Cult Citizen

[icycalm]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8REar-q ... HnN4AaABAg

I hope they light up the spaceport a lot more. If you see airports from the sky they are very distinctive and very well lit. Spaceports in Star Citizen are extremely dark and very hazardous to land in. They should be lit up like Christmas trees so you can easily tell where each hangar is from long distances. When I come out of quantum I should be able to tell at a glance where to go, especially if I have never been there before. Light up your spaceports and outposts CIG.

Very much this. The outposts aren't bad, but the spaceports need work. Orison's is especially egregious to the point where there are Reddit threads with pics showing you how to land.

[icycalm]

https://twitter.com/caztopia/status/1585485968857247744

How it's started and how it's going lol

Yes, Star Citizen is a dating sim

We haven't encountered this gameplay yet. If anyone's interested, message me.

[icycalm]

Didn't realise cockpit glass gets more scratches if you fly long enough without exploding.
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... _scratches

[icycalm]

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Wipe
https://www.patreon.com/posts/73894904

When the "full release" (lmao) comes, the newbs will be starting from square one, and you'll be part of a goddamn fearsome MILITARY.

[icycalm]

https://twitter.com/TheRubenSaurus/stat ... 1147253760

So I tried to play Star Citizen on the 4k monitor, and now I never want to go back to 1080p.
RIP my RTX 2070s on 99% all the time from now :)
The details are just so much better.

It really is. I play in 4k all the time and then i watch a 1080 video on youtube and im like wait why is it so fuzzy! Heh

Tbh if you ever try to mine with Mole's center turret at 1080p and switch to UHD you will understand that the game was never intended to be played at FHD

ysignal will have to get the Mole because with the 4090/13900K supercomputer he has ordered, he's the only one of us who can play at 4K.

That said, the guy said he's playing with the 2070 Super, and Chev for example has a 2080 Ti. Hell Archonus now has a 3070, he just doesn't have the screen for it. Chev does have the 4K projector though. But... I prefer if he uses the extra juice to stream rather than play slideshow at 4K.

[icycalm]

https://twitter.com/sorrelkj/status/1585655867306713089

[icycalm]

SC funding chart october 2022. Projected to hit 100 million us dollar by end of year
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... ted_to_hit



Clear trend that income is accelerating, and this year it hits $100M. If it had been making this much since the first year, it'd have brought in a billion by now.

I bet anything you want that when the second solar system goes in we'll get to $200M/year very shortly. If they manage to release Squadron 42 at some point, and if it's anywhere near as good as previous Chris Roberts campaigns, we'll hit $300M/year.

Can someone remind me what happened between 2019 and 2020 that caused the huge jump?

I can't imagine that was all due to being locked down due to the apocalypse.

There is a combination of factors:

• Late 2019: The game changed with the introduction of Long-Term Persistence (wipes were not mandatory from then on, making time investment in the game more viable), the Carrack (flagship long-awaited and back then jaw-dropping ship interior) and Microtech (playable area the size of Canada, beautiful landing zone, a step further in the game)

You can see the boost in sales had increased already vs late 2018 very significantly (which already debunked the myth that 2020's sales were all 'lockdown', which proved obvious when 2021 sales didn't dip but instead grew).

• April 2020: lockdown must have been a factor too, shifting of spend from travel, transport, concerts to other form of entertainment boosted video game spending, that's well known
  
• May 2020: Invictus was introduced, CIG nailed adding a second hot sales period to their marketing calendar, which is also a period that created an influx of new player (and did so in 2021 and 2022 too)
  
• October 2021: introduction of 3.15, with back then a massive improvement in server stability (not only 30k disconnect were mitigated with the introduction of a mechanism to make your ship respawnable with all its content if you suffered a 30K, but the occurrence of 30Ks massively reduced), and a looting mechanic opening up new game loops that changed how the game is played
  
• Spring 2022: the release of Elite Dangerous: Odyssey was, ehm, less than ideal and a number of prominent ED community members started playing SC not long after (CitizenKate being one example) bringing more eyes to the game
  
• Spring 2022: YouTubers with large audiences like JackFrags, LevelCap, Ollie43 did the same thing, creating other waves of newcomers

Arguably, we do not know the relative weight of the above factor (and other factors) in explaining the record-breaking player base growth and the also record-breaking funding growth, but it's hardly just because of "lockdown", and the Occam's razor explanation, to the dismay of people who hate on the game, is that simply more and more people are finding it worth to support the project based on what they see and play.

This is an excellent take. One other thing I always like to point out in these discussions:

The world is much larger than we typically allow ourselves to comprehend when having these discussions.

What I mean by that: absent any traditional marketing, Star Citizen is relatively unknown. This fact raises the eyebrows of those who claim "but look how much money they've raised already! That can't possibly be true!"

And this is where the size of the human population becomes a very important variable in this discussion.

