It seemed to have multiple content types stable enough to be enjoyable last time I played it. But I have high tolerance for bugs and new content brings new bugs.
3) Is it likely to be highly P2W?
Again, a subjective question but by my definition of pay to win, no absolutely not.
A lot of people see ship pricetags and assume "OOOOOH!!!! 2000$ SHIP! IT MUST BE ABLE TO OBLITERATE ANYTHING ELSE IN THE SKIES!!!"
No. And no for multiple good reasons. First off big ships take big crew. For instance the 1000$ ship takes 15 people.
Second, the game is HIGHLY skill based. Smaller ships are harder to hit. They're faster, have smaller hitboxes, tighter turning etc.
A 25$ Aurora can easily blast any of these bigger ships out of the sky if the pilot is skilled and the gunners are not good on the larger ship. 15 Auroras can easily take on most any single ship even if that ship has a skilled crew.
Pay to win is an assumption based on preconceived notions of players coming from games where character skills and gear completely eclipse player skill. That is not Star Citizen. Star Citizen is highly player skill based.
And as others have stated. All of these ships can be earned in-game.
4) Is there any indication from the developers as to when the game may actually launch?
I'm guessing two years give or take a year for soft launch. Most of the core content is already in place.
Given equal skill, the player that purchases ships with real money will have a serious advantage over the one that doesn't.
So yes, it's P2W. It actually might be the most P2W game with a AAA budget thus far. You can even purchase land with real money.
After that those interested will have bought the interesting ships with in game money only, paying no more than the 35 $ starter package. Leveling the playing field. And as everyone can only fly one ship at a time, it matters little if you have 50 ships in your hangar.
Why should it be any different than the other space games out there in that respect ? Once the players understand the trade system, getting in game money quickly is easy.
Have fun
The number of ships in hangar might not matter, but the quality does. And your bullshit about pretending to understand what the economy will be like is just that, a big fat steaming pile of bullshit.
Chris Roberts has said that the cost of ships will increase dramatically compared to what they are now, so if a ship is currently the equivalent of 750,000 UEC he was on about it costing 10's of million UEC in the game. That's a huge advantage because they've skipped all that progression and the time it takes, they've skipped all the losses, all the mistakes, all the piracy etc. Instead they've jumped from a tiny ship that can only move a couple of crates of cargo to one which can shift 10,000 or more in 1 run.
It's like people jumping to endgame on day 1 of launch with a whole bunch of armor and weapons bought and paid for.
And no more real money than a starter package of 35 bucks is needed for that.
W.r.t. to your rather florid language ... have you any more evidence to offer other than your (rather limited) knowledge about space game economies ?
Wanna be a billionaire in Elite Dangerous within two weeks ?
https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/6x5mkq/the_billionaires_club/
Do it with trade ?
https://www.pcgamesn.com/elite-dangerous/elite-dangerous-the-life-of-a-space-billionaire
Wanna have TRILLIONS just for being trustworthy ? Look at EVE Online
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/05/01/eve-fanfest-the-richest-man-in-space/
Have fun
PS:
>>> he was on about it costing 10's of million UEC in the game. >>>
LOL. Peanuts. See above w.r.t. billionaires and trillionaires.