Star Citizen Online - The search for more money

Mahes_sl said:

Interesting video and for the most part pretty accurate. It is referencing the gaming industry as a whole rather than only the MMO industry, but close enough. My brother in-law worked for EA about 5 years ago and can certainly attest to everything that video comments on. Now he works as an indie developer making his own game while teaching at a college. It is a lot less stressful and more gratifying.

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Interestingly CIG has a huge problem with their Austin office. What would happen is they hire a top shelf physics programmer (if anyone here recalls they are converting part of CryEngine to 64bit) and EA's head hunters would swoop in and poach them. It's still a common occurrence and it absolutely impacted their timelines as a result. Originally they were supposed to have hired someone for that role moons ago and had the 64 bit conversion done or close to it by Jan 1. Yeah that didn't happen. They have a physics programmer for that role finally and hopefully he lasts. CIG just can't pay what EA pays (according to Ben 3x their offer) on poached talent.

So if you like Indi games and hate big time companies there is yet another reason to show them the middle finger.

Squadron 42 comes with every ship package. So unless you just bought the arena pass thing everyone gets it. I haven't seen them mention doing anything different as both games have always been packaged together.

Wouldn't put it pass them though, to sell it on a per episode basis.

The first ep is supposed to be 20 hours'ish. How that's split between ME stuff and Wing Commander play, just have to wait and see. I think 42 was billed as sort of successor to Wing Commander so I would imagine it'll be more space battle and that sort than anything.

Doubt they'll split it off since you can get both for 20 bucks, or at least you could at different times when the cheapest package was on sale. I'd bet on them having a sale of sort around the time 42 roles out to bait in anyone who hasn't bought in yet.

70 million hit, and 1.01 released

Arena Commander 1.0.1 Released - Roberts Space Industries

I think it's worth noting that SQ42 is not necessarily mostly space with some limited non-space content. It's probably more like 60/40 for ship and out of ship content if I remember Chris' comment about the split.

It's hard to explain because unlike in most games where you have a gameplay element that is "space" and then you land and you have a "ground side" element that is completely separate SC is capable of doing both at once dynamically and they are trying, but not yet succeeded, to do the same with planets and not just space stations, capital ships and mid sized celestial bodies (asteroids, derelicts etc).

One example previously given was I think about the Shubin mining station. That thing is six miles long and fairly hefty volume wise. That thing could probably fit all of Alien Isolation inside of it. So you have your briefing and you take off with your ship to escort an assault ship to the mining station that was recently harassed by pirates or whatever. You get there and get into a dog fight with some pirates. The assault squad is ambushed and trapped on the station. You can choose to do nothing and let them die and return to base or you could land at one of the platforms and help rescue them. While on the station another attack occurs in space and you can either take a very long run to get to your ship or use a nearby turret to help fight off the pirates. More occurs on the station after and once done you can go back to your ship, take off and return to base.

That entire mission could take two hours by itself with half of it taking place in space and the other half on ground. The balance of maybe another 10% considered in space (briefing on the carrier and taking off, landing and debriefing).

You will be visiting planets as well not just spending the vast majority of your time in space pew pewing. It makes sense to take advantage of this as much as possible and I'm glad they are doing exactly that.

SQ42 will be single player capable even offline. I don't think Chris has decided yet to bundle it off by itself but he could. Mission disks will expand on it.

Now here is the reason I don't think he can bundle it off even if he wants to. SQ42's story is so broad and they have the funding to do it all that they decided not to cut the story in half. This is amazing because instead of getting a 50 hour long campaign it will be closer to 80 or 100. However Chris said they don't think they can get it out by the release of the PU so they are already in plans on how they would weave the story in and out for those that are playing the PU and want to continue playing the story in SQ42. He explained two ways they could handle it but I forget the details atm.