There is a reason more than half of mainstream movie budgets go into marketing - it works. Same is true of video games. Everything we've seen to date has been word of mouth, even if some of those mouths are big YouTubers - that still is not traditional print and electronic advertisement media. If word of mouth were sufficient, advertising wouldn't be the absolute behemoth it is in terms of finding an audience.

I think people keep (incorrectly) seeing the numbers go into what seems "ludicrous mode" to them and think "any day now, it'll crest and stop".

The reality is, we aren't anywhere CLOSE to the top. Not until a SIGNIFICANT number of people actually know the game exists.

It will drop jaws when the first real SC / SQ42 commercial arrives - and the surge in money will make what has happened so far look like a school fundraiser by comparison.

Much of it is the progress you noted. Much of it is simply the ongoing flow of word of mouth and the reality of how massive the potential audience is.

Couple months back there was a clip circulating of this YouTuber who flew a x-wing type ship with hosas attacking a capital ship but not in the traditional StarWars style. It was using Newtonian style “like” physics flight. Everyone was oh wow is this StarWars that and that. Or is it new and god it looks absolutely gorgeous up till the people in the know spoke up.

No he is flying a scorpius which looks quite a bit like an x wing or Babylon 5 starfury. He is attacking a bengal(bagel) carrier in a special star citizen event.

Wtf??? This gorgeous game is that train wreck of a game star citizen I read about that was pure vaporware??

I really love to see new people loving the game. Quite a lot it seems are pissed that they have been lied to as to not taking a closer look at the game earlier.

I remember that one

Almost 54k upvotes, 4.6 million views on GfyCat, and the most upvoted reply to the most upvoted comment is "Dude how about from NOW. This looks ridiculous. What is this??". There appears to be an as yet untapped market out there.

But yeah, that video is perfect. Star Wars reference as the title, smooth gameplay as the Scorp buzzes the Bengal with lots of action in the background, and that pièce de résistance of an explosion gutting that Hercules at the end coupled with the music punch. CIG could just drop that video as an advertisement and give Terada a Javalin as a thank you

It was quite entertaining watching thay post blow up. Initially everyone is like "OMG, that's amazing. What game is this?" Then the flopd of "it's a scam!" Then they slowly got downvoted into the oblivion.

That clip just tells such a perfect story. There's foreshadowing as you see the massive turret turning as he passes over it, and then it happens just as the Herc comes into the foreground.

I love when multiplayer gameplay turns out so cinematic.

Bro just imagine how many outside eyeballs a proper ad campaign can attract with just the visuals, AAA have played this bait&switch trick for years and people never learn. But for SC what you see in the trailers is what you see in game, more or less.

Henry Cavill alone in the press tour for SQ42 when it comes eventually comes out will probably do wonders for mainstream exposure. Gary Oldman and Mark Hamill are other A Listers that will make people take note, especially the sci-fi nerds that love the genre but aren't plugged into the space gaming niche.

I did a double take when I read the above, had no idea Cavill is in the game. I've had an image showing the main actors for years, but his face isn't on it. It must be because he was less famous back then? At any rate, here he is on Facebook promoting his participation in the game: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1987318377958330

And answer the call I did! It was a genuine pleasure and a real
privilege to be a part of this unfolding saga and to have the
opportunity to play Ryan Enright. I cannot wait to get my hands
on this game! But wait, there is more....the link to the full trailer is in the comments below.

You make a very important point. Every year we keep hearing the argument that SC's addressable market has already either got stuck into sunk cost fallacy or abandoned the project, and every year that argument is proven false.

Not only this is because the current marketing efforts from CIG, regardless of how well-crafted their trailers are, are nowhere near what a AAA publisher would spend when their game is nearing release, but also we tend to wrongly put SC in a niche market based on player bases of niche space sim games. What these do not have is the jaw-dropping visual content and breadth SC is aiming for. They may fail of course, but the scope of the game is so mind-blowing that I think it is reasonable to say that the potential audience is actually massive (though capped to the PC market, for now).

Most of what you mentioned is what brought me from being on the fence to even try out the free fly to being a concierge in less than 6 months.

Main factors include Elite Dangerous Odyssey being an absolute train wreck, pandemic, 3.15 actually made this fairly a decent game before that it always felt like a tech demo from the YouTube videos i saw. And post 3.15, the updates have been more frequent and less controversial. I joined the verse during the peak shit show when the whole roadmap drama was going on. We rarely see that kind of controversy anymore. I also feel CIG upped their PR game in the last year.

[icycalm]

https://twitter.com/DamekCritou/status/ ... 8149052416

[icycalm]

PVErs get rekt itt: https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... _pvp_event

Indeed it speaks to the ever growing schism in the game and it's rather binary unfortunately, and I say this without judgment. The growing numbers who want this game or expect it to be a total solo PvE experience and those who fully embrace multi crew and multi ship gameplay. There are players who will never be active in Orgs and who can't or won't play and talk with other players. Unfortunately they think this game is completely for them. It is for them for sure in many ways, but it feels like we are playing two different games sometimes. The whole idea of just hoping into the game for hours to "chill" by yourself will always have some consequences. Just like getting a crime stat and PvP in general does.

