Star Citizen Online - The search for more money

Faith_sl said:

Thank you for that, but I guess my question is how they plan to release it. Will SQ42 come before SC? That would mean the "game" is even more off track regarding release date (remember, the whole game was estimated for a release nov 2014 once upon a time). Just releasing SQ42 would have been fine with me if co-op was still in it, but since its not I would like to have the game where I can play with my friends as promised (i.e. SC).

If they deliver SC+SQ42 at the same time its fine.

And yeah, I understand an estimate is just that, but I find it fun to see how they will handle the whole "if not delivered within 12 months from nov 2014, we will give you a run-down on the financials as to why this has not happened". My thoughts on it is; a) the guy who put that idiocy into the TOS is no longer with the company and b) they will just silence it to death.

As Barraco Bisi states, the drama around this game is currently way more fun then the game itself at this point

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The best answer I can give on rollout is this:

SC is what you see right now. They will continue to build on top of what you see right now in SC Alpha 2.0 People confuse SC Alpha and Arena Commander. AC is a game within a game just like Star Marine is a game in a game. That game is SC Alpha 2.0 and eventually it will be 2.1, 2.2 - 3.0 etc.

As SC Alpha is built they will replace everything you see right now in SC Alpha 2.0 and eventually the actual star system will exist fully and then another star system and another etc. That will continue throughout 2016. They are truly hitching their star on the automated tools for rapidly creating star systems and missions. If that doesn't work out SC will be massively ridiculed far beyond what you see now. IMO that will happen no matter what at this stage. 100 star systems in 13 months? Who is anyone kidding. That's 10 star systems a month next year. Yeah right.

Anyway so SC Alpha 2.0 will turn into 3.0 eventually or whatever the number it is until they flip it from Alpha to Beta. Beta will happen in 2016 because they will need it out with SQ42. So you are right there. In some shape or form SC will have to exist LIVE.

I suppose they could delay it and not let you go live but that will make things even worse. Much much worse than even not delivering 100 star systems. Remember I'm the optimistic one here and even I'm saying 24 months at best if EVERYTHING goes well. That said they could shit out 100 star systems but it will be that. Shit. It's lose lose. /shrug

Mist_sl said:

Runs well on a 1600ish dollar gaming rig right now. In 2 years or so when we start seeing something resembling the live PU, it will probably run great on 1000 dollar gaming rig, given advances in GPU hardware.

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DX12/Vulcan optimization isn't even in yet. That will come early/mid next year via German office. They are doing it the right way so people should see an immediate improvement there.

On top of that the waste of money and iteration people bitch about here has helped them plenty. Nobody here remembers when ArcCorp chugged along at like 5-10FPS in Pre-Alpha and now it's silky smooth. That's thanks to iteration.

Ship iteration, again waste of money according to some here, has resulted in new tech and ship pipelines that reduced the size of some ships (RAM cost) by as much as 50% even before the damage states are taken into account and that's insane. The new Constellation is a good example. They spent almost a year working on the new Constellation. But it makes the game playable. Nobody complains about that part.

Another thing people forget is they need the DX12 conversion to get full use of two GPUs (stacks RAM between them instead of primarily using only the main card).

They better watch out. If their dev cycle is too long one of the major players is likely to pull the rug out from under their feet.

You can bet your ass Activision wants a piece of that pixel spaceship pie.

Skanda_sl said:

EQ2 thought the same so my reservations remain. Right now all they have is arenas which can be tightly controlled as far as map design to minimize impact on PCs. It remains to be seen if they can keep it running so smoothly in the less controlled PTU. Also, are those ship explosions (as well as the localized damage models they've shown off) currently in their arena game? I hate arena modes with a passion so I've genuinely not seen if it is or not.

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It's the exact same assets so I don't see why it wouldn't work. If my ISP wasn't shit I would be all over the PTU but I can't test it atm.

Quaid_sl said:

They better watch out. If their dev cycle is too long one of the major players is likely to pull the rug out from under their feet.

You can bet your ass Activision wants a piece of that pixel spaceship pie.

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Takes a minimum of 5 years to shit out a half decent AAA title if you aren't CDPR. If you think they can do it justice you are dreaming. An ADHD variant of it ala Battlefront? That I can see happening if space games become popular again but they aren't.

Do you know how many millions of units they sell of their top AAA titles? It's in the tens of millions. They only bet on a sure thing because it costs so much to make a game and costs 2-3x as much to market it to the unwashed console plebs during sports night. Sales have to hit a billion dollar mark. They make a lot of supposed Hollywood blockbusters look like B movies in comparison. They are billion dollar games in an 80 billion dollar a year industry that is twice the size of Hollywood.

The entire space genre in the game industry covering everything probably doesn't even hit 1 billion a year. In fact I would be shocked if it was even 100 million.

The irony of course is that Space Invaders is the highest grossing game in history dwarfing everything.

2012+5years=?

Likely Star Citizen release date=?

Quaid_sl said:

2012+5years=?

Likely Star Citizen release date=?

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It's possible.

I think CR genuinely wants a 2016 release but there are a lot of pies in the oven. It's not like a typical AAA title with maybe 1 major feature to try and set it apart from the others. There are a lot and as a new studio they are building a lot of tools from scratch. They have also paired up with a number of studios to make things like character creation happen much quicker. In the case of RISE it took them nearly a year to shit out a single major character. The same company, partnered with CIG, has that down to a few months and they think they can get it down to weeks in the coming year. They will need that for the countless unique characters in the SC PU and 50+ unique ones in SQ42.