I would expect maybe the first 2-3 Chapters of SQ42 being complete by PU launch at the end of 2016 and the last two Chapters in 2017. Once all of that massive amount of assets exist it will be significantly easier to speed up production on more Chapters. This is what is holding up SQ42, the lack of manpower to churn out the massive amount of assets required for it. Which is why they are still hiring even though their team is now roughly 320 people at last count. It's also the reason why Chris can't bundle off SQ42 or if he does it would have to be heavily discounted at first with the player having to pay more as the Chapters are launched.

IF the Devs can nail the FPS portion of the game while also offering a great space flight game, well, I'm sold.

Felmega_sl said:

IF the Devs can nail the FPS portion of the game while also offering a great space flight game, well, I'm sold.

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I'm hopeful but TBD.

I love good FPS games and I can tell the difference between a shit one and a good one within five minutes of playing around with the game and feeling out the controls, environment etc. So while this is certainly a major concern of mine as well we do have input and we can tell them it sucks. They have already modified the flight model based on feedback so I don't see why they wouldn't modify FPS based on feedback. They seem to have a decent bullshit filter so I'm not too worried about loud noobs ruining the experience for the rest of us.

On that note the FPS arena game should be out by mid year at the latest and should get one or two major iterations before end of year if all goes well.

Fuck they are going to be super busy in 2016 too.

I have to say stuff like this gets me exited:Design: mobiGlas - Roberts Space Industries


It is basically how they will be handling their UI and menus. It is a long read, but it sounds way cool. Some of the things they describe aren't *that* different from pushing "I" to open up your inventory, but the whole experience seems to be very interactive with your environment including the other players. Perfect fit for a Futuristic MMO.

It is the kind of thing that could really set the play-experience apart from your typical MMO, if they manage to not make it clunky, overcomplicated, buggy and unintuitive. But it seems they are well aware of that pitfall.

Yeah they just showed a tiny bit of the new animations and I was like wtf? It just looks like they took video capture of a person and put it into the game. Which is of course a major compliment. That is not fucking easy to pull off. Another game that did that well is the latest MGS.

I'm way less concerned about animations all of a sudden and more apprehensive about character customization. It's one of those things that everyone fails on. I mean I can't even come up with a single game title that has done extensive character customization well. Actually I can name one. Star Wars Galaxies and that's only because they put a cut down version of Maya into the game. Your artistic talent was pretty much the limit. I made an insanely attractive girl from that but it took me close to 9 hours. Wish I would have kept the pics because I could never replicate that level of detail in any other game.

Can someone please give me a brief recap on where this game stands? Is it going to a real live MMO in space with like Privateer gameplay? I'm confused about the various different games being released - like FPS and story.. eh.. is it all coming out together as an MMO ever? What about ships? I guess some people have spent shit loads on ships already? Can you not get ships normally through gameplay, or should I go and drop some money right now?

Are there any vids? Like I'd be interested in seeing those sweet vids mentioned a couple posts above.

Mist_sl said:

I saw some gameplay vids circulating of the current internal version of the arena module and it looks incredibly well polished already.

Turns out that 70+ million dollars + near evangelical proselytizing MIGHT actually deliver something.

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Stop being an ass and link that shit!

Variise_sl said:

Yeah they just showed a tiny bit of the new animations and I was like wtf? It just looks like they took video capture of a person and put it into the game. Which is of course a major compliment. That is not fucking easy to pull off. Another game that did that well is the latest MGS.

I'm way less concerned about animations all of a sudden and more apprehensive about character customization. It's one of those things that everyone fails on. I mean I can't even come up with a single game title that has done extensive character customization well. Actually I can name one. Star Wars Galaxies and that's only because they put a cut down version of Maya into the game. Your artistic talent was pretty much the limit. I made an insanely attractive girl from that but it took me close to 9 hours. Wish I would have kept the pics because I could never replicate that level of detail in any other game.

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SWG was the only game where I could create a pearshaped fat dude. Since Star Citizen will be a Universe, also with non-combat roles, it should be possible to make a fat dude. Not that all enlisted men are so athletic, but still.

EVE has decent customization since an expansion that came a few years ago, it was for that WiS plan that they claimed to expand upon before dropping the entire idea.