There will definitely be systems with high security that will solo players to play more casually with PvE and low security systems where more combat oriented players or PvP will be common. But no one will be completely immune to combat and playing completely solo will always have at least a SLIGHT disadvantage. There is no other logical conclusion. It is inconceivable that CIG could make a perfect balance between a solo multi crew experience with blades and NPC crew vs a group of Organized players. This is an MMO by definition and there are countless ships designed with multi crew in mind in a dangerous Verse.

They hate to hear it though. Hence the downvotes.

I cant wait to see people in a hull series complaining they got raided by a bunch of cutlass blacks and had all their cargo stolen, while flying in a lawless system with no escorts, and a full load of whatever the most valuable cargo is. I just hope that the risk for being a pirate is actually a problem, unlike in other games where you just pay a small fine, or can't land at max security systems.

I've been saying for a long time that we need an Inside Star Citizen episode which solely deals with the CIG and the Devs communicating certain core design principles and intentions for the game. I'm so sick of the theory crafting and the constant pointless debates between the Solos and the Organized Players as well as the PvE players and the PvP players. I want them to say definitively how much you should expect to be able to do solo, how much of the game is intended to support PvP, and how much of an advantage players playing together will have. Once we have that, it can be linked into every post about griefers and murder-hobos, PvE vs PvP and ultimately all the Solo and Chill discussion which has gotten so tiresome.

I think they want to deliberately avoid that though - because they want to basically build a playground that supports all sorts of things and then we all figure out the amount that we're going to lean in any given direction.

Some of that may need to be revisited once Quantum comes online - but we have long enough runway to where today's intention may not line up with where they land when we release.

And since we know that as soon as they say anything players will repeat it forever (even if it was never meant as an indelible data point), it's likely in their best interest to remain quiet.

Counterpoint: There will always be players that are upset that others would choose to work against them or be a hurdle in their attempts to enrich themselves.

That's just human nature. You'll see this in other games too, like GTA V when player try to sell their cargo.

CIG could plaster "This is PvP content" all over the event promos, in game contracts, NPC voice comms etc.. and players would STILL be angry at the PvPers.

There's very little that can be done for people already in that mind set, especially when it comes from the players who are playing the role of the villain in the story. (That's what the 9t side of the mission is, player controlled villains).

So please understand, that when you take on the role of the bad guy, people will inherently have the same feelings towards you and your behavior that they would to a villain. This is natural and normal. If you can't cope with the ramifications of being treated like a villain in a roleplaying game, don't play the role of the villain.

Please understand, as much as I find it frustrating when another player is the reason I wasn't able to accomplish my goal in a game where every single attempt at accomplishing something is already a gamble because of the buggy state of the game and at any moment you could 30k. I do feel that PvP is important and should be allowed and that these kinds of events are overall good for the community.

There needs to be more space to spread out ideas and wants such as regions where PvP and war are king and areas where PvE and commerce are the way to go.

We don't currently have that, and when there's an event like this it ends up being the players who like PvP are the defacto winners if they choose to participate and the risk averse and more casual players are the ones that get the rude awakening.

Have a little compassion for them when you're blowing them up. In most cases you can't help them cope any better and any attempts to do so will just make them more angry/frustrated. This is a game design consideration, not a player to player thing. CIG is responsible for the design of the game and the reward/consequence balance for winning/losing.

Once they've decided, you guys need to direct your feedback to them, not at each other. People will behave the way they're going to behave in any given rule set.

If you're on the "Don't shoot me!" side of things, let CIG know. Being angry at the other players just deepens the animosity on both sides as you're trying to police behavior that is not only allowed but built into the design of the content.

If you're on the "I love PvP!" side of things, don't be cruel about it. Blow up their ship, and move on. Don't try to rationalize your behavior to them, they're not interested. Don't bully or antagonize them in chat afterwards, that just makes you look childish and abusive.

But most importantly, TELL CIG HOW YOU FEEL! regardless of which side you fall on or if you're in the middle. They're the ones that can actually change things.

I think this is all a fair take but you might be underestimating the value of clearer signposting that an event is a PvP event in which by entering you run the risk of combat with others. For example, you don't complain if someone kills you in Arena Commander because you knew from the get go what you were signing up for, so you can enter the game with more of an attitude of sportsmanship.

In open world events obviously the game is a sandbox so CIG don't want to be too gimmicky or unrealistic with the information presented; the very unpredictability of the event and the players involved is what adds to the realism. However, if a cargo hauler goes straight from their usual routes to seeing this new mission to deliver medical supplies, they may stay in their usual mindset. Same with PvE bounty players excited to see a chance to kill a 9T fleet; without it being made abundantly clear that there's another player faction to this event and their goal is to kill you, I can see how players can enter the event unaware of this and then get salty and start throwing the word "griefer" around (which is deeply problematic when you consider that griefing is by definition bannable behaviour against TOS, so to imply that criminal players are no different to a troll who should be banned, when those players are literally playing within the parameters of a CIG designed mission, is not okay).

