There is no need to do so. "Currently, on the Alpha and Public Test Universe (PTU), all ships and vehicles are given a basic insurance plan that does not expire to facilitate testing. At this time, it requires no upkeep or fee for players to acquire basic ship loss coverage."
I don’t care how you spend your money, but you were the one arguing that the game is only 35 dollars and that almost all your ships were in game and flyable. So it certainly seems like you have spent more than that. So it certainly seems this game is much more expensive to the people that are still most interested in it.
Is this article written by AI? It has all sorts of strange errors and repeated words. Like the sentence at the end of this paragraph. I know it is popular to call out everything as AI right now but this article is suspicous.
You know its weird, here people are downvoting me for agreeing its great. On another post I’m being downvoted for saying its okay. Y’all just don’t know and thats okay. If you know what you need and you are just unfamiliar with a library, ChatGPT can explain it fine if your prompt is concise.
If you have no idea what you are doing and know nothing about programming, its not going to help you. I am currently using it to assist with small tasks using Excel.Interop and it basically spat out a working program for me to tweak. Don’t really know what to tell you about that but I can post it to GitHub I guess.
Its fine with programming so long as you know to take it with a grain of salt and give it detailed prompts. Like for instance, if you don’t specify it usually defaults to Row 1 when dealing with ranges, thats fine, because I know what row I need.
I mean you have to verify it as much as any answer on Stack Overflow. Lets not act like dudes haven’t been ripping code from there and just flying with it.
Never ask it for advice period. It is always confident because that's the most believable way to present information on the internet. It is usually wrong because it is not actually intelligent.
There is a wierd amount of generative-learning articles on game/tech Lemmy. I keep seeing these articles from publications that I’ve never heard of and I get excited because “Oo new people in the space” then halfway through the article I feel duped.
Yeah I spent 60€ to get the avenger titan much later.
The bright side is, it is about as finished as No Man’s sky was. That is, buggy as hell game, but playable. It is fun to go in and fuck around in, but I definitely pity the people who have sunk hundreds or thousands into it.
That’s not an accurate comparison, The game breaking bugs in NMS on release were patched a day or two after release (I stupidly preorderd and experienced the hyperdrive blueprint issue). But the issue with NMS wasn’t really bugs, just over promises by the developers that didn’t match the final product. At least there was a few hundred hours of gameplay and complete gameplay loops.
Star Citizen, another game I stupidly preordered / Kickstarted (I’ma sucker for space games; kickstarted Elite Dangerous too) is a totally different kettle of fish. A decade later, there still isn’t a single, non-buggy / non-broken game loop in the entire game.
I so desperately want to like Star Citizen but for $600mil, having a few hours of “mucking about” with no real purpose nor way to achieve anything meaningful without experiencing migraine-inducing bugs, it’s pretty much unforgivable.
For the same money, I’ve been able to play Elite Dangerous for almost a decade and sink 1000s of hours, build a massive fleet of ships, and hang out with my buddies without screaming at the game. Sure, it’s shallower, but at least the loops are complete and the management were able to regularly make meaningful feature additions to the game over the years (although Odyssey was an utter shitshow at launch and took a year to patch into something stable and fun).
I’ve been playing it on the Steam Deck (haven’t had a chance to play on the desktop yet as it’s currently extremely hot where I live so I’m huddled next to the aircon). And yes, it actually plays. Low frames in big cities but otherwise seemingly playable!
I love it. It’s more Skyrim than No Man’s Sky but I’ I’ve been playing Bethesda games since Redguard so I’m biased and a fan of their jank.
Nice! That’s good to know. I was actually waiting for feedback on how it runs on the steam deck before taking the plunge (since that’s where I’m planning to play it most of the time). As long as it’s playable, I think it should be good.
You’ll be playing it on low settings for everything and there are major frame drops in the big cities. But I’ve sunk around 8h in on the Deck and so has my partner. So far, so good. Only crash to desktop happened after resuming the Deck from sleep mid play.
I kickstarted it 11 years ago, I'm sure squadron 42 will be out any day now, right?
Luckily, I really wanted a space sim, so I kickstarted elite too. It was far less hyped and star citizen fans always big up how they're not the same scope (which is true if you ignore everything else about SC), but at least it was released and very enjoyable.
I usually try star citizen out every time I get a new PC to see if it's any better just to make myself happy that I never sunk money into ship preorders etc
Dumb gamer whales will continue fueling it, too blinded by the fact that they're being robbed blind. The same idiots that gamify with WATA on sales. The same idiots that love freemium games and will pay top dollar to keep an advantage.