As I said a late 2016 release of SQ42 with a limited (5+ star systems) SC PU live is likely. It just depends on all the systems being brought online in the next 12-13 months and having enough content both for the PU and everything completed for at least Chapter 1 of SQ42.

If I'm not mistaken they did all of the Mocap shooting of SQ42 already and not just Chapter 1. Rumor puts the cost at 8-11 million so I kind of hope that's Chapter 1-5 but we also know pickup shots are happening next year too. If it costs 10 million per Chapter I don't think they can sustain that without even more funding.

As for 2017 I think we can expect any lingering systems to get implemented like planetside landing outside of planned landing zones. Basically planetary POIs like in Mass Effect 1 with randomized/mission encounters. Exploration and Research. Adding a dozen star systems at most. Chapter 2-5 of SQ42.

Mist_sl said:

Runs well on a 1600ish dollar gaming rig right now. In 2 years or so when we start seeing something resembling the live PU, it will probably run great on 1000 dollar gaming rig, given advances in GPU hardware.

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Hey, if Game God McQuaid once said the same thing, then it's bound to be smart enough to repeat!

a_skeleton_03_sl said:

You will not see a hard launch for SCO in 2016 I will bet my life savings on that.

You might see an early access soft launch bullshit and they will call it a 'launch'.

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We'll get our soft launch. And it'll be hilarious. Because instead of releasing the game in logical, well managed stages with feature-complete modules that will all tie together as they're applicable (which is very possible despite Variise and Mist being super pro game derpvelopers saying it isn't), we're going to get a soft launch where everything is buggy and incomplete. The tears are going to be amazing.

a_skeleton_03_sl said:

You will not see a hard launch for SCO in 2016 I will bet my life savings on that.

You might see an early access soft launch bullshit and they will call it a 'launch'.

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I admit that's entirely possible.

popsicledeath_sl said:

Hey, if Game God McQuaid once said the same thing, then it's bound to be smart enough to repeat!




We'll get our soft launch. And it'll be hilarious. Because instead of releasing the game in logical, well managed stages with feature-complete modules that will all tie together as they're applicable (which is very possible despite Variise and Mist being super pro game derpvelopers saying it isn't), we're going to get a soft launch where everything is buggy and incomplete. The tears are going to be amazing.

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There is no more such things as modules. They admit it caused way too many problems trying to put different modules together and this is a development team that would do code merges to ensure things would work and the final major code merge killed Star Marine. A module they kept wanting to release on its own for almost 3 months until it finally did die. Other studios don't do code merges like this because those other elements of their games are often entirely other games that simply talk to one another and don't have to exist together. It's not that none of them do any but for games like this it's easier to fake it.

Why do you think EVE gave up on FPS integration and put out DUST? Why do you think EVE Valkyrie is a whole other game that simply talks to EVE and not merged with EVE? They talked about it and wanted to do it and realized no fucking way they can make it work. No shit. It's hard. That's way harder than what CIG is trying to do because the engine is not built to do that from the start. It requires re-writes. Hell CIG is having to re-write CryEngine and they are different enough that apparently internally they call it the StarEngine. They can no longer simply merge engine updates put out by CryTek and have to re-work things to get new features from CryTek implemented typically picking and choosing and not simply merging the whole thing.

However without doing the above we wouldn't even have an SC 2.0 Alpha.

You might say but hey EVE is doing it right by doing modules. I would say for them that is probably best. Their smallest piloted ships are roughly the size of an Idris in SC. The scale better suits them to split things up. The scales are just too large for individuals to fully enjoy from a first person seamlessly. While it would be cool to infiltrate an enemy frigate and kill the pilot that would get boring fast. Where's the crew to fight? Right that's not how EVE works.

Anyway modules are dead and it wouldn't do them any good resurrecting the idea.

a_skeleton_03_sl said:

And by me saying that it's not all that different from any other game trying to do the same so that isn't a negative exclusive to them.

I think a decent amount of people that are on the kickstarter etc are not aware this is normal for an MMO and will not be happy though.

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CR has repeatedly said he has no intention of ever releasing SC in a state where it's a bad game. There are countless MMOs that launched and were complete and utter shit launches. I'm trying. I'm really trying but I can't think of a single MMO that launched that went well in recent memory. Can you?

The only online games that had good launches, and I would not call them MMOs, are games like World of Tanks. That was in Beta for like a year. When WoT launched I could not tell that anything happened which is ideal. But that's hardly an MMO.

Final Fantasy XIV? But that was a re-launch and probably the only case in history where an MMO launched, was such an utter shit that the dev/publisher pulled it, re-wrote it and re-launched it and it was actually good. Like really good.

Name some good MMO launches and maybe we can figure out what made them tick.

Quaid_sl said:

They better watch out. If their dev cycle is too long one of the major players is likely to pull the rug out from under their feet.

You can bet your ass Activision wants a piece of that pixel spaceship pie.

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I doubt it, between already selling 1+ million copys of SC and Elites rising number of sales there cant be that much left to cover regarding space sims (lets not forget No Mans Sky also on its way, and Rebel Galaxy is doing pretty well). The number of potential buyers for yet another space game cant be that many.