I'd argue that logging in to the game, you accept and understand that you are entering a PVP area. They've made no bones about it.

As a "PVP is not my primary desire" player, I accept this. As a result, even on those nights when I prefer to be left alone to run cargo or bunkers, etc. - I don't get bent out of shape when I encounter PVP. I knew the risks the moment I logged in.

Understanding that makes the vast majority of these conversations entirely moot.

I really think is a poor recommendation to send people to CIG to complain about getting killed in a PVP event. i also think you are putting too much of a burden on the PvP players. Sometimes you will get killed and someone will talk some shit. I get that they are upset and their feelings might be hurt, but this is a game where you die if you forget to put a helmet on when you go outside. If someone can't handle getting killed once and a while in this game where the only thing you lose are fake credits that are going to disappear in a month anyways, maybe the person getting mad needs to take a hard look at why they play Star Citizen. Complaining like this is how you end up in situations where there are giant no pvp allowed zones and you alienate a whole group of players.

I think every event should have a pvp aspect to it, otherwise it just seems stale. I’m not the best pilot, get kills time to time but I’ve had my share of getting smoked. It’s all supposed to be part of the game, the people crying griefers are becoming the griefers themselves with this participation trophy take.

No, I want free aUEC with no risk involved.

You can do pretty well collecting and selling med gowns/gear at ghex. Just learn the trick for the elevators and collect off the dead bodies.

This is the true definition of a side hustle

A note to everyone reading this: We don't use the word "griefer" in The Cult, unless ironically. We love "griefers" here. We are "griefers".

[icycalm]

CIG is calling its CryEngine -> Lumberyard engine StarEngine. How different is it to the base engines it's derived from and all other competitors? Here is the answer: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spec ... -w/5469159

You can't really compare StarEngine to any other engine at this point in time anymore. Feature wise? Sure, but that is really surface level. Pretty much every engine nowadays has PBR, Physics, Scripting, Skeletal Animations and and and...
Personally i think an engine is usually superior to others due to excellent documentations and tutorials. Unity is the best prove of that.
UE5 however might have gained a technological advancement with Lumen and Nanite, however to this day we haven't seen it yet in a big commercial shipped game.
I'm still sceptical that it will work so much better than traditional lod-based rendering. Only time will tell here though.

Years of developing and having many of the original engine developers working at CIG Star Engine already has become it's own thing.
We have our own toolsets, our own technologies and very unique and customized code which we can freely change whatever suits our needs.

Also: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spec ... -w/5469163

The power and possibilities of having an in-house engine development team can't be overstated... I'm so so happy for the Frankfurt office and everyone else working on the engine and how far StarEngine has already come - - and how much further it can potentially go with all of you working on it

And btw, I read the reason they moved to Lumberyard (which is a CryEngine fork) is because it makes using Amazon servers easier. It seems to come with AWS integration.

[icycalm]

Roadmap Sprintwatch in Graph Form! 9 Nov 2022 ("Spirit on the board! Corsair on target for next week! Map & Rader SOON™! RaStar sprint nearly complete!" Edition)
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... 9_nov_2022



"Indie" game development, believe it or not.

"Cybernetics Concept 100%".

"Sandbox Prison Soap Activities".

[icycalm]

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... months_ago

Started playing 4 months ago...

$400 in flight sticks and pedals and now switched from my avenger titan package to a Cutter while also CCU chaining to a separate cutter package to a Corsair so they both have lifetime insurance... damn you Chris Roberts I am in deep now.

Tell us about it. We must be at least at $1500 as a clan after three months. And that's without counting sticks and pedals.

[icycalm]

From the Corsair page: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm ... ke-Corsair

This is how interactive they want to make the game eventually. The TV will work, tablets will work, mini-games everywhere to pass the time, full eating, sleeping and showering. A jump from one end of a system to another already takes 10-15 minutes. If you're travelling across half a dozen systems it'll be an hour at least plus refueling stops. What will your passengers do all this time? So the more interactivity there is in the environments and living quarters, the less you will care how long anything takes to happen (and things MUST take long to happen, because otherwise the illusion is shattered and you're just playing an arcade game). Shenmue already proved this design two decades ago, in embryonic form. It's time to take it to large scale.

[icycalm]

any advice on what to do with a Perseus when it comes out? I'm totally excited yet intimidated.
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... us_when_it

No, because it requires functionality for the PD-turrets that won't exist until turret AI blades get implemented.

AI blades, in turn, are going to take forever because they're closely tied to multiple systems. Their balance mechanism is that you have to pick what capabilities you want your ship to have, limited by computer power.

Until we have multiple capabilities that could be AI blades, computer power would not be limited since there's no competition, so no AI blades.

Those other systems are such a massive list of starry-eyed dream features they're not showing up any time in the near future. It's like advanced scanning, drone control, storage capacity for data running... all major game loops which haven't even been touched.