The continual assembly line of idiots that invest in this, the more likely SC will never be finalized. They know if that they finalize the game, the gravy train ends.
I was an original backer, I’ve played various iterations over the years and it really takes a lot of rose tint to find the game as it is enjoyable. The core loop isn’t even in place yet. The systems that do exist and work are interesting, the graphics and aesthetics are top notch, in parts, and at times it feels like we’re going to get something revolutionary. But then you play for a while and the unfinished jank gets to you, it’s not very fun. It’s cool, it’s impressive, the scope is insane and you can get lost in the vastness of space in ways that other games just can’t even approach. But it’s not fun. You can make it fun with friends or by setting up your own goals disjoined from the gameplay loop. Like try and jump a vehicle into the cargo bay mid flight or see how tightly you can race around asteroids. But if you just play the existing little loops it sucks. This is of course my subjective opinion. You might love the bounty system and the combat. You might love the salvage runs and transport missions but to me it’s like Euro Truck Simulator which is about the most boring shit I can imagine. And both the space and ground combat just isn’t even remotely as good as other games that just focus on that, which is understandable but I’m always left with this feeling of “will I really enjoy the finished product?” And I’m not sure. The game they said they were going to make in the Kickstarter, that game I would’ve enjoyed. I loved Chris Roberts games as a kid, but this monstrosity it has become? I just don’t know.
That said I really do believe they’re trying to make the best game ever. They just don’t fundamentally understand why we need deadlines and a fixed scope to get things out the door.
I don't think they were chasing newer tech, so much as the development was taking so incredibly long that their current tech had literally aged out of the common gamer's expectations and they HAD to do it over to seem current.
That may be. I do remember somewhere in a documentary that they kept re-developing stuff for different libraries/technologies. I think at least one was voluntary. I can't recall which doc this was, though.
I feel the same way. For the 30 or so dollars I spent as an early backer I’ve actually had some fun times in the game, and I don’t actually think it’s quite the total loss that people make it out to be, but it certainly should be far, far better than it is after a decade and 600m dollars invested in it.
It’s more like a piece of art than a game, meant to be looked at but not played
I have played the game maybe 10-20h and the content variety is not great, there is however an insane attention to detail in terms of ship design which you can get lost in.
there is however an insane attention to detail in terms of ship design which you can get lost in
Those details do not change, however. The secret “smuggling” compartment on one of the ships, for example, is found in the exact same place with the exact same chess piece every time, rendering its novelty for “smuggling” actually worthless for actual gameplay if such gameplay ever happened.
For detailed ships all you need to do is hire a 3D artist, you don’t need a game for that.
The rest is a mess. Free fly weekend? I load in and all the NPCs are T-Posing and standing around. Or sitting half in the ground. The surroundings are lifeless, there is absolutely nothing to interact with besides some doors/elevators. And don’t even get me started on the bugs and performance (I have a 3080 and 5800X3D at 1440p, so it should run fine…).
So no matter how much content they might add in the future, it doesn’t feel like they have the technical side down at all. And the technical part is the entire make or break it topic as they are trying to build something on a scale no one has done before (and a MMO on top…).
For years now my personal bet is that the game will never come out. And if it ever does it will get negative reviews for being an unplayable mess.
Have you heard of the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV, which you’ll soon be able to play with an even further expanded free trial which you can play through the entirety of A Realm Reborn, Heavensward and the Stormblood expansions up to level SEVENTY for free with no restrictions on playtime?
A grift implies that someone is making bank off of it.
No, Chris Roberts is instead burning money by having devs do work, then redo work to add in some last minute shit that he thought of, then repeat until the feature creep completely overtakes their lives. It's the Chris Roberts way.
Work is being done on the game, but remember that treading water is also a lot of work.
He isn’t, but he’s not out there buying multiple sports cars and a yatch either. I really do believe there isn’t anything sinister going on, just a whole bunch of good intended people wasting a collosal amount of money on a dream project where devs get to do exactly what they want and don’t need to adhere to deadlines, no crunch, no job security threats and just no pressure. It’s probably bliss working there but they have no hope of ever making an actual finished product because there is literally noone there with the goal to push a product out the door on X date. It will be done when it’s done, and everyone who’s ever worked in such a loose environment knows that means never until someone comes in and lays down the law.
And before someone comes in and says “Y indie project bla bla” remember that there is a VAST difference between a small game with say 1000-5000 man hours behind it and a large AAA game which Star Citizen aims to be which entail at minimum 100.000s of man hours of work. You can be extremely loose and take your time with a small idea like say Vampire Survivor and scope creep it to hell and back and it still won’t take more than a year or two until there just isn’t anything more to do but release it.