So the Perseus is blocked three steps behind a laundry list of things that aren't happening.

If I was going to bet on a large military ship to get done first it'd be the Polaris and we've all seen how that went. It got prioritized behind the BMM which is now looking like it, in turn, will be prioritized behind shit they haven't even thought of yet.

Large ships are a ripoff. CIG's not building them. Don't buy them.

I am not that cynical. My working theory is everything's coming as long as the game keeps making money. Just don't buy jpegs. Buy stuff that's in the game and working. If everyone did this, they wouldn't put so much emphasis on selling jpegs. I wouldn't say no to free money either, if people bought jpegs, I'd sell them jpegs.

[icycalm]

S W E E T D R E A M S [reupload]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZrFy2DhOFw



One of the best trailers ever. I put it at #3 in my Ultimate Trailer Ranking. It's made to look like a VHS action flick trailer. Makes Top Gun and Star Wars and general movie action look lame.

[icycalm]

I present to you, the Backlog, in image form.
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... image_form



All the concept ships that have been sold but not put in the game yet. Vehicles really, as there are motorcycles too and stuff if you zoom in far enough.



And these are all the vehicles in the game currently for comparison.

Not a bad score, in my book. It's mainly the huge ones they aren't putting in. The naysayers say it's because they take too much work and don't make as much money as the smaller ones. CIG says it's because they need advanced multicrew mechanics to make the big ships meaningful. Also server meshing (coming with 4.0), so the servers don't melt. The truth is a bit of both, I am sure.

And to think its not just the backlog, its the entire rework of most of these ships when the new systems come online

This IS scary tho.

[icycalm]

Development has actually been fairly impressive (super long)
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... impressive

I completely agree. When I think about CIG's business model, realize that no other company has been able to sucessfully do this before, and develop the tech while having a product that we can enjoy.... well I think CR is smarter than all these people who complain about the timing.

But hey, is that a surprise? He's the CEO of an international engineering firm. Yes hes smarter. Yes he is doing the right thing. Yes the game is fun. Yes he needs concept ships to continue to pay for the development of the game.

But have any of you considered that CIG now owns the IP rights to universe building tools?

Porshe did this thing with their business model. They sold amazing sports cars, but most of their revenue came from engineering fees. They sold their services as an engineering firm and designed parts for their competitor's cars.

CIG is now positioned to take on work building high fidelity worlds for other company's games using the tools that they created. They may not be talking about this but I bet this is the real end game. With Turbulent being hired on to build systems, this is a perfect exemple and selling point. Showing that others can pick it up and make a great product with a short amount of training.

If it isnt... well CIG, call me and lets discuss. You may need some help with long term strategy, and it would be in your best int interest to find a way to ween yourself off crowd funding in the future. It has served you well but there are better ways to gain revenue, like sales of a finished single player game (which your doing) and marketing of your toolset.

I really think SC will be a great game, but CIGs real future is being the core of the gaming world.

Also one thing I don't ever see anyone realizing is that any singular relatively recent ship (released within the last 3 years) is already FAR more detailed and high quality than any other spaceship I've ever seen in another space game. It's insane they already have more than a 100 ships out, most of which are at a quality standard much higher than other games where you might only have one single ship or a dozen at most.

Also, is important to remember that when this started, we didn't have FPS combat, it was going to be just ship to ship action, we got FPS combat, we got landings, remember initially it was going to be an automated landing, now you can land ANYWHERE. We have ground vehicles ... I just remember when I backed, they had 18 million, my first "reward" was at 19 million... now look at them.

Add to this list physicalized equipment that has an effect on ship state down to individual fuses. That blows my mind! It's such impressive work and I am looking forward to seeing final implementation.

And armor being different pieces instead of a whole suit ... I watch my old videos sometimes and is amazing how much this changed.

This going to end up being one of the longest games in development ever.

It was supposed to launch in 2014 and then 2016 and here we are finishing out 2022

I believe star citizen is coming up to prey 11 years, Diablo 3 11 years mother 3 12 years and Duke nukem forever 15 years

I can certainly see this becoming the longest game in development ever at this point

This sets everything into perspective since all the games mentioned are junk, and STILL took longer than Star Citizen up to now. Those devs wouldn't have made SC's start screen in the decade CIG has been working on the game.

[icycalm]

2022 passes $100m annual sales revenue milestone
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... _milestone



Star Citizen is officially a $100M/year game, and it's still not December yet.

Proud that we have contributed a significant amount to this, not to mention how many must have got into the game after seeing me spam the frontpage with it for months now.

When Pyro/4.0 is released, it should reach $150M/year comfortably. When Squadron 42 comes out, I expect at least $200M-$250M/year.

[icycalm]

From the Reddit thread linked in the previous post:

The reason why income increases is because the game keeps improving.

If income is their motivation, then they should want to get the game completed, because this way they'd make in 1 year what it took them 10 to make so far.

Furthermore they're spending more than they have already, with all the commitments they've made for the next several years. One single flop year would ruin the company financially.

The idea that "there's no motivation" to get things done fast, or what some people say that there's some kind of incentive to never complete the game is completely delusional and disconnected from reality. A single look at their financials, history, and commitments for the next years, as well as the reason why they keep getting a bigger audience, would reveal that this reasoning is nonsense.

As for what the devs want, I think the time investment into Quanta shows what they want. A universe that is truly dynamic and unpredictable.
There are a few systems they could work on to do this.
Persistence (they are close), a dynamic economy (requires Quanta), larger server populations (think 500+ people), the ability to choose a server to join, true multi-crew gameplay (co-pilots, engineers, etc).
Add those things and the game skyrockets in playability. You'll have groups of players creating bases on random moons using landed ships, you'll have people blockading high value trade routes, you'll have people claiming territory. It would be a true MMO that lives and breathes and doesn't even require forced content to become interesting.

Two new full gameplay loops that I'm enjoying are:


Legal/illegal ground derelict missions - item recovery, crew identification, etc. Each derelict is some combination of puzzle mechanics and sometimes combat, and you can do up to 5 missions at a time at the same derelict.

Legal/illegal bunker content - FPS content which sometimes requires air and ground transport to reach mission locations. Around Hurston especially, there's the parallel loop of illegal bunkers which involves the tug-of-war over comms arrays, then ship-vehicle-ground combined bunker operations as well. Legal and illegal bunker explorers will often come to blows when encountering one another.

I believe that caves are also most of a full loop with similar experiences to derelicts, and medical gameplay has emerged as a viable in-game profession, as solo players need rescue if they are downed in FPS combat.


This is the first time I have gotten back into SC and lasted more than a couple of weeks, because it is more fun and has more to do than it did in years past. Salvage and "soft death" are also right over the horizon in Evocati testing. CIG has not gotten any new money from me this season, but I do feel like SC has become a game to actually play, rather than just one to passively watch and test every couple years.

I'd absolutely agree that you can burn through the current content in 6 months of active playtime. I guess where we different is that for me, that not unexpected or a negative thing. certainly a fine amount of content for $45 already. I'll likely play actively for a couple more months to see how 3.18 turns out, then return sometime in the future when Pyro drops or something.

The last time I ran bunkers, the person I was playing with was downed several times because he didn't know that the restricted area doors opened to spawn enemies. They can be a threat, but the low tick rate of the servers does mean that you can often kill them before they see and target you.

getting around 6 months of playing out of 45 bucks seems a pretty good deal to me. people spend more money on other triple AAA finished products and play them not more than 20h or so, so i think we really need to keep it in perspective here. Also, you could make the argument that as long as the game is not in a live release version 1.0.0 there is actually really no point in even playing, yet you yourself say you can get months out of it already. to me thats an actual achievement for an unfinished product. Also, it really depends whether or not you just joined the project in this years IAE and discover the game from the ground up for the first time or if you are a backer for 5-6 years and know every little inch of the 'verse because you keep up with the development. So of course your reality and the reality of someone who just joined are completely different. For you there is "nothing to do", while someone new will be like "omg theres so much stuff to do and see"(for the next months).

On top of the above, 3.18 adds an insane amount of content to the game, and we'll be getting it in Dec-Jan. I'll make a separate post about that. That "6 months of content" is about to become 8-10. And that's before Pyro comes out next year that will take it to a full year of content and beyond.

They are NOT making a Lot of money in fact they are barely covering their costs last time I looked they had Just, for the 1st time in 9 years, Made a profit of a Whole 1 Million Dollars!! Now divide that between their like 6+ Shareholders/Investors..that's nothing.

An actual Released product will make BILLIONS of dollars over time that a BIG Motivation.

Now re-read their accounts and look at the assets. There are massive asset write offs to reduced realised profits and therefore corporation/business tax. It's a pretty standard procedure but yeah, that's why there isn't much "profit" on the books.

Literally, this. I hate when people look up profit calls and go on the internet like they're CPAs telling everyone that Amazon barely makes a profit.

Why would they if they get $100M a year NOT doing it?

That's not a valid argument because as development progresses, the number of devs drops. Once the game reaches a stable release, there will be layoffs and a reduction of overhead. It happens all the time. Even if they don't, with access subscriptions and cosmetic microtransactions, they can easily make 2-3x what they are making now for a lot less work. If just half the current paid for accounts subscribed at $15/month, they'd make more than 150M every year. That's only HALF the people who currently have already bought the game. There are an additional 2+ million accounts that have been created and it stands to reason a chunk of those would buy the game. Selling jpegs is not the future. Subscriptions, lower overhead, and easy cosmetic sales will net them multiple billions of dollars in very short order.

The game we crowdfunded is long dead.