There is probably some clever parallel to draw here to utopian political ideologies but my brain is mush after a grueling week so I’ll leave that to someone else.
The biggest waste is all the employees and the offices to house them. Details like decorations and conference tables are just a red herring, it’s not the real issue. Just look at their road map, and then consider that they have 1100 people on payroll working on that roadmap, not including third parties like voice actors etc. It’s fascinating.
It’s just because that irks you when there are layoffs. But office supplies are assets, they’re on the books and while they depreciate over time it’s still something that can be sold and doesn’t cost anything after you’ve bought them. The actual office building is different, since you generally rent it and the staff you need to pay monthly and you can’t sell them to recoup part of the investment. High quality chairs etc cost a fortune, but they also last a decade plus in many cases. Still earlier this year they had 1000+ employees, that isn’t sustainable for a game relying on donations basically. You need predatory microtransactions for that to workout which is of course part of the reason CIG monetizes in the way they do, they need to keep the boat afloat.
If the average salary is just $20k yearly were looking at a salary spend in excess of $20 million a year, not including offices or payroll taxes, benefits etc. And I imagine that the average salary is higher than that. If they are laying people off the reason is that someone in finance is putting his foot down saying this just can’t go on.
Haha, that’s not a yatch. That’s a motorboat, we’re talking in the $100k-$1000k range with the topend being unlikely. I agree the optics aren’t the best but it’s not at all crazy to afford something like that on a business leader salary. Sure from a pure ethics standpoint he should take a modest salary and keep at it until the game is released and his obligations to his supporters fulfilled and then get rich. But who has ever been that principled? I can’t really fault him for something everyone does. He’s also been fairly successful for a long time already so he likely had money before SC as well. Now if I’m wrong and another angle shows this is some gaudy 10 million dollar+ yatch he bought recently then I’ll absolutely reevaluate!
He isn’t, but he’s not out there buying multiple sports cars and a yatch either. I really do believe there isn’t anything sinister going on, just a whole bunch of good intended people wasting a collosal amount of money on a dream project where devs get to do exactly what they want and don’t need to adhere to deadlines, no crunch, no job security threats and just no pressure.
Source, your uncle works at CIG?
It's been years since I followed it closely but I remember seeing a youtube video documenting in detail the nepotism and mismanagement going on at CIG like 5 years ago with evidence from their actual videos or public info on websites. Wasn't there also a huge forbes article a while ago talking about the same thing? And if anything, the fact that all these years later we still don't have any new info about SQ42 that was supposed to be almost done in 2018, less alone a finished game, just goes to confirm that they were right about at least some things.
I am saying they’re doing a shit job at delivering a game to us backers. I just don’t think it’s nefarious, just sheer incompetence. They value making the best thing highly, they think the best thing means the most feature rich and realistic thing, and thus they allow scope creep to literally eat money via man-hours in a way that can only and will lead to CIG going bankrupt long before a game is ever released in a finished state. Unless someone high up over there wisens up. Forces a hard deadline and cuts the scope down agressively to meet it and gets the game(s) released. But I find that exceedingly unlikely.
They have outright lied about state of development and progress being done. I remember when CR himself said on citizencon stage that SQ42 demo had to be delayed for a few weeks due to some last minute animation issues that would ruin the first impression, but that other than that it was practically done. Then few weeks later they released a crying video about how much work it is and why it takes so long and asking for understanding.
That was like in 2018 or 2019, and now 4 years later we still don't have anything to show for it, even regarding sq42 alone. At one point it stops being incompetence, they are just full of shit most of the time.
That might very well be. My take on everything I’ve seen so far is that it likely was ready. Just that CR or someone else said “wouldn’t it be cool if we also had X in there?” And then they just said fuck releasing, we need X in there! Then X lead to Y and along the way someone proposed A and that would be so cool but if we have A why not B and…
If we had access to their Jira or whatever they use I can all but guarantee that the backlog grows faster than they can close issues.
And it’s also undeniable that they are developing stuff. Just very questionable stuff at times and they decide to redo stuff all the time.
If this turns out to be exclusive, I’m pirating it in show of support for the PS community. Gamers shouldn’t have to miss out because of BS corporate wars.
If you hate the practice of exclusivity (or the version of it that Microsoft or Sony have these days), the more effective action would be not only to not buy it but also to not play it. When you play it, you can discuss it on forums, share word of mouth, and other things that encourage other people to buy it. When you don't play it, you're probably supporting some other game that needs the support more and abides by your values.
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