What we have now is infinitely better and more interesting, in my opinion. But considering how extremely it changed (from cutscene transitions, no free-roaming in planets, just the usual missions and no deep dynamic systems) to what they're working on now, I imagine you can argue for a refund if you want, since the original product is indeed dead.

We ordered a rusty bicycle, and are getting a space rocket instead, but have to wait 10 more years than originally expected.

They should have finished the original vision and used funds from that to make a Star Citizen 2.

Years of time and effort was at best not fully utilised and at worst utterly wasted for a vision that still feels influx and a product still ten years out.

They probably should have, but once Chris Roberts realized he had his shot at making his perfect game, there was no way he was going to make any compromises on the chance the compromised game would sell enough to let him have a 2nd chance at making his perfect game.

The problem is that his perfect game appears to be everything possible at all times.

Developer: We have these two mutually exclusive ideas for the game which should we go with?

Chris: Yes

Developer: But

Chris: Next

Does he even know what he wants out of this game?

That always depends on the last movies or series he saw. The new Top Gun movie is probably the reason why we get a new flight model. The last one was „inspired“ by „the expanse“

That's a bit narrow minded... He also is inspired by the latest hit game.

Surprised they didn't announce a auto chess version of Star Citizen.

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm ... a-spaceman

I encourage new backers to read that and keep in mind that's a manifesto. Once you understand the mindset Chris is going for there (a world of risk and dynamic content) a lot more of CIGs decisions start to make sense.

What do you mean? Last numbers I saw were 50k a day average, which IMO is WAY above what I had expected.

Most people hop in at new patches then take breaks. Having 50k people come back every day is wild for an Alpha game that has constant wipes and knowingly won't be out for many more years.

Unless the numbers changed, if so can you share them with me? (This is what I could find "50,000, with a peak of 130,000 players happening several times during the year".)

Yeah, but that doesn't change the reality much. Even if 2 million people spent $50 each, that'd be $100,000,000 ($100 million)

There are a lot of whales, but there are also a lot of people that just spend $45 or people that spend between $100 and $500. When I think whales, I think of the people with Krakens/Javelins/Idrises (even just ONE runs you $1000, and having several gets you into 5 digits), but there are a lot of dolphins and minnows in this pond, too.

It all adds up.

Yes, but we have no idea what that fraction is. 51/100ths is a fraction, but is also a majority.

And I'm not saying this to be sarcastic, I honestly have no idea what that is. I remember reading a year or so ago that the average account spent something like $100-$150, meaning a lot of people just buy the starter package, some buy that and maybe upgrade a ship or get a second ship or vehicle, and that's all they do.

The average person probably has between 1.5 and 4 ships. Many only have a starter ship, some might have a vehicle or second ship, many have 2-3 ships and a vehicle. You do get those people with entire fleets, but you get a lot of people who have spent $100-$500 (more than 100, less than 500) on this game over its lifespan (for the record, $500 over 10 years could be thought of as $50 per year or roughly $4/month, which is cheaper than any MMO; and yes, SC is unfinished, but it also is only a quarter what any sub-based MMO costs these days, so imo that comes out fairly even - I get $4/month worth enjoyment out of tooling around in it, and I haven't even spent that much)

I'd say it's the majority voting with their wallets.

Unfortunately, this IS heavily padded by the people who vote with bank accounts the size of small nations...

There are 1.7 million backer accounts, Chris told us at CitCon.

The average spend then is around $300 per account.

Those that voted with their wallets this week ($19m from iae) can't have been the majority (850k+), else CIG would have made lots more than $22 per majority-backer account ($19m / 850k), like A LOT more.

What happened to trigger the spike from 2019 to 2020??

They added a new show event in May that is similar to this one. It is called Invictus and specializes in military ships.

So that's what Invictus is.

Didn’t they also changed the ccu game at some point with more regular warbond ccus during the events?

I feel people stacking up on those worbond ccu chains attribute a lot to funding. Especially long time backers. You might not buy a big new ship for $300+ if you already spend a lot. But a $5 here and a $25 there. That adds up with all those events.

And all of the sudden you save 200 bucks on a $500 ship you had not thought about buying if you hadn’t stacked up all those warbond ccus

I'm still not clear on how this scheme works. It sounds like it might be worth the effort though.

I know how this looks to many..

But I want people to look at this one important thing for a moment. Funding/Citizen# has gone up in recent years. And in that time, we've had more ships and a few more gameplay things happen in that time.

So yes we can sit here and complain, but the thing I want people (and CiG) to really think about is what does this look like with a finished product?

This is proof that people a yearning for this type of game. And I hope we see the day we get most if not all we asked for.

What this guy doesn't get is that "people" asked for NOTHING. It was CHRIS ROBERTS who kept adding stuff to the design, often OVER THE PROTESTS OF THE PEOPLE. There are still countless people protesting that the game is still in development (i.e. that there's still stuff being added to it).

People's opinions count for literally ZERO to Chris Roberts. He just wants to make the game he wants to make, and if that takes the most Byzantine psychological ship-selling tricks in the history of gaming, he's hiring those psychologists asap.

Plot thickens btw:

And with that, almost $600m in total funding.

$527.25 million backer funding + $63.25 million in invested funds

Total: $590.5 million in funds.

btw, who invested the 63 mio, and how are they getting their money back?

A billionaire, Clive Calder, and his son. And apparently, they’re already receiving some dividends back (a few million so far), so they expect to make their investment back (and then some) over time.

I wonder if they will break even for the year.

They did 2020 for the first time in a long time. At least when you don't count in extra investments from non-baker sources. Even turned a nice profit that year. The financial report for 2021 at the end of this year will be interesting to see.

[icycalm]

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... _out_there

Somewhere out there...

There’s a commander who pledged just like you and me. Who supported and followed the development team. Who dreamed of the different possibilities and gameplay loops. Who planned to experience the full game one day… but they ran out of time. I think it’s only right that we honor the commanders we lost. The ones that will never get that experience. Rest in space boys. If there’s an afterlife, I hope you got a chance to see the stars. o7

Quite a few reports out there of people dying before getting to properly play the game.

https://twitter.com/supi_SC/status/1111762649442856960



This spaceport isn't a small thing, it's a huge deal in the game. It's the main one we use all the time on that planet, which is our home planet.

[icycalm]

I don't wanna leave...
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... anna_leave



This is probably the prettiest screenshot ever.

Need to see it on a big screen to understand.

[icycalm]

What is Star Citizen?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-Rz5PT ... XdPpMT44TR



I don't know how I never saw this before, it's pinned at the top of the official YouTube channel. It's a terrific trailer, not a FAQ in any way, as the title implies, it's a full-on awesome trailer and I put it at number 4 of my Ultimate Trailer Ranking.

"Explore on your own terms"
Shows a character imprisoned

lmao

[icycalm]

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... y_shoutout

3.18 Persistence Technology Shoutout

Paul, Benoit, and all the folks at CIG and Turbulent working on the PES tech -

You're probably not going to see this, but as someone who works in Operations on complex, critical, live IT systems, I can say you've done an amazing thing leading right into winter break. I certainly wouldn't have the chutzpah to publicly load-test brand new architectures and technologies this time of year.

I'm sure the data you're getting back on the performance from the graph database platform and all the interstitial systems is both fascinating and mildly terrifying, and I know many of your engineers will be very inclined to spend the break digging into it. I just want to express that even getting this out the door before the end of the year is enough, and even with all the excitement around the new related gameplay systems, I hope everyone doesn't feel too pressured into fixing everything in the next week or two.

Great job and looking forward to what you're able to accomplish next year.

It might not be every person there, but CIG employees read everything, from discord servers, the refunds sub, spectrum, YouTube comments, and of course the front page of the largest SC discourse page. I can almost guarantee atleast 2 of their 1000 employees will read your post. :)

Reminds me of when I did the Hyper Vanguard Force all six missions back to back flawless recording and posted it on here. Found out after the fact when one of them shot me a message that the folks who worked on it all crowded around and watched my video to see the lunatic who went and aced their mini-game, lol!

Hyper Vanguard Force is a pixel art STG they put inside Star Citizen, or rather on their website iirc.

3.18 is now in Wave 1 PTU btw, which means basically subscribers (me, Chev, Archonus and Adjudicator afaik). They plan to put it in open PTU before they leave for the holidays later this week. I 'aint playing until it's in Live, sometime in January.

[icycalm]

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... _pyro_2023

I mean, it's not a "hit piece" if it's accurate. CIG's goals are factually slipping farther and farther as time goes on.

The fact that even the most optimistic backers have finally abandoned nearly all talk of "Squadron 42 next year?" in the 12th year of development is probably the biggest sign of that.

Can we maybe agree on how long SC has been in development? Because it's been 10 years since the Kickstarter in late 2012 and about 9 since development began in earnest.

9 years since they hired outsourced studios to develop the game for a few years, before realising they wouldn't be able to handle the scope of the game that was evolving with such a team. Then essentially restarted the process of building their own studio that only really came online a couple years after that...

It's been like 4-5 decent years dev with COVID in the middle of it.

Not huffing the copium here, I'm pretty indifferent to the time span, very happy to wait and I joined in September 2012 as a golden ticket holder

[icycalm]

ArcCorp's parallax shader for buildings in 3.18 is really awesome!
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... _in_318_is



Show me another game.

Too bad though you can't win by rolling on the floor for 30 hours. It will never be GOTY.

Sorry, can someone explain what I'm looking at?

A shader is making the flat textures on the building look like actual rooms.

Those rooms you're looking at aren't really there. It's a very clever trick that makes a flat texture look like a complex 3D scene.

Orison and New Babbage have the same treatment, reportedly.

The windows in Cyberpunk are a good example of this technique being used almost to perfection. Even with your nose pressed against the window it's difficult to tell it's just a shader in that game.

Happens in the AAA hits Spiderman and Spiderman miles Morales too.